The Pearl

by Reisz, Tiffany

  A new standalone erotic fantasy from Tiffany Reisz, set in the world of the Godwicks (The Red, The Rose).

  When Lord Arthur Godwick learns his younger brother is up to his bollocks in debt to Regan Ferry, owner of The Pearl Hotel, he agrees to work off the tab…in her bed.

  Soon the handsome but troubled Arthur discovers he’s a pawn in an erotic game of revenge—and nothing, including his lover, is what it seems.

  “This is erotica done right.” — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) on The Pearl

  Praise for The Godwicks Series

  “Provocative.” — O Magazine on The Red

  “Deliciously deviant... Akin to Anne Rice’s ‘Beauty’ series.” — Library Journal (Starred Review) on The Red

  “A delightful, wicked fairytale.” — Smart Bitches, Trashy Books on The Red

  “This is erotica done right.” — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) on The Pearl

  “...beautifully blends high art and absorbing prose with the sensual rendezvous of famed pairs in Greek legend... An otherworldly, titillating endeavor.” — Library Journal (Starred Review) on The Rose

  “Will entrance readers…” — BookPage on The Rose

  “[A] best romance of the month.” — Goodreads on The Red

  “Smart and intriguing.” — NPR on The Red

  Dedicated to

  Frida Kahlo

  Remedios Varo

  Leonora Carrington

  Evelyn de Morgan

  Bridget Bate Tichenor

  Baya Mahieddine

  Alma Thomas

  Georgia O’Keeffe

  Artemisia Gentileschi

  Bridget Riley

  Tamara de Lempicka

  and to all the women who picked up paintbrushes and made themselves immortal

  I paint flowers so they will not die.

  Frida Kahlo

  Part I

  1

  The Umbrella

  The day progressed as days usually did for young Lord Arthur Godwick, but it took a turn for the strange when a young woman in a red raincoat and red Wellington boots knocked on the door of the Godwick townhouse in Piccadilly. When he opened the door, his first thought was “red alert.”

  She was a pretty young woman, bow lips that spread into a mischievous smile like he was in trouble and just didn’t know it yet.

  “Can I help you?” Arthur asked the girl in red.

  “You Lord Arthur Godwick?” Her accent was decidedly East End, making the “Lord” sound like a joke.

  “Guilty.”

  She held out a small envelope to him, cream-colored and on heavy paper like a wedding invitation.

  “What is this?” he asked, taking it. His name was written on the envelope, but he got no answer. When he looked up, the girl in the red raincoat was already at the iron gate, then through it, then at the sidewalk and then…gone.

  Bizarre. Arthur had never had a note hand-delivered to him before.

  Slowly he removed the notecard. Hotel stationery from The Pearl. He knew the place well. His sister had gotten married there not too long ago. The hotel’s name was in all black on the outer flap, with a white pearl nestled into the middle of the A.

  We need to discuss your brother, it read inside. The Pearl, penthouse at five.

  The note was signed only with a looping R.

  Who was “R,” and what the hell had Charlie done this time? Could be anything knowing him these days. Gambling? Girl in trouble? Punched the prime minister?

  Fuming, Arthur trudged up the stairs to his room on the second storey of the townhouse. It was already past four. He had on jeans and a t-shirt but needed socks, shoes, and a jacket. He pulled them all on, grabbed his keys, his mobile phone. Into his wallet, he stuffed as much cash as he could fit. Good chance Arthur would be paying damages on something tonight. A broken vase. A broken nose. A broken heart.

  Although it was November, grey with rain threatening, Arthur decided to walk across the park to Mayfair. He needed to clear his mind before the inevitable confrontation with Charlie. If it had been any other hotel, he might not have been so worried, but this was The Pearl.

  In Queen Victoria’s day, it had served as the elaborate London townhouse of a dissipated lord who spent all his money on whores and gaming until he had nothing left but the townhouse and then he didn’t have that anymore. It was sold, turned into a seven-storey hotel. A respectable-enough looking place these days. White and gleaming, black awnings, fine dining. Not a tourist trap. A haven for the wealthy, the titled. Usually both. The interior was dark with heavy oak paneling, the furniture Edwardian, the lights murky and dim. The fallen paradise of aging lords.

  It was also a brothel, hence the family connection. Hence Arthur’s fear for his brother.

  He’d learned from his older sister Lia about the hotel’s past. She’d told him about how their great-grandfather Lord Malcolm was a fixture at The Pearl in its heyday, living there as a bachelor gentleman about town and playing there practically every night of his wicked life. That’s why Lia had gotten married there. She was a Godwick, after all.

  Arthur arrived just before five o’clock. As he looked up at the black iron sign reading The Pearl over a set of double doors, the first raindrops began to fall. Hurrying inside, he strode across the lobby as if he belonged there. He had a title, and he had money. That’s all one needed for entrée into The Pearl. If pressed, he had the note as well, an invitation to a party he did not want to attend.

  As he crossed the lobby to the gleaming golden lifts, he imagined he could still smell the cigars of the thousands of lords and industrialists who’d met here, slept here, supped here, and fucked here. The fucking, of course, being the main attraction. Arthur guessed he had been summoned here to scrape his baby brother off the floor of someone’s bedroom or bathroom.

  And he’d do it. Someone had to, with their parents away in New York City until Christmas. Even if they’d been in London right now, they’d mostly washed their hands of Charlie. He was eighteen, they liked to remind Arthur. Time for their youngest to stand on his own two feet.

  But what if Charlie falls while trying to stand? Arthur would demand. Well, in that case he’d have to learn how to pick himself up.

  Easy for them to say. Charlie didn’t call them at four in the morning when he was too drunk to find a way home. They weren’t the ones who answered the phone when Charlie was detained by the police for starting a fight in a pub. No, it was Arthur. Always Arthur. “King Arthur,” his brother would drunkenly proclaim. “King Arthur saves the day again.”

  The lift deposited Arthur on the top floor. He found a set of grand double doors at the end of the corridor with a brass plaque that read Penthouse.

  He took a deep breath to calm his nerves, then knocked.

  The blonde who’d given him the note opened the door. “She’s on the terrace,” the girl said. “With your brother.”

  She pointed to a set of French doors along the far wall that opened to the outside. Before Arthur could thank her, she exited the penthouse, leaving him standing by himself in the entryway.

  Arthur’s first thought upon seeing the interior of the suite was that his brother was flying in very high circles these days. He’d never seen a grander, more decadent hotel room, and he’d stayed in some of the finest hotels in the world when on holiday with his parents. The walls were gold damask wallpaper with black trim. An enormous gas fireplace with a black china marble mantel dominated the sitting room. To the right of it was a curving staircase that led to a second level, where he imagined he’d find a luxurious bedroom. Black leather club chairs framed the fireplace, and above the mantel hung an oil painting of a pretty young woman wearing a black raincoat and holding an umbrella. As the son of art lovers who owned dozens of galleries, Ar
thur reflexively glanced at the plaque on the frame as he passed it on the way to the terrace. The Umbrella by Marie Bashkirtseff, a Ukrainian-French painter. Not your typical bland mass-produced hotel art.

  Arthur was nearly at the terrace when he stopped next to a golden velvet chaise lounge. Another painting was propped up in the seat, another original he recognized at once.

  The subject was a handsome gentleman wearing a three-piece suit, with black hair and dark eyes, the subtlest smile on his lips…Lord Malcolm Godwick, thirteenth Earl of Godwick. The portrait he’d last seen hanging in the hallowed halls of Wingthorn, the Godwick ancestral estate. It should have been there now, so what was it doing here?

  Arthur went quickly to the French doors and peered through one of the panes. For a split second, the sight was so uncanny, he thought the painting over the fireplace had come to life. A woman stood on the terrace in the rain, black trench coat belted tightly at her narrow waist and black umbrella overhead.

  Not a painting come to life. Just a coincidence. Her umbrella was being held by someone, a young man facing the city. He needn’t turn around. Arthur would have known that rust-colored hair anywhere.

  He pushed open the door and stepped onto the spacious garden terrace. It was filled with so many green plants and small trees, it was like walking into a miniature forest. He went straight to the iron railing to find his brother wearing an expression of pure defeat. Charlie was clutching the umbrella and staring down at his own shoes.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Arthur hissed, shielding his face from the rain with his hand. Before Charlie had a chance to answer, Arthur turned to the woman. “Who are you, and why are you forcing my brother to hold your umbrella in the freezing rain?”

  Arthur had expected a much older woman for some reason—maybe because of the commanding tone of her note—but no, she was young. Thirty, if that. She had chestnut-brown hair that hung in a long French plait over her left shoulder. Her face was lovely and her eyes wide, intelligent, and grey as the rain. Pale olive skin. Peach lips, full and soft. She wore a white-collared shirt under her coat, a pearl choker draped around her graceful neck.

  And what was she doing while Charlie held the umbrella over her head? Feeding raw meat to a raven perched on a brass ring on the railing.

  “Things aren’t what they seem,” she told Arthur. “Your brother offered to hold it for me. Didn’t you, Charlie?”

  Charlie nodded without emotion. Something about the woman, the way she looked at Arthur, so cool and superior, convinced him he was dealing with some kind of ice queen. Who else would make an eighteen-year-old stand in the cold autumn rain holding her umbrella?

  “Charlie, go inside,” Arthur said.

  His brother didn’t budge. He stood there in his stupid skinny jeans and leather jacket that he’d probably bought with a credit card “borrowed” from their mother.

  “Go inside and warm up,” Arthur said, this time more forceful. “I’m handling this.”

  “He may go, but someone has to hold my umbrella while I’m feeding the baby,” the woman said, smiling at the raven.

  Arthur rolled his eyes. He held out an open palm and accepted the umbrella from Charlie, who’d been holding it with a white-knuckle grip.

  As Arthur took over umbrella duty, Charlie bent his head and whispered a miserable “Sorry.”

  Arthur put his arm around his brother’s neck. He couldn’t help it. Charlie didn’t return the embrace, but accepted it without protest.

  Charlie disappeared into the penthouse. Arthur watched as the woman fed another morsel of meat to the raven. It took the red flesh right out of her fingers, so well-trained it ignored the hunk of bleeding meat in the butcher paper in her other hand.

  “All right. What did he do this time?” Arthur asked.

  She smiled. “Whatever happened to, ‘Hello, how do you do?’”

  “Hello,” he said. “How do you do? And what did Charlie do this time, and why do you have one of our paintings inside? Better?”

  “Much better.”

  “Hello.”

  That came from the raven. Arthur stared at it, wide-eyed. “Did that bird just speak?”

  The woman laughed softly. “He did.” She sounded surprised. “He’s never done that in front of anyone besides me, though. Not that he says much besides ‘hello’ and ‘baby.’ This is Gloom. Gloom, this is Lord Arthur Godwick. Say ‘Hello, my lord.’”

  “Hello, baby.”

  Arthur smiled despite himself—he’d never been flirted with by a bird before—and replied, “Hello, Gloom.”

  The evening had taken on a strange, dreamlike quality. The girl in the red raincoat with her summons. Silver-grey clouds, fat as circus tents hovering overhead. The elegant ice queen feeding a talkative raven.

  “You can pet him if you like,” she said. “He’s in a good mood when he’s eating. Just watch your fingers. He’s not too picky about the sort of meat he eats.”

  Arthur couldn’t resist. He raised the back of his hand and stroked the silky black breast feathers of the bird. “The longer you wait to tell me what Charlie’s done, the more scared I get.”

  “I know.”

  “Please?”

  “Ah, well, since you said please. Your brother has graced us with his presence the last ten nights and managed to rack up quite a bill.”

  Arthur sighed. “How much?”

  “A hundred grand.”

  The raven gulped another bite from her fingers.

  Arthur stared. “A hundred grand? You must be joking. What room costs ten grand a night?”

  “It’s not merely the room. He ordered…room service.”

  Arthur quietly groaned. Room service. She didn’t mean coffee, tea, and the soup du jour. She meant a girl who’d serviced him in his room. As his father had jokingly called it once, room cervix.

  “And you let him rack up a hundred grand bill?” Arthur said. “Why?”

  “He’s the son of an earl. Why wouldn’t I?” She gave a shrug, careless and elegant. “We give our special guests a great deal of leeway, but when the tab hits six figures, we call it in. Hotel policy.”

  Arthur stared up at the cloud-wild sky. It was strange, having this conversation while huddled under a black umbrella. They stood very close to each other, barely a foot apart. He could smell her scent, like evening fog. Or was it just the rain on her skin?

  “A hundred grand is above my pay grade,” he said. “I’ll have to call my parents.”

  “No need. He’s paid the bill. I accepted a painting in lieu of cash. This little meeting is simply an act of courtesy. And so that I have a witness it was not stolen but given in payment for his debt. Would you like to see the itemized receipt?”

  “No. No. Absolutely not. That painting of Lord Malcolm is—”

  “Mine,” she said. “You can go home now. Please. I’ve had enough of the Godwicks for the day.”

  She wiped the blood from her fingers and plucked the umbrella from his hand.

  But Arthur refused to be dismissed. “Enough of the Godwicks? What are you—”

  “Rich, spoiled, entitled brats, the whole lot of you. Handed everything on a silver platter and still not happy. Do you people ever take no for an answer?”

  He couldn’t argue with anything she’d said, so simply ignored it. “What did we ever do to you?”

  “You exist. Bad enough.”

  He scoffed. “Sorry, but I don’t have time for an ‘eat the rich’ debate, especially not with a woman feeding filet mignon to her pet raven on the terrace of a five-star hotel penthouse. Whatever you think of us, it doesn’t matter. Charlie stole that painting from my parents. Keeping it would be accepting stolen goods.”

  And incredibly foolish, he didn’t add. To his family, that painting might as well have been a holy icon, though he didn’t want to explain why. She’d think he was mad as a hatter.

  “Call the police then,” she said. “You can tell them who you are, and I’ll tell them who I am, and we�
��ll see whose surname scares them more.”

  Gloom flapped his dark wings and flew off as if sensing things were about to get ugly on the terrace.

  “Who are you anyway?” Arthur demanded.

  “Regan. Regan Ferry. Lady Regan Ferry. As in the late Sir Jack Ferry. My late husband, to be clear, not my late father. People sometimes make that mistake. And yes, he did leave The Pearl Hotel to me.”

  Brilliant. Just brilliant. Could Charlie have chosen a worse person to cross? This wasn’t some sleazy pimp he could call the cops on. Sir Jack Ferry had been a billionaire in life, a hotelier extraordinaire with connections in high places.

  The Godwicks were rich and titled.

  Sir Jack Ferry had been rich, titled, and powerful.

  Lady Bloody Ferry.

  She continued, “I don’t usually take a personal interest in the boys who try to skip out on their bills, but the Godwick surname got my attention. Lord Malcolm Godwick was The Pearl’s best customer in his day. It’s nice to have him back.”

  “Do I have to tell you again? You can’t keep that painting. It wasn’t Charlie’s to give.”

  “Oh, isn’t it, though? That painting, according to Charlie, belongs to the Godwick trust which—also according to Charlie—is composed of all members of the Godwick family who are over the age of eighteen. Therefore, the painting is at least partially Charlie’s. Would you like me to show you where the door is?”

  She was technically right. This was a legal battle they probably couldn’t win.

  “Fine,” he said. “We’ll give you a painting if that’s what you want, but it can’t be that one.”

  “Why not?”

  “That painting is my parents’ most prized possession. It’s the reason they met. It’s the reason they’re married. It’s sacred in our family.”

  “Sacred? Lord Malcolm? The biggest rake and whoremonger in the history of England, and I’m including the second Earl of Rochester.”