Unmasking the Duke's Mistress

by Margaret McPhee

  The moment could not be delayed for ever so she set the needlework down on the little sewing table with care and rose to her feet, skimming a hand down as if to brush out the wrinkles in her skirt.

  Only then did she look at him.

  Arabella was a tall woman, but Dominic stood a good head and shoulders above her. Tall with broad shoulders and a build that was well muscled. His tailoring was a deep midnight blue over the pristine white of his shirt, waistcoat and cravat. His tailcoat of superfine looked as if it had been fitted by a master tailor. Long legs clad in dark breeches showed too well the musculature of his thighs, leading down to matching top boots, the gloss of which could be seen even by the candlelight.

  His face looked paler than the last time she had seen him, his features as breathtakingly handsome as the man from her nightmares. She knew every plane of that face, had kissed every inch of it. His expression was intense and unreadable. And when her eyes finally met his she knew in that instant that all of her resolve was in vain. For she could not even look at him and remain unaffected.

  Her heart skipped a beat and then raced off at a canter.

  ‘Dominic,’ she heard herself whisper, and all of the old emotions were back, all of the love, all of the hurt, all of the hate. She felt her eyes begin to well and looked hastily away so that he would not see it, furious with herself for such weakness. She thought of Archie and that gave her the strength that she needed. She might not be able to do this for herself, but she could most definitely do it for her son.

  ‘Arlesford,’ she corrected herself and this time she was glad to hear that her voice was strong with just a hint of disdain.

  ‘Arabella.’ He made a small bow, but otherwise did not move.

  He stood there so quiet and still and yet she could sense the tension that surrounded him. It emanated from every pore of his body. It was betrayed by the slight clenching in his jawline, in his lips, in the way he was looking at her. His eyes were darker than she had ever seen them, so dark as to appear almost black, and he was looking at her with such intensity as if to glean every last thought from her head.

  She felt the nervousness ripple right through her body at the thought of all that she sought to hide.

  ‘The house is to your liking?’ he asked.

  ‘It is very nice, thank you, your Grace. Beautifully furnished with impeccable taste.’ She kept her face impassive and her voice cool.

  They looked at each other across the small distance and the silence was awkward and tense. She glanced away, waiting for him to shrug out of his tailcoat and suggest that they go upstairs. But that was not what Dominic said.

  ‘I wish to talk to you, Arabella.’

  ‘Talk?’ Her heart gave a stutter. A shiver of warning rippled down Arabella’s spine. She did not want to talk. Instinctively Arabella glanced up as if she could see through the floors above to the small bedchamber at the top of the house.

  She feared what talking might reveal.

  She feared that Dominic would learn of Archie, his son.

  Chapter Five

  If Dominic knew the truth, then God only knew what would happen to Archie. Her son would be branded a bastard, his life ruined before it had barely begun whether Dominic acknowledged him or not. If he knew he had such a fine son, he might wish to raise Archie himself or send him away to be raised by someone of his own choosing. For what man, especially a duke, as rich and powerful and ruthless as Dominic, would leave his child with a woman he had found in a bordello, no matter the explanations she could offer? Archie would be taken away from her to be with people who did not love him, who did not understand a small boy’s tender needs. Arabella trembled from the force of the fear.

  She wetted her suddenly dry lips and gave a false laugh to hide the fear. ‘But what more is there for us to talk about, your Grace? We have already settled upon all of the relevant details.’

  She saw the flash of anger in those dark eyes. ‘I would have you call me by my given name. And there is the whole of the last six years that we have barely begun to discuss, Arabella.’

  ‘I thought you already knew.’ Attack is the best form of defence, she thought and gathered her weapons as best she could. ‘I married Henry Marlbrook. He died. I went to Mrs Silver’s. That is all you need know, Dominic.’ She turned away to gain some semblance of control over her emotions once more.

  ‘On the contrary, Arabella. I think I need to know a great deal more than that.’

  ‘What do you want me to tell you?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘How good a man Henry was?’

  ‘Infinitely better than me. You made that very clear.’ His eyes bored into hers.

  ‘He was a thousand times the man you are,’ she taunted.

  ‘You forget your position, Arabella.’

  ‘No,’ she said and tried to control the raggedness of her voice. She forced a tight smile to her mouth. ‘I understand my position exactly.’ She glared at him. ‘Do you want me in here? Perhaps on the sofa? Or on the rug before the fireplace? Shall I undress for you now?’ she demanded.

  ‘Arabella!’ he said harshly, but there was a flash of pain in his eyes that matched the pain in her heart.

  And she realised that she was doing this all wrong, risking everything.

  She closed her eyes, rallied her senses. ‘Forgive me,’ she said in her normal voice and when she opened her eyes she did not look at him.

  ‘Arabella,’ he said more softly.

  But his kindness was worse than his contempt. It reminded her too much of the man she had loved.

  ‘What has happened to you?’

  ‘You already know the answer to that question,’ she said quietly.

  ‘No, Arabella, I do not.’ His eyes studied hers. ‘I wish that you would tell me.’

  Her heart was knocking so hard against her ribcage that she was surprised he could not hear it.

  ‘All of it that happened across the years,’ he said.

  She shook her head and forced a smile, trying to fool him.

  His gaze did not waver.

  ‘In Mrs Silver’s, when you were pretending to be Miss Noir, you said that it was your first night there.’

  ‘A harlot’s lie. It is what men want to hear, is it not?’ She glanced away and pressed her fingers hard against her lips, hating the words she must say. But say them she would, for she did not want his pity. And she did could not risk his questions.

  Dominic stood there still and silent.

  ‘Shall we go upstairs?’ She knew her part in all this, knew what he had come for. And once he had it, he would go and the ordeal would be over…at least for now.

  He said not one word, but he followed her up the stairs to the large cream-coloured bedchamber on the first floor.

  There could be no room for modesty, nor the last remaining shreds of her pride. She knew what was required, knew what she must do.

  She turned away from him and forced herself to strip off her clothing, every last stitch. And when she was naked she sat down at the dressing table and took the pins from her hair, uncoiling its long length while her eyes watched his reflection in the looking glass. She watched while he slipped off his tailcoat and abandoned it over a chair. His waistcoat followed.

  She sat there, waiting for the inevitable. Gathering her courage for what must come. But Dominic made no move towards her.

  The nerves shivered right through her body. She swallowed. Did a mistress wait for her protector to come to her, or did he expect her to go to him? Arabella did not know the answer. But the quicker this was over, the better for herself. So she rose and walked to him. It took every ounce of Arabella’s strength not to wrap her arms around herself to cover her nakedness, to make herself stand there before him and let him look at her.

  His touch, when it came, was gentle, reverent almost, and she shivered at the sudden flash of unbidden memories from a lifetime ago—of the passion and the love that had been between them.

  He ran a hand over her hair, his hand sliding round to
the nape of her neck. His fingers rested there light as a butterfly and the tingle beneath them seemed to run through the whole of her body. Slowly, deliberately, he trailed the tips of his fingers down the column of her throat.

  Arabella deliberately masked any sign of emotion from her face as she stood there and let him touch her, angling her head to allow him access. He was her protector. This was what he was paying for. It meant nothing. But already she could feel the hard thud of her heart and everywhere his fingers touched, her skin burned, and she felt like weeping.

  His hand dipped lower, so that she felt his fingers trace all the way out to the end of her collarbone and all the way back again. She tried to control the unsteadiness of her breathing, the gathering sob, but that only seemed to make it worse.

  Not one word did he say. Not once did he meet her eyes, just kept his gaze fixed on the magic that his fingers were working.

  He paused.

  Arabella held her breath.

  And then inch by tiny inch his fingers followed the path down into the valley between her breasts.

  Again he halted, but whether it was to torture her, or himself, she did not know. If he continued like this, Arabella did not know if she could bear it. He placed a palm upon her left breast and beneath it she felt her heart jump and race all the harder. Beneath the cover of his hand her nipple was already taut and tender.

  Arabella willed herself not to respond. He did not love her. She thought of all he had done six years ago. But when his palm slid away and his fingers teased at her nipple, plucking it, there was nothing she could do to prevent it bead all the harder. Her wantonness appalled her.

  She squeezed her eyes closed to prevent the tears, knowing what would follow.

  But his hand halted and dropped away, so that he was no longer even touching her.

  Each tight line of his body and the bulge in his breeches revealed that he was every bit as aware as she of the tension that hummed between them. Slowly, his gaze raised to meet her own and there was something in his eyes as he stared at her. The strangest expression. Not lust as she had expected. Not victory or even arrogance. Realisation, maybe. And something else that she could not quite define. Something that looked almost haunted.

  ‘Dominic?’ she whispered.

  But Dominic gave no sign of having heard her. He stood there frozen, staring as if he could see into the very depths of her soul.

  And then he backed away, raking a hand through his hair as he did so.

  ‘I cannot…’ he said and his face was white. He turned away, gathered up his waistcoat and tailcoat and made for the door. ‘Dominic!’

  He stopped where he was, hesitated with his hand stilled in its grip of the doorknob, but did not turn round.

  And then he left, closing the door quietly behind him.

  There was the tread of his boots upon the stairs, the murmur of voices in the hallway and, a short while after that, the sound of a carriage and horses outside.

  Arabella watched the dark unmarked carriage drive away into the night. She shivered and pulled the shawl tight around her shoulders, not understanding what had just happened between them.

  Dominic did not sleep for what remained of the night. He stood by the window of his library and looked out over the sleeping city and watched the dawn break over a charcoal sky.

  He had been a fool to think that he could take Arabella as his mistress and use her as a whore, even if she was exactly that. The past was too strong between them. She might have slashed the ties that had bound them and walked away, but Dominic had only just come to see that what had bound them together could never be completely undone. She was his first and only love. And no matter what she had done, or what she had become, he could not forget that. Every time he looked at her it was flaunted before his eyes. Every time he touched her he felt it in his bones.

  If he had thought it would be so easy to treat her just as he had treated all the other women who had come after her, without emotional attachment, he was wrong.

  She was engrained upon his mind, engraved upon his heart. He had dreamt of nothing else for nigh on six years. He had longed for her and hated her and needed her all at once. It was Arabella whom he thought of constantly. It was Arabella he thought of even when he was bedding another woman.

  He could taste her upon his tongue and smell her own scent, sweet and fresh like roses and summer rain. He could still feel the smooth softness of her pale skin, still feel the firm ripeness of her naked breasts. He wanted to possess every inch of her body with his mouth. He wanted to plunge his aching manhood into her silken flesh and take her in every way imaginable until this endless torment ceased.

  But he could not.

  The grey dress she wore in the bedchamber in Curzon Street was nothing of the courtesan’s guise she had donned before. It was old and shabby and respectable, Arabella’s own, rather than something of Mrs Silver’s. And when she had stripped it off and stood before him, offering what he had thought he had the right to take, he had willed himself to accept it. He had touched her and tried to coax himself, for God only knew how much his body burned to possess her. But beneath his hand he had felt the flutter of her heart and he had known that he could not do it.

  Arabella’s words rang through his head. He was a thousand times the man you are!… A harlot’s lie. It is what men want to hear, is it not? And he realised there had been a part of him that had thought that she would have welcomed him, wanted him. That she would have told him that what happened in the past was all a mistake, that she had loved him all along.

  He shook his head with disgust at his own absurdity. Nothing had changed. It never would. She still had the power to hurt him…and was wielding it with deliberation.

  He had made this arrangement; he would not break it and see her thrown back down into the gutter. But for Dominic there could be no more visits to Curzon Street.

  The decision made, Dominic stood back to watch the new day dawn over London.

  In the dining room that morning Arabella was watching Archie eating his breakfast. After seeing him brought almost to the point of starvation she could not help but worry whether that last week in Flower and Dean Street had left its mark upon him. But looking at him now, wolfing down his buttered eggs and sausages and excitedly telling his story, she felt a sense of relief at the resilience of children. She smoothed down his hair and concentrated on listening to how he was going to have a whole stable of horses when he was a grown-up man. But she knew Mrs Tatton’s questions would not be deferred for long. Arabella could see from the corner of her eye the way her mother was watching her with concern written all over her face.

  She tried to smile and act as if everything was just the same as it had been yesterday, but her heart was filled with humiliation and confusion and embarrassment over what had happened last night. She did not understand what she had done wrong. And she was relieved and angry and ashamed all at once.

  Archie helped himself to another two sausages and then climbed down from the table and ran off to play a game of horses.

  ‘Archie, come back. We do not leave the table until we have finished eating,’ she called after him.

  ‘Oh, leave him be, Arabella. He will do no harm and has been so well behaved of late despite all of our troubles,’ said Mrs Tatton.

  ‘You are right, of course,’ Arabella said. ‘It has not been easy for him.’ The weight of guilt was heavy. She doubted that the memory of those awful last days when he had gone hungry would ever leave her.

  ‘Nor for any of us,’ answered her mother. ‘Now I know it is not my place to ask and that events of the bedchamber between a man and a woman are best kept that way, but…’ Mrs Tatton’s brow furrowed with concern. ‘I do not think that matters went so well for you last night.’

  ‘Those matters were fine,’ Arabella said quickly and felt her cheeks flush at the memory of Dominic’s rejection. She was his mistress. She was supposed to bed him, to let him take his pleasure. And she had been prepared to do ju
st that, however much she resented it. What she had not been prepared for was that he would tease a response from her body and then just walk away.

  ‘Do not lie to me, girl. I have eyes to see and ears to hear. And I see your face is powder pale this morning and your eyes swollen and red as if you have spent the night weeping. And I heard him leaving the house before midnight.’

  ‘My eyes are a little irritated this morning, nothing more. And D—’ She stopped Dominic’s name on her tongue before it could escape. ‘And, yes, the gentleman had to leave early. There were others matters to which he had to attend.’

  ‘At midnight?’ her mother snorted. ‘He was barely here.’

  ‘If his visits are short, does it not suit us all the better?’

  ‘Some men can be inconsiderate in their haste to…to satisfy their own…’ Her mother’s cheeks blushed scarlet and she could not finish her words.

  ‘No,’ Arabella said hastily. ‘It was not like that.’

  The sight of him. The scent of him. His fingers slowly tracing a line all the way along her collar bone, before meandering down to tease her nipples. The burn of her skin, the rush of her blood…

  She winced with the shame of it.

  ‘Tell me the truth, Arabella.’ Mrs Tatton reached over and placed her hand on Arabella’s.

  Her cheeks warmed, and she felt the gall of bitterness in her throat. ‘If you knew the truth, Mama, you would not believe it,’ she murmured.

  ‘Did he use you ill?’ Her mother’s face paled, the flash of fear in her eyes making Arabella feel a brute. She was supposed to be reassuring her mother, not worrying her all the more.

  ‘He did nothing, Mama.’ Even though she had offered herself to him like the harlot she had become. She was so angry at herself…and at him.

  She was relieved that he had not taken her, so why did she feel so humiliated? It was a confusing hurtful mess.