Lilac

by Louisa Trent

  But with her drawers ringing her ankles and her feet spread wide, she posed a finger to the indentation and thought, perhaps, she would.

  Touch.

  There.

  Chapter Three

  Sean Griffith paced the floor of his library, his back-and-forth thoughts reflecting his circular footsteps.

  Like father like daughter. Stubbornness must run in the Ellis family.

  The daughter Tegan’s headstrong temperament measured up to the father Brynn’s inch for stubborn inch.

  The self-righteous little zealot had marched herself to his door, during an impending rainstorm, no less. The run-down heels of her worn boots clicking on the polished parquet floor, she breached his home like a commander leading an army. A one-woman militia out for his blood.

  Since leaving the prizefighting ring, though many had tried, no one had succeeded in drawing a drop from him.

  While Miss Ellis appeared harmless enough, eliminating even minor threats only made good business sense. Having a little fun with her while ferreting out her plans to bring him low satisfied his reckless streak. He did tend to take chances, and those risks usually paid off. And so he would see where this gamble took him.

  Miss Ellis had entered his home carrying a large, lumpy drawstring bag. Ten-to-one, the information he needed to get his hands on was inside there. He meant to find out and have a few laughs at her expense while doing it.

  By the sooty look of her coat, she had come directly from the station, having caught the last train for the night, a hike of some considerable distance. Ordinarily, a woman such as her, one raised to polite gentility, would have gone to her hotel to freshen up before paying anyone a call. That she skipped this step spoke of her impatience.

  To do what? What scheme did she have in mind?

  Damned if he knew.

  Whatever it was, he suspected Miss Ellis would play her hand soon.

  No dawdling for that little firebrand. If she had something hidden up her hideously dull black coat sleeve, he would know it immediately, just as he had known the instant she set foot inside his home.

  He was a wealthy man, and wealth brought criminal types crawling out of the woodwork. Years earlier, as a security measure against robbery, he’d had peepholes drilled into the manor’s walls, installed behind paintings, in bookcases, in statuary—

  Tucked into other, more private places, that had nothing to do with burglary or assault, but with his amusement and the entertainment of his guests.

  Not all, but certainly some boudoirs, for example, had peepholes in close proximity to the bed.

  This was America’s Gilded Age, and many of his female visitors were decadent, most were sexually permissive, if not promiscuous. Some leaned toward exhibitionism. These ladies enjoyed being watched, and he was quick to oblige any and all of their depraved inclinations.

  Watching women touch themselves excited him. His guests did it freely, as a means to achieve orgasm. The prostitutes he used from time to time would allow him voyeurism if he paid enough. Anything, any act, any habit, was possible if the pleasure or the money was right.

  Depraved sex was not what the well-intentioned and serious-minded Miss Ellis was about, however.

  A shame, as, dowdy rags withstanding, she made a pretty picture. Although, from all reports, she was far too innocent for his taste. On the other hand, there was nothing quite as satisfying as corrupting innocence, especially if that innocence appeared at first glance to be incorruptible.

  Everything in life could be had at the right price. Money. Pleasure. Fame.

  Love.

  That last rude awakening came to him compliments of Millie. As bad as his upbringing had been in Hell’s Kitchen, at twenty he had still clung to his belief in the pureness and intrinsic rightness of love. Love will out in the end and all that shit.

  His almost-fiancée had killed that notion in him. No motive was pure, most especially not love.

  In the fifteen years since Millie, no one had proven him wrong. He had yet to meet a man or a woman whose motives were entirely altruistic, who could not be bought. A featherweight like Tegan Ellis was not about to dissuade him from his belief.

  After viewing her arrival through a peep located in his downstairs library, he already knew hers was a delicate but nevertheless determined face. Thick midnight hair, as dark as his own strands, made the perfect foil to a complexion much paler than his tanned skin tones. A heavy fringe of spiky black lashes emphasized her soft brown eyes. A straight nose shone red from the damp. An irresistibly jutting chin pointed her way as she walked. Her militant pose, comical to behold, was ripe to land her in trouble.

  Her lush mouth quivered. Only a little. Only enough so that an inveterate people-watcher such as himself would notice. He had made a study of human nature, and her tight lips showed an admirable but foolish refusal to surrender to fear.

  She should give into her fear. Her fear was justified. She had every right to be afraid. Very afraid. Of him.

  Union strikes were rife in the country. The steep divide between the rich and the poor brought on all sorts of unrest. If he caught Miss Ellis in the act of deliberate rabble-rousing, a move sure to bring on deaths and property damage in the mines, he would offer her no mercy.

  He was jumping ahead of himself, condemning her before she made her first move.

  What a laugh. Why not condemn her now and save himself later aggravation?

  Then again, why wreck his fun? For now, he would simply content himself with waiting. And watching.

  There was plenty to see while he bided his time. Her strategy, for one thing. Like a prizefighter, like he, himself, used to do, she worked every angle. Her “fishy” comment about the bronzed statue, used to subvert the housekeeper’s attention, had tickled his funny bone. Her quick and crafty cunning reminded him of how he had once evaded obstacles in his path. And there had been many.

  The bulk of his post-prizefighting fortune came from steel. He had known nothing about coal, nothing about mining or specifically Central Mine, until Willard Owen, his new insider contact man, informed him about Brynn Ellis’s secret activities.

  Owen’s spying, while helpful in the short term, was not how Sean conducted business in the long term. When he needed to know something about an adversary, an investment, about anything or anyone, he never relied on secondhand information. Particularly not from the vested interests of a spy. Those sorts would say anything to curry favor. Shunning a private investigator, Sean did all the legwork himself. Just like in the ring, quickness kept him all in one piece.

  Upon hearing about Brynn Ellis and his worrisome findings, Sean went to Pittsburgh and surveyed Central Mine, himself. Incognito, naturally. Not even Owen knew he would be there. This was his first visit since winning the deed to the company at the gambling tables a year prior—a large poker debt exchanged for a tiny business.

  During his tour, Sean asked the right questions of the right people and soon had a description of his quarry. As his Irish luck would have it, he even stumbled across Tegan Ellis in Central’s company store. Dressed in deep mourning, thin and pale, she fondled a bolt of lilac cloth. She was lovely, but he never allowed superficialities like a pretty face to sway his point of view. He did what he had to do, and that was that.

  Keeping his ear pressed to the ground, he heard more background information about her. By the time he left Pittsburgh, he had learned all he needed to know.

  And Owen made an additional resource.

  The new mining supervisor was only too happy to telegram Sean when Miss Ellis left Pittsburgh for New York, stuffed reticule in hand. Since Sean knew the train schedule, he knew exactly when to expect her arrival.

  After her long journey, feeding her seemed the first order of business. She had appeared waiflike in his company store, like a strong breeze would pick up her feet and carry her away. A welcoming banquet fit for a visiting dignitary awaited her in the dining room.

  Everything was chugging along smoothly, with the e
xception of placing his guest in the downstairs quarters—those rooms were reserved for servants and prostitutes. Some nameless domestic in his employ, the housekeeper maybe, had taken Miss Ellis for the latter.

  Despite that blunder, Sean was convinced the scathing denouncement of Central Mine would be in his hand before the evening was through.

  Only one question remained: how much cash would he need to invest to make the problems at Central Mine disappear?

  Waiting to find out was putting him on edge. Not good being on edge. A fighter lost his advantage when on the defensive.

  To give himself something constructive to do, Sean left off his pacing and took the back stairs to the servant quarters.

  He slipped into the bedroom adjacent to hers, moved the landscape painting aside, and pressed his eye to the peephole, as was his right. Miss Ellis had barged into his territory, and so she played by his rules, twisted though they might be.

  What he saw knocked him back on his heels. Prissy Miss Tegan Ellis, jaybird naked, was masturbating.

  Not anything he ever expected to see from her. Too starchy and stiff for self-pleasuring, he would have thought. But there she was, in all her lovely naked flesh, launching a frontal attack on her pussy.

  He took himself in hand. Beat for beat, he kept up with her frenzied rubbing, a foray into self-loving on her side and self-loathing on his, until they both, observer and observed, writhed.

  Her mouth formed a perfect O, as if the result of all her diddling had caught her unaware, and she cried out, a highly intelligible, “oh, dear me!” unlike his own highly unintelligible and muffled, “fuck me!”

  Afterward, he rushed to take care of the usual cleanup and then resumed peeping through the hole in the wall. Now that his mood had mellowed, he took the time to observe what he had missed before.

  The dowdy clothes had hidden one hell of a shapely body. A little on the thin side, but her sharp-pointed tits and welcoming ass suited him just right. As to her pussy—nothing he would like more than to make that piece of paradise his own. The black corkscrew curls around the slit and under her raised arms made him edgy all over again.

  He liked his women earthy. But never would he have suspected the little prig would look so at home in her own skin.

  She was touching her dainty tits now, plucking them like the strings of a harp. The upright nipples went from pink to red before his widening eyes. And her face! Her mouth loosened, her soft brown eyes turned slumberous as she went at herself again. Only now, to his delight, she hiked a long, pale, supple leg on top of the bed.

  Christ. The heel of her palm pressed, pressed, pressed against her cunt, and his frustration went out of bounds. He thought for sure he would make some sound, some noise, do something to alert her, something no amount of muffling would diminish.

  Rather than risk giving his presence behind the opposite wall away, he threw himself from the peephole. Like a mangy Hell’s Kitchen thug, he left the room, skulking upstairs to await his guest.

  Chapter Four

  When the chiming bell summoned her to the dining room, Tegan raced for the stairs.

  She felt positively radiant. In her scandalously revealing made-over gown, she had become another person, a confident woman ready to take on any challenge.

  Even an orgy.

  Let the grape peeling begin! She was ready. Not only ready, but open to any eventuality.

  Was it only the made-over gown that inspired her newfound self-confidence, though? Or had some other hitherto unknown activity also contributed to her mindset? Perhaps, her assurance…and her decidedly energized euphoria…is what came of touching her privates?

  Hmm.

  Picking up her gown, she leaped onto the next stair, clearing the tread easily. After a one-footed landing, she tilted her jaw to the side and ruminated over the question.

  Oh, rats! Who cared where her confidence had originated? If touching herself provoked this change in her, she would have to make touching herself a nightly ritual. That glorious, uplifting sensation that followed her stroking was too good to give up.

  A grin broke over her face as she raced for the landing. Yes, indeedy, after one hundred strokes taken with a hairbrush, she would stroke herself the same number. Along with untangling her hair, she would untangle any knots of tension inside her. She was certainly unknotted now.

  Her mind clear, every muscle relaxed, she planned her next move.

  Practically speaking, she could ill afford to take chances. To that end, guarding her name was essential. Incriminating herself in wrongdoing would lead to horrible repercussions all around. Lest the robber baron connect her to her father, an unlikely occurrence given Mr. Griffith’s gross negligence of Central Mine, she would heed the voice of caution and adopt a false persona, an alias. Recognition would ruin everything.

  Imagine her, plain and simple country girl Tegan Ellis, using an alias, just like a Pinkerton detective. Positively thrilling!

  But wait. Was guarding her anonymity strictly necessary? Did participants of an orgy formally introduce themselves?

  Hmm.

  Having never attended an orgy before, she would have no idea as to the etiquette. Though a round of bowing and curtsying did seem rather unlikely.

  At any rate, the key to success was having a strategy in place. To that end, should the industrialist ask over her name, she must be prepared in advance with a fraudulent identity. So, what was a good alias to use?

  Miss Smith?

  She shook her head. That assumed name would never do. Too obvious.

  Something bold and exotic, then?

  By Jove, she had it. Miss Vitisvinifera! The word for grape in Latin. Apropos, since she would be peeling bunches of them this evening. Though the name was rather a mouthful.

  Regardless of what she called herself, she must make herself over into someone else, someone incredibly seductive. And interesting. A sophisticated femme fatale capable of turning male heads in a crowded room, someone who unashamedly oozed hedonism. Someone persuasive and alluring. Someone who could bring Sean Griffith to his knees.

  Now, if only her own knees would stop trembling.

  What if someone found her out? Discovered her infiltration of the manor? Knew she was here at Griffith House under false pretenses? What if, what if, whatif, whatifwhatif…?

  Oh, my how her head buzzed. Like a hive of bees swarmed between her ears. She should just turn right around and leave…

  Or lift her skirts and give her privates one hundred good strokes right here.

  After chortling and spitting and snorting through her nose, Tegan settled down. Her shoulders squared, she clamped down on her spate of nerves.

  Choosing personal safety over commitment to her cause would not only make her a craven coward, but unworthy of calling a dedicated and selfless man like Brynn Ellis her father.

  Noble sentiment. Unfortunately, no amount of words, regardless of how fine and lofty, would have pushed her to continue. What kept her going was the knowledge that this might be her only shot at adventure, of doing something wild and, yes, wicked. Something like she read about in her beloved romance novels, an exciting exploit that plucky heroines routinely undertook between the pages of a book.

  At the top of these very stairs was a dining room filled with gentlemen waiting to have their grapes peeled.

  And what else?

  She had it on good authority that orgies involved stolen kisses.

  In the name of struggling miners and their families, she would allow one or two kisses. On the cheek. Not on the mouth. And only because she believed so deeply in the cause.

  Liar.

  All right, all right. At times, she wished her conscience would just hush!

  The truth was, she was curious too. About kissing. And all the rest. Particularly, what went on between gentlemen and ladies in those passages that authors never explained, those missing chapters after the boudoir door closed.

  Compelled to find out what exactly romance characters did on tho
se blank pages, Tegan tiptoed down the hall and, craning her neck, peeked inside the open door.

  Food. All sorts of food, some steaming, some iced, heaped on the banquet table. Most prominent of which was a pig with an apple stuffed in its mouth.

  Then she saw him, a man in stark black evening attire. He stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out onto the falling rain. Immediately, he eclipsed the feast—no small feat, considering her protesting belly.

  Other than resembling a hideous ogre from a Grimm’s fairy tale, she had absolutely no preconceptions of what Sean Griffith would look like. Unlike previous Central Coal Mine owners, the wealthy industrialist had made no tintype of himself available in the company office. But she knew it must be him, for who else would he be? Apart from his solitary person, the dining room was quite empty.

  Gossip said Mr. Griffith rarely left the walled grounds of his estate. Business agents, lawyers, and managers brought their concerns to him here. Merchants and others, loose women included as well. Though, she supposed fleshmongers handled the pandering end of things at a distance.

  The rumors of Mr. Griffith’s reclusive nature gave her cause for hope. For if he truly did shun the public eye, her extortion scheme might well succeed. A man who prized privacy would do anything to avoid scandal reaching newsprint.

  Although, what scandal?

  As far as she could see, there was no ammunition for blackmail here. Plump purple grapes bunched together in a glass fruit bowl in the center of the food-laden table, but no one, except Sean Griffith, waited to have them peeled.

  The evidence in her reticule had better convince him to do the right thing, for this was an all round disappointing orgy, if you asked her. She had expected more than one man’s silent reflection on windblown rain. Had the inclement weather kept everyone else away?

  Gathering her courage, she called across the room, “Mr. Griffith, I presume?”

  The callous mine owner left his solitary position at the wet panes and came toward her. He walked deliberately, as if he owned the world. And indeed, he did. Her world.