“Well they didn’t, did they?”
“No,” he growled, fondling her. “You’re very fortunate.”
Her reply was tart. “So are you, Blackwood.”
Suddenly he dropped to his knees, and Christina gasped as his big hands gripped her legs, almost encircling her gartered stocking tops. His breath was warm on her thighs and then between them. He hooked her legs over his shoulders, one after the other, and enjoyed her as if she was his dessert, while she leaned against the wall and tried to keep her screams from echoing up and down the lift shaft.
A bell began to ring, signaling guests in need of the lift, but Harry continued without pause, his tongue tireless, his greed unbound, until he brought her to an orgasm that rattled all four walls of the little box and made the brass grill tremble.
Before she crumpled in a complete puddle, he stood, holding her skirts up around her waist, lifted her a few inches off her feet, and entered her in one swift move.
The lift lurched and suddenly they were going up.
“What happened?” she gasped.
Harry merely grunted, too enrapt to answer, or care. He pressed forward and upward, rocking his hips.
Her cry of delight was swallowed by his mouth on hers, and then he shifted position, spreading his feet, bent his legs slightly, and forcefully thrust up into her again. He ate at her mouth in a passionate frenzy, and she wound her fingers in his hair. Somehow he moved her along the wall, her legs around his waist, and he reached with one hand for the controls of the machine, wrenching the handle back the other way. The lift groaned, bumped and jarred to a halt between floors. But for how long?
She was hot, her skin already perspiring in the close space of the lift car, but when he found his rhythm and began working his hips, his forearms under her knees, his maddened thrusts pumping her up and down on his shaft, she erupted like a volcano, molten lava dripping off her body, soaking through her clothes. She would have screamed as she climaxed, but held it back for the sake of discretion in this fine hotel. He would feel her pleasure anyway, she knew. It rippled through her and surely pulsed around his cock, beating like the wings of a hummingbird.
In the distance, the angry bell rang again, but what did it matter? Let them all wait.
He was incredibly strong, she mused, as her orgasm faded and she felt his shoulders flex under her arms. He nudged the controls again and the lift jerked to life.
Downward.
“Harry!”
There would be people in the foyer waiting for the lift.
The panel at her back vibrated with a muted rumble. His breath fluttered against her neck, and then she felt his teeth again, leaving their mark. The man was laughing.
“This isn’t funny,” she groaned. “Put me down.”
But he wasn’t done. She wrapped her legs tighter around his waist as the second round began. He was slick and fast, pumping his hips, groaning out low curses, his breath feverish, scalding her skin. She was on fire.
Any moment now, they would reach the ground floor and the doors would open.
She looked desperately at the controls. His hand reached for them, as if he knew what she wanted to do and he meant to stop her. “No,” he grunted. “Leave it.”
She slapped at his hand and managed to push the handle back up. The lift creaked and bumped. The sudden stalling caused an even deeper impaling on his cock and this time she did cry out. The machine shuddered upward again, and Harry Blackwood whispered in her ear, “For that insubordination you must be punished, little madam. Now I’m going to finish inside you.”
“Don’t you dare,” she moaned as he shifted her higher against the wall panel.
Three grunts later he evidently came to his senses and pulled out, just in time, shooting his seed on her thighs and her petticoats.
Slowly he let her down, one foot at a time.
They didn’t speak, both too breathless as they tidied their clothes, and when they finally reached the third floor, Harry opened the brass grill and the outer door before bowing politely as if they were barely acquainted. “After you, madam.”
There were four people waiting for the lift, all looking rather peeved. She knew her cheeks must be scarlet, and the back of her hair was a frightful mess, for which there could be no decent explanation.
“Modern engineering,” Harry explained to the waiting people, shaking his head grimly.
He led the way to his room and unlocked the door. “Won’t you come in, Miss Deveraux?”
“Thank you, Mr. Blackwood. Don’t mind if I do.”
As he followed her inside, she turned quickly, jerking his evening coat over his shoulders, kissing him desperately, pushing him back against the door, closing it with a bang that rattled the shades on the gas lamps. This was the only sustenance she needed; it was all she had an appetite for this evening.
Chapter Nine
The coachman tipped his hat. “Good morning, Mr. Blackwood. Going to the station again today, are we?”
Harry scowled, the sarcasm not going unmissed. “Yes. We are. Make haste. I don’t want to miss another train.” He’d had another sleep deprived, exhausting night thanks to that little hellcat. Under no circumstances would he stay for another. A man had to draw the line somewhere. Before it was too late to save himself.
He’d drifted off into a sort of sleep around five in the morning and woken less than an hour later to find her gone already, the room neatly put back together, no sign that she had ever been there.
Frankly, he was terrified that if he stayed another night he’d never have the strength to leave and return to his real life. She made it too easy, too alluring a prospect to stay and be her plaything.
Eyes scanning the street, he spied a newsboy a few feet away and decided to purchase some reading material for the journey. Something to keep his mind occupied and away from the hellcat. Reaching into his overcoat pocket, he fumbled for some coins, walking along the pavement with a purposeful stride.
Something made him look across the road and he stopped abruptly. Folk walking behind almost bowled him over, and he rocked on the balls of his feet before he stood again, motionless.
On the other side of the street, a tall woman walked along, glancing in shop windows, leading a child by the hand. She wore a dark garnet coat and a black hat. The child scurrying along beside her was about ten, wearing a sailor suit. He wanted to go to the park, but she was making him shop with her first. If he was good, she promised him an ice-cream.
Harry took a breath.
The woman never looked across the street, never knew he was there, as she dragged the boy onward.
“Mama.”
Harry closed his eyes.
“Mama. Where are you going so fast?”
He thought it was the little boy speaking, but it wasn’t. It was his voice.
He would have known his mother anywhere, even all these years later. Her hair was striped with grey now, instead of the lush black it remained in his memory, but her features were the same – high cheekbones; thin, fine nose; a large mouth clamped tight; dark eyes that could stab a man through the heart with their disgust and disappointment.
Eleanor Blackwood.
He opened his eyes, tried to move his feet, but they were stuck. The newsboy shouted out headlines. People and carriages rushed by. Coins that slipped through his fingers rattled along the gutter and landed in a puddle.
Mama. Where are you going?
She was taking the boy into a barber’s shop. That must be why he was so reluctant. No little boy wanted his hair cut.
A glare of sun left him momentarily blinded, made his eyes smart.
Finally, his feet found the strength to move, crossing the street. He looked through the bow-window of the shop and found it wasn’t a barber’s, but a milliner’s. The woman was alone and no little boy dragged along with her. His eyes and his mind had played tricks on him. What he’d seen, of course, was a memory of the past, another street in another town, and himself trying to keep up with his mother.
This woman wasn’t Eleanor Blackwood, of course. At least once a year for the last twenty seven years he believed he saw her, sometimes in the strangest places. But it was never her. One would think he would’ve grown out of hoping by now, yet he wished he could see her one last time. It wasn’t good to leave things undone. He supposed that was what Christina felt about her father.
Christina. Would he never see her again? He should say goodbye properly.
* * * *
The grandfather clock in the hall had just struck noon when Mrs. Draycott announced the unexpected arrival of the Duke of Berwick.
Christina had no time to prepare herself, for he swept in close on the housekeeper’s heels and wasted no time on pleasantries.
“You will leave my son alone, Miss Deveraux. Or you will regret the day you crossed my path, and his.”
She was darning stockings, a job she insisted on doing herself, despite Mrs. Draycott’s insistence that she hire a maid. How she wished she’d been doing something more elegant – napping with her feet up or reading a ladies magazine and sipping sherry with the vicar’s wife.
“Mrs. Draycott,” she said steadily, setting her work aside. “You may leave us.”
The housekeeper looked as if she might argue, but when the duke rounded on her, his eyes spitting rage, she wisely left the parlor. Christine knew she wouldn’t go far and probably had her ear to the door.
“How much is it you want, girl?” the duke demanded.
“Want?” She stood.
“Money,” he blustered. “I assume that’s what you want from me to leave my son alone.”
She shook her head. “Your son is in no danger from me.”
“Why then has he broken off his engagement to Lady Fennemore?”
Shocked, she stared at the black hearth for a moment. “I couldn’t say why he would do such a thing. Unless, perhaps, he decided he isn’t in love with her.”
“Love?” he spat the word. “What does love have to do with anything?” Suddenly his gaze strayed up to the portrait above the mantle. His moustache drooped. He leaned heavily on his cane. Two pin pricks of light broke through the moldy green of his eyes.
“I can’t say I’m a great believer in it myself,” she said carefully, watching his face.
His fierce regard swung back to her. “You meddled with my son deliberately.”
“I have not meddled with him and I don’t intend to. He is my brother, after all.” She waited for the denial, stiffening her spine, hands at her sides.
“He tells me he intends to pursue you for his mistress,” he grumbled.
“Then I would advise you to confess the truth to your son and save us all a great deal of bother.”
“Never! My son will never know the likes of you as a sister. He’s foolish and indiscreet. He’s just stupid enough to tell the whole world and expose us to ridicule. To associate the Berwick name with a place like this,” he waved his cane, “women like you and your mother. Such ignominy will not be borne.”
She thought of his wife, only the evening before enjoying herself upstairs with John. How strange the world was. How unreal. So much of it went on beneath the surface and behind closed doors. People were afraid of the truth and what it made other folk think of them. They built their lives and relationships on lies.
“How much do you want,” he snapped again, losing patience. “And bear in mind, girl, that this is the only payment you will ever receive from me.”
“Very well.” She clasped her hands tightly behind her back. “I want you to admit the truth. Call me daughter.”
“What?” he roared.
“Call me daughter. Here and now. While we’re alone. Just to me.”
Even that he wouldn’t do. Instead, he flung a pile of bank notes in the air. They drifted to the carpet all around her. “Never go near my son again or you’ll be sorry, young woman. I’ll ruin you. I can have this house shut down and you jailed with one click of my fingers.” He demonstrated the gesture, his face crimson, lips drawn back over his teeth, nostrils flaring. “Whitechapel Improvement Committee indeed! Oh, I know what you do here, and it’s not serve cream teas or discuss the hardships of the poor and put-upon. I give you fair warning, girl, be seen with my son again and you’ll find yourself arrested within the hour, your house shuttered. Do you understand?”
Christina stared at the banknotes at her feet.
“I trust that will be enough, madam.” He took one last look at Louisa on the mantle and then stormed to the door. Mrs. Draycott was there, her broad, square face completely white, lips quivering.
“Stand aside, woman,” he bellowed at her, striking her arm with his cane. He marched out of the house, but hadn’t descended the stone steps when the housekeeper flew after him, holding a sheaf of his banknotes in her clasped fist.
Through the parlor window, Christian watched Mrs. Draycott try to stuff the notes down the Duke of Berwick’s outraged throat as they battled on the steps and he dropped his cane. She closed the curtains, shutting out the sun and the commotion.
Her heart was beating so frantically she could hear nothing else.
One hand to her cheek, she felt warm tears falling. Anger battled for supremacy over sorrow. She wasn’t a child. She refused to cry.
There were folks worse off than she in the world.
But her knees crumpled, and finally, she gave way to the passions seething within her. She sobbed into her fingers, kneeling on the floor among the remaining bank notes. She had wanted him to embrace her, just once. Even until that moment, she’d thought there must be a little humanity in the man. She was wrong. In his eyes, she wasn’t his daughter. She was, like her mother, just another whore.
When Mrs. Draycott returned, she was disheveled and out of breath, but bristling with grim satisfaction. “He won’t forget the taste of his own filthy money for a while, the blackguard.” She passed a handkerchief to her young mistress and talked to her as she would to any child in her charge. “Now blow your nose and dry your eyes, Miss Christina. We’ve got an auction to get ready for tonight and no time to sit about idle, feeling sorry for ourselves. We shan’t let the likes of him get the better of us, shall we?”
Christina was grateful for the old lady’s calm words. They brought her back to her senses and shook her out of her self-pity. She got to her feet, brushed down her skirt, and blew her nose soundly. “What would I do without you, Mrs. Draycott?”
“God knows,” the old lady predictably replied. “Or Beelzebub, perhaps.”
* * * *
She spent the remainder of the day arranging the house for the evening’s entertainment. Furniture was removed from the long drawing room, except for lines of chairs set out to face a small stage erected at one end with extravagantly tasseled curtains looped on either side.
The charity auction was a way to entice these women of the socially elite class, women who generally tucked their heads into sand when it came to those worse off than them, to donate money to a home for unwed mothers. Naturally, this was a cause close to her heart, but the auction itself had lost its excitement somehow in the last few hours.
She forced her smiles to reassure Mrs. Draycott, but they were fleeting and unconvincing. As dusk settled over the sky, she lost all will to turn up her lips and wondered if she’d be able to go through with the evening. She considered retiring to bed with a headache and leaving the capable Mrs. Draycott to manage the event, but then gave herself a stern lecture about responsibilities and maintaining a stiff upper lip. This was her idea; she would, therefore, see it through to the end.
This was the life she’d chosen. She couldn’t lose her courage just because of a little setback. Her mother had managed despite far worse problems.
Tonight Christina wore black silk again. It was one of her mother’s gowns, with the waist and bosom taken in to fit her. At her throat she pinned a small cameo brooch. There were no diamonds and pearls tonight, for she preferred to fade into the woodwork as much as possible. Mrs. Dra
ycott, seeing her standing in the kitchen in black silk again, exclaimed, “Back to mourning? All those pretty frocks and you choose that one!”
“I thought it made me look older, more mature.”
The housekeeper shook her head. “Why not just put a lace cap on your head, fingerless woolen mittens on your hands, and spectacles on the end of your nose?”
Christina pouted. “Perhaps I shall!”
“Old age and all its aches and pains come soon enough. Why you want to hurry them along, I can’t imagine.”
She didn’t care. There was suddenly no point to being young. She followed Mrs. Draycott out of the kitchen, touching the door and the wall as she passed just to reassure herself she could still feel something. Because inside she was hollow, cold, and empty.
The auction was soon under way. Her drawing room was packed this evening with some of the richest purses in London. Word of her fabulous new stable had traveled swiftly, it seemed. Christina moved around the peripheral, nodding to those ladies she knew already, introducing herself to new faces. Some of them she’d seen at the ball two nights ago, but of course they pretended they hadn’t seen her there. In public, at an event like the Berwick’s ball, she wasn’t someone with whom they would ever converse, although they might acknowledge her with a passing flutter of their fan. They couldn’t be seen to consort with her in public, but here, in her own drawing room, she was no longer invisible. They enjoyed the services she provided and so they put up with her. The Duchess of Berwick, she noted, was in the front row as the bidding started.
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