Forbidden Jewel of India (Harlequin Historical)

by Louise Allen

  Anusha oiled and stroked, her hands caressing over skin roughened with hair, puckered by old scars, smooth as polished stone. She massaged his long legs, then, greatly daring, took a deep breath and went under the water to take him in her mouth.

  Nick shuddered, arched and she used her tongue and her lips while her breath lasted and finally surfaced, seeing stars and little else through a curtain of wet hair.

  ‘Oh, my love.’ Nick moved fast. She was wrapped in towels and somehow he had flung some on the swinging bed, for she landed on thick cotton, as Nick fell full length beside her, setting the whole thing swaying.

  ‘There are many subtle things we can do on this bed,’ he said as he pushed the wet hair carefully from her face. Anusha nodded, hoping she could interpret the illustrated texts well enough to satisfy him whilst her legs were trembling and her heart was beating like a tabla.

  ‘But I do not think,’ Nick said between kisses as he bent his head to her breast, ‘that I am going to attempt any of them today. I intend to be a straightforward Englishman and simply worship you.’

  And he did so, with his mouth and his hands and his words, until she was mindless with pleasure and desperate with spiralling tension. Soothed and provoked, kissed and teased, she moaned his name and arched under him, begging for him in Hindi and English and soft, incoherent murmurs.

  Anusha had no inhibition or fear left in her by the time Nick settled himself over her. She cradled him in her thighs, curled her legs around him and opened her body and her heart to him as he thrust, slow and strong, and made her his.

  ‘Nick,’ she said and opened her eyes on to his as he looked down at her, every strong line in his face refined by tension, his eyes full of love and desire.

  ‘I am here,’ he said, as if she could doubt it, and began to move, gentle at first and then with a rhythm that swept her with him, up and up until everything exploded and they were one and indistinguishable and she did not know where her body ended and his began, nor her mind either.

  *

  ‘Anusha,’ Nick murmured and rolled over with her still tight in his arms. The bed swung wildly and she clutched at him and laughed, her wicked laugh that never failed to make him smile.

  ‘I am here.’

  ‘Are you happy?’ It was a brave question to ask of a new bride who had just lain with her husband for the first time, he thought with a wry smile. What if she said no?

  ‘I think perhaps it is not permitted to be this happy,’ she said and came up on her elbows to smile at him. ‘Are future marchionesses allowed to be so?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ he confessed. ‘But we will make new rules and do as we will and I predict that we will laugh more than any other lord and lady in the whole of England.’

  She curled down beside him and her hands began to explore. She was brave, a little tentative, and he realised she was putting her theoretical learning to the test.

  ‘I also predict,’ he said, trying not to gasp, ‘that you will be the only aristocratic lady in England with an understanding of the Indian classical erotic texts. I am not sure what I have done to deserve it, but please, my love, do not stop!’

  Anusha rested her arms on his chest and kissed along his collarbone. ‘Oh, I do love you, Nicholas!’

  ‘For ever.’ He drew her up for his kiss and the two words that were a question and an answer and a vow all at the same time. ‘For ever.’

  *

  Keep reading for an excerpt of Some Like It Wicked by Carole Mortimer!

  Author’s Note

  In the early years of the East India Company’s rule in India their officers and men were encouraged to marry local women or to take Indian mistresses, for that was seen as an important way to gain understanding and acceptance. Many officers had liaisons with ladies from the princely families and there was little prejudice—many British men became Hindu or Muslim, studied the languages and culture of the sub-continent and raised families in Anglo-Indian households.

  It was only from around the 1820s, when English wives and missionaries began to settle, that attitudes changed for the worse and such liaisons were frowned upon. Company officials were expected to live lives as close to the English norm as possible and doors to advancement slammed in the faces of Anglo-Indian children.

  I was first enchanted by the world of the eighteenth-century Anglo-Indians when I saw paintings of them in the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition The Indian Portrait 1560-1860. William Dalrymple’s book The White Mughals tells the story of one such liaison, in this case between the Resident at the court of Hyderabad and the high-born daughter of the Nizam’s Prime Minister. But that love story ended in tragedy and I was determined that my lovers would find their happy ending.

  An amazing two weeks touring Rajasthan, staying in royal palaces, gave me settings and more fantastic memories than I could ever use. The states of Kalatwah and Altaphur are, of course completely fictitious.

  Begums, Thugs and White Mughals, the Journals of Fanny Parkes, gave me essential information for the trip down the Jumna and the Ganges from the pen of an intrepid Company wife. From a very different point of view, but full of fascinating detail of such things as sugar production and the difficulties of travel, Bishop Reginald Heber’s A Narrative of a Journey Through the Upper Provinces of India gave me a great deal of information.

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  Chapter One

  May 1817—Highbury House, London

  ‘Do smile, Pandora; I am sure that neither Devil nor Lucifer intends to gobble you up! At least…it is to be hoped, not in any way you might find unpleasant.’

  Pandora, widowed Duchess of Wyndwood, did not join in her friend’s huskily suggestive laughter as they approached the two gentlemen Genevieve referred to so playfully. Instead she felt her heart begin to pound even more rapidly in her chest, her breasts quickly rising and falling as she took rapid, shallow breaths in an effort to calm her feelings of alarm, and the palms of her hands dampened inside the lace of her gloves.

  She did not know either gentleman personally, of course. Both men were in their early thirties whereas she was but four and twenty, and she had never been a part of the risqué crowd which surrounded them whenever they deigned to show themselves in society. Nevertheless, she had recognised them on sight as being Lord Rupert Stirling, previously Marquis of Devlin and now Duke of Stratton, and his good friend, Lord Benedict Lucas, two gentlemen who had, this past dozen years or so, become known more familiarly amongst the ton as Devil and Lucifer. So named for their outrageous exploits, both in and out of ladies’ bedchambers.

  The same two gentlemen Genevieve had moments ago suggested might be considered as likely candidates as lovers now that their year of mourning for their husbands was over…

  ‘Pandora?’

  She gave a shake of her head. ‘I do not believe I can be a party to this, Genevieve.’

  Her friend gave her arm a gently reassuring squeeze. ‘We are only going to speak to them, darling. Play hostess for Sophia whilst she deals with the unexpected arrival of the Earl of Sherbourne.’ Genevieve glanced across the ballroom to where the lady appeared to be in low but heated conversation with the rakish Dante Carfax, a close friend of Devil and Lucifer.

  Just as the three widows were now close friends…

  It was sheer coincidence that Sophia Rowlands, Duchess of Clayborne, Genevieve Forster, Duchess of Woolle
rton, and Pandora Maybury, Duchess of Wyndwood, had all been widowed within weeks of each other the previous spring. The three women, previously strangers, had swiftly formed an alliance of sorts when they had emerged from their year of mourning a month ago, drawn to each other by their young and widowed state.

  But Genevieve’s suggestion a few minutes ago, that the three of them each ‘take one lover, if not several before the Season was ended’, had thrown Pandora more into a state of turmoil than anticipation.

  ‘Nevertheless—’

  ‘Our dance, I believe, your Grace?’

  Pandora had not thought she would ever be pleased to see Lord Richard Sugdon, finding that young gentleman to be unpleasant in both his studied good looks and over-familiar manner whenever they chanced to meet. But, having found it impossible to think of a suitable reason to refuse earlier when he had pressed her to accept him for the first waltz of the evening, Pandora believed she now found even his foppish company preferable to that of the more overpowering and dangerous Rupert Stirling or Benedict Lucas.

  ‘I had not forgotten, my lord.’ She gave Genevieve a brief, apologetic smile as she placed her hand lightly upon Lord Sugdon’s arm before allowing herself to be swept out on to the ballroom floor.

  *

  ‘Good Lord, Dante, what has put you in such a state of disarray?’ Rupert Stirling, the Duke of Stratton, enquired upon entering the library at Clayborne House later that same evening, and instantly noticing the dishevelled state of one of his two closest friends as he stood across the room. ‘Or perhaps I should not ask…’ he drawled speculatively as he detected a lady’s perfume in the air.

  ‘Perhaps you should not,’ Dante Carfax, Earl of Sherbourne, bit out. ‘Nor do I need bother in asking what—or should I say, whom—is succeeding in keeping Benedict amused?’

  ‘Probably best if you did not,’ Rupert chuckled softly.

  ‘Would you care to join me in a brandy?’ The other man held up the decanter from which he was refilling his own glass.

  ‘Why not?’ Rupert accepted as he closed the library door behind him. ‘I have long suspected that my stepmother would eventually succeed in driving me either to drink or to committing murder!’

  *

  Pandora—having found herself trapped in a corner of the ballroom with Lord Sugdon once their dance came to an end, and only managing to escape his company a few minutes ago when another acquaintance had engaged him in conversation—could not help now but overhear the two gentlemen’s conversation as she stood on the terrace directly outside the library.

  ‘Then let it be drink this evening,’ Dante Carfax answered his friend. ‘Especially as the Duchess has been thoughtful enough to conveniently leave a decanter of particularly fine brandy and some excellent cigars here in the library for her male guests to enjoy.’ There was the sound of glass chinking and liquid being poured.

  ‘Ah, much better.’ Devil Stirling sighed in satisfaction seconds later after he had obviously taken a much-needed swallow of the fiery alcohol.

  ‘What are the three of us even doing here this evening, Stratton?’ his companion drawled lazily as he threw wide the French doors out on to the terrace with the obvious intention of allowing the escape of the smoke from their cigars.

  ‘In view of your dishevelled state, your own reasons are obvious, I should have thought,’ the other gentleman remarked. ‘And Benedict kindly agreed to accompany me, once I told him of my need to spend an evening away from the cloying company of my dear stepmama.’

  Dante Carfax gave a hard laugh. ‘I’ll wager the fair Patricia does not enjoy being referred to as such by you.’

  ‘Hates it,’ the other man confirmed with grim satisfaction. ‘Which is the very reason I choose to do it. Constantly!’

  Devil by name and devil by nature…

  The thought came unbidden to Pandora as she remained unmoving in the shadows of the terrace, having no wish to draw the attention of the gentlemen to her presence outside by making even the slightest of noises.

  The aroma of their cigars now wafting out of the open French doors was a nostalgic reminder to Pandora of happier times in her own life. A time when she had been younger and so very innocent, with seemingly not a care in the world as she attended such balls as this one with her parents.

  Occasions when she would not have felt the need, as she had this evening, to flee out on to the terrace in order to prevent any of Sophia’s tonnish guests from seeing that Pandora had finally been reduced to humiliated tears by Lord Sugdon’s blatant and crude suggestions…

  Not that most of the ton would care if she did find herself insulted, many of society not even acknowledging her existence, or troubling themselves to speak to her, let alone caring if she constantly found herself being propositioned by those gentlemen brave enough to risk her scandalous company.

  Indeed, if it were not for the insistence of Sophia and Genevieve in having her also received at whatever social functions they chose to attend, then Pandora believed she would have found herself completely ostracised since she had ventured to return to society a month ago.

  ‘A futile exercise, as it happens,’ Rupert Stirling continued wearily, ‘now that my father’s widow is also recently arrived at the Duchess’s ball.’

  ‘Oh, I am sure that Sophia did not—’

  ‘Don’t get in a froth, Dante, I am not blaming your Sophia—’

  ‘She is not my Sophia.’

  ‘No? Then I was mistaken just now in the perfume I recognised as I entered the room?’

  There was the briefest of pauses before the other gentleman replied reluctantly, ‘No, you were not mistaken. But Sophia continues to assure me I am wasting my time pursuing her.’

  Pandora’s mind was agog with the implication of this last conversation. Sophia? And Dante Carfax? Surely not, when Sophia lost no occasion in which to criticise the rakishly handsome Earl of Sherbourne…

  ‘Would not the taking of a wife solve at least part of your own problem, Rupert, in that the Dowager Duchess would then have no choice but to leave off living openly with you in your homes, at least?’ Dante now asked.

  ‘Do not think I have not considered doing just that,’ the other man rasped.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it would no doubt solve one problem, but surely bring about another.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘In that I would then be saddled for the rest of my life with a wife I neither want nor care for!’

  ‘Then find one you do want, physically, at least. There are dozens of new beauties coming out each Season.’

  ‘At two and thirty, my taste in women does not include chits barely out of the schoolroom.’ The to-ing and fro-ing of Rupert Stirling’s voice indicated that he was pacing the library in his agitation. ‘I cannot see myself tied for life to a young woman who not only giggles and prattles, but knows nothing of what takes place in the bedchamber,’ he added disdainfully.

  ‘Perhaps you should not dismiss the existence of that innocence so lightly, Rupert.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, no one could ever accuse you of a lack of finesse in the bedchamber, which would surely allow you to tutor your young and innocent wife as to your personal preferences. And secondly, innocence does have the added benefit of ensuring—hopefully—that the future heir to the Dukedom would at least be of your own loins!’

  ‘Which may not have been the case if Patricia had succeeded in giving my father his “spare”—an occurrence which would have succeeded in rendering me fearful for my very life whilst I slept,’ the Duke of Stratton stated venomously.

  Pandora was aware she no longer remained silent outside on the shadowed terrace merely to avoid detection, but was in fact now listening unashamedly to the two gentlemen’s conversation. Two gentlemen, having seen them from a distance but a short time ago, it was all too easy for Pandora to now envisage.

  Dante Carfax was tall and dark with wicked green eyes, his impeccable evening attire fitt
ing to perfection his wide and muscled shoulders, flat abdomen and long powerful legs.

  Rupert Stirling was equally as tall, if not slightly taller than his friend, his golden locks fashionably styled to curl about his ears and fall rakishly across his intelligent brow, his black evening clothes and snowy white linen tailored to emphasise the powerful width of his shoulders, narrow waist and long and muscled legs. His eyes would no doubt be that cool and enigmatic grey set in his haughtily handsome fallen-angel face, with a narrow aristocratic nose, high cheekbones and a wickedly sensual mouth that could smile with sardonic humour or thin with the coldness of his displeasure.

  A displeasure that at present appeared to be directed at the woman his late father had married four years ago.

  Pandora had been only twenty at the time, and not long married herself, but she remembered that the whole of society had then been agog with the fact that the long-widowed seventh Duke of Stratton, a man already in his sixtieth year, had decided to take as his second wife the young woman it was strongly rumoured had been romantically involved with that gentleman’s son before he returned to his regiment to fight in Wellington’s army against Napoleon…

  Pandora, along with all of society, was also aware that the new Duke and his stepmother had occupied the same house ever since the death of his father the previous year—or rather houses, because whether in town or the country, Rupert Stirling and his father’s widow invariably now occupied the same residence.

  ‘As I recall, you always did have reason to fear for your life when in the bedchamber with that particular lady,’ Dante drawled drily in reply to the other man’s previous comment.

  Pandora felt the colour warm her cheeks at overhearing such intimate details of Rupert Stirling’s relationship with the woman who was now his widowed stepmother. Perhaps, after all, she had listened long enough to the gentlemen’s conversation, and should now return to the ballroom and make her excuses to Sophia before leaving? Yes, that would probably be for the best—

  ‘Half the gentlemen present this evening are currently following my stepmama about the ballroom with their tongues hanging out,’ the Duke said scathingly.