After being furious just minutes ago, Gabriel now felt something melt inside him at the happiness he could see in Victory’s expression at the mere idea of being given a dessert to eat. Reminding him, no matter her gender, of the hardships this young woman suffered on a daily basis. He would ensure Ellis was aware of the need for the inclusion of a sweet delicacy in their dinner menu.
Gabriel could not even begin to imagine what desperation had resulted in this need to hide Victory’s gender and the refinement of her natural voice. A voice that, although occasionally edged with that soft Cornish burr, was also far more educated than had previously been revealed.
The ruffians’ behavior earlier, their comments regarding selling off the sexual favors of the young residents of St Giles, could perhaps explain why Victory, or more likely her mother, had decided she would be safer as a young boy when they moved to live there. Victory would not have survived two minutes in that disgusting slum as the beautiful young woman Gabriel now occasionally caught glimpses of beneath the dirt smearing her face.
Even so, he had not enjoyed being made to look so foolishly naïve in the presence of one of his closest friends.
His mouth thinned. “You shall be given something sweet to eat once you have bathed and told me the whole truth as to how you and your mother came to be living—” Gabriel abruptly ceased talking as something else suddenly occurred to him. His thoughts had been too otherwise occupied before now for him to give thought to all of Victory’s circumstances.
She was aged nineteen.
As his niece or nephew would now be.
Her mother was a widow.
Her now dead mother.
Could that mother possibly have also been Gabriel’s sister, Elizabeth?
He knew the coincidence of such a thing being possible was not probable, but Gabriel nevertheless felt the blood draining from his cheeks as his fingers tightened about Victory’s arm. “What was the name of your mother?”
She gazed up at him sharply. “Why do you wish to know?”
“Tell me!” Gabriel had no care right then that the tightness of his grip was probably hurting and bruising her. Or that he was looming over her in a threatening manner, his height and bulk being so much bigger than hers. “There will be nothing sweet to eat until you do,” he warned harshly.
Victory had no idea what had set the duke off again when he had seemed to be warming to her. But the thought of losing the possibility of eating a dessert was enough to urge her to answer him. She was very fond of sweet things and had not had any in a very long time. “My mother’s name is—was Rachel Jones.” The loss was so recent that it would take some time for Victory to accept her mother’s existence was now in the past tense.
“What was it before she was married?”
“Rachel Trelawney.”
“Are you sure?”
“Course I am. My mother showed me the entry in the church register before we left Penzance, after first me da died, and then me grandad. It read Rachel Trelawney, retired schoolteacher, married Edwin Jones, sailor, on May 29th, 1799. My birth appeared a year later.”
Gabriel gaped. “You could read at the age of six?”
“As I was then her only pupil, my mother ensured I could read and do my numbers by the age of four,” she announced proudly. “She continued that education despite the hardships we suffered in London. Now take your hand off my arm.” Her much smaller fingers tried to dislodge his, without success. “You’re hurting me,” she lied, his hold firm but not painful. But Lord Winter believed her to be a liar, as no doubt did the duke, so she might as well continue to be.
“You mentioned your grandfather just now?”
She nodded. “My mother’s father, Gryffyn Trelawney, fisherman. We lived with him while Da was away at sea. But my grandad died not long after me da, and as the cottage was only rented and we had no means of paying the rent, Ma took the last of our savings and brought us both to London.” A frown creased her brow at the memory. “She had been so sure things would be easier for us here.” Her expression became bleak. “Better if she had just killed us both then and there and foregone the bother and expense of journeying up to London and the years of anguish and despair since.”
“Victory—”
“Do not attempt to admonish me for the irreverent ingratitude of my words, Your Grace.” Her eyes flashed. “My mother and I attended church every Sunday when we lived in Penzance, and I probably know the church’s teachings better than you do. But no matter how hard my mother tried to provide for the two of us once we arrived in London, she was denied job after job because she did not have the appropriate references. But how was she ever to acquire those references when no one would employ a widow with a young child?” Victory gave a disgusted shake of her head. “She was only seven and thirty when she…she died, but in truth, she had given up the will to live long before that.” Her voice broke with despair of that loss.
The duke released her arm. “Your own time of hardship is now at an end.”
Her chin tilted at a challenging angle. “Am I to become a whore to you personally or in your club, after all?” she scorned.
His nostrils flared. “Obviously, you have wallowed with the low-life in the slums too long and the words that come out of your mouth have deteriorated to that same level.”
She gave an unconcerned shrug. “Why else would you want to help me?”
Gabriel quickly dispensed with his disappointment at discovering this young lady had no knowledge of his sister or her baby. It was made easier because it was the same disappointment he had suffered many times before. Nor did it change his desire to assist Victory in whatever way he could. “For the simple reason you are in need of my help,” he assured her.
She eyed him scathingly. “It has been my experience that no one does something for nothing.”
Gabriel thought of all the young women who had entered the doors and worked at Club Venus during the five years of his ownership. Always voluntarily, and usually, within six months of that employment, each of those ladies would find a protector or husband to take them away from that life. Gabriel actively encouraged them to do so. And while those ladies worked for him, he ensured they had a roof over their head, warm and plentiful food in their bellies, and medical attention when needed. More importantly, he ensured that all the money they earned belonged to them. Gabriel was one of the wealthiest men in England. He had no need of any more, especially earned in such a manner.
“I do,” he stated firmly. “Besides”—his gaze raked over her in slow and critical assessment, bringing an uncomfortable blush to her cheeks—“I doubt you would do well at Club Venus with your lack of feminine curves.”
“You are very insulting,” she snapped in total contradiction to her having stated she would never accept employment at Club Venus.
Gabriel shrugged. “I am merely being truthful.”
He was not so sure about the accuracy of his assessment when, half an hour later, he returned downstairs after bathing and changing his clothes, and Victory presented her newly washed self to him in the private parlor.
Gabriel’s cock gave a throb merely at the sight of her, before plumping fully in painful arousal inside his pantaloons.
Because Winter had been perfectly correct earlier.
Beneath all that dirt and ground-in grime, Victory Jones was so beautiful, she took Gabriel’s breath away.
Chapter Six
Gabriel occasionally met old acquaintances from his school days, and there would be obvious changes in their appearance in the years since. But within seconds of looking at that person, those changes would supplant the previous memory of them and became the reality of them as they were now.
The same thing happened as Gabriel looked at Victory. She had gone upstairs to bathe as a male youth named Vic, but she had come down the stairs unmistakably and forever the beautiful young woman, Victory.
Because she was not just a pretty girl, attractive, or appealing, but an utterly and exquis
itely beautiful woman.
Even dressed in the clean set of male clothing she had insisted upon putting on after her bath.
Or perhaps because of it?
The clothes had been provided by one of the footmen from when he was both younger and smaller of stature. The top of the thin white cotton shirt was unfastened to reveal Victory’s delicate throat. It then fell over the slight swell of her breasts rather than concealing them, before being tucked in at the narrow waist of gray pantaloons. Her feet were clad in a pair of thin gray socks.
Gabriel could only assume that Victory had previously worn some sort of binding about her chest to conceal the sweet curve of those breasts.
Her newly washed hair was a short halo of glorious and shining dark curls about her heart-shaped face. She had a smooth alabaster brow, clear green eyes, and a delightful smattering of freckles across the bridge of her pert nose. Her cheeks were creamy smooth, and her lips—dear God, her pouting lips were the color of ripe cherries above a small, pointed, and stubborn chin.
Young Vic was well and truly gone, and in his place was this delectable and sensual woman.
Mischievous humor shone bright in Victory’s eyes. “So, Your Grace, do you still think I am too thin to attract a man?” She looked at him over her shoulder once she had turned so that he could inspect her from the back.
Gabriel had been preoccupied with replacing the image of this beautiful woman over the one he had of Vic, but his mouth now went dry at the sight of how well the pantaloons fitted to and revealed the perfection of Victory’s nicely pert and very feminine rounded bottom.
The same bottom he had earlier threatened to spank if Victory did not behave…
The very idea of bending this young woman over his knees and spanking that arse made Gabriel’s cock throb harder still!
“You are presentable, at least,” he bit out harshly as he rose to his feet, hiding his reaction to her behind a veil of coldness.
Her nose wrinkled. “No wonder you don’t have a lady friend of your own.”
His brows rose. “I beg your pardon?”
“You are far too ill-humored and opinionated for any woman to put up with you for long.” Victory grinned unrepentantly after delivering the insult.
That smile revealed teeth that Gabriel should have noticed were very white and even. Revealing that, whatever conditions Victory and her mother had been forced to live since coming to London, the widow Rachel Jones had ensured her daughter cleaned and cared for her teeth on a regular basis.
As for no woman wanting him because he was ill-humored… “I believe you will find the fact I am one of the wealthiest gentlemen in England makes up for all manner of other defects in my personality,” he informed her dryly.
Dark brows rose. “And do you wish to be wanted for your wealth alone?”
Winter was correct in his opinion that this young lady’s complete lack of respect or awe for his station in life was highly entertaining. “I believe I have other, more entertaining…attributes a lady might also find appealing,” he drawled. “Once she came to know me better.” The steadiness of Gabriel’s gaze, and his meaning, taunted her obvious innocence.
Victory was aware that the duke was playing with her, like a large cat with a small mouse. “But will she want to take the trouble to know you better?”
“When I am so ill-humored, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“You—” Whatever the duke had been about to say was interrupted by the loud rumbling of Victory’s stomach, despite the bread and cheese she had eaten earlier. “Come along, we shall go in to dinner,” he told her briskly as he held out his arm toward her. “Because I have no idea of your preferences, I have asked for a selection of hot food to be set out for us to choose from in the family dining room.”
“My only preference is that it shall be hot and appetizing food,” she assured him, her gaze lowered as she placed her hand on his forearm in the manner she had seen ladies of Society do to their menfolk on their way to the London theatres.
Not that she thought for a moment the duke was her menfolk. It was only that it felt rather grand, despite wearing a shirt and pantaloons, to be escorted into dinner in this formal way.
Even more so when the duke pulled out a chair for her to sit at a small but formal table set for two, with silver flatware, cut-crystal glasses, and snowy-white napkins. “This is the family dining room?” Victory questioned once she was seated.
The duke nodded as he strolled over to inspect the contents of the tureens keeping warm on a side table. “As opposed to the formal dining room, where I hold dinner parties and the like,” he dismissed distractedly.
Blackborne House felt like a different world to Victory. Probably because it was. Even when they had lived in Cornwall with her grandfather, it had been in a small fisherman’s cottage. Victory had never even seen inside anywhere as grand as Blackborne House before now, let alone been treated as a guest there.
Even a reluctant one.
Victory watched her host from beneath lowered lashes as he spooned food onto a plate. The aromas alone were enough to make her mouth water.
Blackborne was once again dressed formally in a pristine white shirt and neckcloth worn beneath a silver-and-green-brocade waistcoat and a darker green superfine. Fawn pantaloons were fitted perfectly to his long and muscular legs, along with very shiny black Hessians. His hair was still slightly damp from his bath.
Muscles visibly flexed beneath the superfine and pantaloons as he crossed the room to place the laden plate in front of her. “If there is anything not to your liking, then please leave it on the side of your plate.”
“As I told you, I will eat what I am given. Besides, I haven’t had anything but the bread and cheese to eat for a day and a half, so I am sure all this is going to taste delicious.” With the rich aromas assaulting her senses, Victory had to literally hold herself back from scooping up the hot food with her fingers and pushing it into her mouth.
The only eating utensil she’d possessed in St Giles had been a roughly hewn spoon, after the knives and forks her mother brought with them from Cornwall had been stolen and no doubt sold. Victory had seen no point in trying to replace them when anything they had of value received the same fate.
Her hands shook slightly as she picked up the silver knife and fork placed either side of her plate. They shook even more as she forked up the first forkful of rich beef stew. “Oh,” she groaned. “Oh my goodness.”
Gabriel, having dismissed Ellis in favor of serving Victory himself, in an effort to prevent any embarrassment she might be feeling, was now unable to take his gaze from the ecstatic expression on Victory’s face as she masticated the hot food. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks flushed, and the most ecstatic smile curved those sensual lips as she continued to chew on a tender piece of beef.
Gabriel’s cock became fully engorged again as he imagined that same expression and smile upon her lips when they were wrapped about his throbbing and thrusting flesh.
Dear sweet Lord…
It seemed he had well and truly accepted Victory was a female if he couldn’t be in her presence for a few minutes without having a cockstand.
He took his own plate of food and abruptly sat down opposite her at the table. “We will talk once you have eaten.”
She opened one glittering green eye. “Do you do that on purpose?”
He stiffened. “Do what?”
She shrugged, opening both eyes to frown at him reprovingly. “The minute I start to relax into our old friendship, you deliberately say something to remind me I am only here under sufferance. That if I do not give you the answers you wish for, I shall be thrown back out into the street.”
“Have I said as much?”
She sighed. “You do not need to do so when the threat is there in the tone of your voice.”
Gabriel reached out to grasp her hand holding a knife. He was unsure whether he had done it to comfort her or to prevent her from using it as a weapon. “I promis
e you here and now that I shall not throw you out into the street, no matter what our conversations reveal.” He could not even think of doing such a thing now that he knew Victory was a female and utterly without defenses out in the often cruel and harsh streets of London.
Quite what Gabriel was to do with her instead was still to be decided.
Perhaps she could be a maid here?
No, he would not be able to see her every day—possibly on her knees in his bedchamber first thing in the morning, her delectable arse high in the air as she lit a fire—and not walk around with a constant cockstand.
Perhaps one of his friends—
No, having already seen how the usually cold and haughty Winter had taken such a liking to her, Gabriel knew he could not allow Victory to work in the household of one of his friends either. The jealousy he would feel over that would tear him apart.
Jealousy?
God, yes! He felt sure it would be impossible for any man to look at the beautiful Victory and not want her. For Gabriel to even imagine her being intimately involved with one of his friends was unacceptable.
No, he would have to find something suitable for her to do in his own household.
* * *
“Am I about to receive my spanking now?”
Gabriel came to an abrupt halt in the doorway of his study, having lingered briefly in the dining room to give instructions to Ellis regarding providing and leaving some nightclothes for their unexpected guest in the blue bedchamber.
As Winter had cautioned earlier—damn the man for being correct all the time!—Gabriel really had not thought his actions through properly when he whisked Victory from her home in St Giles. Most especially so in regard to her future.
Admittedly, Gabriel had thought he was rescuing a young boy, who would have been much easier to accommodate in regard to an apprenticeship or something similar. But truthfully, it would have made no difference if he had known Victory’s true gender. All Gabriel had been able to see at the time was poverty so extreme, there was not even a sliver of comfort to be found there.
Gabriel's Torment (Regency Club Venus 2) Page 5