Belle

by Bancroft, Blair

  Belle’s insides rebelled, she thought she might be sick. She had pleasured men and it was horrid. She knew—of course she knew—that wasn’t what Lady R meant, but the flickering candles, the pungent odor of cigar smoke, the slap of cards on the table, the leering eyes, the groping hands—it all came back in a rush. She whimpered.

  “Miss Ballard?”

  “I beg your pardon, my lady.”

  “Are you ill?”

  “Bad memories,” Belle murmured. “I’m sorry.”

  Lady Juliana’s face softened. “No, I am sorry for bringing back your past. But always recall what you are doing here. We are training you to become a person who will never again have to suffer abuse. Even if we should make a mistake and pair you with a man who turns out to be less than we thought, you always have a place to turn. My doors are always open to my girls.”

  “My lady.” Belle bowed her head, a tear dripping onto the wooden surface of her desk.

  “We can come back if a man knocks us about?” Holly asked, a tinge of wonder in her customary skeptical tone.

  “You may always come back. I promise.”

  Belle heard Cecy heave a soft sigh before saying, “That is very good of you, my lady. That’s why you chose us, isn’t it? Because we’re the ones with no place else to go.”

  “That is part of it, Miss Lilly. But I also chose you because I thought there was hope of teaching you to be something more than you were.”

  “But you didn’t choose me,” Belle said. “I was thrust upon you.”

  The Dragon Lady smiled. “My dear child, if I hadn’t chosen you, you would have been scooted off to the country the very next day, destined to be a companion to some maiden lady with nineteen cats.”

  The girls giggled. Belle sniffed, fumbling inside her skirt for a handkerchief.

  “And now, may we please get on with the topic of the day?” Three pairs of eyes focused on their mentor. “As I said, it is necessary for you to experience pleasure so you need to understand why men crave it . . . and understand the power you hold by being able to provide it.”

  “You going to let us have a go at that great hunk of a man we seen yesterday?”

  Steepling her fingers before her face, Lady Rivenhall heaved a heartfelt sigh. “No, Miss Hammond, that is not at all what I had in mind. I am, in fact, suggesting something that may come as a dire shock to your upbringing.”

  “Don’t know as I had any upbringing, my lady. M’ma died when I was eight. After that, I just growed.”

  The clearly long-suffering Lady R shook her head. “I am beginning to think we should postpone this lesson for another day.”

  “Don’t let me put you off,” Holly returned expansively. “I’m always right glad to learn about pleasure and pleasuring.”

  Cecy glanced at Belle, fisting a hand over her mouth to hide a smile, but her eyes, brimming with laughter, gave her away.

  “What I am talking about,” Lady Rivenhall announced in stentorian tones, obviously determined to get on with it, “is pleasuring oneself.” Silence. Instead of wide shocked eyes, three ducked heads. “Ah . . . then this is something not unknown to you.”

  Not a sound.

  “Then may I suggest you explore yourselves more thoroughly, not forgetting such sensitive areas as your breasts and nipples. And inside your vaginal passage. It is important that you experience the full force of the pleasure you are expected to give, for it is quite possible you may not experience it otherwise. Only a few wise men are aware of a woman’s needs and willing to take the time to provide it.”

  Three heads remained bent. Silence ruled.

  “Ladies, have I made myself clear?”

  “Yes, my lady.” Faintly, in chorus.

  “You are dismissed.”

  The three girls scurried out, heads still bent, not so much as a glance at each other. Silence all the way down the corridor until they reached a small but elegantly appointed sitting room. They sat down, still not looking at each other until Holly burst out, “Oh. My. Gawd. Do y’think that’s how she gets by without a man? The Dragon Lady,” she snapped as the other two girls looked blank. “D’y’ think she pleasures herself?”

  Chapter 7

  “The Prince Regent has left for Brighton,” Belle announced over breakfast, as she scanned the London Gazette.

  “The Season is over,” Cecy said, “the news nothing but the dullest for months and months to come.” She sighed. “It’s lovely here,” she added hastily. “Safe, no worries. But I’ve been here nearly a year now, and it’ so very quiet. I miss town, the bright clothes, everyone rushing about. Even the noise, the smells . . . well, perhaps not all of them,” she admitted with a wry smile. “But now with no news of the ton to brighten our days . . .”

  “Anybody know how long we have to stay here?” Holly asked. “I mean, I know I’m hard to teach, but I’ve been trying, really trying, you both know it. And seems like we should be graduating, or whatever the Dragon Lady calls it, one of these days.”

  “We’ve certainly had an eyeful,” Cecy concurred.

  Holly snorted. “And me thinking I knew everything there was to know about what men got up to with women.”

  “Some of those things,” Cecy mused, “were, well . . . I think Asians must have more joints in their bones.”

  Belle choked on a mouthful of coffee. She’d thought the same thing herself when they’d viewed demonstrations right out of the pages of an illustrated Kama Sutra—a book included in their daily reading assignments—but she’d never admit it. She would absorb every last contortion and mimic it to the best of her ability. She would hold the power to enchant. Fascinate. Give pleasure. Become indispensable. Whatever man was hers, she would use him to her advantage . . . until something even better came along. Cecy and Holly might think no further than graduation day, of what fine gentleman might be theirs, but Belle Ballard had armored her heart well. Men were not for love but only to be used. An act of revenge she savored, even as she absorbed the tools of her future trade.

  “Now that town has been abandoned by society,” Lady Rivenhall declared one August morning, with birds providing a steady background chirp through the schoolroom’s open windows, “we will venture into occasional social situations, giving you girls an opportunity to practice your manners, your ability to interact with people outside our small group.”

  “Out?” Holly cried. “You’re letting us out—” Her mouth snapped closed as the Dragon Lady pierced her with a look that would have depressed the pretensions of a duchess.

  “We will be traveling as an ensemble, Miss Hammond, the four of us together.”

  “Where?” Belle asked, prompted out of her customary silence by the shivers running down her spine.

  Evidently, Lady Juliana read her pale face correctly. “You fear town, Miss Ballard?”

  “I–I admit the thought of social occasions in town, even when the ton is conspicuous by its absence, is . . . more than a little frightening.”

  “Ah.” An arrested look crossed their mentor’s face. “I should have realized. You fear your father may still claim you.”

  “And cause trouble for the man who was kind of enough to bring me here.”

  “Come to my office directly after this class, Miss Ballard. I believe I may be able to relieve your mind.” Lady Rivenhall returned to the subject at hand, outlining the excursions she had devised to break up the monotony of long summer days when darkness did not come until nearly ten. Belle scarcely heard her. Relieve her mind? How was that possible?

  Amazingly, it was. Though the news seemed too good to be true.

  “Lord Ashford,” Lady R informed her, “was kind enough to write to me, declaring that he and Lord Pierrepont came to an arrangement. No details were given, but I suspect Ashford paid a considerable amount for your freedom.”

  “Oh no!”

  “‘Oh no’ is not an acceptable response, Miss Ballard, for a gentleman’s generosity. A generosity that signals something more than an honorable
spirit. I suspect Ashford may have some interest in your future.”

  Belle’s eyes expanded to what felt like saucer-size, even as her stomach clenched. Not Ashford, never Ashford. She had to be paired with a man she could use, one for whom her heart felt not a single flutter. Not a man to whom she owed so much. Not the man whose blue woolen coat hung in her closet. The coat she sometimes buried her face in, sniffing the last lingering scent of him. Remembering the glorious moment when he had escorted her out of Pierrepont House, brought her here. The man who was her hero, the subject of her dreams.

  Not Ashford. Never Ashford.

  “Miss Ballard? Belle? Surely you must be gratified. He will be Wythorne one day, an earl, a peer of the realm. He is handsome, charming, and not as much of a rake a he would have us believe.”

  “He is the man I would have wished to marry,” Belle whispered, head bowed.

  “A-ah. Oh my dear child, I am sorry, so very sorry.” Lady R came out from behind her desk, laid a hand on her shoulder. “Shall I not consider him then?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. My mind’s in a whirl.” Belle burst into tears.

  The tableau held—the sobbing girl and the lady who was now wondering how she could ever have had the temerity to think she could help girls in such anomalous situations as Lady Arabella Pierrepont.

  “I am a fool!” Juliana burst out the moment she walked through her sitting room door. “An arrogant, insensitive, thoughtless wretch who should be whipped about the village green . . . perhaps burned for a witch,” she added with considerable bitterness as she paced across the room to stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the garden and the river.

  “Good God,” Darius Wolfe responded, raising his head from the book he’d been reading in a wingchair set before one of the windows. “What brought this on?”

  Hands fisted at her sides, Juliana turned and glared, seemingly unaffected by his dark good looks—long wavy strands of ebony framing his high cheekbones and eyes of liquid brown—or the lithe figure capable of such remarkable feats of agility. Feats now only fond memories of activities in which she no longer indulged. Which quite possibly made her an even greater fool.

  Juliana stalked back across the room, dropping into a wingchair which faced his, and buried her face in her hands, fingertips pressed against her forehead. “I thought—ah, I’m not sure what I thought! Perhaps I was dazzled by all that money. I thought I could be Lady Bountiful and fix the world. Or at least a small part of it. But now, today, I realized that money cannot fix everything. That my good intentions must run afoul of reality.”

  She paused, her voice softening, wobbling with imminent tears. “I knew I could not even begin to save them all, but I had such hopes for the cream of the crop . . . particularly one young lady of good family who has been sorely abused. And now—how could I have not seen it?—now I realize returning her to her own milieu, even as the most elegant new courtesan in the kingdom, can only be the ultimate humiliation. She was born into the ton, expected to marry well, move in the highest circles . . . and I’ve trained her to be a whore!” Shoulders heaving, Juliana buried her face in the chair’s tall wing.

  “You have trained her to be a splendid wife, the kind every man dreams of but never expects to find. The kind of wife you were.”

  “I beg your pardon.” Red-rimmed amber eyes peered at him from the depths of the chair.

  “If ever there was a green girl . . .” Darius let the phrase hang, forcing Juliana to recall the early days of her marriage. Her face flushed. “But you learned to like it, did you not? All the “attitudes” of sex and eventually most of the more–ah–unusual practices as well?”

  Images of Geoff and Darius suddenly filled her mind, the one so blond, the other so dark. Both sharing her bed, making love to her at the same time. Or indulging in sex à deux while the third person watched. Dear God, it had been glorious. Except when she began to find herself more lost in mind-shattering sensation with Darius than with Geoff. And then Geoff was gone, leaving her all his worldly possessions. And earth-shattering guilt, as she had time to catch her breath, look around, and realize how very different her life had been from the other young women of the ton.

  Which was why she accepted Darius’s counsel, accepted the companionship of her “other” husband, but refused to invite him back to her bed. A rejection he was not taking well. No matter how adamant her edict against men at Thornhill Manor, he always seemed to find his way in. And even though she had turned all her passions into creating The Aphrodite Academy, she admitted to welcoming his company. Now, when she felt lost and defeated, even more so.

  “What did you mean by “training her to be a splendid wife”? Juliana demanded, eyes narrowed.

  “Grant me some modicum of sense, my dear. You do, after all, trust me to manage your vast holdings, so I must have an occasional moment of lucidity. When you accepted the Pierrepont chit, you risked your position in the ton. No matter that Ashford paid for Pierrepont’s silence, the baron could accuse you both of kidnapping. Yet the truth is, despite the rumors, the girl has disappeared from society with no stain on her name beyond rumors—”

  “You forget the salacious gossip from Pierrepont’s gamesters.”

  “Men of poor repute whose slanders can be ignored if the girl turns up married.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Lady Ashford,” Darius mused, savoring the significance of the title. “Any man who steals a woman from her father should expect to be caught in parson’s mousetrap, don’t you agree?”

  “I have watched her closely,” Juliana said. “I believe she may have taken all men in dislike. Though who can blame her, poor child. “I fear she may be looking forward to using the skills she has learned against men, rather than for their mutual pleasure. She may refuse to consider marriage. Most certainly Ashford will. I swear he clings to his freedom with more determination than a molly man.”

  “Oh, definitely, my sweet. Many a poor girl’s life has been ruined by a molly man marrying her as a screen for his activities. But a young lady refuse Ashford if you should bring him up to scratch? Nonsense!”

  “I was thinking of their potential happiness,” Juliana pronounced in repressive accents, “not merely a practical solution to the problem.”

  “But you are thinking of a solution, I trust, rather than merely castigating yourself for saving a girl from an impossible situation.”

  “Indeed. Since the night Ashford brought the girl to me, I have considered him top of the list for Belle’s protector. Felice Lattimore cannot stand up to such fresh-faced beauty coupled with genuine virginity. But more than that, no. Word of the Academy is beginning to spread—clearly Ashford knew something months ago. Lady Arabella Pierrepont is no more. Only Belle Ballard, courtesan. Marriage is out of the question.”

  “Was there not someone on your family tree with a motto of, ‘I shall contrive’?”

  “‘Contrive’ is one thing,” Juliana huffed. ‘Miracles’ are quite another. Speak no more of marriage.”

  “Very well,” Darius returned, clearly all too willing to divert the subject to his own ends. “You spoke of your concern for young Belle’s happiness. When are you going to consider my claim to a bit of it? I grow tired of my lonely bed, Jewel, and don’t tell me you don’t.”

  “As if you’ve not filled your bed with—”

  “Others don’t count. It’s my Lady Jewel who fills my heart.”

  “Hah!”

  Darius blew out a soft hiss of breath. “Is it a true marriage, you want then, Jewel? Is that it? Cleave only to each other ’til death do us part?”

  Juliana stood and stepped away from the wingchairs, pausing only when she’d put a good ten feet between them. “I am well aware, Darius, that my life, my world, everything I own, everything I am, cannot function without you. You are indispensable, and I am abjectly grateful.” She paused, searching for words that would never be right, no matter how carefully she chose them. “As for what we once had . .
. I cannot go back to that either. There was something about Geoff that compelled me to go along with his fantasies, even to enjoy them, but now . . . I suppose you could say I am doing penance, trying to find my feet in a world of my making, not his.

  “Unfortunately,” she continued quietly, with a hint of deep-seated sadness, “we are what our experiences have made us. And just as Lady Arabella must learn that not all men are monsters, so I must discover my own place in the sometimes strange world of sexual appetites. Until then . . . forgive me my inclination to be alone.” A lie. She didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want him to go. But if he stayed, she knew what would happen.

  And the regret that would follow.

  Darius rose to his feet, a dark figure all in black, a shadow creature who had no difficulty insinuating himself into Lady Juliana’s private quarters. She could sense the mockery in his bow. “Open the windows, Jewel. Allow a little reality inside.” She blinked back a tear and he was gone.

  This time, she feared he might not come back.

  The next morning Juliana sat at her elaborately inlaid marquetry desk and retrieved a sheaf of papers from a locked drawer. Papers compiled by agents provided by Darius Wolfe. Papers that contained carefully prepared lists of all the single gentleman in the ton, including approximate age and their direction, not only in London but at their country residences. Another list presented the names of the wealthiest unmarried men of the merchant class. A third list, married gentleman of both classes who were known to have a roving eye. Juliana had paid a considerable amount of money for these lists and considered them priceless. Without them, she would be tossing her girls into a heartless sea, sink or swim. With them—Juliana smiled for the first time since Darius had stormed out of her apartments—with them she could arrange her students’ lives, offer them a near certainty of joining the world of London’s most renowned courtesans.