He would do something to lay one of his fears to rest.
Soon he entered the handsome establishment of Mirabelle, London’s premier madam. Heavy chandeliers illuminated her grand salon, where men gamed and drank, often with a woman in their lap. On the many raised daises around the room, thinly draped beauties assumed suggestive poses to titillate any still-jaded appetites.
Fort indicated that he wanted to speak to the proprietress privately, and was ushered into her elegant boudoir. Soon the handsome if hard-faced Mirabelle joined him. Her dark hair was elegantly arranged, and her ruby-red silk gown would not have disgraced a duchess. Nor would her jewels, though she always wore too many at a time.
The madam was clearly disappointed to discover that one of her richest patrons hadn’t come in search of pleasure, but she was willing to sell information, too. She knew the usefulness of friends in high places.
“You know I don’t deal in slaves, my lord.”
“But you know who does. Would you have heard if a new girl was being coerced?”
“I have no interest in such things.” She fingered the diamond necklace spread over her white-powdered chest. “I could find out.”
He gave her a smile that carried promise of payment. “Do so. I’ll be grateful.”
She smiled back. “I count on it.” As he turned to leave, she said, “Are you sure we can’t entice you, my lord? As you know, we have anything a person might desire.”
From the way she stressed anything, he suspected she was delicately offering a pretty boy. His recent lack of attendance must be puzzling her.
“Thank you, Mirabelle, but no.”
He made no further explanation, but as he strolled through the crowded salon toward the doors, he gave a moment’s thought to his strange celibacy.
Before his father’s death, his attitude toward women had been enthusiastic, but cheerfully uncomplicated. As long as a wench was willing and likely to be free of disease, he’d enjoyed her, doing his best to give her pleasure in turn. He’d always appreciated a restless body more than a passive one. In fact his ideal was to enter a woman already wild with orgasm, to ride her writhing hips . . .
With some surprise, he realized the image was having no effect on him at all.
It was taking time to escape Mirabelle’s, for friends and acquaintances constantly hailed him. He had paused with a group of men to watch one of the women on a dais give an excellent representation of orgasm with an invisible lover. His companions were staring hot-eyed, slack-lipped, some even rubbing at their crotch.
Nothing.
He felt nothing.
He’d shackled his interest in women months ago, but he hadn’t realized how thorough he had been. Perhaps he would never desire a woman again.
But he’d desired Lisette.
That thought jolted him. Had he reached the state where he needed a frightened innocent to stir his jaded palate? If so, his palate could stay jaded. Trembling virgins were too much trouble.
He quietly slipped out of the group around the demonstration, and left Mirabelle’s wondering just when his interest in sex had died. He could remember a time not long ago when his interest had been strong, even excessive.
After his father’s death, he’d discovered that his sexual appeal had suddenly increased. A surprising number of society matrons found the youngest, handsomest earl an enticing curiosity. For a while, he’d obliged them.
If he preferred a whore, his purse was bottomless, and in London anything, absolutely anything, could be bought. For a while he’d thought he might find oblivion in exhausting and inventive sex, or perhaps he’d foolishly thought to find something more.
Whatever he’d sought, he’d found only hell.
When the writhings of pleasure ceased to explode his mind, he’d progressed to the writhings of pain. Lady or whore, they never complained—some even seemed to enjoy his roughness. But one day, seeing the bruises he’d left on a countess’s lush body, he’d hated the person he had become.
As his coach rolled up and he climbed in, he hoped none of his thoughts showed on his face. The coach moved off, heading back to Walgrave House, and he suddenly remembered Portia. Here in this coach he’d threatened to rape his childhood friend simply because it would be a blow against Bryght Malloren, her husband.
At the memory, he raised his fingers to massage his temples. It had been the ancient instinct of man to attack his enemy through his women.
But Portia.
God, Portia.
Of course he wouldn’t have done it, couldn’t have done it.
He’d forced a kiss on her, though. The sort of kiss that had nothing to do with tenderness or even lust. An assault of anger and power.
He’d stopped there, thank God. But sometimes, lying sleepless in the dark, he wasn’t sure rape had been impossible. Could he, in fact, have blocked out who she was, blocked out the fact that Portia was a person at all. Could he have hurt her, defiled her . . .
Frightened by himself, he’d taken very few women after that, and soon stopped entirely. He knew his friends worried that he was turning into a simulacrum of his prudish, pride-ridden father.
Perhaps he was, at that. His healthy interest in women seemed to have drained away, leaving only warped tastes he would not nurture.
But then, there had been Lisette . . .
Irritated, he pushed thoughts of the tiresome chit away.
Sometimes he felt that every healthy part of him had rotted away, leaving only a warped formless thing that should not survive. A thing guilty of the most heinous sin. . .
Plague take it!
He had everything. He should be able to do something with it. Something worthwhile.
But what?
He didn’t want to be a copy of his father. The Incorruptible, though admired by many, had cared not a jot for wife, sons, or daughters. He’d been driven by pride and his own grandiose plans. In the end, he had even proved to be corruptible in pursuit of pride and plans.
Fort had pride and plans of his own, noble notions of using his wealth and power for good purposes, of making reparation for the evil his father had done.
Beneath, however, lurked another plan—no, a need—to destroy the haughty Marquess of Rothgar just as the marquess had destroyed him.
He knew one plan conflicted with the other, but was fiercely determined on both.
He was aware that these obsessions could drive him as mad as his father had been at the end. They could push him over the edge as his father had been pushed—by Rothgar, who played people like the helpless figures on his damned Chinese pagoda.
Rothgar’s sister Elf popped into Fort’s mind and he remembered her lively face as she bandied words with him at Sappho’s. How typical that Rothgar let his sister run wild, verbally crossing swords with anyone she didn’t like. He’d thought once or twice of using her in some scheme of destruction.
It would mean his death, he knew that. But death in the cause might be welcome. This was hardly a life he lived. And he had a brother.
Immediately after their father’s death, Fort had sent seventeen-year-old Victor to Italy. Whatever happened, he would come through it in some shape to take on the responsibilities of the earldom. This left Fort free to pursue revenge.
Through Elf Malloren?
Fort’s eyes focused, and he saw his reflection in the glass window of the coach, saw his own wry smile. He hadn’t been able to use Portia in his war, and he doubted he could use Elf.
She was a troublesome creature, but something about her made her hard to hurt—perhaps the fact that she had a genuinely kind heart. Sometimes, when she was teasing rather than taunting, it was damnably hard not to mellow and forget she was a Malloren at all.
He muttered a curse.
Kind thoughts of Elfled Malloren.
An excessive interest in that silly Lisette.
Perhaps Mirabelle was right to be concerned about him. Probably a night of exhausting, unusual sex with a few of her most skilled whores wo
uld be the cure to all that ailed him. After all, would he be thinking so much about Lisette if she hadn’t been the first woman to truly stir his sexual appetite in months?
And that made her doubly, triply dangerous.
He made an instant resolution to put her out of his mind. Rather than returning home, where he’d be likely to think about the wench, he needed company.
Back to Mirabelle’s? No, that kind of sex still did not appeal.
One of his clubs? The main activity there would be gaming, and he was not in the mood.
A coffeehouse? Late-night denizens of such places were always sunk deep in philosophy or politics. The last thing he wanted was to think.
He needed distraction and regretted that the theaters would be closed by now. A romping, foolish farce would fit the bill.
Then, ahead on Piccadilly, he saw the glittering lights of Devonshire House and remembered receiving a card for the duchess’s ball.
Dancing would provide mindless distraction for an hour or two. With luck, by then the strange mood would have passed.
Chapter 7
Elf spotted Walgrave the moment he appeared at the entrance to the duchess’s crowded ballroom.
Of course, in this glittering company, anyone dressed in funereal black would stand out. There was no question of some sixth sense alerting her to his presence. Of course there wasn’t.
She couldn’t deny, however, the disturbing flutter in her stomach, and that her hands were suddenly slick with sweat on her fan.
Oh dear. This was becoming ridiculous.
She forced her attention toward young Lord Northrop and smilingly accepted his invitation to join the next set. As he led her forward she refused to allow herself to watch the earl.
Some of the flutters in her stomach were nervous ones, however. She wasn’t accustomed to bumping into Walgrave all over town. What if he recognized Lisette?
As the music struck up and she curtsied, she assured herself that his identifying her was next to impossible.
Tonight, turned out to perfection by Chantal, she was completely Lady Elf. Her sandy curls were unpowdered and scattered with tiny blue flowers to match her pale blue watered-silk gown. No gaudy black-and-gold trimming here, but instead a cobweb-fine confection of white and silver, trimmed with seed pearls. For jewels, she had chosen a pearl-and-sapphire parure which Lisette could never afford if she saved for a thousand years.
Though this outfit was exactly the sort she found boring, she knew society thought it elegant and perfect. She knew, too, that she was a pleasing companion well liked by nearly everyone. Yet Fort, who had been kind and sometimes charming to silly, gaudy Lisette, would sneer at Lady Elfled Malloren as if she’d slithered out of a marsh.
Despite her good intentions, her eyes flickered around in search of him.
He was talking to Minnette de Courtances. No, not talking. Flirting! Minnette was a charming young woman, but how unfair that he flirted with her when he never did anything but glare at Elf!
“Is something the matter, Lady Elf?”
Northrop’s words made her realize she was frowning. She hastily smoothed it into a smile. “Nothing of moment, my lord. Just one of those fleeting concerns.”
He raised their arms so she could pass beneath them, then turn. “Is there any way I may assist you?”
Elf smiled. “Thank you, my lord, but no. Now tell me, what do you know of Nova Scotia? My brother is posted there, you see.”
That settled him comfortably off on another track.
Northrop was one of the men who would make her an offer of marriage if she gave him the slightest encouragement. As they chatted and went through the movements of the dance, she wondered why she did not. He was young, well set-up, intelligent, courteous . . .
He did not, however, make her flesh tingle when he touched her, and he never made her think of sex. In fact, she thought, rather shocked at herself, try as she might she couldn’t imagine lying naked in a bed with him, something she found all too easy—and too stimulating!—to envision with Fort.
When had she started thinking of him as Fort?
The set ended and she asked Northrop to take her to sit by her Aunt Kate. Otherwise, he would be obliged to keep her company until a new partner appeared. Having thus liberated them both, she chatted to her aunt while keeping a hunter’s eye on Fort.
She wanted to be with him—she didn’t try to lie to herself about that. But she had an altruistic purpose, too. This unreasonable enmity between the Mallorens and the Wares was dangerous and she intended to put an end to it.
Tonight.
Minnette was stolen by another gentleman and Fort stood alone, his dense black making him seem apart from the company. It could not be pleasant to be so alone, Elf thought in sudden awareness. Not pleasant at all.
On the other hand, his decision to continue in black so long after the funeral was his own choice. For the first time she wondered why he chose to dress so. Yet another problem to be solved.
With an excuse to her aunt, she rose, gathered her nerve, and set off toward him. Partway, however, she was intercepted by Lord Bute, extremely grand in white powder, red satin, and the blue ribbon of a showy Order. She wondered if he were consciously sporting such patriotic colors. The handsome Scottish lord was Prime Minister of England, but everyone knew he’d obtained the post simply because the young king was fond of him. Or perhaps because the king’s mother was even fonder.
“Lady Elfled, how charming you look tonight.”
Even as Elf smiled and curtsied, she knew his smile was false. He did not care for Mallorens, for Rothgar was one of his rivals for the affection of the young king.
He took her hand, making it impossible not to walk with him for a while. She cast a cross look in Fort’s direction and saw him chatting to some male friends.
“Now,” said Bute, “tell me how your family goes along, my dear lady. I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the marquess for some time.”
“Surely only for a week or so, my lord?” said Elf, resigning herself and putting on a smile. “He attended Court quite recently. But since then, he’s traveled to the coast with Lord Cynric, who is off to Nova Scotia. Rothgar planned to go on to Versailles.”
“And other places, I suppose.”
“Oh, doubtless. We have estates in France, you know.” As she chattered on about their vineyard near Bordeaux, Elf puzzled over his tone. It was almost suspicious. No, not suspicious. Insinuating. And he looked almost smug.
When she fell silent, he said, “The Mallorens are astonishingly prosperous, Lady Elf. When the marquess returns, the king must ask his advice on financial matters, I think.”
With that, he kissed her hand and departed, leaving Elf distinctly uneasy. Though always courteous, Rothgar and Bute were rivals, so why would Bute suggest that Rothgar become even closer to the king?
Fanning herself thoughtfully, Elf remembered Rothgar remarking that Bute would do him harm if he could. But, try as she might, she could see nothing in her recent conversation that warned of harm. Except that aura of smug insinuation.
Oh, hang it. She didn’t need yet more puzzles on her mind!
As she threaded her way back toward Walgrave, however, Elf couldn’t shake off the uneasiness. Other places in France? What other places? Astonishingly prosperous?
Good heavens! Did Bute suspect the source of the Malloren wealth?
What an arrant case of the pot calling the kettle black! Bute’s money came almost entirely from the public purse. Rothgar did not refuse the occasional gift from the Crown, but most of the family’s money came from well-tended land, trade, and shrewd investments.
The fact that Rothgar didn’t try to dip into the young king’s purse was doubtless one reason George found his company so pleasant.
Fort’s male companions moved away, and Elf slipped into place beside him before someone else could do so.
“Lord Walgrave, will you walk with me?” It was a bold request, but not unreasonable since many
couples strolled about the room waiting for the next dance to start.
He turned slowly to face her, clearly considering refusal. That, however, would take matters between them into outright rudeness, which they generally tried to avoid. After sufficient pause to almost be an insult, he extended his hand.
She stared at it, unsure why she felt shocked. Then she realized that from his austere style she had expected his hand to be like her older brother’s, like Rothgar’s. Fine-boned and pale. Instead, it was square-nailed, solid, and brown. He clearly neglected gloves when out riding.
How strange that she’d not noticed his hands before. But then, during their most recent encounter she had been distracted by the whole of him.
Not an elegant hand, no, but astonishingly pleasing, especially when thought of in contact with her skin . . .
He raised a brow and she read his suspicions as clearly as if he’d voiced them. He thought she played some petty trick and was about to snub him!
Hastily, she placed her hand in his and they began a stately progress around the ballroom. Though suddenly nervous, Elf had achieved the first step of her plan. Promenading in this way, no one would try to join them.
So, if she could ignore the distraction of his flesh against hers, she had her chance to thaw the ice.
“Is it your plan now to surprise us all, my lord?” she asked in a playful manner.
“Surprise, Lady Elf?” Thaw was the right term. His voice could frost one of the nearby hothouse plants!
“We so rarely see you at these normal society affairs.” She plied her fan gently and stole a look at his cool face. Perhaps she could tease him into warmth. “If I were a vain woman, I might think you were pursuing me, Walgrave.”
“Because I arrived here tonight after you?” He turned to look at her, brows raised. “But then, my dear sister-by-marriage, you must have pursued me to Sappho’s, mustn’t you, since you arrived second.” He stared at her as if struck by a revelation. “You did! There’s no need to be coy, dear lady. If you lust after me, just say so and we’ll attend to it directly.”
Jo Beverley - [Malloren 03] Page 12
