by Elsa Holland
There was a crease on his brow and he moved fractionally closer. Wiped the lone tear from her cheek and tasted it before she could turn her face away, mortified, to gain her composure.
He said nothing, just straightened in that way he had of standing so that the world was held back, his eyes blazing in an expressionless face.
“The caramel was exceptional,” she said quietly. For the first time, she was unable to lift her gaze up to his. “Perhaps you should take care of your purchases.”
“Of course.” There was no hesitation in his voice or manner.
He moved to the shopkeeper and came back with a few small pink paper bags, tied with red-and-white-striped ribbons.
He looked at the silver tray, surely noticing the missing caramel. While he’d paid for his purchases, she’d taken another of the sweets and placed it in her purse. That would be saved for later in the quiet and privacy of her room. At a time when the memories they unleashed could be savored before she again locked them away.
He motioned her to the door. They left the shop and stood on the street outside, the noise of the traffic and cool autumn air a welcome relief from the confronting aroma of memories inside.
Chapter 5
The sounds from the street seemed louder than before they’d entered the confectioner, her senses heightened and strangely raw. The noises around her jarred. Elspeth looked around at people in twos and threes promenading the street. Blackburn with that unfathomable gaze, scanned her and then the street, as if he was trying to assess what she was looking at. She could almost hear the self-interested cogs clicking in his brain.
Her hand lifted to a nonexistent jacket, unsatisfied when the comfort of a hem was not there to be found.
The yellow-striped dress presented her as much a piece of candy as the caramel in her purse, and embarrassment colored her cheeks at the realization.
“Are there any shops you would care to visit while we are here, Miss James?”
“No, thank you. Perhaps we should head back to the house?” That was what she needed, to get back home and put this all behind her.
Blackburn didn’t answer, instead he started to walk at a brisk pace.
She hurried to keep up with him.
“Walking will help you relax. Just breathe deeply.”
The melancholy lifted and anger spiked in its place at that arrogant know-it-all confidence in his voice.
“I do not need to relax and my breathing is working adequately. Despite what you may think, I am not given to emotional surges.”
“What exactly would constitute an emotional surge, Miss James? Sobbing in a sweetshop, perhaps?”
“I was not sobbing!”
“Do you shed a little tear over dessert, too, or do you only save that for confectionery?”
Anger burned what remained of those memories, and the pain they held, right out of her chest. She wanted to throttle him.
“I wish to return home.” She wished she never saw his show-nothing face again.
He slowed down and took up that damn shepherding stance, his arm lightly at her back.
“Stop directing me.”
He stopped and she did as well. He pulled out a handkerchief and held it out to her.
“What is this for?” she asked.
“In case you need to cry about the way I’m walking.”
She hated him!
Her muscles bunched up and she wanted to hit him. Hit him harder than she’d hit anything in her life.
“If I had a foil . . .” she growled at him.
As usual, when it suited him he ignored her. Yet there was something in his face, a hint of satisfaction. Blackburn pointed a little way down the road.
“Ah, there we are, just up ahead. If you will be patient I would like to visit the bookshop—if you can contain yourself, that is.”
“I’ll manage.” Her teeth clamped tight.
Up ahead was The Bond Street Bookshop, the shop’s name arched in large gold letters on the glass. Books were displayed in the window, weighty tomes including Sidney Lee’s A Life of William Shakespeare, and a small display of H.G Well’s War of the Worlds; a step led up to a large glossy green door.
Blackburn opened the door, which rang a discordant bell, gesturing for Elspeth to enter. She stepped over the threshold and was greeted with the smell of dusty old books and papers, along with the faint smell of leather: far safer than the scent of the confectioner. A rather plump balding man hurried forward, bowing profusely at Mr. Blackburn.
She rolled her eyes.
Blackburn wandered into a space and people ran to him. Everyone was eager to do whatever he pleased. Well, that partly explained his high-handed manner.
What was it that they saw?
He was handsome, certainly, yet it was more. There was an aura around him that made people want to serve him, want to find out how to please him.
It irked her.
If she was honest, she felt the pull of it as well. Maybe that was part of why she reacted so badly to his proposition.
He moved over to where she stood in front of a bookcase of periodicals.
“I have business elsewhere in the shop, are you comfortable browsing while I’m away? I have let the shop manager know you are to have anything you wish. He’ll put it on my account and send it to the house.”
Her shoulders tightened. She was not going to soften to him. The gesture was gentlemanly but, as with his shepherding of her, it felt too possessive. Maybe from a man who actually cared about her it would be different, it could be heady even. But given that she was a potential purchase, his manner had nothing to do with romance and everything to do with acquisition. Better to remember the callous man just now taunting her on the street.
“I have my own funds, but thank you for the offer.”
“Nonsense, you are my guest. Consider it a peace offering.”
Her muscles tightened some more and her chin rose.
“This isn’t an amorous outing. It is, in fact, a waste of our time.”
“The better we rub along Miss James, the easier this will be for both of us.”
“The Hurleys said it was ultimately my choice.”
“The Hurleys are the ones eager for us to rub along, I have no such requirement.”
She leaned in closer to him, a move that felt suddenly perilous as awareness sparked around them.
“Rub along well?” She pointed outside. “You call taunting me rubbing along well? I despise you…”
His eyes darkened. The air between them alluring and dangerous despite or perhaps because of the anger he generated in her.
“None of this,” she waved her hand about, “is going to make me change my mind. It is true that I have been seeking change, but I do not wish to become a Painted Sister, and I certainly do not want to become the possession of a man like you.”
“A man like me?” His brows came together.
“Overbearing, controlling.” Her hand reached for a jacket hem which wasn’t there.
“I think you forgot arrogant and self-aggrandizing.” His voice was bored.
She couldn’t imagine he cared one way or the other what she thought of him. He’d said as much already at each meeting. What she thought of him was of no consequence.
“That, too. Go do your business. I’ll not even know you are gone. The sooner you are done, the sooner I can get home and be finished with all of this.”
To demonstrate the point, she grabbed a book and marched over to a large brown leather tub chair, placed with its mate around a small table, designed for the specific purpose of lounging and reading in the shop.
He watched her as she settled, then proceeded to exit through a small door to the side of the counter.
Soon after, a tray of tea arrived—a special service requested by Mr. Blackburn she was told. She drank from her freshly poured cup and settled in to read.
After she drank several cups of tea, Elspeth put down her book in favor of browsing the bookshelves. There were so ma
ny books she would gladly take home. She took a small note pad and pencil out of her purse to write down books she liked.
The balding man came over. “Mr. Howard, the manager of the shop. Can I help you with anything? Help you find a particular title? Are you interested in the one you are holding?”
“No.” She slipped the book she was looking at back into the book case. “No. I’m just browsing really.”
“Mr. Blackburn said you were to have whatever you wanted.”
“No really, it’s not what I’m looking for.”
There was a call from a curtained space behind the counter and Mr. Howard excused himself.
The time was now starting to tick on, she wanted to get back home and let the Hurleys know there was still no change of mind regarding becoming Mr. Blackburn’s Painted Sister.
What was Blackburn doing back there?
Elspeth moved over to the small door Blackburn had gone through and opened it, seeing a dimly lit stairwell that led both up and down. She stepped on the landing and pulled the door closed behind her. Up or down?
Down the stairs there was a flash of light and muffled voices coming from behind what appeared to be a closed curtain. She could hear nothing from upstairs. She warred with herself over what to do next; go down those stairs and look for him, or go back through the closed door to the bookshop. Back to bookcases filled with topics that fed her passions from the comfort of an overstuffed armchair.
She could get one of those books that made her heart beat hard and sit in one of those comfy chairs scattered around the shop and get a good read in before he came back with his show-nothing chiseled face.
But she was not a girl to sit patiently reading and waiting; if she was, she would never have gone with the Hurleys all those years ago. Besides, he thought she didn’t have the aptitude for it and she ached to prove him wrong. She would show him that self-respect and courage were two different things.
Elspeth could see very little in the stairwell, which was lit only by a single gas lamp on the landing. The descent was two flights down and the light didn’t travel all the way to the bottom. She stumbled on the last step, caught herself then cautiously moved through the curtain separating the stairwell with the room on the other side.
There was no one there.
In front of her was a small area containing wrapping paper, old vases, and a few boxes of what could be stock for the bookshop. Beyond this was another opening covered by a curtain on brass rings and a rod.
Her heart raced as if she’d been fencing for hours. From further away she could hear Blackburn’s voice, as well as a woman’s—they were coming from deeper in this basement area. She could not stop now; she drew the weighty golden brocade curtain aside with determination and strode through, and came to an abrupt halt.
She was behind the counter of an illicit sex-shop.
Heat flared over her face as the contents of the establishment came to view, a leather tongued device on a circular wheel, the famed image beside it depicted its use as it stood position between a woman’s legs and the man tuned the wheel. Those leather tongues slapping the woman’s open sex had been hand painted on the image to stand out in a blushing pink flush.
She’d seen sexual apparatuses before; all the Canvases were trained in the art of pleasure and, as chaperon, so had she. However, that it was Blackburn down here while she was supposedly waiting demurely upstairs, her mind wasn’t able to process what it all meant.
Mortification, indignation and hot curiosity fought for her attention as she scanned the space. In front of the counter was a large oriental carpet, leather chesterfield and large potted palms in brass holders. Behind those were tables with boxes of what looked like photographs.
She stepped closer.
His voice was deeper and further into the space. Somewhere behind rows of cases containing harnesses, crops and various metal instruments. Was this what Blackburn wanted with his Painted Sister, from a woman?
Rows of shelves, glass cabinets, and hooks on the wall were filled with sexual apparatus, things to slip inside a woman, things to slip over a man. Ointments and oils, feathered things, wooden paddles, metal chains, manacles, and collars.
It was impossible not to walk through and look at the items which suggested the unimaginable. Items she and the canvases had seen drawings of, had been told about. Items that only those canvases who chose to belong to the dark collectors understood; the pleasure in studded whips and ornate chastity belts. It was impossible not to follow the sound of his voice deep in the interior.
Postcards flashed from their boxes as she walked past, photographs of breasts, derrieres, phalluses and thatches of dark intimate hair. In a line along one shelf hung black leather gloves with metal spikes in the palms and fingers, as well as cuffs, clamps and wooden paddles.
She continued further into the shop, her breath shallow and high in her chest, her throat as tight as if a palm was clasped around it. And still the dark deep rumble of his voice called her deeper, past the warren of shelves, along the back wall to a door that stood ajar, sharp light flooding back into the shop from the room’s interior.
Pulse racing, she pressed her palm flat on the door and pushed.
Blackburn stood talking with a young woman, a remarkably beautiful woman, who was nodding seriously to what he was saying.
The sound of her heart, boom, boom, boom, thudded behind her ears making it impossible to even hear the words he was saying.
A range of stone members lay between them.
Blackburn held a gruesome mask made of thick black, hard leather, shaped like an animal with holes for the eyes and a large open mouth with silver fangs. His hands moved over it, unlacing the back, then slipping the mask over his head.
The familiar, if not unwanted, sight of him disappearing broke the spell she was under, and she knew she had to run.
Elspeth went to turn. And blast if he didn’t glance up at exactly that time and see her there. Her face burst into a flaming heat. Their eyes met, his through the harsh leather mask, and held.
Run.
An irrational fear slammed through her and primal instinct rushed through her, propelling her to run, run for her life.
Her body was charged as she spun, stumbled and then bolted for the stairs.
Panic screamed in her chest, knowing that he would follow. She looked and, right behind her, there he was, mask removed and face as hard as that damn leather.
“Elspeth!”
She screeched, a wilder sound than she had ever made before in her life. She flew through the shop and behind the counter, then through the golden curtain to the little back room. Finally, she threw open the curtain to the stairwell, moving up the stairs like her life depended on it, her long skirts bunched up in her fists so she could take them two at a time. She reached the landing and lunged for the door, but Blackburn’s hand slammed over her shoulder to hold it closed.
Elspeth drew in a shuddering breath to scream to Mr. Howard on the other side, but Blackburn’s hand came over her mouth, muffling her call and pulling her hard up against him.
She struggled furiously while arms like steel bands held her tight.
His breath rushed out past her ear, hers labored through his palm.
“Calm down.” His voice was a beast’s growl, matching the mask he’d worn, the sound tightening her chest, cramping her lungs.
She twisted with all her strength and those iron strong arms clamped her tighter still.
“No!” her voice broke.
All sense of where she was and who was holding her slipped away; vertigo spun through her as the floor raced towards her. She could feel branches ripping through her skirts, scraping her thighs and sex in searing pain. Male voices shouted in the distance and her teeth bit into her lips to stay quiet.
“Elspeth.” Her name sounded so far away.
“Stay quiet, stay quiet,” the whimper leaked out of her.
Lips touched her temple, gentle and soft.
The cl
amp of steel bands eased.
“Shhhh. You’re alright. I have you,” a confident voice wrapped around her.
The dark was still there, cloaked around her as she listened to him breathing, felt it over her cheek, the side of her nose. Her body began to relax. Slowly, her sense came back to her, and she realized where she was.
So close.
Her feet were on the landing, and she felt the heat of Blackburn behind her, clasping her to him. A surprisingly comforting wall of warmth.
His palm lifted off her mouth.
His arms slowly let her go.
She gulped in air, felt dizzy. Her hands patted her skirt, she looked down. There was no rip. There were no branches.
The gas lamp on the landing popped and she cried out. Elspeth turned, then turned again, lost in the dark and on the edge of vertigo again.
He swore.
Her mouth opened to bellow.
In a sudden, harsh movement, he swung her back around so she was facing him.
The scream started to rise out of her throat. His mouth came down over hers, the sound caught against his lips. His hand firm behind her head, holding her to him as his other hand pinched her nose closed.
She wriggled to break contact, to breathe, as Blackburn pushed her back against the door, held her still with the weight of his body.
The grip on the back of her head increased.
She couldn’t get enough air. Then he breathed into her, once, twice, sending the air from his lungs into hers.
She bucked, and under it all a soft burning heat started to glow through her body at the feel of him, at the sheer force of his steel chest against hers, the hard immovable thighs that pressed on either side of hers keeping her still.
Somehow, with each breath he breathed into her, she lost the wild flood of fear, the mindless panic, and slowly relaxed against him.
Moments slowed and, strangely, the panic eased.
His hold loosened and his lips softened, until he held her lightly and lifted his mouth.
She leaned against his chest. Took the steady heat of him while her mind was blank, before all the thoughts came crashing in and she hated him again.