Fair Cyprians of London Boxset

by Beverley Oakley

  He kept his eyes closed while he continued to breathe in the lingering traces of her.

  A deep and strange out-of-body lethargy had overcome him, yet the feeling was more healing than the lethargy that had sapped him of his desire to live for the past few months.

  Now, a life-affirming conviction stole through him, like a thread of something giving him strength. The circumstances were not ideal, but Hope would be his.

  He shifted position and stared at the ceiling. Thinking.

  For two years, he’d dreamed of making Hope his wife. After receiving no response to the three letters Felix had written to the address Mrs Merriweather had given him, Felix accepted that her daughter had become swallowed up by the Continent and her new life there and, understanding she wanted to sever her past ties, he’d resumed his desultory courtship of Annabelle; mostly because Lady Durham seemed always to be inviting the girl to the house and planning social events which Annabelle invariably attended.

  When Miss Charlotte Merriweather had said she had news that suggested her sister was in some kind of danger or difficulty, hence her lack of communication, Felix had been spurred on by the greatest sense of at last having a quest to fulfill. He’d told Annabelle, kindly, that she must lay to rest her dreams of a shared future now that Miss Merriweather was again within reach.

  Yet even the discovery of learning what Miss Merriweather had had not exorcised the tenderness and passion he felt for her. She was, he believed, evading the truth when she’d hinted at how she’d come to follow her degraded path. She’d not denied it when he suggested another man.

  Was it someone with whom she had a pre-existing affection and Felix had misinterpreted Miss Merriweather’s interest in him at the Hunt Ball?

  Whatever had happened, Hope had apparently been abandoned and resorted to the only employment open to women in her situation, it would seem.

  He drew in a deep breath. If he could just rise above his repugnance and set aside his pique, anguish and all the other emotions he felt, Miss Merriweather was willing to be his.

  His.

  That, in truth, was what he wanted above all else, and it wasn’t just about the sex.

  As he continued to stare at the plaster cherubs adorning the ceiling, Felix contemplated the road ahead—marriage to Annabelle and nights in the arms of the woman he loved. Hope. He could reconcile the double life because each woman would know what he offered beforehand.

  He would not lie to them or pretend it could be otherwise.

  The ornate collection of plasterwork winged creatures that frolicked with bucolic abandon around the ceiling edges seemed to smile down at him. Since he’d inherited his grandfather’s townhouse, he’d been in the habit of seeing Hope’s features in their innocent gazes. Of course, they were not representations of innocence. They were from another age. A more ribald age that celebrated the pleasures of the flesh.

  Felix had not thought himself a sensuous man, but by God he’d taken his fill of it this afternoon and been left wanting.

  In typical fashion, his father had taken him to visit a prostitute on his twenty-first birthday. The experience had left him cold although he’d returned recently on a couple of violently ribald occasions instigated by his friends who were determined to cheer him.

  While he’d have been unable to name the house or location to save his life, he wondered if it might have been the residence to which Miss Merriweather was attached. Thank God he’d not encountered her within its precincts. It was bad enough that she’d come from there, but that was the reality he’d have to get used to. The virtuous creature he’d put on a pedestal had lost her wings and taken on an earthly guise, but she was just as desirable.

  Hope had mentioned the name Madame Chambon. Her brothel madam.

  His nostrils flared as he breathed through his disappointment. For two years, he’d dreamed of discovering her, saving her…she was too late for saving now.

  But he could still have her. The thought was accompanied by a surge of bile. He would still have her, but he would not punish her for disappointing him like he might have, once.

  Like he might have as a callow youth whose notions of womanly virtue were so at odds with who and what a woman really was.

  * * *

  A loud knocking disturbed these reveries that might have gone on for hours, and if he’d been sucking on the pipe again, might have put him out of contention for the evening Millament obviously desired for him.

  “Gad’s teeth but you look like the cat that’s swallowed the cream and is contemplating a second foray with much wickeder consequences,” his friend declared as he strode through the door.

  Millament was dressed for the theatre, looking the debonair man of fashion as he glanced at the rumpled sheets and his friend’s disarray.

  “Not like you at all, Felix.” He shook his head, his expression bemused and interested. “But a little light entertainment seems to have done you the world of good. What a shining star she was. A magical, mystical creature of the night. I wonder where the boys found her?”

  Felix raised himself on his elbows. “What do you mean, the boys?” The thought she might have given herself to a number of his friends presented itself as a sudden, shocking possibility.

  Millament shrugged. “After that disastrous game of poker the other night when you were so very far from yourself, someone proposed—I forget who—that he procure you a creature who would take your mind off your earthly woes. You’ve been a monk, Felix, and that damned pipe is making you no fun to be around.” He glanced at the smoking apparatus by the bed and his smile brightened. “But a glorious woman has brought you back to life. She came to you three nights ago when your senses were addled and she clearly was prepared to come again, which augurs well for you, judging by the egg-like look on your face.” He walked to the wardrobe and pulled out a coat, anxious clearly to get his friend ready for the evening. “Remind me of where this divine creature can be found.”

  “She’s mine.” Felix sat up. The energy fuelling him now was unlike anything he’d experienced for as long as he could remember.

  “Calm down. I’m not about to steal her from you, though I’d hurry and stake your dibs before someone else lays claim.”

  “What have you heard? What do you know about her?” Felix flung his feet over the side of the bed.

  “Steady, old chap. Of course I know where she’s from. A bower where the princes of the realm are ready to bankrupt themselves for a night of her charms. I hope you know that pocketbook might take a beating if you fancy exclusive rights.”

  Felix reached for his silk dressing gown and encased himself in its cool and sensuous folds. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be downstairs,” he said, conscious it sounded more like a snarl although Millament, with his perpetual good humour would in all likelihood forgive him.

  But his friend’s words had opened a chasm of fear that worried at the wound that had blighted him these past six months. It had begun to close over these last few hours as he learned, finally, what he needed to set his life to rights.

  Felix had just tasted the closest to contentment and ecstasy, and it was even more addictive than the opium.

  Even if the cost to his well-being might be greater.

  Chapter 8

  The Red Door was a favourite haunt of the young bloods. Felix hadn’t rubbed shoulders with his friends in such a den of debauchery since the tragedy over his sister. Now, however, a sense that normalcy might again reign—despite Millament’s unsettling words earlier—bolstered him to match the revelry displayed by Millament and the others whose company he’d eschewed for so long.

  “Bold move,” mocked Ravensby, an old Cambridge colleague as Felix threw down what was in his pockets.

  Felix grinned. He’d never been a big gamester like so many of his friends. Still, he was in an impulsive mood tonight. He’d just sated himself with the woman he adored and he was addicted.

  Yes, she’d been gone by the time he’d woken, but she’d given hers
elf to him a second time in a manner that could leave him in no doubt that she’d agree to his proposal. She’d agreed to be his mistress. He didn’t want to remember that she’d also agreed to his proposal to meet him at the church two years ago, and then failed to appear.

  No, this was different. Miss Merriweather returned the feelings he had for her, he was sure of it.

  “I say, Felix, what’s the matter old chap?”

  It was Millament returning to his side, his dear concerned friend, always on the lookout for him since he’d moved into his townhouse after Felix’s spectacular disintegration six months before. Felix sometimes wondered if his mother were paying his friend to attend him so closely, or whether Millament truly was one of those friends in a million.

  Felix shook his head and put up his hand to allay the concern directed his way, but the truth was, the familiar fog of despair had descended without warning.

  He’d set out for an evening as if the answers to his problems were all but neatly solved but now suddenly he was flailing in a morass of uncertainty.

  The acrid cigar smoke that swirled about him did not have the soothing effects the opium pipe delivered, and he coughed, gripping the arm Millament put out to steady him.

  Blindly, Felix allowed his friend to steer him towards a large wing-back chair near the window.

  “Please tell me I didn’t imagine the woman who came to me this afternoon—”

  “You’ve not taken leave of your senses,” Millament soothed. “And I won’t go after her. On my oath.”

  “Then she was real. I didn’t imagine it.” Felix blinked open his eyes and saw Millament staring at him with a look of sympathetic understanding.

  “She’s the kind of woman a man dreams about, to be sure, but she certainly was real.” He patted Felix’s arm in a brotherly fashion. “And she liked you, Felix, my friend. That was very clear. You go and find her again if that’s what you want. I’m glad to see you lusting after a woman, truly. She’ll be good for you. Banish these black moods, once and for all.”

  Felix nodded. “I will find her. I made her a proposition and I must find her and make it binding.” He took a deep breath. “I need her.” Saying it made him feel better, even if the mire of unpleasantness he’d have to pass through was equally on his mind. A vision of her black-eyed gaze, her skin so pale framed by ebony tresses, drifted tantalizingly through his mind.

  Yes, he would find her, and he’d make her his, regardless of what it cost him.

  * * *

  An owl perched on the drainpipe of Wilfred’s lodgings. In the dead of night, it seemed a portent of doom, a symbol of unearthliness. Yet it was Wilfred’s malevolence Hope feared more. Nothing good would come out of this forthcoming interview, but she was duty-bound, for her sister’s sake, to follow through.

  “Madam.” The butler inclined his head, eyeing her with scorn as he opened the door for her. A young, single, unaccompanied woman calling on a gentleman was beyond the pale in his eyes. In the eyes of anyone respectable, in fact. Especially so late at night.

  She was used to it. In two years, she’d developed a thick skin to the mixed responses she’d received from members of the public who regarded her enviously for her beauty and boldness, at the same time as reviling her for daring to brazen it out in public on whatever mission she might be on.

  “I’m here to see Mr Hunt.” She barely glanced at the disapproving retainer. He was beneath her, and he’d despise her even more for her autocratic tone that suggested she was on par with a duchess and that he was beneath notice. He’d loathe that, but then she loathed the way the servant class took the moral high ground. They, of all people, must know how hard it was not to starve without a benefactor. But then, had her scope of the world been no broader than that of a governess out of the schoolroom, what would she think of a woman of suspect morals? A woman like her?

  “Miss Merriweather, what a delightful surprise.” Wilfred greeted her with a cool smile as the butler bowed himself out of the library to which he’d just led her. “Refreshment?” He waved her to a seat and went to the sideboard, raising the brandy decanter with an enquiring look.

  Hope shook her head. “I shan’t stay. I came here only to give you what you requested.”

  “You don’t wish to linger over past reminiscences?” He feigned disappointment.

  “I’ve spent enough time in your company to last me a lifetime, Wilfred.” She shouldn’t have said it, and not in that cool detached manner that suggested she believed she was better than he. Wilfred was a man, which gave him so much more power, and he was a petty one at that. “You brought me into your orbit against my will, but it was you who thrust me into my current profession. I have no recourse to change the past or to change people’s perceptions of me, but I would ask one concession.” Her fingers tightened over the clasp of her reticule with its contents she was so loath to surrender.

  The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece sounded loud in the silence as he took his time responding. His lips thinned. It was clear he did not like her attitude, and Hope wished she’d employed some of the tact Madame Chambon had drilled into all her girls when there’d be many an unsavoury assignation they must pretend to enjoy.

  “Concession? Here, drink this.” Ignoring her refusal of brandy, he thrust a cut-glass tumbler into her hand. She glanced at it suspiciously and remained standing.

  “I haven’t laced it with poison,” he snarled.

  “Or laudanum? That’s what you put into my drink when you took me to London. When you had your way with me. When you defiled me. That’s why I’m what I am today.” She sent him a twisted smile. “Let’s talk about that, shall we, Wilfred? I have no memory of my first time. I only knew I was ruined, and I could never return to my parents. You told me I had to rely on you.” She shrugged. “What choice did I have but to stay with you. That is, until you’d had enough of me.”

  His eyes flickered and he glanced away, but that was the only indication of any acknowledgement that he may have behaved in a manner to invite censure. Before a second more had passed he’d closed the distance between them.

  Hope stepped back as he gripped her shoulders and glared.

  “I looked after you, didn’t I? I bought you pretty things and took you dancing. I spent a fortune trying to please you.”

  Hope felt his hand tremble despite his efforts to make his point in as passionless a manner as he could. Wilfred did not enjoy passion except when his needs were being gratified.

  She tossed her head. “And then you sold me to the highest bidder.”

  “Quite simply, I couldn’t afford you, my dear.” His hands fell away, and his hooded eyes blazed beneath their reptilian lids though his words were measured.

  “Why, Wilfred?” Hope asked the question that had puzzled her for so long. For the moment, she was more perplexed than angered. “I’d been your mistress for eight months when you simply abandoned me. I had no friends. You made sure of that. There was no one who could help me. You took me unwillingly from my family, my home, and you made me dependent on you. Why? Only so you could dispose of me with as little compunction as you would an old coat. Did you despise me so much?”

  “It was clear the feeling was mutual.”

  Hope shook her head. “Did you really expect me to love you?”

  Wilfred made a noise of irritation as he flung around and took a few steps towards the window, turning to rest his hand on the back of the green velvet sofa and shaking his head at her. “Lord, Hope. We were both scorched that day. It was not my intention to take you with me. Heavens, you’d go so far as to say I kidnapped you when nothing could have been further from my mind. You know you were as much to blame as I. Everything that happened that day was unfortunate. An accident.” He sighed. “I’ve told you a thousand times how much I regret it, but it doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done.”

  “You ruined me, Wilfred!”

  “Only because you were too stupid to seek the other avenues I offered you.”

&nb
sp; “I tried.” Hope said it under her breath. Bitterly. “Papa died that very night. I was supposed to be on a boat heading for the Continent. I received no answer to my letters, my pleas.”

  “Precisely. Which is why the responsibility of looking after you when I had not a feather to fly with landed on my shoulders.” He looked outraged at her suggestion that he was culpable. But then, Wilfred had a knack for turning the blame back on the other person. “You could have continued to Leipzig.”

  “How? The boat had gone. I had no ticket, and you had no money, you said, to pay my fare. I wrote. I tried everything to get out of the situation you placed me in. Nothing you say excuses drugging me, kidnapping me, making me your mistress, and then selling me to a brothel madam!”

  Wilfred put up his hands. “I had no intention of doing any of those things! You drank from the flask Annabelle offered you. I didn’t realise it was all but undiluted laudanum. Before I knew it, you were fast asleep. I tried to remove you, in as gentlemanly a manner as I could. I had the door half open, and I was contemplating where I could leave you.”

  “It was freezing. The snow was three feet high. I’d have died. You could have made some excuse.”

  “I could have,” he conceded. Then his tone changed, and he looked like a petulant schoolboy with a perpetual sneer at being the butt of life’s misfortunes. “If you want to blame anyone, blame your high-and-mighty Mr Durham. Just as I was about to carry you out of the carriage and leave you by the church door, there he was, coming towards me, passing the vestry where I’d hoped to be rid of you. I knew he’d jump to conclusions; he was always so protective of you.”

  Hope gasped, her hands jerking at the shock of this surprise revelation, causing her drink to splash over her skirts. “If you’d been a gentleman you’d have thought fast enough to say whatever necessary to protect my honour which was not besmirched at that point, Wilfred.”