She pitied them both in that moment. “You’ve been very low, I believe, and some friends of yours who had only your best interests at heart were worried about you.” Nervously she plucked at her glove, glancing away and finding her eyes trained on the large bed upon which they’d enjoyed such sport so recently. Was she imagining it, or did he in fact blush as he followed her gaze? Was the truth finally hitting home?
“They sent me to visit you a few days ago, and…they’ve funded this visit to you now.” She swallowed before meeting his eyes, adding with difficulty, “Because they saw how improved you were after the last time.”
“The last time?” He looked as if he’d received a blow to the solar plexus. “Dear God, it truly wasn’t a dream? It was you?”
Hope nodded, unsure whether to take a step towards him or to begin her retreat now. Mr Durham was not the kind of man to indulge in prostitutes, and this encounter was clearly as distressing to him as it was to her.
“I’m sorry if I disappoint you, Mr Durham.” She truly was sorry, but warring in her breast was how to expedite matters so she could protect her sister and the man before her. Both were innocents—unlike her. But both stood to be destroyed by what she did or didn’t do in the next few minutes. Her burden was a great one. “I think I should leave now.”
There, she’d voiced it—the turning point that meant she had to find some other means of safeguarding Charlotte’s future. She could disappear into the sewers so no one could find her and hold her up as a shameful contamination of the hopeful bride-to-be.
“Wait!”
Oh, there was so much hope in that word that was followed by so much disappointment when common sense filled the vacuum left by extinguished optimism.
“I don’t understand any of this! I thought you’d gone to the Continent to work for a family in Leipzig.” His anguish at discovering how deeply wrong was his belief was hard to witness. He ran his hands through his hair. “I gave a letter to your mother to forward to you—two, in fact. But you never replied.” His eyes widened at the broader ramifications. “Your family know…what you do?”
Hope shook her head. Woodenly, she said, “I’m dead to them, and that’s the only way it can be. Dead to my whole family.” She drew in a breath. “You know my sister is to marry?”
“Everyone knows it. The match of the decade. You’ll not be there, of course.” There was a harsh edge to his voice that shouldn’t have distressed her so much. Of course, he was putting up the barriers around his heart to protect it from an unwelcome and undesirable reality.
She shook her head. “But you will, naturally. And I’m sure I needn’t ask you to withhold my personal congratulations. Charlotte doesn’t need to know I’m not where she believes me to be.” Hope sighed. “I have no idea what story they’ve concocted, but she needs to be protected. Do I have your assurance you’ll keep my…secret?”
“Secret? And how did this become your…secret, Miss Merriweather?” His nostrils flared as he took a step towards her. “What changed that you did not make our assignation two years ago?” He ran the back of his hand across his face. “Do you know how often I’ve thought of you? Dreamed of you?”
“You have?”
Ridiculous that the sentiment in his tone should touch a weakness she didn’t know existed within her. The fact she had ever meant more to him than a brief encounter was both joyous and tragic.
“Of course I have!” He seemed to have trouble controlling his breathing. “You must have known that for years I watched you in church, on horseback, hoping for the opportunity to speak to you. And then suddenly you were riding with us during the Hunt. I don’t need to tell you what nearly happened after you fell. When I rushed to your side…before we were interrupted.”
Hope brushed away a tear she did not let him see. She was glad of her choice of the midnight-blue velvet rather than the dark brown satin which would have revealed the droplet like a badge of shame. Fallen women were not allowed to cry for the sins of their own making.
She let him go on. He seemed to want to tell her everything as, agitated, he began to pace. “And that night, at the Hunt Ball, we danced. I thought there was…something…” he choked on the word “…something special between us. I spoke of us meeting at the church the next day, and although you didn’t agree, I believed you wanted to make that assignation as much as I did. Now I see there was obviously someone else. Someone who led you down the path of ruin. Was it a man? Money? A lust for something beyond what your virtuous existence could offer you? Why did you run away, Miss Merriweather?”
Hope should have been more immune to the accusations into which he channeled his disappointment. She’d clearly been his angel on a pedestal, and now that he’d discovered her so weakly human, susceptible to human vices, his lovely dream had been obliterated.
“It was a man.” She drew in a shaking breath. Would she tell him what Wilfred had done? Or did that no longer matter? All that was important to Felix Durham was that she was no longer the paragon of virtue he needed her to be. She’d disappointed him. Let him down. Whatever she said in her defence would sound like a weak excuse for her own susceptibility.
Hope touched his arm, not expecting him to flinch as he did.
“You wish for a return of my former regard?” He shook his head. “What do you want from me?”
“I enjoyed what we shared three nights ago.” She was back in character, her voice husky and suggestive as she slowly stroked his cheek. It was her best defence. Let him sate his disappointment through the pleasures of the flesh. She’d loved him but he was just a man, after all. Like all the others, he saw her only as a conduit for his dreams of what a good woman should be.
His sharp intake of breath was proof that he was not immune. He might like to pretend his disgust of a woman like her, but the kind of woman she’d become offered him delights more compelling than his reluctance to engage.
Facing him squarely, she ran her fingertips lightly up his flanks to cup his cheek.
He remained rigid. “Is this what you do to all the men who…pay you?” He shuddered slightly. “Who is paying you now? Millament? It doesn’t sound like him.”
Hope pretended she neither knew nor cared. “Those friends who are concerned about your state of mind. They paid Madame Chambon in the hope of restoring to you your former spirits, and now here I am again.” She pushed back her right shoulder just a fraction. “I’m the remedy for a great many sorrows and disappointments.” She licked her lips. It was part of the act. Not that it was usual that she had to resort to any measures to entice a man before. “So you may as well enjoy me while I’m here.”
Strangely, she’d never found herself so desirous of wanting to make a man bend to her. Of his own free will. She’d excited his desires when he was responding only to bodily cravings. But his moral objections were a barrier she needed to breach. Not just because she wanted to, but because of what she needed to do for Wilfred. For Charlotte.
He straightened and moved back slightly, watching her with horrified fascination. “You’re trying to break me, aren’t you?” He spoke through clenched teeth. “You want to destroy my dreams. Otherwise, you’d just leave. Why torment me? I’m tormented enough already.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, he sank suddenly onto his bed and hunched his shoulders, his breathing fast, but controlled as he half turned away.
Hope thought he’d have taken her in his arms by now. Most men would have, especially one who admitted to loving her. Well, to having loved her.
She glanced at the door. If she left now, she’d still have the memory of their lust-crazed lovemaking. Two days ago, he’d been insensible to the fact she was reality, and therefore free to love her without censure. He’d indulged himself like a man in love. Truly in love, so she’d felt at the time.
Now, the circumstances were very different. Excruciatingly so.
“I’ll leave.” She said it decisively, and she meant it. “I didn’t come here to torment you. Go back to Annabelle
. That’s her name, isn’t it? She’s pure and untainted, and you can love her without guilt.” Hope was pretty certain she’d summed up the situation correctly when she saw the rigid awareness transmitted through his suddenly stiffened shoulders, though he didn’t speak. Gaining courage, she went on, “Whatever you do with me—or feel about me—will cause you only more torment, and ruin whatever little we shared once. I don’t want that to happen.”
How noble she could sound when she fell so very far short of it. She started walking to the door, the decisive click of her neat kid boots giving substance to her intentions.
“Annabelle?”
She stopped when he spoke the name, but she didn’t turn. “She’s the woman you intend to wed, isn’t she?” Just speaking of it made her heart convulse.
“What do you know of Annabelle?” His voice was barely above a whisper. Hope looked over her shoulder, but he remained hunched over the bed, his face in his hands.
She sounded as guilty as she felt. “I saw you’d made several written attempts to apologise to Annabelle. Several of the letters had fallen to the floor.”
“Did you find anything else of interest when you went through my correspondence?”
“As I told you, I picked the letters up from where they’d fallen beneath your escritoire.” She changed the subject. “Are you in the habit of apologising to Annabelle for consorting with women like me?”
She deserved it when he swung around, fury in his eyes. “I have never consorted with women like you.”
“You’ve never been with a prostitute?”
“I was initiated at the urging of my father and I’m not proud of it. I do not choose to take my pleasure with a prostitute over a virtuous woman, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“But you did,” Hope interrupted, speaking slowly. “You had me not three days ago. And you enjoyed me very much.” She smiled, pushing aside a loose ringlet that fell across her face as she met his stare. His eyes flared with frustrated desire as again she turned and began to walk towards him, using her body like the instrument of pleasure Madame Chambon insisted her girls must regard it. Not for themselves, of course. But for men like Mr Durham.
The rustle of her skirts across the floor was loud in the sudden quiet. He seemed to be mesmerised. The longing in his eyes made clear she’d won.
Until he whispered, “Miss Hunt is my likely intended. It’s all but agreed.”
“So, it really is Miss Annabelle Hunt?” Hope blinked rapidly and put her hand on the high mattress to keep her balance. “Annabelle Hunt?” She couldn’t help but say it again.
He was angled to look at her, sitting on the other side of the mattress, and when she repeated the name he said, “You and she were rivals, were you not? Though I’d have chosen you over Annabelle any day had circumstances not put you out of my reach.” He finished on a bitter note though his feelings could not have been as bitter as Hope’s.
In a flash, she understood the reasons behind Wilfred’s game of revenge and wondered why she had not before.
“You wrote your apology to Annabelle because you wanted to avoid marriage to her?”
Felix rose slowly from the bed. “I was on the point of proposing. In fact, she was expecting it, when I received a note from your sister six months ago saying she believed she knew where you were.”
Hope put her hand to her mouth, but he gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, she was clearly wrong. However, she believed you’d been unable to communicate from your position in Leipzig. It went without saying you were in a respectable position, Miss Merriweather; however, she feared you’d been detained against your will. After all, what else could account for your silence?” He looked accusingly at Hope. “When your sister contacted me, I told Miss Hunt that this new information changed everything. That I had to find you. At all costs. I was quite honest with her. I told her that you and your well-being would always be my first priority. I thought you needed rescuing. That I could be your saviour…”
He let the sentence trail away in the heavy silence so Hope could assimilate his meaning. He’d kept a flame burning for her all this time. Since their separation.
But Hope knew what Felix did not. And could not, now. Not if she were to protect her sister’s future.
So Annabelle was the reason Wilfred had sent Hope on this mission to reveal herself as being far from the gilded object of Felix’s dreams. Wilfred wanted Felix to resume his courtship of his sister, and the only way to do that was to destroy his regard for Hope.
Felix treasured purity. He’d held Hope up on a pedestal.
Well, look at her now. A degraded creature destined for hell.
Hope took in the hurt in his eyes and knew what she had to do—what Wilfred intended for her to do. Tonight was her last chance to exorcise herself from Felix’s romantic daydreams so he’d pledge himself to Wilfred’s sister, Annabelle—heart, body, and soul. Little matter that it was Annabelle who was as complicit in Hope’s fall from grace as her brother.
So, as Hope revealed herself as the rotting corpse of noble, high-minded Mr Durham’s dreams, the young heir to a viscountcy would be free to pledge himself to Wilfred’s sister, so that pretty Miss Annabelle Hunt, the squire’s daughter, could look forward to a title and a life of leisure in the house on top of the hill.
Hope forced her tone to sound light. Madame Chambon was an exacting teacher. Her standards were high and her tolerance for failure as low as Wilfred’s. Between them, Hope stood no chance.
Unless she resigned herself to the gutter.
“And now I am here. It’s true I stand before you in a guise that sits uncomfortably with you, but you’d be far from alone if you took your pleasure with me, Mr Durham, when I am already paid for.”
Even though her heart was close to breaking, she must shore up her remaining reserves and follow through with this hateful charade. For Charlotte.
When he didn’t respond, she gave a light shrug of her shoulders and went round the bed to stand just in front of him. “What will you do, Mr Durham?” She put her hands on his shoulders and smiled, as if she cared nothing for the parody role she played. The angel had fallen. She offered what he’d always wanted—but she was a poisoned chalice.
He stiffened and turned his head away, but she felt what it cost him to deny himself.
It both angered her and ripped at her heartstrings.
A moment went by. She couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t going to succumb when she felt scorched by the heat of attraction. Yet he truly was going to turn away from her.
And deny her the only pleasure she was likely to ever enjoy on this earth again?
Not only that, he’d prove how truly abhorrent he found her. And yet, he’d enjoyed her body but a few days beforehand with complete abandon.
No, she would not allow him to do this to her. To make her feel so worthless, when she relied on him to nourish her if she were to make anything of her future.
Carefully, she lowered herself onto his lap and draped her arms around his neck.
He didn’t respond other than to stiffen slightly. He didn’t move his own arms.
With a soft sigh, she pressed her cheek against his.
Although he still didn’t move, she heard him catch his breath. And she felt the effort it cost him to hold himself deathly still. He was on a knife edge. He couldn’t bring himself to push her away, which must mean he was dangerously close to caving in.
Using her eyelashes to trail a sensuous journey from the sharp delineation of his cheekbones to the corner of his lips, she felt the straining of his thigh muscles and tautness of his chest.
When she lightly ran the tip of her tongue across the seam of his lips, she knew she had won.
With a terrible cry of agony, he clasped her tightly against his chest and pressed his hungry mouth to hers. Hope had never embraced a kiss more. Or rather, the hope in that kiss. Pushing him onto his back on the mattress, she straddled him, securing each of his wrists above his head in a light clasp he could break
as easily as a fly’s if he chose.
But he did not. He was her willing slave for the moment, taking every drop of love she spilled from her lips until she rose to alter her position, and he reached up to pull her down, flipping her onto her back and caging her body beneath his.
They were both fully clothed but now began the torturous, exciting, and desperate race to divest themselves and each other of trousers, coat, and shirt in Felix’s case, and Hope’s elaborate bustle skirt. It unclasped at the waist, and she was skilled at wriggling her hips so that it shimmied down past her ankles and she could kick it gracefully free. Beneath it, she wore nothing but her stockings.
His eyes were closed, their mouths fused, when his seeking hands registered this. She felt his shocked awareness and the swelling of his member against her belly. Arching her back, she quickly worked the fastenings of her cuirass, wriggling expertly out of it so that the only garment she wore was her corset.
It nipped in her waist to a tiny twenty inches, but it would take too long to unlace. Besides, she knew he enjoyed the sensation of entering her when she was so confined. He had before, anyway.
And right now, Hope was determined Felix was going to enjoy her—consciously—even more than he had last time.
She had to prove she had some semblance of power over him. Even if it was only for the twenty minutes they were destined to spend together. What happened after that, she would not dwell on for there would be only these few moments to enjoy what she once might have forever, had her future not been swept away from her by Wilfred Hunt.
What a cruel irony, that Wilfred was both facilitating and destroying these final few moments of pleasure—these only few moments of pleasure—Hope would ever have to call her own.
Felix Durham’s eyes blinked open a moment and caught her in the blaze of his despair. She might have lost him then had she not gripped his manhood and again covered his mouth with hers. Oh, she’d have let him go if he truly found her abhorrent. If he had no feeling for her. If there was no desire beyond lust.
But he had carried a candle for her; raised it to her memory. Admitted he desired to be her champion. Every tortured admission of what he’d been prepared to do to discover her whereabouts, reclaim her, was an admission of that love.
Fair Cyprians of London Boxset Page 9