The Courtesan's Secret

by Claudia Dain

  “It’s only a glove!”

  “Did you remove it or did he? Don’t bother to lie about it, Louisa. You know it’s the first thing he’ll tell me on the dueling field tomorrow. Men, as you may have heard, do talk about things of this sort . . . and women of that sort.”

  Women of that sort?

  “That’s entirely uncalled for!”

  “The glove?” he said, smiling like a . . . well, like a shark. Not at all reassuring.

  “He took it off!” she said, feeling that it vindicated her somehow.

  It didn’t come out right at all, she realized, watching the expression on Blakesley’s face shift into something most appalling.

  “What can I do but follow the great Dutton’s form?” he said on a soft snarl. “He is the master, is he not? He is all you have wanted these past two years, is he not? What better course for me, the man you will marry, than to follow where he has so generously led?”

  Oh, dear. That sounded most unpromising as courtships went.

  He looked terribly angry and frightfully outraged, frankly more purely masculine than she had ever seen him, in a purely predatory way, obviously.

  It was rather appealing, truth be told, though she didn’t suppose he would appreciate hearing that at the moment, not when he was doing his best to be intimidating. And he was intimidating, she just found it so compelling, which she was quite certain was not the reaction he had intended. Oh, well. She would try to display discretion as the better part of valor, holding her tongue and her opinion while he backed her against the wall and . . . what, stripped her bare?

  Oh, dear.

  Being ruined certainly did have its advantages.

  “You don’t look at all as frightened as you should be, Louisa,” he said, walking slowly toward her. He didn’t have far to walk; it wasn’t that large a room. She backed up as he came on, her gaze held by his, until her back hit the wall with a soft thump of finality and dead ends.

  “I shouldn’t think you’d want your future wife to be frightened of you,” she said stoutly, lifting her chin and meeting his gaze.

  “You clearly don’t know a thing about how a proper marriage works,” he said, lifting her face with his hands, his fingers tangled in her dangling curls, ruining her perfect curl completely and unrelentingly. It was past fixing now, certainly. “Of what use are you to me if you are not cowed into behaving properly?”

  “I’m not at all certain I can be cowed into any sort of behavior, Blakesley,” she said, “not proper and not even improper.”

  “You don’t think so?” he said, grinning like an imp from Hell. “Let’s try, shall we? For myself, I prefer improper from you. For the world, you shall have to learn how to behave so as not to bring derision upon me. A simple formula for success. Learn it, will you?”

  “Blakesley, you have the most sublime sense of humor,” she said, grinning back at him, her eyes challenging him outrageously. “Do you honestly believe you can force me to anything? Why, I have defied Melverley for years and all he has to show for it is a head of gray hair and four missing teeth. I think you should protect your hair and your teeth, for I am quite certain I should not find you at all attractive without them. And you are so very attractive now. Let’s proceed from there, shall we?”

  “You find me attractive?” he said, lifting her chin with his thumbs, his fingers bracing her face tenderly, no matter what he said.

  “I presume you have a mirror?” she said tartly. “You can see for yourself that you are devilishly handsome, if one cares for devils, that is. How fortunate for you that I do.”

  Upon which he grinned and pulled her face to his and kissed her as she so well deserved. It was such a relief to be kissed by Blakes after the mistreatment and mismanagement she had suffered under Dutton. She felt her heart trip, her head spin, and her pulse pound—in a word, all the things she expected should happen when a woman was properly kissed. She really didn’t know how Dutton had managed it all these years. Clearly, he was living on legend, and she couldn’t possibly imagine how the legend had first started. Perhaps with his father?

  In any case, she had no time to think about Dutton, not when Blakes was doing his best to drive her wild.

  Blakes was so very good at driving her wild.

  His tongue teased hers, and his hands played in her hair, pulling at her curls, strand by strand, one by one, until her hair tumbled down around her shoulders in what she was certain were tangled coils and not one bit attractive. Blakes didn’t seem to notice that her hair was not the thing. Blakes was too busy elsewhere. He pressed her back against the paneled door and kissed her hard, hard, until her breath came in gulps and gasps and she had her arms wrapped around his neck, breathing in the scent of him, the feel of him against her breasts, pressing, the weight of him a gift she was shocked to find she hungered for.

  He did not pull away from her this time. No, she held him fast, a prisoner, caught in ruining her as she was in being ruined. A perfect pairing. It was only fair that they should share in it, tumble into it, falling as far and as deep as ruin could deliver them.

  Her breasts ached and felt hot and full and she moaned into his mouth and demanded more, more ruin and more falling, more heat and more madness.

  Blakes, that devil, untwisted her arms from around his neck and held her from him, his eyes like blue coals of passion and determination and what looked like anger. Let him be angry. Let him also be determined to follow passion and Louisa when they led him. Was that so difficult?

  He smiled, a lopsided thing, and pulled a chair to him by its wooden back. It was a simple chair, well made, upholstered in pale blue silk on its seat and graced by careful carving on its open back. A pretty chair. Blakes sat in it when he should have offered it to her. The lout.

  He sat, his legs splayed out, his smile still crooked, and, grabbing her by her hips, pulled her into the space between his legs. Her gown was thin, the finest muslin, fragile and nearly sheer in the candlelight, and she could feel the hard heat of his hands through the fabric.

  It was horrifying, to be manhandled so, like a common actress in a side street.

  She liked it. She liked the look in his eyes and the smile on his face and the ease with which he handled her.

  She was a wanton.

  Perhaps, if no one but Blakes were to know, it wouldn’t be too scandalous. Certainly, he would tell no one. What man wanted his wife to be known as an unrepentant wanton? A secret wanton would have to suffice, however unrepentant.

  “I am going to ruin you, Louisa,” Blakes said in a voice just above a whisper, the sound so low and so intense that the hairs on the back of her neck rose in a chill of warning. “I am going to ruin you so completely that no man will have you, save I. I’m going to ruin you so that no man’s touch will ever satisfy you, save mine.”

  “I suppose you’re going to do it by talking,” she said, taunting him, wanting to hurry him along, unable to bear the tension of pure waiting.

  Blakes laughed, a mocking sound that filled the silent room like ripples of light.

  “You can’t bear it, can you?” he said, studying her, molding his hands to her hips, feeling the bones of her joints with his thumbs. “You don’t know what I’m going to do and you’d rather be beaten to death by my hands than wait in fear.”

  “An overstatement of absurd proportions,” she said, lifting her arms to try and rearrange her hair, a pointless exercise, but Sally Bates had done it in the second act of that abysmal play and it had done wonders for her bosom. And stretched her bodice ties to breaking, or nearly. “Have you always been given to exaggeration and melodrama, Blakes? I had no idea.”

  “There’s much you have no idea about. But not for long.” And with those words he grabbed her derriere with one hand and lifted the hem of her skirts with the other. A wash of cold air ran over her legs in a slow sweep of motion as he lifted and lifted . . . and lifted. “And I’ve seen your bust often enough to know it’s quite fine. You can relax.”

 
Relax? Impossible.

  She did not try to argue with him for she knew that would only amuse him; besides, she was more than curious to see where these strange and slightly marvelous sensations would lead. And she was more than a little certain that Blakesley’s hand would lead her there.

  Wanton.

  Well, there had to be worse things a woman could be. She would think of some later, when she wasn’t so distracted.

  “You are very quiet, Louisa. You’re not going to faint, are you?” Blakes said as he methodically caressed her leg from the ankle to the knee, the fabric of her stocking increasing the sensation, magnifying it. Ripples again, ripples of sensation.

  “No, though I may scream,” she said, trying for sarcasm. She thought she’d likely missed it. She could barely stand, what with Blakesley’s hand on her leg and his eyes studying her like she was an experiment he was conducting.

  “My plans exactly,” Blakes said, his smile deepening as his hand rose higher.

  He was skimming over her thigh now, a tickle, a brush of skin against skin, a caress that teased.

  “Did you bring me here to tickle me?” she said.

  “I didn’t bring you here at all,” he answered, his smile lost. Oh, yes, she shouldn’t have reminded him about Dutton. The fact was, she’d forgotten about Dutton. And hadn’t Blakes promised he would accomplish exactly that?

  Blakesley’s touch, that gentle thing he’d been practicing on her was abandoned for something altogether more primal.

  “Stand still,” he commanded. “Don’t move or make a sound, Louisa. I’m going to have my way with you and you’re going to let me.”

  “Or what?” she said, daring him. Really, she didn’t know what had gotten into her.

  Of course she did. Blakesley. He’d ruined her by kissing her. He might as well ruin her by touching her where, frankly, she was desperate to be touched.

  “Or I’ll not give you back your pearls,” he said, watching her face.

  It hardly seemed the time to tell him that she hadn’t thought about her pearls for simply hours and the entire matter of her pearls seemed, well, given the fact that she was ruined, completely irrelevant. If he thought threatening her with her pearls was an efficient whip, she wasn’t going to be the one to disillusion him as to their inefficacy.

  “Oh, no,” she said flatly, forcing herself to face him when all she wanted to do was to close her eyes in abject shame.

  His hands were under her skirts, both hands, and her skirts were at her hips. She knew that her legs were sticking out for him to see, a completely shameless posture, that her nether regions would soon be as completely bare to him, and she was determined, because she was clearly a fool, not to back down in fear and timidity.

  She was afraid and she was timid, certainly about this, but it wouldn’t do at all for Blakes to see it. They were to be married; every inch of skin revealed sealed their fate more firmly, and even now the stage was being set for their future dealings. She was not going to enter in with her head bowed and her hands shaking, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

  She was not going into marriage as her mother had.

  “You don’t want your pearls back?” he said, his hands stilled as he studied her face.

  “Did I say that?” she snapped. “Tell me, Blakes, do you even listen to me?”

  “Not usually,” he snapped back. “Especially not when you look as you do now.”

  Yes, like a wanton with her skirts around her waist. What man would care what a woman said at that point?

  “How completely typical,” she said, staring down at him, at his golden head and his cynical blue eyes, which did not look at all cynical at the moment. Blakes, dear Blakes, looked almost vulnerable. Angry and vulnerable. It was a combination she understood perfectly. “I suppose you even prefer it when I am as I am now, exposed, helpless . . . voiceless.”

  Blakes laughed, a short bark of laughter, and said, “Louisa, you are the worst liar I have ever known.”

  “I suppose you’d prefer it if your wife were an accomplished liar,” she said, smiling in spite of herself and her exposed legs and his wandering hands.

  “No,” he said, his smile fading. “No, but we both know you shall never be voiceless. Not with me. Particularly as I plan to have you screaming in the next few minutes.”

  “If I scream now will you stop talking and kiss me?” she said.

  “Kisses first,” he said, standing, dragging her skirts with him in one fist, his other hand grabbing her neck and pulling her toward him, “screams later.”

  And then he kissed her. Finally. It was everything it should have been. Deep and hard and hot. Her breath caught in her chest and exploded there, sending heat spiraling upward and down, coiling in perfect curls of fire and longing. His hand pressed against her derriere, his fist releasing her dress to grab the woman beneath. She met his kiss and arched into his hand, moaning, but not screaming. Not yet. She would not give him that just yet.

  His hand moved to the front, to the apex, to the quivering, slippery folds of her sex, and he cupped her.

  She was hot. Wet. Trembling.

  She wanted to buckle against him, sobbing out his name or some such trite nonsense. Blakes would lose all appreciation of her if she became, literally, weak-kneed. She locked her knees and held on, her hands gripping his coat, her mouth locked on his, breathing his breath, anchoring herself in his arms.

  He fingered her folds, softly, testing her. She moaned and writhed against his hand. But she did not scream.

  She would not scream until she could do nothing but scream, and she was a long way from that. She thought.

  Blakes seemed to think differently.

  He plunged a finger inside her, a violent action that matched her mood exactly. His mouth still possessed hers fully, his tongue filling her, commanding her to respond. She didn’t need to be commanded. She was with him fully, eager to be ahead, to lead him on, to control his passion as he controlled hers.

  “I’m in you, Louisa,” he breathed against her skin. “Start screaming.”

  “Make me,” she said, staring him down, but she couldn’t see him, not really. She was passion blind, her eyes unable to focus, her thoughts chained to his hand and his mouth, assaulted and enjoying every second of it.

  He scowled, a look that screamed sensual promise, and plunged his finger into her faster, harder, his thumb brushing against a tiny bud of explosive sensation she had no idea she possessed.

  She bucked against his hand, fighting for more contact, fighting against the assault of his hand. She couldn’t understand herself, not what she wanted, not what she should have wanted. It all disappeared when she looked into his eyes or plunged into his kiss. Or was plunged into by his hand.

  “What are you doing to me?” she whispered against his neck, her mouth almost smothered in his cravat.

  “Ruining you,” he said, his voice hoarse and low. “Possessing you.”

  “You . . . you do it very well,” she said, her voice breaking into a high-pitched gasp at some particular motion of his fingers. “The result of much practice, no doubt.”

  “Shut up, Louisa, and let me ravish you in peace, will you?”

  “Lord and Master, I suppose, is what you had in mind,” she said as he spread her thighs and plunged deeper, watching her, his blue eyes glittering.

  “Oh, I think I’ve mastered this,” he said, his fingers doing mysterious and wonderful things, things which . . . things which . . . oh, dear. “What say you?”

  “Shut up, Blakes. I need to scream.”

  And she did.

  Blakes grinned, which she supposed was allowable as he had earned it.

  She collapsed against him, her legs truly now completely unable to support her, which pleased Blakes inordinately. He withdrew his hand and allowed her skirts to fall back to the floor, sat down in that very pretty chair, and pulled her onto his lap. She was, she was mortified to admit, clutching his shoulders as if he could keep her from
falling off the edge of the world, which is exactly how it felt, and breathing so forcefully and so shakily that she was afraid she must sound to him as if she were on the point of death.

  Blakes didn’t seem to find any of this extraordinary in the least, which was just the tiniest bit irritating. In fact, Blakes couldn’t seem to stop grinning. It was, she decided when he actually began to whistle, completely annoying.

  Of course, it was at that precise moment that the door to the dressing room opened. She tried to jump to her feet, but Blakes, still in that same aggravating mood, held her fast and turned to face the open door, looking, she suspected, like a man about to enjoy an afternoon tart at his leisure. She, naturally, was the tart.

  “Oh, there you are!” Molly said, eyeing first Blakes and then Louisa. Upon which, she added, “I should have known.”

  “We thought we heard a, well . . . a scream,” Iveston said, looking over his mother’s shoulder. He looked decidedly unconcerned for a man who had heard a woman scream.

  “I’m certain you did,” Blakes said before she could get a word out.

  At which point, Molly’s gaze went directly back to Louisa. She looked entirely displeased.

  “I’ll see about getting a special license,” Hyde said, looking appropriately grim and ducal. “It might be best if we not wait the usual length of time for these things, special circumstances and all that.”

  “Special circumstances, to be sure,” Molly said, turning on her heel and walking off. She had a bit of a time doing it as the way seemed to be clogged with bodies.

  Louisa elbowed Blakes in the midsection, which proved to be the prompt he needed to release her. She stood, albeit on shaky legs, but she did stand and looked more closely at the opened door and beyond into the yellow drawing room. It was clogged with bodies, the bodies of the dinner guests, who, having become convinced that salmon was a shoddy affair when compared to the affaire going on in Hyde’s dressing room, had left the table en masse. To see her. To see Blakes. To see what they were up to.

  Which only required that they look at Blakesley’s breeches at a particular point to see exactly what was up and what was pointing.