Fair Cyprians of London Boxset

by Beverley Oakley

Yes, safe, was his last thought as he lowered his head and put his arms gently about her to seal the kiss. A chaste, brief kiss with a sweet but definite ending would be a fine way to show her his true feelings. He could imbue it with respect, the merest sensory illusion that there could be more, and as he withdrew with just the right expression, he’d leave her under no illusions that he was in any way affected by their connection.

  Yet, as she moved closer, standing on tiptoe to twine her arms about his neck, he was taken aback by the rush of sensation that speared his body. Her mouth was still several inches away; her eyes were closed, and there was a smile of innocent expectation that was heartbreakingly endearing.

  He felt trapped. It would be wrong to leave her with the sensation that a kiss couldn’t be more. She was embarking on a big journey for an innocent debutante. She had no idea what to expect. Surely, he owed it to her to show her just what a real kiss could be like?

  It was his last moment of rational thought before another rush of sensation speared his groin, pounded in his head, and turned his vision into a multifaceted plethora of pumping, pulsing need that sent him reeling as her mouth fused with his and her arms about him tightened.

  His world seemed suddenly a different place. He’d not expected to be so affected. He’d not expected to feel such connection. He’d not expected to feel anything beyond the casual enjoyment he’d experienced with so many past kisses.

  Yet he was conscious of every nuanced change as this one progressed from what was supposed to be fleeting—the softness of her lips pressed against his, tentative, then growing bolder, sending tendrils of fire right through his body. Her breasts pushing against his chest as she leaned into him. Enjoying herself. Throwing herself into this as if it were the greatest enjoyment to be savoured, losing herself just as he was losing himself.

  He’d thought himself in love in the past. There had been moments of grand passion. Or so he’d thought. And yet…he couldn’t remember them. His mind was cast into the void, for only the present existed. Only the here and now as he was swept into a maelstrom of intense, physically satisfying, and yet totally unsatisfied, desire.

  And it was as this desire roared into the stratosphere, nearly out of control, that a single cognisant kernel of self-preservation brought him rapidly back to earth. His hand, unconsciously, had slid downward to cup her breast, and she seemed to be pressing against him, searching for satisfaction beyond what was being offered.

  He registered the need to extricate it, yet it was squeezed fast, against the thin fabric between his chest and her heaving bosom. But as he removed it and his hand touched her heated skin, it took every ounce of willpower not to insinuate it beneath her bodice. With her encouragement.

  Dear lord, she was losing control just as he was, and unless he brought this to an end, they’d both be engulfed by the fiery flames of hell.

  Unless he took charge, Miss Montague was going to keep kissing him, and he wanted her to want it. Wanted her to continue.

  And that could prove fatal.

  Panting, breathless, he put his hands on her shoulders and stepped backwards. Out of danger.

  With enormous effort he tried to maintain his composure, tried to be the bigger man, bigger than he was, by pretending it hadn’t affected him as much as it had. Running one hand through his hair, he blinked and offered her what he hoped wasn’t a totally sappish smile as he murmured, “My apologies, Miss Montague, if that wasn’t what you were expecting.” What else could he have said? The kiss certainly hadn’t been what he’d been expecting. He could barely stand. His body was straining, still, to take this further, but she was as out of bounds as she’d ever be.

  Miss Montague, he noticed, looked a little dazed. She wandered to the fireplace and put a supporting hand upon the mantelpiece. He’d thought she might look at him, dewy-eyed with affection, but she looked troubled as she raked her fingers through her own damp hair and said, “Oh, please don’t apologise for you were very kind to indulge me. I’m sure it was…so much more than I was expecting, Mr Westaway.”

  * * *

  Faith managed to make her way back to her bedchamber. As she lowered herself onto her bed, she wasn’t sure how she’d got there, her mind was in such disarray. That kiss. No, it wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. The consequences were nothing like she’d intended. The kiss had been supposed to shore up her power, but with her knees still trembling, she felt entirely powerless.

  A knock on the door was followed by the beady-eyed scrutiny of Lady Vernon, who lowered herself into a chair by the window and said, “I hope you used the time I allowed you wisely, my girl. He likes you, admires you, but you’ll get nowhere with just that. Did you get him to kiss you?”

  Faith objected to the question with an inner ball of such impotent fury she thought she might explode under the need to keep her response muted.

  “That’s between Mr Westaway and myself.” She rose from the bed and went to sit at her dressing table where she began to plait her hair. “I am aware of what I must do. Please do me the courtesy of allowing me the freedom to do it at my own pace and using my own intuition.”

  Lady Vernon moved to stand behind her and began to undo the buttons on the back of her dress. “Please do me the courtesy of remembering your manners, and your gratitude. It was thanks to me you were given any opportunity to achieve anything at all, young lady.”

  “Yes, of course. But please let me go about this my own way. I assure you that you will get your money. That is, after all, what is important to you.” She hoped the reflection of her gimlet eye in the looking glass was as piercing as the older woman’s.

  “I think you’re in love with him.” Lady Vernon’s smile looked more like a grimace of satisfaction. “Don’t think you’ll marry him.” Her eyes narrowed, and in the gloom, she looked like a witch or a goblin. “You’re cleverer than to daydream that, Faith. He won’t marry you.” After a pause, she added, “Everyone in Mr Westaway’s orbit, and beyond, will ensure that he won’t.”

  Faith’s legs were still shaking after Lady Vernon had left and Faith was preparing for bed.

  Of course, there were. Faith had a mission to fulfil and too many people stood to gain something as a result of Faith’s success—herself included.

  Though her success might just come at a cost she’d not factored into the equation.

  She stepped out of her skirt and peeled off her cuirass-bodice. Why was she so affected by Lady Vernon’s unkind truth? It defied logic. Mr Westaway was a man who could do as he pleased and that alone put him out of her orbit. Faith was inured, so she thought, to entitled, self-absorbed gentlemen who took what they wanted and bargained for the rest.

  The trouble was, Mr Westaway wasn’t like that. If he were, her job would be so much easier.

  She touched her lips. They still tingled from the memory of Mr Westaway’s mouth, tender upon hers at first, before his hunger became so pronounced for that brief moment before he broke away. There really shouldn’t have been time to have decided anything much about the quality of it. And yet, it had lasted long enough for her to realise that she was changed. Affected.

  And that he had been, too.

  But he was a man. Rich, entitled. If he were affected, he’d have forgotten it by morning.

  She sat on the bed and rested her head in her hands, the silence of the room seeming to break into her thoughts.

  Who was she trying to fool? That was only if he were the kind of gentleman who frequented Madame Chambon’s. The kind who thought nothing of paying for their transitory pleasures.

  Mr Westaway was not like that.

  And Faith had been trained to entrap men like him. Good, decent men who, when embarking upon something like tonight’s kiss, thought they were attracted to a good, decent woman.

  She was the honey trap. His disappointed hopes and dreams would be all the more bitter for having realised the extent of his being duped.

  Except that Faith had no intention of it going so far, and nor di
d Madame Chambon. He would not know what Faith was because Faith came from Madame’s establishment and Madame Chambon’s was hallowed ground. Whatever devil’s agreement made between Madame Chambon, Lady Vernon, and Mrs Gedge would protect the reputation of the highly lucrative Soho purveyor of beautiful and expensive women. Gentlemen of discernment and fat pocketbooks must always know they would be safe when selecting a girl from London’s most highly regarded brothel.

  Faith crawled into bed.

  No, not a hint of scandal would link Faith with Madame Chambon’s though Faith had no doubt Lady Vernon was as ruthless as her cohorts. She had no love of Faith, but as long as Faith delivered what was promised, Faith would be free to make her own way in the world.

  Pulling the covers over her head, she thought of the days ahead—the escalation of searing passion, then a promise extracted from Mr Westaway so that the sting of rejection, timed just right, might be all the bitter.

  It seemed too simple but, of course, there must be more at play than that for Mrs Gedge to have spent three years grooming Faith to be the means of breaking this young man’s heart.

  Perhaps there’d been a failed love affair between herself and Lord Maxwell, Mr Westaway’s father?

  Or was Mrs Gedge avenging the death of her daughter. Had the girl died of a broken heart after he’d spurned her?

  Was money, not love, involved?

  There was no point in quizzing Lady Vernon or even digging for the truth in her most artful and subtle manner. Lady Vernon conversed with Faith only upon her conduct.

  And that conduct was required to become as scandalous as it was possible for a young, supposedly innocent virgin to be.

  The night pressed in on her, her mind churning with questions but knowing only one thing— that tomorrow or the next, she must do whatever possible to compromise Mr Westaway in order to extract an offer of marriage, or at least an ardent declaration of love.

  And, for the first time, the knowledge that this might mean sacrificing her virginity didn’t trouble her in the least.

  The fact that it might involve breaking hearts along the way, did.

  Chapter 16

  A beautiful, sunny day meant that the washroom wasn’t the only alternative for creating a setting whereby Faith must recline amongst the water lilies.

  At breakfast, when she went down and found Lady Vernon and Mr Westaway in the parlour, Faith was immediately besieged by conflicting suggestions. Lady Vernon thought the bath was the better alternative; Mr Westaway was keen on the lake.

  Only the arrival of Lord Delmore stirred enough conviction one way or another.

  “To the lake,” he announced, and Faith wasn’t unhappy about it. The surprisingly balmy feel in the air combined with her hopefulness was a good combination, so that she was unusually unconstrained and forthcoming as Lord Delmore quizzed her on her time in London during the walk through the gardens and along the lakeside, before they arrived at a small copse which Mr Westaway had spied out as a likely location.

  The older gentleman seemed fascinated by Faith’s impressions on the capital. He asked her about her family and her father, and she answered truthfully, for even though they were lost to her, she could imbue the reality of a poverty-stricken cottager with the high hopes of an equally poverty-stricken, though fictional, family intent on bettering their most promising progeny.

  Surprisingly, Faith found she suffered no pangs of guilt for lying, or even sadness for letting her family believe her dead. There simply had been too many of them and her father too brutal and economical with words for her to have understood him. She genuinely had no desire to ever see him again. The others, too, were so different in the way they thought of life or conducted themselves that she’d have been happy to have called herself an only child.

  Her future was here. In her hands. In Mr Westaway’s hands. Meanwhile, Lord Delmore served a useful purpose in acting as a conduit for the questioning she’d have liked to have come from Mr Westaway, who appeared too absorbed in his painting to notice her or anyone else.

  For the first half an hour, Mr Westaway occupied himself with setting up his easel, then sketching the backdrop so that Faith could enjoy being dry as she sat in one of the wicker chairs her host had a servant arrange for her, Lady Vernon, and Lord Delmore.

  The last thing Faith felt like doing was going near water again but knew what was required. So, when Lord Delmore asked, “And does the idea of floating among the trailing water lilies horrify you, Miss Montague?” she just lifted one shoulder slightly and said, “This is a very pleasant country sojourn and being somewhat impecunious, which I’ve made no secret about, I shall pay my dues uncomplainingly when the time comes.”

  He seemed to like her answer enormously for he laughingly responded, “Not so demure, if you don’t mind my saying so, Miss Montague. Most young ladies would not advertise such facts.”

  “I would rather no potential suitor was under any illusions, Lord Delmore.” Faith decided she liked the candour in his twinkling blue eyes. He seemed far easier than the buttoned-up personages she was more likely to meet in London. And when he added, “I’ll have to introduce you to my daughter-in-law. She could take a leaf out of your book when it comes to being candid and not putting herself above others,” she decided he was quite fatherly in the kind of endearing way she liked to imagine her own father might have been had he not been cursed with ten children, no money, and a drinking problem. All of which, she supposed, meant that there could never be two men more different than Lord Delmore and her own father.

  “It’s time, I’m afraid.” Mr Westaway cleared his throat, and they all turned. He’d not said a word in a good twenty minutes.

  Faith was sure he’d even blushed when he’d nodded a greeting, earlier, before quite studiously avoiding any further direct contact.

  Was he regretting last night? She certainly wasn’t. An unbidden memory of the searing passion in that one short kiss sent the blood rushing to her cheeks. She was surprised that she’d blushed but also rather pleased that she’d managed it so artlessly. It served her purpose rather well.

  Faith took a deep, audible breath, rose from her chair and glanced about at the company as she picked up her skirts and turned towards the water. Then she stopped and sat down again. “My shoes. I can’t go in wearing these, naturally.” She pressed her lips together and sent a rather imploring glance at Lady Vernon, who grunted as she moved forward in her chair before muttering, “I can’t take them off for you, my girl. Not with my arthritis. Gentlemen, would it be so shocking if one of you were to do the honours.” She put her nose in the air as if pretending great delicacy when Faith knew any pretence at anything remotely refined or delicate was a complete sham. “I’m sure you know that a lady is somewhat restricted when it comes to bending at the waist.”

  They’d know it, of course. Lord Delmore was a widower, and Mr Westaway must have had some experience with women, surely, to know that they always put on their footwear before donning their corset. And Faith was wearing a corset today, as directed by Lady Vernon for just this reason.

  The two men exchanged long looks. Faith could tell they both wanted to offer but were reluctant to be the first. Finally, Lord Delmore conceded to the younger man, saying, “I’m not as agile as I once was, either, Crispin. Miss Montague, apologies for embarrassing you like this.”

  “I shall be more embarrassed when you see how poorly I manage in water. I presume you want me to float, but the truth is, I’ve never tried. I only know that if it can be learned, I’m sure I’ll learn quickly. I don’t want to delay you, Mr Westaway, when time is of the essence.”

  Faith stretched out her leg and pointed her foot while Mr Westaway went down on bended knee on the grass and rested it in the palm of his hand. She liked his touch. He seemed gentle and respectful, unlike many of the gentlemen who came to Madame Chambon’s fuelled by rampant sexual desire.

  But how surprising that she was enjoying her mission.

  When Mr Westaway had re
moved her shoes, he took her hands and helped her to rise.

  “Will you be all right getting to the water?”

  “If I may lean upon your shoulder as I negotiate the mud. I’m not sure how deep it might be.” She made the most of the contact, and when they were at the water’s edge with the others a few yards behind them, he said, “I took unconscionable liberties, Miss Montague.”

  “And I do not hold you to account for any of them.” She giggled happily. Silly, but it was no act. “It was too marvellously unexpected, Mr Westaway. And so comforting to know that I shall be able to enjoy these mysteries if I’m ever granted the opportunity.” She patted his shoulder. “Don’t trouble yourself anymore over it. It’s in the past. Now I just have to lie amongst the water lilies and stare vacantly at the sky. I can do that. I can do whatever is required. Oooh!” She gave a squeal as the water reached mid-calf and then, because she knew when the dramatic would serve her well, plunged headlong into the depths with an even greater cry.

  “I did it!” she squealed, emerging a second later. At home, the boys had sometimes bathed in the river, but Faith had never been tempted by the discoloured water from the tannery upstream. Her mother had always come down hard upon the girls for trying to emulate the boys who were so carefree in their nakedness.

  Faith couldn’t imagine what her mother would think of her daughter, now. But as Faith had never had the slightest respect for her mother, and truly felt her life was better for being free of her sanctimonious piety and propensity to lash out, like Faith’s father, the reflection did not dampen this morning’s proceedings.

  All of which were progressing swimmingly if the admiration and mutual enjoyment on both Lord Delmore and Mr Westaway’s faces were anything to go by.

  “Just be careful amongst the reeds,” Lord Delmore cautioned, “and keep well within your depth. This is a smart new set of clothes I’m wearing.”

  “You’d actually consider getting them wet and muddy on my account?” She sent him an impish smile. “I think that’s the most gallant thing a gentleman has ever said to me.” She could afford to feel lighthearted, for this morning was all about playacting, setting up the gentlemen to think of her as she wanted them to, not as she was.