by Mia Gabriel
“This is Mr. Barry, Mrs. Hart,” the maid said. “Mr. Barry, Mrs. Hart is his lordship’s new Innocent, and his lordship says you’re to put her at ease until he comes upstairs.”
“Good evening, Mrs. Hart,” Barry said, opening the door more widely for me to pass inside. He was a small, wiry man with wisps of graying hair over a mostly bald head, and clearly proud of his impeccable manners. Not once did his gaze drop to my revealing costume, for which I was endlessly grateful.
Curious, I looked about, eager for more clues to Lord Savage. To my surprise, the rooms were lit not by gaslight but by dozens of candles, in wall sconces, in chandeliers, and in candle stands, that cast everything with an antique light, full of mysterious shadows.
“Is there no gas lighting in this part of the house, Barry?” I asked, keeping close to the servant. “I would have thought Lord Carleigh would have had it installed here as well.”
“Yes, ma’am, there is gas lighting throughout the house,” Barry said, answering one question and no more.
“Then why not use it here? Why candles instead?”
The servant’s expression didn’t change. “It is Lord Savage’s preference, ma’am.”
I nodded, for there wasn’t much I could say beyond that, the perfect servant’s reticent reply. But why would Lord Savage have such an outdated preference? I had always lived with the newest and most modern of conveniences. In New York, even gaslights had been replaced by electric ones. Why would a young man—for he could not be past thirty—wish to use such an old-fashioned and inconvenient light?
Not that Barry would volunteer an answer as he led me down a short hall and through a sitting room. The maid had been right: the rooms had the feel not of a transient guest’s impersonal, if expensively appointed, quarters but of the more permanent lodgings of an individual with very definite tastes, and the soft light and shadows cast by the candles somehow made it all the more personal.
It was also clearly the place of a man with many interests that he avidly and actively pursued. I saw that at once. Despite my father’s faults, he had worked ferociously hard, and in these rooms I could see the obvious signs of a similar temperament in Lord Savage.
There were newspapers and books everywhere, books that were read and marked, and not simply for show. An oversize desk dominated the sitting room, and scattered across it were notebooks and maps and the schedule booklets for trains and steamships.
Manly souvenirs of foreign travels decorated the rooms as well, from the stretched zebra skin used as a rug on the floor, to a miniature pagoda carved from Chinese ivory, to a white marble bust of some ancient Roman senator staring blankly from a column out into the room. Father had kept these sorts of curiosities about his office, too, the stuffed head of a moose he’d shot in Maine and a painted, feathered tomahawk from a Plains Indian that he swore (to my horror) had been used for scalping.
But then there were other things here in Lord Savage’s rooms that would never have found their way to Father’s office. Over the fireplace hung a large painting of a woman sprawled over a daybed, wearing only a small diadem and bright jewels that glowed against her pearly skin. She smiled shamelessly, proud of her nudity in a way that made me blush for her.
That was only the beginning: the terra-cotta statue of a muscular, goatish satyr with a nymph, their limbs intimately entangled; a small watercolor of two beautiful young women lying together in a bed, kissing and fondling each other; and, most stunning of all, an engraving of another woman whose head was thrown back in a frenzy of passion, mating with the sizable swan clasped tightly between her thighs. It was not only shocking to me but physically impossible.
But, to my astonishment, this engraving and the other artworks had the most curious effect on me, making my heart race and my blood warm in a way that overwhelmed my initial embarrassment.
It was much the same as when I’d first spied Lord Savage with the other woman in the London garden, and I remembered how he’d told me that I must like to watch. I’d been offended then, but now I merely wondered if he’d been right.
I’d come here to discover passion, hadn’t I? Perhaps looking at explicit pictures like these were part of my discovery. Perhaps they were meant to be … inspiring. And if the artwork affected Lord Savage in the same way, then it was no wonder that he kept it here at Wrenton, where he came to participate in Lady Carleigh’s sensual games.
Yet, I forgot everything when Barry led me through the last door.
“His lordship wishes you to wait for him in here, Mrs. Hart,” Barry said. “Is there anything else, ma’am?”
“No, Barry,” I said. “No.”
I could scarcely wait for the servant to leave. I was standing in Lord Savage’s bedroom, and the excitement I felt was almost unbearable. Unlike the exotic, erotic clutter of the sitting room, this was spare, even austere.
An enormous antique bed with elaborately carved posts dominated the room, the red velvet coverlet, pillows, and canopy glowing by the light from the candles and the fire in the hearth. Beneath my bare feet was an oriental carpet, thick and plush with swirling patterns of crimson and blue.
There were no pictures on these walls. The room’s single ornament was the sweeping view of the surrounding countryside visible through tall windows without curtains. A single armchair near the window, two small tables flanking the bed, and a large, framed dressing mirror were the only other pieces of furniture in the room.
I ran my fingers lightly over the velvet coverlet, trying to imagine Savage himself lying against the piled pillows at the head of the bed. Before long, I wouldn’t have to imagine, and a tremor of anticipation rippled through me.
Swiftly I drew my hand back as if it had been burned, curling it against my chest, and retreated to the chair beside the window to compose myself. The view was lovely, fields and ancient trees splashed by moonlight, and the dark blue skies overhead scattered with stars. It could have been a warm evening at my house in Upstate New York rather than here in—
“Are you stargazing, Eve?”
At the sound of Savage’s voice, I immediately twisted around in the chair to face him. He was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, still dressed in his impeccable formal clothes from dinner.
In the candlelight, he was all black and white, from his starkly white shirt and black suit to his inky-black hair and the white teeth of his smile. It was more predatory than humorous, that smile, and all that spared it from pure wolfishness were his pale blue eyes with the thick, dark lashes.
He was such a striking, intoxicatingly male figure that all words and thoughts flew from my head, and I could do nothing but stare at him.
“There’s no sin to looking at the stars, Eve,” he said. “Even a beggar may look at a king, and the moon as well.”
Slowly he began to cross the room. He unfastened his tie, tugging it from beneath the starched collar, and let it fall to the floor without a thought. He shrugged his shoulders free of his coat and dropped that, too, followed by his white brocade waistcoat, leaving a soft, costly trail of discarded black and white behind him on the carpet.
I made a gulping little laugh, so much like a nervous schoolgirl that I winced. “I’m hardly a beggar, my lord. You know that. But the stars certainly are beautiful tonight.”
He stopped, and frowned.
“Oh, Eve,” he said softly, pulling the top pearl stud of his shirt to open the collar. “You’ve forgotten again, haven’t you?”
“Forgotten?” I repeated uneasily, slipping from the chair to stand with my back to the window. “What have I forgotten?”
“Who you are,” he said, sounding disappointed and almost sad. “Who I am.”
“Oh, that Game foolishness,” I said hurriedly, remembering now. “I didn’t think it mattered when we were alone, my lord. I thought it was only for when we were downstairs, with the others.”
“‘That Game foolishness’?” He tipped his head to one side, his frown now one of puzzlement. “The Game’s hardly
foolish, Eve. At least it isn’t to me.”
“That is, it’s not to me, either,” I said quickly. I felt off-balance and uncertain, and unsure of what sort of answer he was expecting. “If it were, I, ah, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Very well,” he said. He raised his chin a fraction, to unfasten another stud on his shirt, his gaze never leaving mine. “Then I’ll forgive your forgetfulness, and permit you to begin again, as an Innocent. Will you agree to that, Eve?”
I swallowed, nervously smoothing a stray curl of my hair behind my ear. How could I think, with him undressing like this? As he took the onyx links with the gold snakes from his cuffs, his shirt fell open nearly to the waist, revealing that he wore no undershirt beneath, the way most gentlemen would. Instead there was only a tantalizing glimpse of his bare chest and the whorls of black hair upon it.
I’d never seen a gentleman’s chest like this, not once.
“Eve?” he asked again, working the last of the onyx cuff links free. “If you do not wish what I can give you, then you are free to—”
“No, Master,” I said breathlessly. “I wish it.”
“You will obey me in all matters?” He tossed the shirt’s studs in his palm like a gambler’s dice. “You will trust me completely?”
“Yes, Master,” I said quickly, as much to convince myself as him. “Yes.”
“I am glad.” He turned away and dropped the shirt studs and cuff links with a clatter into a porcelain dish on the mantel. With his back to me, he poured himself a brandy from the decanter on the nearby table.
He didn’t offer the wine to me. Not that I wanted any, but I wasn’t accustomed to not being considered, the way a gentleman always did with a lady.
But then I wasn’t a lady any longer, not to him. I’d just agreed once again to be an Innocent, and the realization was at once both exciting and daunting. What would he expect me to do? What desires of his would I be obliged to fulfill?
And what in turn could I expect of him?
“So here we are, my pretty Innocent,” he said, coming slowly toward me with the cut-crystal tumbler in hand. “We’ll have a week to learn each other’s ways, won’t we?”
Instinctively I took a step back, away from him, bumping against the cool glass of the window. Foolish, foolish, I scolded myself. I needed to be bold and confident with him, not skittish as a cat. No, I felt more like the mouse, with him as the cat.
“Won’t we, Eve?” he repeated, bemused by my unease.
“Yes, Master,” I said belatedly. I had to remember that he expected an answer to every question.
“Good,” he said. He dropped into the armchair that I’d been sitting in earlier and stretched his long legs out before him, making himself comfortable.
I, however, was anything but comfortable. I was standing between his chair and the window—trapped between them, really—and anytime he wished, he could reach out to touch me.
Or I could touch him, I told myself, glancing down to the black-clad leg so close to mine. The fabric pulled and stretched over his muscular thigh, and I longed to place my hand there to feel his strength, his power.
That’s what a woman like Lady Carleigh would do, I thought. She wouldn’t be shy. If I wanted this man as much as I claimed, then I should let him know with a seductive kiss or a caress. Likely he’d welcome it, even expect it.
But then Lady Carleigh would know exactly how to please a man, and I … I did not.
“You seem uneasy, Eve,” he said. He didn’t have to be a clairvoyant for that; surely he could hear the racing of my heart from his chair. “To prove how generous a master I am, especially compared to others in this house, I shall permit you to ask me three questions, just like a genie. Anything at all.”
It was a precious opportunity to learn more of him, and an unexpected one, too. But, in the way of such moments, my thoughts went blank, and I blurted the first thing that came to my head.
“Why—why do you use candles instead of the gaslight?”
“Because I prefer them,” he said easily. “I have an old soul, Eve, and a romantic one. I find little to please me in the hasty vulgarity of modern life. If in this small way I can exist in former days, then so be it.”
“But don’t you own a motorcar?” I asked, in my astonishment unwittingly using my second question.
“I do,” he confessed, holding the glass close to his cheek. “Several, in fact. One cannot completely escape one’s life, no matter how much one wishes otherwise. But I much prefer a candle’s warm light to the greenish glow of gas, the blood and urgency of a fast horse to a rumbling motor, and a painter’s mastery to the chemical wizardry of a photograph.”
No other man I’d known would ever have made such an admission, nor so poetically, and it intrigued me. “Then you are a true romantic, aren’t you?”
“I am, and proudly so,” he said, and smiled. “Which is why I am so intrigued by you. And that, Eve, was the last of your allotted questions for me.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed with dismay. “I didn’t mean to—”
“I don’t care what you intended, Eve,” he said, cutting me off. “All that matters to me is what you do, and what you will do now is what I say.”
Reluctantly I nodded. He hadn’t exactly tricked me, but the distraction of his mere presence had made me trip myself. If this was part of the Game, then I’d already lost the first gambit.
“Take your hair down,” he said. “I want to see it loose.”
Years had passed since I’d either dressed or unpinned my hair myself, especially without a mirror; Hamlin would never have permitted it. I hadn’t been seen in public with my hair loose since I was fourteen. Likely, Savage was aware of all this, but I didn’t wish to admit to being so helpless.
Instead, I reached up and began pulling out the dozens of pins that held my elaborately braided, curled, and puffed hair in place. I neatly tucked each pin between my lips, the same way as Hamlin did.
“Let the pins fall,” Savage said. “Barry will gather them. I’ve far better uses for your mouth than that.”
I took the hairpins from my lips and dropped them as he’d ordered. One by one they fell to the polished floorboards with a little ping, like drops of metallic rain.
He watched me closely, sipping the amber-colored brandy as his gaze drifted from my hair to my breasts. His gaze was focused and intent and left no doubt of his appreciation. Of course: I hadn’t considered it, but the act of lifting my hands to undo my hair also raised my breasts, swaying and shimmying against my filmy Innocent’s gown.
I remembered how he’d watched and admired me this same way when I’d stood on the bench during the auction. Daringly I once again began to play to his interest, and as my confidence grew, I turned this way and that as I made a kind of dance of freeing my hair. I never would have performed like this before Arthur, nor would he have been anything but scandalized if I had.
But Savage clearly approved, his focused gaze never leaving me.
I was almost disappointed when the last pin fell to the floor. I shook my head from side to side to make the heavy waves of hair fall and settle over my shoulders and down my back, and began to rake my fingers through it like a comb.
“Leave your hair as it is, Eve,” he said. “I like it like that, with an air of wildness.”
I smiled, even as I was unable to keep from coquettishly twisting one errant lock into a curl around my fingers. It was a strange compliment, to be praised for being tousled and untidy, but because it came from Savage, I liked it more than any of the well-worn banalities I’d heard in ballrooms both in New York and London.
I gave my hair a little toss, embracing the wildness he’d seen in me.
“So you feel the freedom, my wild little Innocent,” he said, chuckling. “I knew it was there inside of you, waiting to be released.”
“Yes, Master,” I said breathlessly, feeling happy as well as wild. It pleased me to please him, a roundabout benefit that I hadn’t expected. “Yes, I do.”<
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I watched the muscles in his throat work as he finished the brandy, the slight sheen of the skin under his jaw. He set the empty glass down on the table before he smiled at me again.
“Very good, Eve,” he said. “I imagine that you’ll now find it easy enough to remove that wretched garment.”
“My costume?” Startled, I ran my hands lightly over the front of the gown. Earlier this evening I had despised this costume for being too revealing, and now it had become my last scrap of—of what?
The gossamer-weight fabric hid nothing. Dressed like this, I was as good—or as bad—as naked. He’d already seen most of me when I’d stood on the bench for the auction, beneath the bright gaslights. There were precious few secrets left to be revealed, yet still I hesitated, my last scruples clinging fiercely to my New York–born modesty.
“Yes, Eve, that tawdry foolishness that Lady Carleigh chose for the Innocents to wear,” he said, watching me closely. “It’s a damned tease. I cannot believe you are attached to so wretched a garment.”
“I’m not, Master,” I said quickly. “It’s only that—that—”
“That you are shy? Is that it?”
I sighed softly. “Yes, Master, I suppose I am,” I admitted. “Not even my husband saw me without my clothes.”
“Then I am honored to be the first,” he said, his voice low and coaxing. “Come along now, Eve. This is only the initial step if you wish to be free. Show me yourself in all your wild beauty.”
If he truly wished me naked, then he could have torn the fragile costume from my body in an instant; as my master, I’d granted him every right to do so. But the fact that he wished me to make the decision to reveal myself—ah, that made it somehow much easier.
Before I changed my mind, I grabbed the costume’s hem and jerked it up and over my head, then tossed it to the floor with the hairpins. Perhaps it was remembering how Lady Carleigh had praised my figure that gave me confidence, or simply my own desire to be as wild as he urged me to be. Whatever the reason, I didn’t shrink away, but stood straight and proud in my heeled slippers, almost defiant with my hair tumbling down my back.