After hours of lovemaking, her hair was rumpled and matted, the paint on her face disarrayed, cheeks beard-burned, lips kiss-swollen. Adolphe could imagine no sight more striking than Michelle after a long day of pleasing him.
For her part, she couldn’t help touching the long scratches down her sides and the bruises on her wrists and throat. His features were relaxed and body loose, hair tousled, falling unevenly without pomade.
“Every time, Monseigneur, vous êtes extraordinaire,” she said, as she kissed him lightly, just above his nipple.
“You may call me by my name tonight, my sweet.” She mouthed it silently, as though tasting a delicacy. “You are most entertaining,” he chuckled. “I have hardly considered my troubles at all this day.”
He opened the curtains on his side of the bed to encourage a breeze, brass rings sliding loosely along the canopy rail. “Light a candle and open the window, Michelle. It will rain tonight, and I want the sea air to clear the stink of London from my nose.”
She opened the bed curtains and sat up. She used the tinder tube to light a rapeseed oil lamp, glowing red in the darkened room. Stepping to the window, hips swaying in the way she knew best enticed him, she said, “Why do you not come home to stay, Dofi? You say you dislike London, but you are there but for a few days each month. The air here is clean, and you can see France from your bedchamber. I see you renewed when you visit the cliffs. Your troubles fall away.”
She opened the shuttered casement window, setting the latch to keep it open, then tied back the drapes. Walking back, she bounced just enough on her toes to set her breasts swinging, nipples hardening in the cool wind.
When she was almost to the bed, he said, “Stop.” She pulled her foot back from the step she was about to take. “You have the face of a crone, ma petite, but in this low light, still the body of a girl. Turn for me,” he demanded, twirling his finger to demonstrate. She turned her back to him, looking over her shoulder playfully. “Bend over and spread your legs. Show me your derrière.”
She bent at the hips, giving him the view he craved: her striped, welted, and scarred flanks, bruised with today’s handprints and fingertip bruises, scars years old, every one with a salacious story he could tell. He leaned over the mattress, ran his fingers up her leg, then sharp fingernails down the back of her thigh across the rising welts, making her stumble. She quickly regained her position and bent further with a sigh that could have been frustrated or contented or both.
He growled, “Come back to bed, my lovely little whore. It is a chilly night, and I would have you keep me warm.”
He said nothing until she was once more in his arms. As she tugged the blanket up, he stopped her, rubbing his free hand along her arm, using his thumb and index finger to pinch her nipples lightly, then harder, using his nails until she keened. He fell back onto his pillow, pulling her closer, covering them both with the blanket.
“I have reason to remain in London for the moment.”
He could hear the sneer in her voice. “Madame la Comtesse.”
He yanked her head back by the hair at the nape of her neck, and listened to her gasp, his cock hardening again, the third time since he had returned to Dover five hours ago. “Oui, Madame la Comtesse. Soon Madame la Duchesse. I grow tired of repeating myself, ma chère. You will show respect for my wife, or I will have no need to keep you once I have married.”
“I am sorry, Dofi. I mean no insult.”
The lines around his mouth deepened. “Monseigneur will do.” The tiniest of whimpers objected when he took back the gift of the name she had given him in childhood.
Satisfied with her fearful apology and his continuing lesson in proper deference, he dropped her head and caressed her hair again, and she snuggled closer to his side, letting her hand drift down his stomach, falling gingerly on his hip, close enough to stroke him if he commanded it, far enough away she couldn’t be accused of taking liberties. She risked a sensual kiss behind his ear, and he turned his head to allow it.
“She responds well to your suit, Monseigneur?”
His hand dropped heavily to her shoulder. “She is charmed, but I must make her want to elope the moment her meddling husband is gone. She would have fallen in love before now if not for his interference,” he snarled. “The old fool is minutes from death, and still he makes plans to thwart me.”
“Does he not see the honor of his wife becoming une Duchesse de France?”
“He would prefer to consign her to a convent.” His tone rasped as he explained, “Like the rest of les goddams, he has no love for Frenchmen, and like every bourgeois tradesman, is envious of nobility.”
Fingertip twisting in the curly hairs on his thigh, she tucked her head close, burrowing against his shoulder, inhaling his scent. Shifting his hip under her fingertips signaled a small reconciliation. For a lifetime, she had been allowed more freedom with his person than other women, especially after she pleased him so thoroughly, but the indulgence was never guaranteed.
“And I am sure,” he spat, “he has no wish to be cuckolded by a man who can screw her better than he, with his limp, old man’s prick.”
She moaned her agreement in his ear and gently nibbled the side of his neck until he tugged her mouth away by her hair. She settled her cheek against his shoulder before asking, “Does she not have other suitors? Is her fortune not appealing?”
For a moment, he was silent, listening to the wind whip around the corners of the house, considering the question he had been asking himself: whether any of the sycophantic fortune hunters sniffing at Lady Huntleigh’s assets posed a real threat. “Only Wellbridge might seduce her readily, but once she has no husband and is draped in black, he will abandon the field. He has no need for money and will soon tire of la comtesse begging his attentions.”
Her head came right off his shoulder. “You cannot want a woman who soils herself with an Englishman.”
He laughed with a deep rasp, tweaking her nose. “I still want you, mon chaton, and you have soiled yourself with Frenchmen, Prussians, Turks, Venetians, probably even Gypsies.” Her body tensed, so he allowed his fingertips to drift down her neck, across her shoulder. “Let him tumble her.”
Michelle twisted her leg around his, chilly toes toying with his ankle.
“He can be her atonement for compelling me to dance attendance, as though she is worthy of my notice. I am sure Wellbridge is no dunce in the bedchamber. Let her know ecstasy once and she will feel the lack for a lifetime.” Adolphe relished Michelle’s quiet whining at the unwelcome thought of feeling his lack. “He will drop her in the gutter when he is sated; she is too whey-faced to keep as a mistress. La comtesse could not make me hard with both hands and a rope.”
Michelle’s hand clutched at his hip, waiting for any indication he might allow her a more intimate touch. The reflexive curling of her fingers, tightening of her leg, the faint rocking of her sex against his thigh, were both noticed and unrewarded.
“Will she not fall in love with him?”
“Pity for Madame and her lover, Michelle?” He yanked her hair, dislodging her wet heat from the possibility of fulfillment. “Events will proceed more easily if she falls in love with me first.”
“Of course you can make her love you.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that! Who could be more deserving?”
The pride Michelle took from being chosen as lover to le duc shone in her eyes, ready to defend against anyone who might devalue his name. The confidence in his powers of seduction caused his sex to rise again. With a firm tug of her ear, he reminded Michelle she needed nothing but her presence to render him stiff as a poleax, several times a day.
“By the Heavens, I hope I need not bed her before we are wed. That I will do naught but once.”
Her voice grew very small and she scooted closer once more, braving his chastisement. “You do not plan to get her with child, Monseigneur?”
“Why would I fuck an ugly old woman, ma petite, when I have a pretty one?” He leaned down a
nd kissed the top of her head, smoothing the wrinkles under her eye with his fingertip. “No, Michelle, I have no need for her once the money is mine, and I want no half-English child. It is a pity you are too old to bear. In France, your bastards might inherit.”
The silence fell heavy and dark, and he held her closer, kissing her forehead, her face in his palm like cradling a kitten. His hand down her shoulder and arm gentled as for a frightened animal. Michelle curled her leg around his under the blanket, her toenail scratching his heel. A tear fell on his collarbone, but he wiped the next from her cheek with his thumb, distracting her with a sweet, soft kiss.
“Mon chaton, you must not cry. It has been so many years, and we have been given this great gift from God, my dear, the chance to be in each other’s arms again.” He cuddled her closer. “Does that not dry your tears?”
Before he could whisper the same words of comfort as so many times before, she shuddered and shook off her excess emotion, careful not to dislodge his hands, and nodded very slightly, offering the tiniest of kisses on his shoulder.
The reticence in her voice dared not verbalize the larger question hanging in the air. “What will you do with her?”
Pleased he had held her grief at bay, he absently toyed with her riotous red curls and answered, “She will be kept in the country until she can act like a duchesse, not a sailor’s whore. If she can be made presentable, perhaps she will have value at Court, since she is known there. But first, I must marry her, which is proving more complicated than I had thought.”
He shifted his hipbone slightly, and Michelle’s hand very slowly slid toward his cock, a quarter-inch at a time. He watched, waiting, letting her risk his anger. Although he was responding, he stayed her hand an inch away.
His voice hard and low, he ordered, “Stop, you greedy slut.”
Asserting his control would be more comfort to Michelle than any tenderness he might show. Tenderness only confused her.
She pulled her hand away without delay, draping it across her leg. Indrawn breath and instinctively pulling herself closer, signaled she was safe again under his dominion. Firmly grasping the hair at the nape of her neck, he let the fingers of his other hand drift down her thigh, tugging her legs very slightly apart. “I will fill your hungry cunt soon, ma douce pute, but I have an idea I need to consider.”
As the cool wind blew across them, now half-uncovered by the bedclothes, her shoulders tightened, so he pushed her back down to the mattress, holding her there with his free hand. When she relaxed into his touch, he ran his fingertips along the seam of her lips, opening her clenched jaw to allow her to suck on two of his fingers, almost daring her to bite him. His smile grew wider and colder as she pulled him inside, sucking and licking his hand as though he offered food to ease starvation.
The bed curtains rattled as he pulled them shut against the breeze, now infused with the scent of incipient rain, filling the enclosed space with the combined perfume of ocean wind and their long day of arousal and satisfaction. Sitting up to straddle one of her legs, keeping her exposed and available, his other hand reached her center, and he began stroking very lightly, teasing until she groaned. He bent down to suckle her nipple, biting, scraping his teeth against the swollen flesh, then kissed the bruises on her throat, drifting toward her ear, all the while letting her prove the willingness of her lips and tongue.
As he reached her lobe, tugging gently, he asked, “You have said you will do anything for me, n’est-ce pas?” He removed his hand from her mouth so she could answer.
Breath wispy, she agreed, “Oui, Monseigneur, anything you ask.”
He increased the pressure of his hand between her legs and quickened the rhythm, sliding two fingers inside and pressing his thumb against her tender bud, until she was moaning in earnest, twisting her head back and forth on the pillow. The bed shook.
“Show me.” Pulling away, leaving her whimpering, he fell back onto his pillows, hand pushing her head down to his burgeoning shaft. “If your mouth is the very best I have ever had, ma chère, I will give you what you so desire before I go back to Town in the morning.” He stroked her cheek with one hand and hair with the other.
“Now, suck my cock while I tell you what we are going to do.”
Chapter 15
“It is absolutely outrageous! Ridiculous!” Bella’s shrill voice echoed in the small hothouse in her Russell Square garden. Her speech was rapid, face red, not blushing prettily. “I will not stand for it!”
Situations of this type were the primary reason Nick discouraged intimacy with women. He had never heard an animal howl in as much rage as this, nor had he ever been so afraid of one’s bite. The sweat breaking out on his forehead had little to do with the sun beating down through the glass walls.
He had thought he was doing a masterful job expressing Myron’s proposition, enumerating every benefit, explaining why it should please her, and making her eager for the alliance.
“You must understand, my sweet, there are many dastardly men who may attempt subterfuge in pursuit of the fortune Huntleigh will leave. Under my protection, your money can be managed entirely to your benefit.”
So,” she said slowly, “you believe no gentleman might choose to pursue me out of interest in my person?”
He sidestepped that cannon blast: “No, darling, that’s not it at all. You are well worth the effort a man might put into knowing you. I only mean… well… your husband and I think it best to have your interests firmly in hand before such an occasion should present itself. Merely as a precaution against anyone with less-than-honorable intentions.” He nodded his head firmly, sure he had now explained to everyone’s satisfaction, and certain there was no way she could argue.
Her sweet smile seemed almost grateful. “The two of you think it best?”
His deep sigh echoed with profound relief at her instant understanding. “Yes, we do. And you needn’t be concerned for your place in society. You will be a duchess, my dear, and may do anything you like, short of murder. You can entertain any way you like—or not at all—wear anything you like. You will set fashions every time you hire a dressmaker. I shall open Wellstone if you prefer it, so you may abandon London. Anything you’d like, sweeting. Anything you choose.”
Her head tilted. “As long as I first choose to marry you.”
“Well… yes. That is the plan we are proposing.”
“We, meaning you and my husband, who think it best?”
His shoulders tensed. Something was very wrong. “Yes?”
Then, the awful tirade began.
Bella threw a trowel onto a worktable so hard the recoil broke a clay pot. “I am not a commodity, Wellbridge, and this is not an Arabian bazaar where one can sell a woman for sixpence!”
“We both know a woman costs more than sixpence at an Arabian bazaar,” Nick said, trying to tease her. He reached out to gently touch her face, but she literally snapped her teeth before he snatched his finger away. Then, like a simpleton, he compounded his mistake. “One with hair and eyes like yours must be worth at least ten riyals. Plus a camel and a herd of goats.”
Her hand shot like a musket ball into his shoulder. Arms flailing for a handhold, his feet went right out from under him, dumping him gracelessly and painfully on his behind, legs sprawled on the tiled floor. Next to him, on top of a pile of broken pottery and loam, sat a crumpled and pungent rosemary shrub he had dragged off the table on his way down. Examining the punctures and scrapes on one hand, rubbing his hip with the other, he stretched to ease the bruise he would have by nightfall, finally kneeling to right himself.
She looked down her nose at his indignity, then swept past to the greenhouse entrance. By the time he regained his feet to follow, he found his nose flattened against the glass in the slammed door. Once steady on the gravel path around the rose bushes, she was only a few steps from the morning room door. When he tried the latch, the lock turned and the curtain dropped across the diamond-paned windows.
He banged on the door w
ith his fist, rattling the glass: “Bella! Open the door! Let me explain!” He watched her shadow disappear behind the sheer curtain and cursed, “Demme, Bella! It wasn’t even my idea!”
He slammed his hand against the door jamb one last time purely to channel a bit more ire, then turned to leave, assuming he might have to jump over the wall to get to the street from the back garden, and would ruin his clothes in the ivy doing so. Before he could identify the lowest point over which to vault himself, the glass door reopened. He turned back, ready to fall on his knees and beg forgiveness if it would end the harangue until he could marshal better arguments.
Bella’s husband sighed as he shut the door gently, then motioned Nick to a cast-iron bench underneath a beech tree. Huntleigh sat awkwardly, leaning his cane against the tree, stretching out his bad leg before him, heel cradled in soft dirt and thick grass.
“I’m sorry for the scene, Wellbridge. I should never have agreed to let you initiate the conversation. I know better.”
Nick sat heavily on the bench, sodden as a sack of parboiled beans. “It’s my fault. I talked about fortune hunters and financial arrangements and the advantages afforded a duchess until she wanted to dispatch me herself.” He should have said something about lo—affection. Affection isn’t even a falsehood, he thought.
“Yes, I was listening from the library. Remarkably dim-witted for a man of your intelligence. ‘Your husband and I think it best’ was a dreadful turn of phrase, which I suggest you never repeat in the hearing of any woman.”
Nick brushed dirt from his sleeve and left a thumbprint on his cuff trying to remove a spot. “Thank you so much for your thrice-damned opinion, Huntleigh. Quite helpful at this juncture, of course.” If he tugged at his jacket much harder, he would tear the stitches, and the roiling of his tensed shoulders threatened to make short work of Weston’s tailoring.
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