The Accidental Courtesan

Harrington town house until well past midnight, unable to find any relief from the heavy burden of her thoughts. The house felt stuffy, and her body responded to the lack of any noticeable circulation of air with a thin sheen of perspiration dampening the entirety of the skin beneath her corset.

She could not imagine lowering herself to become the unwilling courtesan of an American colonist, yet if she couldn’t discover a way to convince him she was not his erstwhile lover, the consequences could be deadly.

Certainly, should she agree to the disturbing proposal, her body would keep him occupied and his mind off searching for the real reason for her nocturnal visit. The necklace. Maybe he hadn’t put her together with the sudden appearance of the sapphire beauty in his room. She could be worrying for naught.

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. It wasn’t her body that took issue with her becoming his courtesan. He made her feel hot and cold mingled together in a mishmash of sensations. How easily his touch caused her to lose any measure of sanity and sent her rushing eagerly down a path toward ruin. Like all young women of her class, she’d been raised with the deeply ingrained knowledge that a lady saves her virginity for her wedding night. She doesn’t fall headlong into the arms of a handsome groom, she doesn’t allow a wicked lord to take a close-up peek at her drawers, and she doesn’t get caught in the bushes with her father’s secretary. Innocence is the highest gift one gives to the man with whom she will spend her life.

Regardless of the fact Noelle planned never to wed, she still had the virginity rule buried in her mind. She was fairly certain the layers of clothing women had been forced to wear throughout the ages had been specifically designed by some outraged father as an added barrier to male seduction. A man had to be determined to find his way clear down to the skin.

Dragging a hand over a tabletop, she wandered through the dining room and back into the hallway. The staff had gone to bed, and the house was silent.

There had been a time in the not-too-distant past when she and her sister Margaret raced down these halls, their boots tapping on polished marble and wood as their mother called for the nanny to get them under control. Now, the house was hers alone, and she ached with loneliness.

Her shoulders slumped. No Margaret, no Eva, and now no Brenna. Brenna’s parents had shuffled her out of London to visit an ailing cousin and she wouldn’t be back for several days. Any decisions Noelle made about Mister Blackwell from this moment forward would be hers alone.

Noelle gathered her skirts and headed through the back of the house and out into the cool night air in the garden. Though she knew wandering alone in the garden at night wasn’t her best idea, she couldn’t stand the confinement of the house for another moment.

Mister Blackwell would certainly find her discomfiture amusing. He’d likely puff up his chest, knowing she couldn’t get him out of her mind. Lord help her if he ever discovered how he made her body ache in inappropriate places.

She had wandered halfway down the short path when a feeling came over her that something was gravely amiss. She stopped dead and listened for sounds out of place.

With only the flickering light of a distant streetlamp to illuminate the moonless evening, she darted a glance up and down the path, her heart pulsing wildly in her chest.

There was nothing to give her pause other than the odd notion she was being watched. She started to dismiss the thought as foolishness, until she heard a footstep crunch on a stick near a patch of lilac bushes.

Realizing her servants and the residents on either side of the town house were probably tucked in their beds, leaving her without rescue should a thief be prowling the night, she lifted her skirts and walked briskly back toward the house.

She had managed to get within feet of the kitchen door when she slammed sideways into an immovable object. A large, obviously male object. Arms came up to catch her as she bounced backward and lost her footing. She let out a shriek and flailed her slippered foot. A grunt followed contact with some part of her attacker’s leg.

“Let me go,” she cried, and opened her mouth to scream. The scream became a muffled squeal when the man clamped a gloved hand over her mouth. She raised her eyes to get a good look at what was probably the last face she’d ever see.

“How dare you lurk around my garden in the middle of the night? You gave me a fright,” she snapped before casting a glance toward the windows and quieting her voice. If she was discovered trysting with him, no matter how innocent the meeting, she’d be ruined. “I demand you leave at once, lest someone see you.”

Footsteps along the sidewalk beyond the iron fence sent Noelle into a second panic. It was the night watchman taking his nightly stroll about the neighborhood.

She slammed both hands on Gavin’s chest, shoved him back into the shadows of a narrow hedge, and pressed one finger to her lips in warning. If he made any sound to expose their whereabouts, she swore to herself that he’d suffer greatly. Thankfully, he remained silent as a tomb, but for the sound of his light breaths near her forehead.

It took a few deep gulps of air to slow her own breathing enough to allow her to speak. When she did, he faced her full wrath. “I told you I did not break into your room,” she hissed between clenched teeth. “When will you get that through your stubborn head?”

Her face burned. If she didn’t regain control of herself, and soon, she’d end up bearing the man a passel of bastard children, her life in shambles.

“Clearly you have mistaken me for someone else.” She shook out her skirts and tried not to think about his mouth, his eyes, his finely sculpted muscles; anything that he might use to get into her drawers. “You were very well into your cups and barely standing upright.”

A grin tugged the corners of his mouth. “How could you know I’d been drinking if you weren’t there, My Lady?” He crossed his arms and leaned back on his heels. “Let us forget the charade and get to the business of you making good on your offer.”

The man had no sense of honor or decorum. His shirt strained over defined, muscled arms. Clearly, wearing a coat wasn’t part of the costume of a prowler. She noticed the garden’s ancient oak tree was close enough to the house for a climb through her second-floor bedroom window.

She grimaced. “You were plotting to break in and seduce me in my very own bed. Had I not been walking about instead of sleeping, you’d have been free to wander into my room and pounce on me before I could awaken and defend myself.”

“I am.” He nodded. “Now that we’ve settled that matter, my little thief, we have some arrangements to make.” He gave her a thorough once-over. “You broke into my cousin’s town house, sneaked into my room, kissed me at least twice, and offered to be my courtesan. I must say, I knew you noble classes like to pretend to be proper while secretly playing lascivious games, but I was quite stunned by the scandalous offer. However, in spite of the unorthodox manner in which the offer was made, I accept.”

He cocked a brow. “I thought the way you vigorously pushed me against the hedge here meant you wanted to consummate our arrangement. After all, I’m stuck with you in this garden until the watchman finishes his rounds, am I not?”

“You know the watchman cannot find us together,” she grumbled. If only she’d thought to bring a pistol when she’d decided to wander around tonight. One shot, and she’d be rid of him for good. “In spite of what may have happened in the past, I have no intention to bed you. Not now, not ever.”

His grin slowly faded, and his eyes narrowed. “Then your presence in my room that night was for a darker purpose.” He locked onto her gaze. “Stealing a very expensive sapphire and diamond necklace, perhaps?”

The words pounded through her head like rifle shots, and it took Noelle a few seconds for the full impact of his comment to take root. He wasn’t there to seduce her; he was there to have her arrested! She was bound to spend the rest of her life suffering the horrors of Newgate.

Her legs buckled. Somewhere, from a distant place, she felt herself lifted, carried off the path, and lowered onto a bench. Once she was settled on the damp stone surface, she began to reclaim her senses, and with them, terror.

Gavin sat beside her and looked into her eyes. She gripped his forearm with clawlike nails. “Please,” she whispered, numb to her toes, “do not send me to Newgate.”

She felt the sting of hot tears burn her eyes and spill down her cheeks. “The necklace was returned in perfect condition. The theft was a mistake. There isn’t a reason to ruin lives.” The words rushed from her unchecked. She lifted his hand and clamped it to her chest. “Please. I will do anything to keep from prison. Anything.”

Noelle closed her hands over her face and sobbed. The image of living in that dank, rat-infested prison, with guards who abused women without fear of consequence, was too much to bear. She’d beg to be hanged before she’d suffer that fate.

What had begun as a lark, an adventure, a way to help Bliss, had become her darkest nightmare. The shame brought to her family with her arrest would be acute.

The bench moved slightly as Mister Blackwell reclaimed his place beside her. She hardly noticed him as her body shook uncontrollably with wretched despair. “It was a mistake, a stupid mistake,” she sobbed over and over again.

Gavin drew her to his side and settled her in his arms. She clung to him in her misery, wetting his shirtfront, uncaring if he was the key to her downfall. She was falling into a bottomless abyss, and he was the only stable handhold she could cling to.

Though he knew of her deception, he had not brought a magistrate. She understood that much in her befuddled brain. Perhaps she could still dissuade him from his plot if she could stop the flow of tears and figure out a course of seduction.

Shhh.” : Gavin pressed his mouth against her hair and inhaled her sweet fragrance. She felt so small and fragile as she her sweet fragrance. She felt so small and fragile as she shook uncontrollably and sobbed as if her heart was breaking. It brought out unexpected protective instincts, and he did his best to calm her. “Shhh. You must regain control of yourself lest the watchman hears you and comes to investigate.”

Her reaction to the mention of the necklace had thrown him off balance. He had intended to get to the bottom of the matter, not send her into hysterics. It took a moment to realize, when she mentioned Newgate, that she thought she was about to be arrested. Arrested? What crimes had she possibly committed, outside of breaking into the town house, that could send her to Newgate?

He managed to make out something through her hysterical rambling about returning the necklace and how sorry she was for the trouble. She kept saying “we,” and he sensed she wasn’t the thief but perhaps knew the culprit. The missing courtesan, Bliss?

However, the theft of the necklace was the least troubling matter he had to ponder. He’d been attacked over the bauble, and that lifted the crime to another level. There were deeper and more nefarious forces at work than Noelle climbing in a window. Now he had the added worry that somehow his reluctant courtesan might have put herself in danger.

When her crying slowed, then stopped, he tipped her chin up to the lamplight and brushed lingering tears from her cheeks. Her beautiful eyes were so full of despair; he felt guilty, knowing he’d unwittingly been the cause. He cupped her cheek and bent to look into her flushed face.

“I would never send you to Newgate,” he said softly. A beauty like Noelle would be a target for all sorts of debauchery in prison. She wouldn’t live a week. “It’s no place for a woman.”

Her soft body ran the length of him, and all sorts of improper reactions filtered through him. And he felt like a cad. She was emotionally frail, and what he wanted very much to do was nuzzle his face in the curve of her neck and run his hands over her perfect figure.

For the last several days he’d planned to bed her, but not like this. He didn’t want her to feel obligated to him, or desperate enough to allow a seduction in order to save herself from prison. When she pulled back and unlocked her hands from his neck, he let her move away. She looked down at her lap as if shamed by her tears and unchecked emotion.

His arms felt bereft without her in them. He cleared his throat, leaned over, and braced his elbows on his thighs. His aching face deserved some justice, and Noelle was the key to lead him to the identity of the culprits. Somehow she’d gotten mixed up with some questionable characters. He found it difficult to believe she could have just stumbled upon them during her daily activities. If it took all night, he’d have his answers.