Saving Grace: Fair Cyprians of London

by Beverley Oakley

  The past was the past, she reminded herself as she shifted in his lap to give him greater access to places he’d never before touched. No point in tormenting herself with it, though the physical was proving a greater torment than she’d thought possible.

  She felt exposed as she’d never felt with any client. She was frightened to rest her hands on his head and feel his soft brown hair as he put his lips to the hollow beneath her shoulder blade.

  He used to kiss her there when he stopped her after she’d fly in from the passage with a moment to spare between cleaning the drawing room and making the family’s beds. Her contours would be different now, of course. She was no longer the scrawny servant he’d remember, with hands roughened from scouring pots and scrubbing floors.

  “Are you cold?” he asked, and when she said she was not, he frowned. “Then why are you trembling?”

  “You have a lover’s touch. See?”

  His pleasure was real when he felt her nipples spring to attention as he gently circled them before bringing down his face and again taking first one and then the other into his mouth.

  Grace threw back her head and moaned softly, guiding his hand back to her inner thighs. “Feel what you’re doing to me,” she whispered and laughed softly at his surprise when he felt the slippery wetness between her legs.

  “Is … is it—?”

  “It’s called desire,” she whispered in his ear.

  “But how—?” He shook his head, unable to finish.

  “It’s something a woman cannot feign. The physical manifestation of desire comes from within. For a woman, that is,” she added. “Men are different. If their desires were whipped up only by the women they loved there’d be no need for … whores.”

  Though he frowned, he was clearly enthralled by the responses he was eliciting through his increasingly bold exploration of the folds of her sex and the swollen nub at their heart. Excitement was fairly fizzing through Grace’s veins, making her gasp and jerk as her sensitivity grew.

  “You must be enjoying it. You’re so wet,” he marvelled. “Look at the effect it’s having on me, too. I … didn’t think I’d ever feel desire again.”

  Opening lust-heavy eyes, Grace grasped his growing erection, making him wince, his voice hoarse as he whispered, “You are obviously … practised at making a man feel he is your heart’s desire. I hope you will want to come again.”

  Cradling him, Grace laughed softly, avoiding an answer as she murmured suggestively, “I would like to make you come again, but perhaps you’d enjoy it if our pleasure coincided. A woman’s climax is as enjoyable to her as a man’s. You’ve already seen how my pleasure escalates when you touch me here.”

  He laughed and increased the pressure on the area between her legs which most excited her while his other arm held her close.

  “Oh, that is very enjoyable,” she whispered, nibbling his earlobes.

  Suddenly both his arms were around her and his mouth was moving against hers, his voice urgent as he pushed her back upon the bed. “I’ve been closeted from the world for three years. I know only a schoolboy’s love.” He squeezed shut his eyes as if he were in pain and added, haltingly, “I know you’re accustomed to what we’re doing now but…what about what you’re feeling?”

  “Never!” she told him with more sincerity than she had felt in three years, resisting the urge to arch up and touch her lips to his. “I have never been with a man as tender and willing to please a woman as you.”

  “It’s your job to say that.”

  Before she could answer he added, almost roughly, “Why have you chosen this life?”

  “In a brothel?” Rolling out from beneath him, she gave a bitter laugh as she stood. She had the strangest feeling she’d put him in danger of being singed by her wickedness. “At least it’s better than the life I had.”

  “Which was…?”

  “On the streets.”

  She did not miss the spasm that crossed his face. Revulsion. Yes, he ought to be repulsed. She was. She was half tempted to leave; to spare him and to spare herself. But bitterness got the better of her.

  “The first time I sold my body was to get medicine for my baby.”

  “You had a baby?” His hand went out to her and she allowed him to draw her back, first to sit beside him on the bed. But then it seemed he wanted to hold her again and Grace had no reserves left to refuse.

  “It’s the reason I was dismissed from my position in a grand house.” The familiar grief clawed its way up her gullet. “But the baby died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She could feel his sympathy as his hands roamed over her body, blazing a trail of sensation across her sensitive skin and scoring her vulnerable heart.

  “Sorry that it died or sorry for me that it was born?”

  “Both,” he muttered. “The … father didn’t offer to marry you?”

  She let out her breath derisively. “The father was a young gentleman visiting the house who believed he was as entitled to pleasuring himself with the servants as he was to the entertainments his hostess laid on for him.”

  He was shocked, clearly. Perhaps sympathetic, though her plight was common enough. He would know that.

  She took a painful breath. “He forced himself upon me and when the housekeeper realised I was pregnant—before I did, myself, for I had no knowledge of these matters—she spoke to the mistress. My mistress dismissed me. Without a character.” She trembled at the injustice, still just as raw as it ever had been. “And a girl without a character has little alternative but to become a prostitute, in case you weren’t aware. So, take all the liberties you like, sir. There’s nothing I haven’t done and nothing that will shock me. Have you really never been with another woman since you lost the girl you loved?”

  He shook his head, his expression bleak, his hands gently cradling Grace’s face. “I’m sorry for your misfortunes. Mine are in a different league. Yes, I’ve lost my sight but often I think I’d still look towards the future with hope if I had her by my side. Despite what she’d done.”

  “Falling pregnant and running away with the blacksmith?”

  “I would have forgiven her if she’d realised her mistake and wanted to come back,” he muttered.

  Grace stiffened. “Perhaps she was waiting for you to come after her and declare your love.”

  David gave another of his short, humourless laughs. “She’d have understood why I did not. Do you know, I kissed her for the first time the night before I left for Cambridge. The softness of her mouth and the way she breathed my name are the sweetest memories I will ever have.” His tone changed. “And then she gave herself to another.”

  She could not tell him this was untrue so with the greatest self-restraint Grace asked carefully, “You say you’ve never felt desire since her betrayal? What about Miss Lenders?”

  “I barely know her, but Mama arranged the match and Miss Lenders will be well compensated for being allied to a useless creature such as myself.”

  “Don’t say that!” Grace cried, fiercely, jumping to her feet. “You’re kind and handsome and you only need someone who loves you who’ll be your eyes.” She wished she could stop herself from trembling as she tripped out the platitude. “When Miss Lenders knows you better she’ll be that person because she’ll see you’re a man who deserves a good woman’s love!”

  5

  “Please … Miss Fortune!” David rose and pulled her back into his embrace, holding her tightly, muttering as he buried his face in her hair, “You are very kind to jump to my defence but I do not need championing. I am determined that when I marry I will forge a life independent of the one my mother has mapped out for me. She’s always forced me to bend to her will.”

  Didn’t Grace know that to her cost? Mrs Willowbank had determined David’s future the moment he’d been born and studying landscapes with a master in Florence did not feature. It was why David had felt it safest to entrust Grace with Signor Bettoni’s letter the night before he went up
to Cambridge in his first term. He planned to visit a sympathetic cousin en route to borrow funds so that when he returned to Barton Hall he’d have all in order.

  And Grace would go to Florence with him.

  The letter. Oh God, if only there’d been no letter, thought Grace, none of this would have happened.

  “I do not intend being an object of pity to my wife,” David went on with growing emotion. “I intend to repay Miss Lenders for taking me on. So show me how I can do that. Show me how to make her desire me.”

  “Come with me,” Grace whispered, reaching across to draw back the counterpane of the four-poster bed.

  He seemed uncertain when Grace angled herself close and ran her hands down the front of his trousers.

  “Let me take them off for you,” she whispered, deftly working the buttons, enjoying the feel of his smooth flanks, resisting the urge to trail kisses from his ankles to his lips. She was too afraid their time would be cut short and she was determined, now, to be possessed by David in the fullest sense. The memory would serve as her protection when she succumbed to the inevitable with each future client. “Now climb onto the mattress. I’ll join you there.”

  Almost desperate with need, Grace climbed onto the bed and laid her naked body over his. Instinctively his hands went to her rump, his palms cupping her bottom, sending spirals of heady desire coursing through her veins and making her sex throb with anticipation.

  So many men.

  She’d had so many men and now, at last …

  “I think you feel sorry for me,” he murmured. “That’s why you don’t regard me with the same revulsion you do your other clients.” His breath tickling her ear. “I hope not, because …” He’d transferred his attention to Grace’s inner thighs, where he’d enjoyed her responses earlier. His touch ravaged her with urgent desire.

  “Because…why?” she whispered, pressing her cheek to his chest as she moved her body slowly, suggestively, over his. His erection pressed into her belly and she rubbed herself up and down upon it, sighing with the satisfaction of feeling it swell.

  “There’s something about you … I can’t explain it. You remind me …”

  The thrill Grace felt was truncated as he muttered, “Only it seems wrong to compare you.”

  “Because she was pure? And I am not?”

  Grace raised her head and studied his face. His heightened colour was his only answer.

  Forcing his painful words from her mind, she rose to a sitting position, reaching down to cup his balls. He gasped at the unexpected sensation, hardening instantly, holding his breath and clasping her shoulders as she gently squeezed.

  “You like it?” Her voice was husky. Suggestive. The same tone she used on all her clients, yet what was in her heart was so different.

  “I shall disgrace myself once more if you continue.” His breathing was laboured. “Stop doing that. I want to feel you.”

  She remained sitting, straddled upon him as his hands roamed over her, as if he were committing her to memory. Grace registered his frown, his growing excitement as he contoured her with the concentration of a sculptor exploring the possibilities of his subject.

  “I can feel you … like I can see you.”

  She breathed deeply and surrendered herself to his touching. How thrilling it was to again be the object of his enjoyment.

  He raised his head as if looking for something, then pulled her down so he could kiss her breasts, gently suckling her nipples while he massaged her buttocks.

  “I can imagine every part of you,” he marvelled, drawing his head away. “I’m an artist. I can’t paint you but I can … make you. I could make you in clay.” His breath came faster.

  So did Grace’s. Electric impulses surged through her, excitement roiled in her lower belly and moisture bubbled between her legs.

  “You can be my muse. I can sculpt you. I can.”

  Hope clawed at her, just a little more forcefully. Perhaps there really was a shared future for them …

  “Tell me everything. Your hopes, your dreams, your disappointments. I need to know you from the inside. It’s the only way I can create you.”

  His rising excitement coincided with the crashing of her hopes.

  His muse? She’d told him enough, already. “If I tell you everything, sir, you will want nothing more to do with me.”

  At the dull resignation in her voice, he checked himself. “Are most whores as honest as you?”

  Despite herself she gave a soft laugh. “We quickly learn when we must lie. But I am not lying when I say I want you to make love to me.”

  “You really want that?”

  Ever so briefly she touched her lips to his mouth before drawing back in sudden alarm as the familiar longing surged through her. It was too dangerous. Before long she must leave him.

  Probably forever.

  “Yes, I want you.” She heard the almost desperate note in her voice as she rose above him, rubbing her sex over his now rampant erection.

  He held her tightly, his breath hot in her ear. “And I want you, too. Oh, God—”

  She’d reached down to grasp his shaft which she was sliding the length of her slick entrance and back again. His breath was now coming in convulsive gasps which matched hers as she guided him into her slippery depths—and as he filled her she felt the most heightened sensation of coming home.

  “David.” She breathed his name upon the faintest of whispers as he withdrew slightly before thrusting into her again and she felt herself clamp over him as need and joy and pleasure swirled through her.

  “Oh God!” he cried again as he re-entered her, his passions ratcheting up with unstoppable force on a journey she shared.

  He was still little more than an untutored virgin and she didn’t mind that he came quickly upon a final thrust for she was so ready, shattering around him, her brain whirling, her heartbeat pounding as she collapsed on top of him.

  For a long time companionable silence enveloped them. The clock in the passage struck three o’ clock and the sounds of carriage wheels from the street below lent a strange normality to the sensation that nothing and everything was changed.

  David was the first to speak. Shifting her against his side so that her head nestled into the crook of his neck, he held her close as he gently stroked her.

  He laughed softly. “I hope I can last a little longer the next time.” He paused, then asked awkwardly, “Why did you have no one to turn to?”

  Surprised by his interest, she decided to lay herself bare.

  “My family refused to have anything to do with me after I … disgraced them. My mam gave me what savings she had and sent me to London, making me promise I’d never contact them again.”

  His warmth was comforting, the familiarity taking her back to the days when they could speak of so many things as he sketched or painted her: the many injustices Mrs Medley meted out and David’s troubles concerning his controlling mama.

  She snuggled closer and he reached across to pull the covers over her as she went on. “In London I became apprenticed to a milliner until she, too, dismissed me when I could no longer hide my growing belly. I used the last of my money to pay the midwife and was going to take the babe to the foundling home. I had no means of supporting either of us, of course, but the babe became sick and as I nursed it, I grew to love it. I couldn’t let it die so I called a doctor but I couldn’t pay him … or get medicine.”

  He frowned, indicating for her to go on. “The doctor suggested … I pay him in kind.” She swallowed painfully. “I had no choice. He took me against the wall in the room where I slept because my baby was screaming on the bed. He came often after that—” She breathed deeply, “—until my baby died.”

  She glanced across at him. David’s eyes were dark with sympathy as he lightly caressed her.

  “Were you not able to get respectable work?”

  “I tried.” Oh God, she wasn’t going to cry, was she? “But I’d been dismissed without a character. No one would em
ploy me so I had to return to the streets until I was procured by Madame Chambon.”

  “Is she a good employer?”

  “I can’t complain, I suppose, though she knows how to make her money out of us girls. Nevertheless she’s taught me how to hold my own with a duchess. I now speak like a lady, am fully versed in proper etiquette and I can converse on the current affairs of the day in order to entertain the customers. That’s why Madame Chambon charges so much for one of her girls.”

  “And that is why you are here.” Carefully he ran gentle fingers over her eyes, cheeks, jawline. “And for once I’m glad of my interfering mama and her high standards.”

  Smiling, he moulded her buttocks with the barest pressure. But the pressure she felt inside her was like nothing she’d known before. She’d been drained by the telling of her story but he’d not reacted with revulsion. He still wanted to touch her. The excitement she’d felt during their lovemaking was returning, and with even greater force.

  She’d told him everything and it seemed he was ready to repeat the intimacies of earlier.

  Now he raised himself, feeling his way over her until his body caged hers. One hand traced her hips. As if committing them to memory he stroked the jutting bones before sliding his hand into the juncture between her legs.

  He grinned and murmured, “You really do like it when I touch you there.” He slid his fingers deeper into her heat. They glided through her moisture and she shivered all the more.

  He moved his face closer to hers and for a moment she thought he was about to kiss her, then he drew back, perhaps remembering her stricture, despite their earlier passion.

  But, oh how she wanted to be seared by the heat of his desire—and it could be ignited by a single kiss, she knew it.

  “That is …heaven,” she gasped, opening her eyes to see his glazed with passion.

  A great poignant need gripped her heart. She had him in thrall. He was her slave, and how she longed to enjoy him again in the fullest sense. To feel him stretch out his responses. To claim responsibility for tutoring him in how to be the best lover he could be.