Elise squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “Yes,” she said softly.
“It isn’t that I haven’t matched the occasional titled widow,” Vivien continued. “But never one of such a high rank. So I must ask, what is it that brings you to my door? Pleasure or something else?”
Elise stared at her. The concept that a woman would come to Vivien for a pleasure match had never occurred to her. She shook her head. “I—must I say it?”
Vivien nodded. “You must. I need to know the circumstances I’m involving myself and others in if I am to continue. But this place is known for its utter discretion. So you needn’t worry that your story will become fodder for others.”
Heat was burning Elise’s cheeks now and she could hardly find the words as her head spun. At last she drew a long breath and said, “I am in a tenuous position. My husband died in November of last year. There was a drawn out struggle between two cousins to determine who would be his successor.”
“Oh yes, that was very public.”
“Very public,” Elise said with a shudder as she thought of the cruel and violent pair who had battled so fiercely for the prize of the title. “Neither was the best choice, but the one who won the title in the end is a bastard of the highest order. He and my late husband had that in common, it seems. And it has been determined that I have been left nothing.”
“Nothing?”
Elise lifted her hands to rub her arms, as if she could make the cold go away when it generated from icy terror about her future. “No. I have been allowed to stay in a smaller home in London thus far, but that ‘kindness’ is threatened to soon come to an end. Whatever money I saved from my pin amount is all I will be settled with and it is a pittance, Vivien. I have no family left—my parents died two years ago—and nowhere else to go.”
“You could reenter Society and find a new husband,” Vivien suggested gently.
Elise shook her head. “The mourning period requires I wait an additional three months before I even think of reentering Society. If I returned now looking for a husband, I would be shunned. And my husband’s death was in a duel over a married woman. I think you probably know that.”
Vivien inclined her head once and Elise stammered, “Th-then you know that scandal will likely make any attempt to marry well even more difficult. It’s a nearly impossible path, but to be someone’s mistress…”
She trailed off, and Vivien said, “It seems the one of least resistance. And it will allow you to retain some autonomy that a marriage would not.”
“Yes,” Elise whispered.
“I understand,” Vivien said, leaning forward. “But you may not. Now I must ask you some rather indelicate questions. Did you like sex?”
Elise jolted at the very direct and unexpected question. But Vivien held her gaze steadily and it didn’t seem that this was a way to make her uncomfortable. She just wanted to know.
“I—once,” Elise admitted, her mind going to one glorious night that felt like a lifetime ago. Hands on her, a mouth on her, eyes that were filled with love that seemed to pierce to her very soul. She shook it off and jumped to her feet, pacing away before she added, “But I also know a great deal about enduring.”
Vivien stood and faced her. “Most men do not want a mistress who endures. Or at least looks like she is.”
Elise swallowed hard. “Well, I suppose it would be nice if I…”
She broke off, and for the first time Vivien smiled gently at her. “If you liked the man?” she finished for her.
Elise nodded slowly. It was hard for her to imagine that could be so. It was hard to think how she wouldn’t compare any man who offered to protect her to the one she had been married to…or worse, to the other man she’d loved. The one she tried so hard not to think about.
But maybe it was possible.
“I’ll do my best, Elise,” Vivien said, moving toward her. “Now, why don’t you go out into the party? Grow accustomed to the…the public displays. Just your appearance here will generate some interest and I will think on the prospects available and see what I can do to help you.”
Elise almost sagged with relief, even as sheer terror gripped her stomach. She forced a smile. “Thank you, Vivien. I appreciate it more than you could possibly understand.”
Vivien nodded. “I’ve asked one of my guards to watch you. No one will bother you. And if I find someone tonight, I’ll have you meet with him in a private room. Not to consummate a bargain, of course. But to get to know him. Will that suffice?”
Elise let out a broken sigh. “Yes.”
Vivien motioned her toward the door. She followed the silent instruction and exited into the hall and walked toward the main room. This was not the future she had pictured for herself so many years ago.
But this was where she was. And she would have to come to grips with it and do the best she could.
Stenfax stepped into Vivien’s closed off foyer and approached the guard at a table in the vestibule. The man looked up. “Good evening, sir. Your name?”
“The Earl of Stenfax,” he said, tossing his card on the table.
The man picked it up, examined it a moment and then began to flip through a long list before him. He glanced up. “I’m sorry, sir, you don’t seem to retain a membership in Miss Manning’s club. Would it be under another name for anonymity?”
Stenfax pursed his lips. “No. I’m not a member. I haven’t been here in a long time, actually, but Miss Manning and I are acquainted.”
The man looked him up and down, sizing him up, looked at his card again and then nodded. “I see. Well, wait here, will you? I’ll have someone check.”
Stenfax nodded as the man scurried off, card in hand, to talk to another guard at the entrance to the main house. The second man left as the first retook his position at the door. Stenfax paced off rather than taking a seat in the vestibule, looking over the painting that hung in the foyer. He shook his head with a chuckle.
Vivien was still Vivien. The painting had been done by one of the most popular portrait painters of the day, but this painting was of a naked lady, legs spread lewdly as a man knelt before her, almost in prayer. Stenfax wanted to feel something as he looked at it, but there was nothing that stirred in him.
Nothing but vague memories that he pushed away with internal violence.
“Stenfax.”
He turned at his name and found Vivien, herself, had come out to greet him. She was a beautiful woman, with a lush body and thick blonde hair. She also wore a swooping neckline that left very little to the imagination. And still he felt nothing.
This was going to be an embarrassing waste of time, it seemed, but he stepped forward. “Vivien,” he said, taking her hand and placing a kiss against her knuckles. “You look lovely.”
“Thank you,” she said, and motioned him to follow her into the hall. They walked the length, past rooms where moans echoed and halls where Vivien’s pleasure parties were in full swing. She took him to her small office in the back, and when he entered he stopped dead.
There was a scent in the air. One that felt…familiar. Jasmine and earth, sweet and sultry. All at once, his cock stirred and he swallowed hard as she closed the door behind him.
“I’m surprised to see you here. You haven’t been to my club in over a year,” Vivien said, gliding a hand toward the liquor at her sideboard.
He shook his head. “Yes, well, I was to marry, if you recall. I steered away from such things. But when my engagement to Celia Fitzgilbert dissolved, I just…”
“You had no heart for it?” Vivien offered.
He shrugged. “Something like that. But I’ve been told that taking a lover might improve my mood around others. So I came here in the hopes you might help me find discrete companionship for a very limited engagement.”
Vivien tilted her head and a sudden knowing smile crossed her lips. “You came here tonight. Of all nights.”
He wrinkled his brow, not understanding her
tone. “Yes,” he said slowly.
“Looking for a temporary lover,” she continued.
He nodded. “Yes. Is there something I’m missing?”
Vivien shook her head, but that secret smile remained tilting her lips. “Not at all. I think we understand each other perfectly. She is looking for a longer term agreement, you know.”
Stenfax blinked in blank misunderstanding. She? Vivien must be referring to the larger “she”. To all the women who came to her, seeking to be matched with a protector.
“I’m certain that is true. That is what you do, after all. But you must make it clear that I am not in that market. At least not at this point. I don’t want to mislead anyone.”
Vivien nodded slowly. “I will make it clear, Stenfax, I assure you. This might even make it easier.”
Stenfax stared at her. She truly did have the oddest expression on her face, but before he could question her more fully about odd behavior, she motioned him toward the door. “I’ll take you to a room and bring you what you desire.”
Stenfax sighed and drew in another whiff of the rapidly fading scent in the room. It stirred him as nothing else in his presence that night had. Then he followed Vivien down the hall, through winding corridors where more moans and cries floated from various rooms. She stopped at one and motioned him in.
“Here is where you will meet with the lady. Talk, and if you can come to an agreement, do as you will. I hope I’ll see you after for a drink.” She bobbed her head as he entered, and left.
Stenfax slowly looked around the room. There was a bed in the corner, draped in rich red satin. A fire burned in the enormous fireplace and a black velvet settee was set before it. This was one of Vivien’s finer rooms, he thought. And not, it seemed, one where other guests could spy. He verified that with a quick sweep of the room for hidden looking holes.
Satisfied, he shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over a chair near the bed. There was a window beside it and he moved to it. He could see the terrace off the ballroom to the side and there were couples milling about on it, kissing, touching, one was even making love. His body thrummed and he shut his eyes, thinking of soft hands on his flesh, warm lips covering his, thinking of…
Elise.
His eyes flew open and he shook his head to clear the image. No, he would not think of Elise tonight. She would not pollute a night of pleasure with a willing stranger.
As if on cue, he heard the door behind him open, and the rustle of skirts before the door was shut. He slowly turned, a smile of welcome on his face for the lady who would bring him that pleasure.
But when he saw her, the smile fell. The blood drained from his face, his hands began to shake. He stared at the woman who had entered the room and his mind began to scream at him.
Elise. It was Elise. She was standing there at the door, staring at him with an expression of shock and horror that had to match his own.
And she was gorgeous. He hadn’t seen her in three long years, a circumstance organized and planned impeccably because looking at her would be too painful. And it was, for everything about her was even more beautiful than he remembered.
She was a statuesque beauty, a good head taller than most of the women in their set. This meant she towered over many of the men, but never him. She had always fit perfectly in his arms. But it wasn’t just her height that gave her presence.
Elise was stunning. She had an intelligence to her face and coupled with her high cheekbones, her full lips, her bright green eyes and her light red hair, she had always been the kind of woman men turned to look at as she passed.
He thought all that in the fraction of the second as he saw her standing there, and then his brain lurched, recognizing not only that she was there, but where there was. Elise was at Vivien Manning’s, a house of ill repute, where men came to have their pleasure and women came to find protection.
She was here in a room with him. Anger rose in him, betrayal and confusion mixing to a toxic level. He swallowed hard and found his voice.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Chapter Two
Elise’s heart was racing so fast that it felt like she would collapse. She stared across the room and couldn’t believe what she was seeing. This was a dream she’d had so many times that she wished she could pinch herself now to prove it wasn’t real.
Only she knew it was. Lucien was here. Just a few feet away from her. And he was so utterly beautiful. He was tall, impossibly tall, with thick, dark brown hair and eyes the color of rich molasses. He had a strong jaw and full lips that she had pictured moving over hers a thousand times in the three years since she’d seen or touched him last.
“Answer me,” he snapped, his hard, harsh, broken tone shattering the spell between them. “What the hell are you doing here?”
As he asked the question a second time, he started across the room toward her in long, certain strides. He looked like a bull racing across a paddock at an intruder, and she should have been afraid. But she wasn’t. Not even a little. She stood her ground without effort and sucked in a long whiff of his scent as he crowded into her space and all but pinned her to the door behind her.
“What do you think I’m doing here?” she managed to ask, pleased she could talk at all, let alone sound as cool and detached as she somehow did.
His jaw tightened, the muscle along it twitching, and she had a powerful urge to lean up and kiss him there, feel him move beneath her lips. But she didn’t do something so foolhardy.
“Why?” he finally shouted.
Before Elise could answer, the door behind them flew open and Vivien raced in, a guard behind her.
“What is going on in here?” she cried.
Lucien glared at Elise one last time, then pushed past her toward Vivien. “I could ask you the same bloody damned thing, Vivien.”
Elise remained facing away from them, but flinched at his anger and his familiarity with Vivien. He was here, after all, and he had obviously been looking for someone to take. Not her, of course, not her. But someone.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Vivien asked.
Elise spun around to see his face when he answered her. It twisted in pure horror. “Is that what she told you?”
Elise gasped. “No!” she burst out. “I had no idea it was you I was being led to meet.”
Vivien nodded. “I didn’t tell her a thing, nor did she ask for you. But I assumed…I assumed…”
“What?” Lucien fumed, raising his hands in animated fury. “Why in God’s name would you assume I wanted this?”
Vivien lifted both eyebrows. “You showed up here after over a year, on the very night your former fiancée did. I assumed you were hoping to match with her. The coincidence—”
“Is just a coincidence,” Lucien snapped.
Rejection stung every part of her, but Elise lifted her chin as he turned to look at her at last. His dark gaze flitted over her and his pupils dilated.
“Get out,” he growled
Elise wrinkled her brow. “Are you speaking to me?”
He shook his head very slowly. “Not you. Vivien—get out.”
Vivien folded her arms and let out a bark of laughter. At her side, her guard stirred, but she held up a hand to still him. “I beg your pardon?”
“Get out,” Lucien repeated, this time softly, almost gently.
“I shall not,” Vivien said. “I don’t trust you won’t…well, you’re very angry, Stenfax.”
Elise stared at him. He was, indeed, very angry. It all but pulsed through his every fiber. But she still wasn’t afraid. Not in the slightest. Nor did she want to escape that anger. She deserved it, after all. What she had done to him deserved anger and revenge and a great deal else. She had already served part of her penance in a desperately unhappy marriage.
Perhaps this was the rest.
“It’s all right,” Elise said, casting a quick side glance at Vivien. “You may leave us.”
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Vivien looked between her and Stenfax. She flitted her hand and the guard stepped from the room, though Vivien remained. “Are you certain?”
The answer to that question was no, but Elise nodded regardless. “Yes.”
Vivien shot another look at Stenfax, then inclined her head and backed from the room, drawing the door shut behind her.
Lucien was silent for what felt like a lifetime. His nostrils were flaring and his hands were fisted at his sides. “I would never lay a hand on you in violence, ever.”
She nodded slowly, thinking of his history. Even if she didn’t know what his sister and her former best friend Felicity had endured in her marriage, she knew him well enough to trust what he said was true.
“I know,” she whispered.
He swallowed. “You’re here for a man.”
Heat flooded her cheeks, but Elise forced herself to nod again. “I-I am.”
His face twisted yet again, but this time it wasn’t a mask of anger, but of pain. He just as quickly flattened that into bored disapproval. “Why?”
Stenfax couldn’t stop looking at Elise. Smelling her, that same jasmine scent he’d caught in Vivien’s office earlier. The one that had set his body on edge. It was hers. Of course, it had always been hers, he’d just allowed himself to forget. Forced himself to forget.
Now it all but filled him up and he wanted to rip the gown off her body and bury himself in her. Cover himself in that smell and in her taste and her feel.
How he hated them both for that lingering want.
He turned away and walked across the room, back to the window where he’d first seen her. “Answer me,” he said.
She cleared her throat and he faced her. God, but she was calm. Cool. He so wanted her to react, but of course it was only him who was affected. Just as it had always been.
“Why do you think?” she asked, repeating her earlier answer. It was just as unsatisfying now as it had been then.
He clenched his hands at his sides. “Damn it. It’s a straight question, give me a straight answer.”
One Summer of Surrender Page 2
