Baleful Godmother Historical Romance Series Volume One

by Emily Larkin

  Footsteps echoed in the corridor. Albin entered the study and closed the door.

  Marcus lowered his glass. “Well? Will she meet with me tonight?”

  “The Earnoch Hotel at eight o’clock, sir. The room will be in the name of Brown.”

  The hiss of anticipation became stronger, fizzing in Marcus’s blood. “Is that her name? Brown?”

  Albin nodded.

  * * *

  A little after seven o’clock, Charlotte climbed the steps to the Earnoch Hotel, carrying a valise and wearing the face she’d worn in Aldgate. The hotel was in a backstreet off Piccadilly, an unassuming establishment for people of modest means and quiet habits. “I booked a room for Brown.”

  The landlord barely glanced at her. “Fred,” he said, beckoning to a servant. “Show Mr. Brown to room seven.”

  “I requested that a bath be ready—”

  “Water’s already heated, sir. Ned’ll bring it up for you.”

  Charlotte followed the servant up the staircase. Her heart thudded uncomfortably against her ribs.

  The room was plainly furnished with a bed, a table and two chairs, and a washstand. A hip bath stood behind a screen. Once it was filled with steaming water, she locked the door and stripped out of Albin’s clothes. Her hands trembled and her palms were damp with nervousness.

  I want to be me. Charlotte.

  The room became blurry, the edges of the furniture indistinct. Me with good vision, she amended, and everything came into focus.

  Charlotte bathed quickly and dressed in the only gown she’d brought to London. Her best gown, the one she’d worn to church, of faded blue wool, with a high neckline and a narrow flounce at the hem. Then, she packed away Christopher Albin’s clothes and pushed the valise well under the bed.

  She stood in front of the mirror. Her face stared back at her. Brown hair, brown eyes, a scattering of freckles.

  She needed to be pretty for Lord Cosgrove.

  Charlotte closed her eyes, building an image in her mind of how she wanted to look. Nothing like the earl’s dead wife. Raven-black locks. Green eyes. Lush rose-red lips. Ivory skin unblemished by freckles. As full a figure as her gown would allow.

  The itch of magic crawled over her skin.

  Charlotte opened her eyes. A stranger looked at her from the mirror.

  She stared at her reflection, unsettled. The lustrous black hair and emerald-green eyes, the alabaster skin and rosy lips, the ripe breasts pressing against her bodice—it wasn’t who she was. It was wrong. False.

  But the earl would like it. He’d want to bed her.

  She glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes until Cosgrove arrived.

  Charlotte paced the room, twisting her hands together, listening to the clock tick. Her lungs felt as if they were shrinking. With each minute that passed, it became harder to inhale, to exhale.

  She wanted this—so why was she so afraid?

  Because it was a terrifying intimacy. To be naked with a man. To have sex with him.

  Footsteps came down the corridor. Was it Cosgrove? Was he early?

  Panic squeezed the air from her lungs. I can’t do it.

  The footsteps passed.

  Charlotte turned away from the bed and stared at the mirror, wringing her hands. Her outward beauty should give her courage. It was a mask, a barrier. The intimacy she was afraid of would be as false as the face she was wearing.

  But somehow, that knowledge didn’t make her feel better.

  This encounter was a lie, a charade. Lord Cosgrove didn’t deserve to be deceived like this.

  A sense of wrongness swelled inside her. It pushed up her throat like bile.

  Charlotte stared at her beautiful reflection and came to a decision: if she did this, she did it as herself. No false faces. As few lies as possible.

  She changed back into herself. Her image in the mirror blurred.

  Charlotte adjusted her eyes and looked at herself. Familiar. Ordinary. He won’t want to bed me.

  There was another alternative: she could give Lord Cosgrove the Smiths’ names and not ask for anything in exchange. And let my lust fester and grow until the earl notices—and dismisses me.

  Charlotte turned away from the mirror and stared at the bed, twisting her hands together.

  No, she would conquer her lust for him. And she would do it as herself.

  Charlotte fastened her hair at the back of her head. No sleek curtain of ebony-black hair—just plain brown hair in an ordinary chignon. She looked at herself again in the mirror and closed her eyes in despair. He won’t want me.

  She heard footsteps in the corridor.

  Charlotte swung around. There was something wrong with her heartbeat: too high in her chest, too fast, too loud.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Marcus knocked a second time. Perhaps he had the wrong room? The wrong time? Or perhaps Mrs. Brown had decided not to—

  The door opened.

  Marcus blinked. The young woman standing in the doorway was not what he’d imagined. She looked like a governess, respectable and dowdy, wearing a gown that had been cut for practicality, not beauty, her hair pulled back from her face. She needed only a cap on her head and a pair of spectacles to be the epitome of spinsterhood.

  “Mrs. Brown?” he said, certain that he’d got the wrong room.

  The woman stepped back, silently inviting him inside.

  Marcus did as she bid. He felt off balance, as if the floor were on an angle. He’d expected a highflyer, an impure who’d seen a way to turn information gleaned between the sheets to good use, not this drab respectability. He turned to face his hostess, perplexed. “Mrs. Brown?” he said again.

  “Miss Brown.” The woman closed the door and stood with her back to it. Her face was pale. Freckles stood out clearly on her skin. “It’s not my true name. Forgive me if I don’t give you that, Lord Cosgrove.”

  Marcus removed his hat while he considered this answer. “Very well.”

  The woman gestured to the table, the chairs. “Please be seated.”

  “After you, madam.”

  Miss Brown hesitated, then crossed to the table, smoothing her gown with nervous hands.

  Marcus took his seat opposite her. He was aware of a bed out of the corner of his eye. Under the circumstances, it was oddly embarrassing. He kept his gaze firmly on Miss Brown’s face. The soft glow of candlelight, the deep shadows in the corners of the room, the bed, made the moment seem too intimate, a lovers’ rendezvous, not a meeting.

  “My secretary says you have some information for me, madam.”

  “Yes.” A candleholder and tinderbox lay on the table. Miss Brown straightened them, aligning them with one another. “I believe I know the names of the two men who razed your conservatory.”

  His pulse gave a skip of excitement. “How did you come by this information?”

  She met his eyes for a moment. “I cannot tell you,” she said simply.

  Her honesty was oddly refreshing. No lies, no evasions, just bluntness. Marcus decided to be blunt in his turn. “You’d like something from me in exchange.”

  “Yes.” Color rose in Miss Brown’s cheeks. She fixed her attention on the tinderbox, moving it so that it no longer lined up with the candleholder, then moved it back into place. “Before I give you their names, there is something I should like you to do for me.”

  The blush, the awkward embarrassment, the dowdiness of her gown told Marcus what she wanted. He reached into his pocket and pulled out banknotes.

  Miss Brown’s gaze jerked to him. She recoiled slightly in her chair. “Oh, no! I don’t want your money.”

  Marcus replaced the banknotes in his pocket. He clasped his hands on the table, surveying her. “What then?”

  Miss Brown’s flush deepened. She bit her lip, as if holding words in. Her hands twisted together, white-knuckled.

  “Tell me,” he said gently.

  Silence stretched between them, and then she i
nhaled a deep breath. “I’m a virgin,” she blurted. “And I would like not to be.”

  Marcus blinked. What? He opened his mouth and then closed it again, at a loss for words. He stared at Miss Brown. She hadn’t said what he thought she had. She couldn’t have said it. And yet his ears told him she had. Her words reverberated in his head.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said at last.

  “I don’t want to be a virgin anymore,” Miss Brown said, her eyes fixed on his coat buttons, not on his face.

  “And you want me to . . . to . . . ?” He couldn’t articulate the words. There was no way in which to politely say, You want me to bed you?

  Her gaze flicked to his face and then back to the buttons. Her cheeks became even rosier. “Yes.”

  Marcus stared at her while he processed this answer. His brain kept rejecting it. No respectable woman—and she was clearly respectable—would choose to lose her virginity under such circumstances. He tried to find a reason for her extraordinary request. “Do you wish to become a . . . a . . .” He groped for a polite word and failed to find one. “A prostitute?”

  Miss Brown jerked back in another recoil. “No!” Her horror was too genuine to be feigned.

  “Then why?” Marcus asked, at a loss to understand.

  She met his eyes. Her expression was a mixture of embarrassment and defiance. “Because I wish to know what it’s like.”

  Marcus shook his head, but even as his head moved, he knew she spoke the truth. Her voice, her face, told him.

  She wanted to know what sex was like.

  This isn’t real. I’m dreaming.

  But it was real: the woman seated across from him, the bed in the corner, her request.

  Marcus shook his head again. “I cannot. Of course I cannot! Your reputation, your virtue—”

  “My reputation and my virtue are of no matter. I shall never marry.”

  The flat, matter-of-fact tone silenced him. He swallowed and tried again. “And if you fall pregnant?”

  Her eyes fell to the objects on the table. She reached out and straightened the tinderbox a fraction. “I have taken the precaution of using a sea sponge.”

  Her manner struck him as evasive. Did she want a child? Did she intend to blackmail him into supporting her? “Forgive me if I disbelieve you, Miss Brown.”

  She looked up, meeting his eyes directly. “I can assure you, Lord Cosgrove, that if you agree to my request, I shall not fall pregnant.” The sincerity in her voice, the certainty, was unmistakable; she meant what she said.

  Marcus stared at her, perplexed.

  Silence fell between them. Miss Brown’s gaze dropped to the table again. She moved the candleholder an eighth of an inch, then straightened the tinderbox so that it was perfectly in line with it. “If . . . if it is too repugnant for you to consider, then of course you may decline.”

  Repugnant? Marcus blinked, and then examined her more closely. She wasn’t as homely as he’d first thought. If she wore a more flattering gown, if her hair was dressed in a style that suited her, then she’d be . . . not beautiful or pretty, but attractive.

  She was aware of his observation. The color in her cheeks heightened. She looked up, met his eyes. “If it’s repugnant—”

  Marcus shook his head, silencing her. It wasn’t repugnant. The emotion he was most aware of was . . . curiosity.

  It was a long time since he’d lain with a woman and enjoyed it. He hadn’t bedded Lavinia for many months before her death—he’d barely been able to look at her, let alone touch her. He’d visited a courtesan once since he’d been widowed, but the experience had been unsatisfactory; for all her beauty and skill, he hadn’t been able to forget that the woman was having sex with him for money, that her eagerness—the kisses, the caresses, the sighing moans—was pretense, just as Lavinia’s had been. He’d not repeated the visit.

  If he had sex with Miss Brown, it would be an encounter utterly unlike anything he’d previously experienced. She wasn’t a professional, she wasn’t a bride he was besotted with, she was a stranger whose name he didn’t even know. I can do this, and then walk away and never see her again.

  His curiosity became sharper. The beginnings of arousal tingled in his blood. “Why me?”

  The question seemed to disconcert Miss Brown. She frowned slightly as if searching for the right words. “Because you are a man who is honorable and . . . and kind. I don’t believe you would deliberately harm me.”

  Kind? Where had she got that notion from? “Society generally credits me with hounding my wife to death,” Marcus said dryly.

  “Society is wrong.”

  Marcus studied her through narrowed eyes. “Do I know you from somewhere? Do you work on one of my estates?” A housemaid, perhaps. The servants had been well aware of the realities of his marriage and the events leading to Lavinia’s death.

  “No.”

  Kind and honorable. Marcus shook his head, not believing her. “That’s your reason for choosing me?”

  Miss Brown flushed. Her gaze fell. She straightened the tinderbox again. “And because I . . . I find you attractive,” she said gruffly.

  He couldn’t doubt the veracity of that statement. Her blush told him it was true. “You’ve seen me before?”

  She nodded, still not looking at him.

  “Where?”

  “In London.”

  It was an unsatisfactory answer. Marcus leaned back in his chair, baffled and intrigued. He examined Miss Brown again, noting the smoothness of her cheeks, the delicate curves of her earlobes, the soft tendrils of brown hair curling at her temple. The tingle of arousal in his blood became stronger. His gaze dropped to her breasts. What would she look like naked? Very different from Lavinia.

  “All right,” he said abruptly, hearing the words with a sense of shock. “I accept your terms.”

  Her gaze jerked to his face. “You do?”

  He nodded and pulled off his gloves, laying them on the table. A tryst with a stranger. It should wipe away memory of Lavinia.

  A flicker of emotion crossed her face; not excitement, but apprehension.

  Marcus frowned. “Are you certain you wish to do this, Miss Brown?”

  She nodded, her face as pale as it had previously been flushed.

  “Forgive me, but . . . you look afraid.”

  She swallowed. “I have never done this before. It’s somewhat alarming.”

  It was his turn to flush; shame warmed his cheeks. He’d been thinking only of himself, caught up in astonishment and curiosity. He’d forgotten that she’d never lain with a man before. This wasn’t about his own pleasure; she was trusting him to deflower her.

  Marcus almost balked as the full significance of what he’d agreed to do struck him. “You are aware that it’s painful for a woman to, er . . . to relinquish her virginity?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you expecting a degree of pleasure? Because that may not be possible.”

  Miss Brown regarded him seriously for a moment, her eyes steady on his face, and then nodded. “I know.”

  The nod didn’t completely reassure him. If he hurt her—

  But it was what she wanted. Her choice, not his. Sex, and then she’d give him the names he was after.

  Marcus stood, feeling awkward. After a second’s hesitation, so did Miss Brown. She was taller than Lavinia had been, not as fragile, as slender. His curiosity surged again. The tingle of arousal returned. What would she look like unclothed?

  I can’t believe I’m going to do this.

  Marcus removed his coat and laid it over the back of his chair. He cast his mind back to his own first sexual experience. How had the highflyer who’d done the honors made that encounter so pleasurable?

  He unwound his neckcloth, recalling the way she’d teased him with her body, slowly undressing, giving him tantalizing glimpses of her breasts, her buttocks, the triangle of hair between her legs. Then she’d undressed him, skillfully touching him to heighten his arousal, and finally she’d gu
ided his cock inside her and let him take her, a rough and clumsy coupling, during which she had squealed with pleasure.

  And I actually believed she was enjoying it.

  Marcus sat and took off his top boots. He regarded Miss Brown dubiously across the table. He didn’t want to titillate her by slowly removing his clothes.

  Miss Brown undid the buttons at her cuffs. Her face was pale, her expression resolute.

  “You look as if you’re preparing to go to the scaffold.”

  He bit his tongue as soon as the words were out—now was not the time for clumsy jokes, however ill at ease he felt—but Miss Brown didn’t appear to be offended. She glanced at him, a glimmer of amusement lighting her eyes. “I assure you, I don’t consider it quite as terrible an ordeal as that.”

  Marcus was surprised into a small huff of laughter. Some of his discomfort eased. Perhaps this wouldn’t be as awkward as he feared. If she had a sense of humor—

  “Let me,” he said, as she reached behind herself to undo the fastenings of her gown.

  “Oh, no. I’m used to dressing without a maid.”

  Marcus ignored these words. He walked around the table and began unbuttoning her gown. The fabric was more faded than he’d thought. The gown had seen several years’ wear. He tried to place her as he unfastened the buttons. She’d seen him in London. Was she governess to a family in Grosvenor Square?

  It felt very intimate to be standing in shirt-sleeves and stockinged feet, unbuttoning her gown. Strands of her hair brushed across his fingers, soft, tickling. Marcus worked lower, exposing the top of her chemise, then her stays. Warmth flushed beneath his skin and gathered in his groin.

  He undid the final buttons and stepped back.

  “Thank you.”

  Marcus cleared his throat. “You’re welcome.”

  He retreated behind the table and took off his waistcoat and shirt. Yes, heat was definitely building in his loins.

  Fabric rustled as Miss Brown stepped out of her gown. He glanced at her, then quickly away. His pulse began to beat a little faster. “Do you need help with your stays?”