But as she stood in the parlor she had been led to, there was no doubt it was opulent in its own way. The walls were papered in a very fancy red with a subtle black design. The furniture was beautiful and rich, a combination of welcoming velvet and shiny, dark wood.
The room was not the kind any lady would keep, Jacinda didn’t think. It was too...blatant. It was almost erotic.
The door behind her clicked shut and she spun to face her host. Carnthorn smiled at her.
“I’m sorry, my dear, I was just speaking to the servants about some arrangements. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”
She shifted, still uncertain. “Not at all,” she managed to whisper.
He motioned toward the settee before the fire. “Please, why don’t you sit? You’ve obviously had something of a trying night, and you must desire a moment’s respite.”
She drew back at his concern, but nodded. It wasn’t as if she had much of a choice. She had stepped into his carriage, after all. She had allowed him to take her here, curiously quiet during the journey. She had no idea of her plan, but sitting on the velvet settee could hurt no one.
She settled onto the comfortable cushions and stared into the fire. What a mess her life had become. Or perhaps had always been was a better description.
Only now the facts of it stung so much more. Why was that?
“Jason,” she whispered as an answer to herself.
“What was that?” Carnthorn asked as he set both a tumbler of whiskey and a cup of tea before her on the low table between her and the fire.
She shook her head. “Nothing, I’m sorry.”
She looked again at the drinks. He held his own glass of whiskey in his hand, so she had no idea why there were two drinks before her.
“For you to choose,” he explained with a thin smile. “Now or later.”
She tilted her head and watched him settle in beside her. He was too close and she wanted to scoot away, but refrained. He wasn’t touching her, he wasn’t doing anything inappropriate and he had saved her. She couldn’t be peevish now.
“Choose?” she asked instead, using conversation as a barrier that physical space could not be.
“Life is a series of choices,” he mused, sipping his drink, though his eyes remained on her. “For example, you chose to get into my carriage tonight.”
She swallowed, her nerves making her throat dry, but she didn’t want to take the drinks he’d offered. She felt like they represented something and she wasn’t ready to give him leverage without knowing what that something was.
“Yes, I did,” she admitted. “I-I don’t know why.”
Carnthorn strummed his fingers along his glass slowly. “Of course you do.”
Jacinda stiffened. There was a faint hint of mocking to his tone, as if he already knew something about her, something she didn’t know about herself.
“You have come along this far—don’t hold back now,” he continued, leaning a little closer as he set his whiskey aside. “It doesn’t suit your new, confident self, Jacinda.”
She lifted her chin. Kowtowing to this man would not do. She could see that.
“I got into your carriage because I didn’t want to be trapped,” she admitted, her voice soft and slightly shaky. She wished it wasn’t, for she could see Carnthorn was a man who noticed every weakness.
What he did with what he saw remained to be seen.
He smiled. “And you think my offer could keep you from being trapped ever again.”
Jacinda squeezed her eyes shut. Standing in front of her father’s home, lost and confused, she had convinced herself that Carnthorn’s carriage was only a temporary means of escape, but now she could acknowledge it was more than that.
She nodded without opening her eyes and was surprised when she felt the light brush of his finger on the tip of her nose. When she opened her eyes, she found the duke had slid even closer and was now right next to her.
He was handsome, though not in the god-like way that Jason was. He had bright, intelligent eyes and a lean physique that wasn’t unpleasing. His angular face was hard and unyielding, but not unattractive.
“You are quite right, my dear,” he said, his tone still even and calm.
She swallowed again, still dry as the desert. “Your Grace, I hope you do not confuse me. Yes, I stepped into your carriage and I’ve come here with you, but that does not mean a decision has been made by me. The offer you have made is shocking and it will mean surrendering any other future, any ties to proper Society, even to my family, forever.”
His expression didn’t change except for a slight tightening of his lips, but she sensed his displeasure at her continued resistance to his offer.
“Do you have another future to surrender?” he asked. She drew back and he caught her hand, gentle but firm in his grip. “Do not mistake me, I am not asking it to be insulting, but only to make you see your path a bit more clearly.”
She shook her head. “You are saying I have no other path.”
He released her, and she caught the hand he had touched with her opposite one, rubbing it gently even though he had done no damage with his grip.
He shrugged. “The facts are what they are, Jacinda. Northfield...Jason...does not really want you.”
She flinched. Carnthorn was saying the words already in her head, but she didn’t like that he knew them. “Why do you say that?” she asked, her voice cracking.
He gave her a look. “We are not children, are we? If he wanted you, I doubt you would have gotten into my carriage at all. It’s obvious you have been nursing a foolish interest in him for a long time. If you had a chance to be his, truly his, you wouldn’t even think of me.”
Tears stung her eyes, but Jacinda would not allow him to see that. She took a deep breath to calm herself, but said nothing. There was nothing to say that wouldn’t reveal too much, make her too vulnerable to this man she didn’t fully trust. Likely would never fully trust.
A frightening truth when she was sitting in his parlor with little chance of escape.
“A marriage might never come to you at all,” Carnthorn continued when she was silent long enough that it was obvious she had no retort. “Yes, there is increased interest thanks to Northfield’s courtship, but you have a past, you have no dowry...you cannot be blind to those disadvantages.”
“How could I be when so many are kind enough to remind me of them daily?” she said with a brittle smile.
“Like your family?” he pushed. When she was silent yet again, he shook his head. “They make it clear they do not see your value, so walking away from them cannot be so very difficult, can it?”
“I do have another option,” she said, still resisting, still trying to resist even though he was weaving a spell around her. Or perhaps a trap.
He arched one brow. “Which is?”
“Stay where I am,” she choked out, the words thick in her throat, painful to expel. “I could remain with my father or my aunt and simply…”
“Continue to die on the vine until you are too old and too empty for anyone to desire?” He completed the sentence calmly, coolly, cruelly, and she sucked in her breath at the bluntness of the response.
“Answer me,” he ordered when she had been silent a long time.
She met his gaze. “Yes.”
He took a moment’s pause to let her feel that response all the way down to her bones. And she did feel it, the hopelessness of it, the horror of it.
“Or,” he finally said softly, “you could have this.” He waved a hand at the room around him, and she looked again at the pretty, sensual parlor.
“This is—” She cut herself off, for she didn’t know what to call this place.
“Where I keep my mistresses,” he supplied with a smile. “I am between them at present, but there is a full staff here at my lover’s disposal. There is a generous purse as well, I assure you.” He looked at her gown much as her sister had earlier. “You would be able to buy what you pleased, do as you pleased.”
“Except when you wanted me.”
His eyes brightened at the response. “You are correct.”
She shivered at the tone of his voice. When he first offered her this option, she had been far removed from activities of the flesh. She had never experienced any pleasure from her brief foray into those acts.
Now she was only days away from the last time Jason touched her, the last time he made her body shatter with pleasure, the last time he kissed her with such tenderness. She knew what this man wanted and it would not be what she had shared with her friend, her love.
Even if Jason hadn’t already warned her away, that much was clear just from looking at the duke.
“I can have this at the cost of cuckolding your wife,” she whispered, reaching for the thread of decency that kept her from this thing, this offer.
He stifled a mocking chuckle. “You will always be cuckolding someone’s wife if you choose this path, Jacinda. And if you were to marry, you would always be the one betrayed. One way or another, you would not be free of it.”
She swallowed hard, not knowing how to respond, what to think, what to feel. The world was spinning.
“I see you need more persuading,” he said with a sly grin.
He rose to his feet and held out a hand to her, just as he had in the carriage. And just as she had in that moment, she stared, knowing this was yet another test. Yet another choice that would take her further down the path or not.
He did not move his hand when she was silent, but he smirked at her. “Or you could go back to the street and try to find your way home.”
Her lips parted as she realized she was trapped. She didn’t even know where she was, let alone how to get home or to Isabel or Grace’s. Or even Jason’s, if he wouldn’t turn her away. Which he might, considering their last exchange.
The choice was a farce. And Carnthorn knew it.
She was shaking as she took his hand and allowed him to help her to her feet. He looked so smug as he tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and led her from the room. It was as if he already knew what would happen.
And she feared he already did.
Chapter Twenty
“But do not mistake me, no one has the right to take what you do not freely give. Whether that is your heart, your time or your body.”—The Ladies Book of Pleasures
Jacinda was shaking as she and Carnthorn reached the top of a staircase and moved down a long hallway toward a series of closed doors. She could only imagine one of them was the main bedchamber. The only room he could be taking her to, despite the fact she had not agreed to nor even heard his terms.
He stopped before one of the doors and drew out a key. He pressed it into her palm and stepped aside to give her a path.
“Before you unlock that door,” he said, leaning against the wall and smiling at her. “You must understand that I show this to you in order for you to grasp the needs a man like myself has. The reasons I cannot be satisfied with only my wife.”
He said the word like it was a curse.
She hesitated, but then slipped the key into the hole and turned it. The door swung open and inside was a room that was already brightly lit by several lamps. She staggered as she took in what she saw.
It was not a bedchamber. It was a torture chamber, it seemed, for there were whips and chains attached to the walls, some of them with little metal studs attached to leather. A table was where a bed might otherwise be, and there were straps at the top and two straps at the bottom, as if someone would be bound there with their hands above their head and their feet spread wide.
She blushed as she turned toward him. “What is this?”
“Go in,” he said, and his tone was an order again.
She staggered a step further into the room, and noticed what appeared to be leather plugs shaped like cocks, bottles of oils, blindfolds, pinchers.
Her stomach fluttered and her knees shook.
“What do you want to do to me?” she asked, almost more to herself than to him, although his chuckle was her answer.
“I like pain, my dear, can’t you see that?” he whispered, shutting the door. He had removed the key she left behind and tucked it into his jacket pocket. Had he locked her in?
He moved closer before she could ask, his mouth near her ear, his breath on her skin like fire.
“Pain?” she gasped, thinking of that first time with Hodgend all those years ago. There had been pain then, but none with Jason. She could not imagine someone would want to do that to another person.
“Yes,” he said, his voice low. “To tie you to that table, to mar your skin with my whips, to pinch your nipples and even your clitoris until you beg me to relieve you. And when you do, when the pain is gone, the pleasure is exquisite, Jacinda.”
She swallowed hard. His words were so ugly and yet she found herself picturing what he wanted to do. Only when she did, it wasn’t him lording relief over her, but Jason. Always Jason, only Jason, who she could trust to go so dark, so deep.
She looked at Carnthorn. She didn’t trust him at all. He could hurt her and simply keep hurting her, even if she didn’t want him to. Even if she begged like he said she would. Pleasure would not be guaranteed.
“You are the perfect specimen for such a thing, my dear,” he continued. “You are an innocent who is not an innocent. I could teach you, make you my slave. Corrupt you entirely while you looked like a lady in my parlor.” He licked his lips. “I have not defiled a lady like you in such a long time.”
“Your Grace,” she whispered.
He lifted his fingers to her lips. “Thomas,” he corrected her. “Please, call me Thomas.”
She shook her head. To do so would take another step along this dangerous path she had already gone too far down.
“Your Grace,” she repeated. “Please.”
He smiled. “Oh yes, you will say please. A year, Jacinda, that is how long I would keep you. I would pay for this house, all your food and the servants. I would also provide you with an allowance, with an extra amount if you were to be…”
He trailed off and looked at the instruments hung on the wall.
“…scarred,” he finished.
Her stomach turned. He was offering her freedom, only it was far from free. It would cost her the utter surrender of her body, the twisting of her very soul. She would be changed, emotionally and perhaps physically.
“Your Grace, please let me speak,” she said, trying to back toward the door and if he hadn’t locked it, the hall, but he clasped her wrist, holding her where she stood.
“By all means,” he said softly. “Speak.”
His face was very close to hers, his eyes locked and holding her captive. She was afraid. He knew it. He liked it. And she realized she was already lost.
“My lord,” she began, trying to make her voice firm when she was trembling with fear. “Although I appreciate the fact that you are so determined to make me your lover. I realize that fact is a great honor since you could likely have any woman, but I must decline.”
His eyes narrowed, darkened. “You will make me chase you, convince you,” he said, his voice a hiss in the quiet. “I rather like that about you, though it is growing tedious since you insist on carrying on about it. After all, the moment I approached you after you birthday, you were destined to be mine, to have my cock stretch you. Denying me will only make the first time more of a punishment for you and a pleasure for me.”
She had been managing her tears throughout the night, keeping him from seeing them, though she guessed he knew her struggle. But now she couldn’t deny them.
“I’m asking you to let me go.”
He didn’t loosen his grip. “Do you know why you were caught with Hodgend that night seven years ago, Jacinda?”
She blinked at his change of subject, especially to her past. She didn’t want to talk about it with him, but if it kept him from forcing himself on her, she would do it.
“No. Yes. My father came looking for me.” She tr
ied to focus on the memories. They were horrible, but they were better than this. “I was gone too long.”
“No.” He laughed and the sound grated down her spine with its cruelty. “You were gone exactly the right amount of time. Hodgend’s father, Garrenton, had been in a card game with your father and lost a horse he valued a great deal. He and the baron made a bargain.”
Jacinda’s eyes grew wide as he spoke. “A horse? A bargain?”
He nodded. “Garrenton would encourage his son to ruin you, and your father would come in to force a scandal and a marriage. But Hodgend didn’t play along. He took you, but he refused to make good because he didn’t want to marry you. And so you were destroyed. Over a horse, Jacinda. Over a horse.”
Her knees buckled, but he caught her elbow, keeping her upright.
“You’re a liar.” She tried to scream it, but her voice was no more than a squeak. Her father wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t sacrifice her and then walk away. He wouldn’t…
Only he would, and she knew it. She knew it like she knew her own face in the mirror.
“It is the truth, told to me by Garrenton himself over three too many drinks when I went snooping into your past,” Carnthorn said. “So where do you have to go, Jacinda, but here? Where do you have to go but to me?”
Jason burst through the front door at the home Carnthorn kept for his mistresses without knocking or waiting for leave from a servant. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but rush forward and look in every room for Jacinda.
And pray he would find her downstairs and unharmed.
He threw open a parlor door and stopped. A cup of tea and two glasses sat on a table before a settee in front of the fire. Dear God, what had that bastard gotten her into?
“Sir!” A frazzled servant skidded into the room behind him and waved his arms. “Who are you? How dare you barge in here—”
Jason stalked forward and stuck out a hand to shove the man aside. “I am the Earl of Northfield and I am here for my—” He cut himself off.
What was Jacinda? He had never allowed himself or her to label their relationship. He kept her at arm’s length, kept his heart at arm’s length and here they were. With her in a potentially very dangerous position because she had lost faith in him. Because he hadn’t given her a good enough reason to have it.
A Moment of Passion (The Ladies Book of Pleasures) Page 20