Caroline dressed carefully, her white muslin frock buttoned down the back and cinched up high just under her breasts. Today she had also worn a thick pelisse, the velvet coat knee-length and fur trimmed.
More for him to peel off, the voice in her head whispered as she turned to look at herself in the mirror.
A tasty sacrifice.
The rouge only highlighted the paleness of her face.
‘Are you completely certain that this is the best of ideas, Caro? What if the Duke of Penborne tries to get you into his bed?’
She smiled. Wanly. ‘He will not, Suzette. ’Tis just a dinner at his friend’s house and a late concert.’
‘Very late, if you ask me, seeing as you say you won’t be home till the morning. Are you certain there is nothing you are not quite telling me, chérie?’
It was on the tip of her tongue to confess it all, but Caroline knew that, if she did that, there would be no way she could leave here with the certainty that her brother would not turn up at Lindsay House in the night and demand redress.
A duel.
At dawn and the Duke an accomplished shot by all accounts, even given the extent of his injuries.
No, she was the only one who could get them out of the mess they now found themselves in. Consequently she smiled and said nothing as she tied up her bonnet and stuffed her reticule with a hanky and a comb.
Two things for the night. She could not risk the inclusion of her nightgown in case Suzette saw it.
Massaging her right temple, she hoped that the pain would not worsen. Migraine or not, she was going through with this…business proposition. And if she could only half-see Thornton Lindsay, then all the better for it.
He opened the door himself when she knocked and straight away she could tell that he had been drinking. She could smell it on his breath when he reached forward and took her pelisse, the warmth of his fingers brushing her arms in a certain way.
When he closed the door behind her she felt as if she had strayed into a dream, as if she had passed through the threshold of good sense into some sort of unimaginable mistake.
‘I thought that you would not come.’
‘I am a woman of my word, Your Grace, and fifty guineas is a lot of money to turn down.’
‘Indeed.’
His answer was closely whispered and tonight the scars on his face seemed less…frightening. The eye-patch he wore was made of soft leather, giving her the impression of the blinding of the falcons in centuries past that she had read about.
A falcon. That was exactly what he reminded her of.
Alert. Dangerous. Vigilant. When his right hand reached out and touched her cheek she jumped back, her teeth biting into the soft inside of her mouth.
‘You seem a little ruffled.’
‘I had a late evening last night and I have a headache—’
He stopped her simply by placing the first finger of his right hand across her lips.
‘As this assignment is affording you a large sum of money, I would appreciate you keep your mind upon the moment.’
Nodding, she met his eyes and frowned. No brutal lording glance stared back. Nay, today she saw only lust.
Such a simple word for what was next to happen.
‘I hope you have ways of avoiding conception? A child is the last thing I would want from this union.’
‘I have, Your Grace.’ She fumbled for words and hated the aching fear at the back of her throat. What exactly did that mean? What were the ways that women ensured no child should come from a union?
‘And you are cognisant of the fact that it is a whole night I have paid for.’
More than once? Many times? How many times?
Bought and sold.
The throbbing awareness she felt in her lower region surprised her. Lord. While her mind rebelled at such a life-changing act, her body melted into acquiescence. More than melted. She felt the heat as a blaze of pain, delved into the very marrow of her bones. And he had barely touched her…yet.
Her eyes went to the clock on the mantel. A quarter past six. Her innocence quivered beneath the heavier passing of time.
Still early.
Would he rip off her clothes and throw her on to the ottoman and have his way with her? She could not imagine how any of it would begin. When her breathing quickened, she felt the hard beat of blood in her throat and the thinner line of alarm in her stomach.
Thornton leant back against the wall and watched Caroline Anstretton eye up his ottoman. He knew apprehension when he saw it and hers was every bit as visible as that shining in the faces of the young and green boys he had so often consigned to battle.
But she was a courtesan and by all accounts a damn experienced one. And he was paying her well.
The light frock she wore disguised none of her abundant charms. Tightly draped about her body, it looked almost too…small, the generous curves easily seen, the swell of her breasts as visible as the wares in a shop window.
Her trading commodities.
The thought made him harden. He could take her whenever he wanted to and however he wanted to. After years of self-imposed celibacy, that realisation was a potent aphrodisiac.
He was glad that she had chosen white. It suited her. Suited his intentions. Virginal white to stave off the demons that raged inside him, aching for release.
Stepping forward, he cupped her elbow and pulled her closer. Here in the nearly dusk before the beeswax candles were lit, the shadows of late day masked their faces, any money paid for services mellowed beneath a kinder promise.
He could almost believe that she was Lillyanna resurrected from the dead. Warm. Alive. Laughing.
No. He could not have her like that and be healed.
He had to know that it was Caroline Anstretton. Vapid. Careless. For sale.
His fingers unbuttoned the cloth at her back and he was glad that she did not pull away or question. And her curves beneath the petticoat and chemise were enchanting.
‘I want to see you.’
‘Here, Your Grace?’ She looked around the parlour and towards the door.
‘I have dismissed my servants for the evening. They will not return until well into the morrow.’
She smiled, tremulously, and Thornton understood just exactly why it was said that she was the most beautiful woman to have ever come to London.
It was nothing to do with the red of her hair or the curls softly rounding her waist. Nothing to do with the alabaster skin strangely plied with a heavy layer of rouge. No, it was her eyes, the dark blueness of them studded in sparkle and dimples deeply etched into each cheek even when she did not smile.
‘Would you possibly have some rum? I’d like it neat.’ Her voice was low and beckoning.
Rum and neat! The drink of sailors and harlots and people who had little left to lose.
‘Of course.’ Stepping back, he poured her a double shot. She drank it quickly, draining even the few drops at the bottom of the glass before putting down her reticule and removing the bracelet at her wrist.
‘I should not like to misplace this when we…if we…’ Stopping, she laid the jewellery carefully on top of her bag, a dark flush of redness standing out on her cheeks.
‘A bauble from an admirer, perhaps?’ He did not know why he had asked that question given his blanket prohibition of the same subject a few moments prior, but he could not help himself. He was glad when she simply shook her head and turned to face him.
‘Should I take my underclothes off?’
A blunt unpolished frankness that had him guessing that she had perhaps not been in this game as long as she had said. He frowned, the fright in her eyes making him soften his approach.
‘I think we might eat first.’
Her laughter surprised him. A throaty laugh, the first real glimmer of the woman who was not a whore; because of it he ran his finger along the line of her jaw, tracing his way on to the smooth skin of her bottom lip.
Warm, wet, hot.
Like the rest of her?
The thick throb of desire almost unnerved him and he made himself slow down. The whole evening lay before them, after all, and he wanted to savour every damn moment of it.
Food! They would eat first? Relief rushed through Caroline, almost making her dizzy, and the rum compounded the whole effect. She rarely drank, apart from the occasional unconventional brandy, not even wine. But tonight with the thought of what she was about to do before her she could have picked up the whole bottle and emptied the contents down her throat. She was glad for the light silk shawl that he draped across her shoulders.
The table in the next room was set with numerous candles and a fine supper. Pheasant and salmon, scallops of chicken and turbot, apricot tartlets and a compôte of apple. Fluted glasses completed the laying, the whole effect embellished by a large bowl of flowers sitting squarely in the middle of the cloth.
Thornton Lindsay pulled out a chair for her and was careful in his assistance. When he sat, the light caught his eye, amber velvet, and beneath the scars she could see again so easily the man he had once been.
Still was!
His frock coat was a dark, dark brown and he wore this over a charcoal waistcoat. And at his neck sat a simple white cravat. No pretence to the highest of fashion and it suited him, ornamentation and foppery a far cry from the interest of an officer who had caught the King’s attention and favour after his bravery in Europe.
She longed to ask him about it all, about the battles and the intelligence work he was rumoured to have been so good at, but she stopped herself.
One night.
Anonymity.
And if she asked him questions, then he might ask them back of her. And she could not tell him anything. Nothing real, at least, for as a master of intelligence, she was certain that with only the least amount of information he could put together a whole tableau of possibility.
Consequently she lifted one fluted side plate and held the workmanship before a candle.
‘Sèvres, is it not? I have always loved their designs.’
He did not answer.
‘Once I went to a ball and the whole of the dinner set was embellished with white swans and I thought to myself, what if someone drops one, what if they should slip and…’
‘Why did you need to name me as your lover?’
He broke into her diatribe, effortlessly, and his long fingers entwined round the crystal stem of his glass. One nail was blackened, she noticed, and the scars so evident on his other hand were harder to see on this one.
But still there, running up into the cuff of his snowy white shirt. The signet ring he wore was engraved with a crest that portrayed a knight’s helm surrounded by roundlets. And half of his little finger was missing altogether.
‘It was a mistake.’ Frantically she plastered a smile on her lips and dropped her glance. What he could see on her face would not be reflected in her eyes and to make this whole charade work she needed him to believe in her story. ‘My brother had thought he could best his opponent in a card game and when his coins ran out he bet me instead. Or my hand in marriage, rather. I remembered your name and used it.’
‘And do you often partake in such…pranks?’
Gritting her teeth, she frowned and for just a second bleakness filled her. Filled her to the very ends of her toes. And she swallowed. Hard.
‘Promise me you will return to England. Promise me, Caroline. On your honour.’ Her mother’s voice as she lay dying on the edge of the winter of 1813. ‘It is not safe here for you. Guy can be…’ She had stopped and tears had rolled down her cheeks.
A bully? A pervert? An intimidating oppressive tyrant. She had been seventeen and no match for him. Until Tosh had saved her!
Shaking her head at the memory, she steeled herself to her set task.
‘I am a woman of the night, Your Grace.’ Licking her lips, she helped herself to a goodly proportion of the turbot in a lobster sauce.
‘Delicious,’ she proclaimed after trying a little piece, the fish sticking in her throat like cardboard.
Anything to get your mind off me and on to the food, her subconscious screamed.
But he did not eat, did not even pick at the grapes on a plate next to his elbow. Rather he watched her. Closely.
‘I have heard it said that you lived in Paris?’
She took her time before nodding. ‘I spent some time there a few years ago?’
Beat. Beat. Beat. Her heart in her ears and danger.
In consternation she reached for the wine glass, clumsily, and it toppled over and over and over, the red staining white linen and blossoming like a pool of blood, almost transparent at the edges.
He was not a man to be trifled with. Even from here she could see his brain ticking over, a plethora of facts evident in the keen perception of his one uncovered eye.
Suddenly she just wanted the whole thing to be over. Completed. The money in hand. Finished.
Fifty guineas of freedom.
With care she pushed her arms in close against her sides, the shawl falling away and the flesh of her breasts swelling markedly.
When his gaze thickened, she knew that she had him.
Thornton put down his wine glass and stood. Any thought of food flew out of the window as the bounty of her womanhood was so carelessly offered. Giving her his hand, he pulled her up.
She smelt of roses and softness, and her hair tickled the side of his cheek.
It had been so long since he had had a woman. So long since he had touched another person with…care.
He ran his finger down the length of her bare arm and slipped the material on her chemise lower. Her nipple stood proud in the cold and he forced up her eyes to his to make sure that she knew where it was he was looking.
‘I want you. Now.’
When she nodded he simply bent his head and suckled, the taste of sweetness and the brighter echo of a time in his life when everything had been easy and innocent. A time when he had not known how to break a man’s neck or leave a family in tatters simply because politics demanded tough choices and he was the only one left alive to make them.
Lillyanna.
He shook away memory.
Caroline. The soft easy abundance of her charms and the husky cadence of her voice. Alive. Real. Here. When he looked up again, the heavy languid burn of sex showed in the shadows of her eyes and in the pull of her hand against his.
And when she traced the outline of her lips with the tip of her tongue he leant forward.
To take.
Apprehension exited Caroline’s body in a single second to be replaced by liquid silver longing, and delight. It was not hurt he had paid for after all.
She felt his tongue lave the surface of her breast and the sharp sting of pressure when he nipped her. Not hard. Not hard enough. Her fingers threaded through the darkness of his hair, drawing him in closer, pressing outwards, filling his mouth and her body, and making them one. An unbidden groan. Hers. More it said, and more.
And when he shifted focus to lifting the thin muslin petticoat she opened her legs further and invited him in. Needing, craving, everything. With her head tipped back and her neck stretched tight against the raw desperateness of want, she felt as if she was floating. Weightless. Waiting. His fingers weaving a magic that she had never believed could be possible.
‘Now?’
Had he heard her?
No more hesitation.
When he led her into the parlour again she did as he bid and lay down on the thick rug, watching as he removed his jacket and waistcoat. The clock against the mantel chimed seven and the day outside deepened into night. One night.
This night. The money on the table beside her bag.
Fifty shining guineas.
Payment.
Her hand reached into the material beneath his shirt as he lay across her. Scars and knotted skin. The essence of him. Strength and steel. Tempered with gentleness. The soap he used left an elusive scent and when she caressed his chest, as he had done to hers, she heard him take in breath and was pleased. The corded knots of muscle in his throat stilled and the heavy beat of his heart quickened. And further down she felt the hardening of his sex laid long against her stomach. Ready.
More than ready.
His finger slipped inside her, testing. She was tight, moist.
When her knees fell open she heard the rent of lawn. Exposed. Bare. The swell of her stomach white with moonlight.
Waiting to be taken.
The thought egged her on, made her hips buck up into his hands, asking for something she knew nothing about.
Then he was in her, stopping, retreating, before the hilt of his manhood slipped home into the warm darkness of her very being.
‘God, you are so tight.’
Thornton tried to stay still, tried to stop the wrenching waves of climax that beached themselves in the very act of caution. And then he was lost. Lost to this world as he spilled his seed into her. Without protection. Without anything. On and on and on until the red blazing lust was sated and he had no more breath to even lift himself off her. Covering. Her white against his brown, spread against the night. The musky smell of what was between them filling the air. Finished. Satisfied. Undone. The slash of her red full lips smudged against the moment.
Tears? He felt them warm against his chest. And felt them again in the uneven gait of her breathing.
Instantly he lifted himself away from her, feeling for the tinderbox.
‘No.’ She stopped him with her hand. ‘Just the moonlight.’
‘If I hurt you…’
‘You did not.’
She sat up and tried to bring the fabric of her petticoat together. ‘I brought no other clothes with me…’
The clock chimed the half-hour. Loudly. Surprising them both.
‘Will it be safe?’ His question. As if now that they had been joined he could read her mind.
‘I think it will be so.’
The expletive told her that her answer was not the one he was after. When his hand stilled she knew what he was about to say and stopped him.
‘No, I shall not be with child. A woman of my persuasion has other ways of making certain.’
Other ways? For fifty guineas she would find a way—she did not want irritation to change his mind about the amount.
His fingers tightened around her upper arm; bringing her on to his lap, he tilted her hips and claimed her breasts.
One night. All night. The clouds and the moon and the darkness rolled into one and the clenching want made her shake, made her sweat, made her say his name in the wildness of passion.
‘Thornton?’
Just as a question.
And then she could say nothing.
Much later he took her upstairs to his bedroom, the quiet light of candles suiting his purpose of truly seeing her body as he stripped off her chemise and petticoat and waited for her to wake up.
Two o’clock. Four hours before daybreak and the end of a bargain.
Too soon. He willed the hours to travel more slowly and bent to wake her.
The touch of a finger against her cheek, a gentle finger, his finger. Her hand came up to cup his, and he saw a crescent-shaped scar on her thumb as she pushed forward.
Kiss me, she longed to ask.
For he had not kissed her once.
Not even when she had taken his face and brought it up to her own.
The truth hit her suddenly. Men did not kiss courtesans. She had heard that bit of news from her brother when he had returned home from an evening with his wilder friends.
Did not kiss.
Did not kiss.
She was surprised by the loss she felt at this knowledge.
The wallpaper in the room also surprised her. They were no longer in the parlour. This room was larger, more elaborate. The softness of mattress beneath her and above the canopied bed, draped in burgundy velvet held open by tassels of multi-coloured silk. A full-length mirror to one side of the bed caught the flame of candles burning on silver plinths.
Turning, she caught him looking at her, and was astonished to see that he had removed his eye patch. No scars were visible.
With care she traced her finger across his brow and, heartened by his smile, asked her question.
‘I thought there must be some disfigurement?’
‘No.’ He returned gently. ‘It just gets tired sometimes.’
‘What happened?’
‘I was not careful enough.’
Catching her hand, he brought her forefinger into his mouth when she went to say more. Sucking. Warm.
‘No past, all right. Just now. Just tonight.’
She understood and, emboldened by his words, wrapped her leg around his, pleased when he rolled on top of her. Her breasts were squeezed beneath the heaviness of his body and he caught at her hands, dragging a long silk tassel to bind her wrists to the bed-head and tying off the knot with his mouth. And one arm came beneath her hips, raising them and pressing open her legs.
‘This time I will watch you,’ he said simply, and trailed his fingers up the insides of her thighs, up and up to the fullness of them, touching a place high within her, a place where the thin pain of delight blossomed and grew, the throb of the nearly-there elusive until the bolster of his arm beneath her tightened and the clenching contractions tugged at reason. She called his name loud, loud, loud in the night, slicked in the smell of him, tight-close bound, the movement of his fingers beginning again even as the last orgasms were fading.
Heaven.
She never wanted to leave this room, his magic had woven her fear and need into something else indescribable.
Love?
The word came unbidden and she squashed it back, the fifty guineas decrying such a promise.
And then she forgot to think altogether.
She sat on the bed after eight in the morning and rolled up her stockings, every part of her body vibrating with a languid heat as he watched her from across the room.
She wanted another night. Another thousand nights!
Her stockings, dress and pelisse were all she had left, her underclothes balled in a broken ruin.
He had mentioned no further contact. He had not asked her for anything.
Just this night.
No past.
No future.
Finished.
Filled.
Banished.
When he buttoned her coat about her she was silent. When he told her he had hailed a carriage to the door to take her home she did not look at him. And when he pushed the money into her hands she did not thank him.
The coach ride home to Suzette’s was like a dream and Caroline was glad to find the house empty when she let herself in.
Once inside, she peeled off her clothes and washed. Washed the scent of him from her body and the feel of him from her limbs. Placed lavender oil where pure masculine strength had left the marks of loving and massaged attar of roses through her hair, now bereft of the wig.
Much later she sat bound in a bath cloth before a mirror and allowed herself to truly look into the depths of her eyes.
Enchantment sparkled.
And disbelief.
And nowhere lingered shame or reproach.
Unexpected. Freeing.
She had been brought into the delights of woman hood by a master, and regretted none of it.
When the tears came they were not filled with sorrow for what she had done. No, they were filled with the secret aching anguish of knowing that such a night would never happen again, and that any knowledge of another man would be tempered by this one unattainable perfection—Thornton Lindsay.
Even now his golden eyes watched her in memory, etched in sadness and hurt, lust measured only in the hours of payment.
Balling her fists, she pushed away the sweet promise of impossibility and began to dress for her journey home.