Improper Pleasure

by Charlotte Featherstone

  Improper Pleasure

  By Charlotte Featherstone

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Prologue

  London, 1876

  It was a day like any other. Yet there was something enchanted in the air that made Amelia think that this particular Tuesday would be very different from all the others.

  Despite the real unease gripping her, Amelia looked about her surroundings, recognizing the fact that everything was just as it ought to be. There was nothing, not even a warning softly whispered through the tree branches that predicted what was to come.

  Wiping away the dew on the bench, Amelia sat on the stone slab and looked around the little copse which was awakening to life after the long winter. With a sigh, she lifted her face to the cool breeze and closed her eyes, relishing the sounds of chirping birds, the rustle of the wind through the leafless tree branches and the promise of a beautiful spring day that scented the air. Even the funerary statues surrounding her seemed to glow with beauty, wonder and life.

  Most would say that a cemetery in the heart of London was a macabre and disturbing place to spend a few hours of solitude. But Amelia found comfort in the quiet, in the privacy of her little spot, as if it were her very own garden.

  How long it was before she heard the sound of carriage wheels clacking against cobbles, she had no idea. Despite the dew smudging her spectacles and the black lace veil she used to cover her face, Amelia could make out a well-appointed carriage with shining black lacquered doors and an elaborate gold crest. Tassels, fixed in the center of the window shades, swayed gently back and forth, drawing her eye to the lavish length of gold bullion fringe that edged the scalloped contours of the crème velvet shades. She recognized the carriage and the regal crest it bore. Knew the features of the occupant as well as she knew her own.

  Yes, she knew the man inside the carriage, but did he know her? Could he see her? Did he know who it was standing amid the statutes with her face veiled?

  There was a flicker of darkness—a shadow—that moved across the pale interior, compelling her to look deep within the carriage. She had never seen him like this, at this time of day. It had never been just the two of them, looking at each other. And even though a lane and fence lay between them, Amelia had never felt more intimate with him than she did now.

  The shadow shifted once more in the depths of the carriage interior. Then she saw him, another movement of sifting light that revealed him and his black, wild-looking hair and penetrating eyes that seemed to burn straight into her as if he could see through her lace disguise.

  What she wouldn’t trade in order to have him see her—to notice that she existed.

  He settled back against the cushions and the carriage moved on, rolling down the cobbles. Amelia could no longer see his beautiful face, and she was glad for it. For this obsession was only one-sided. It could never be more than that—a secret, forbidden fantasy—no matter how much she wished for it to be otherwise.

  Turning, Amelia walked away from the copse, toward the path that would lead her back to the gate—and the reality of her life.

  Chapter One

  He could not recall the precise date when he had first glimpsed her through his carriage window, yet that day was still so fresh, so evocative in his mind. Time seemed to stop as she stood aglow in the center of a glittering sunbeam that had found its way through the gently waving tree limbs.

  As his carriage had bounced and swayed its way down Swain’s Lane, he watched the lone figure of the woman, her head bent as if she were reading, or praying, or perhaps even silently weeping. He had fancied her a mystical faerie or angel as she sat down on a bench beneath a stone seraph, the stippled sunlight dancing off her black bonnet and netted veil. He had been unable to move his gaze from her, a lone figure amidst the statues.

  “Stop the coach!” he ordered his driver.

  How long he had his coachman hold his team of blacks in the middle of the lane while he watched her that day, he had no idea. How long had he been waiting now, at the gates of Highgate Cemetery, desiring a glimpse of her, he knew not.

  Since that fateful day when he had first discovered her, he had made the weekly trek to Highgate, hoping for another stolen glimpse of her. That was nearly a month ago.

  She came only once a week. On Tuesday mornings she arrived, dressed in a drab woolen gray gown, the skirts of which were bustled high in the back. Her long cloak was plain and unadorned, giving nothing away of her shape. Her bonnet, a simple black confection, was tied primly beneath her chin. Black satin ties whipped in the breeze beneath the long lace veil she used to cover her face.

  Once a week he saw her from beyond the bars of the iron fence. Once a week he silently watched her—studied her, never allowing himself to give in to his impulse and go to her.

  Once a week he allowed himself to see her. The other six days he was consumed by thoughts of her.

  The sound of his mount’s reins jangling in the quiet of the peaceful morning brought him abruptly back to the present. The gelding, stepping sideways, snorted and pranced, anxious to be cantering off to Hyde Park and his morning run on Rotten Row. “Just another moment,” Adrian muttered, tightening his gloved hand around the leather reins. “She has only just arrived.”

  Pressing forward in the saddle, he inched to the right and saw her walking amongst the seraphs that stood sentry around the grove. Find me beyond these black bars and see me, he whispered to her.

  Somehow she heard him from across the sunlit space that separated them. Slowly, she looked at him over her shoulder. With a small nod and tip of his hat, he acknowledged her, then pressed his knees into the gelding’s sides. She was aware. He would let that awareness grow into something stronger—need. And when he was certain her need was at least half as strong as his, he would go to her. Only then would he learn everything there was to know about this woman who made him dream such beautiful, erotic dreams throughout the night.

  She was playing a very dangerous game by returning to Highgate week after week. Yet she could not stop herself from coming, from experiencing those few minutes of his undivided attention. He would never know how she clutched those memories of him to her breast. Those minutes alone with him, despite the distance, were so very dear to her—as if she were the only woman in the world to him.

  Yes, but what if he was to discover what you are, the nasty voice inside her asked. What if, contrary to her beliefs, he had recognized her? Her life would be ruined. Yet here she sat, wishing to see him, feeling her blood heat at just the thought of him.

  What a fool she was to delude herself that he would feel anything for her, least of all desire. She was not a beautiful woman. She was plain. She wore spectacles. She was nobody. That was her reality.

  This morning, she had neglected to wear her spectacles in hope she might actually come face to face with him. But he had not come today, and as a consequence she had stumbled about the grove half blind.

  Grumbling over her stupidity and unusual pride, Amelia stood up from the bench and reached for the strings of the reticule that dangled from her wrist. As she looked down, a blurred image of a gloved hand resting atop her fingers swam before her. With a gasp she looked up and faltered back a step.

  “At last we have come face to face.”

  “I didn’t think you were coming today,” she whispered. As soon as she said the words, she wanted to kick herself for being so foolish—so transparently needy.

  He took a step closer to her, she felt his gloved hand encase hers before he raised it to his mouth. “I have been
here all morning, waiting.”

  Reluctantly she turned her gaze from his face in order to watch his lips press against her gloved knuckles. “I didn’t see you.”

  “I did not wish for you to see me. I wanted to watch you unseen. I wanted to discover everything I could about you before this moment.”

  What had he discovered? Did he know her secret? Panic gripped her and her fingers began to tremble in his hand. She tried to pull away, to run, but his long fingers encased her palm, holding her tight.

  “Tell me your name,” he asked in a silky voice that felt like a caress—a sensual, tempting touch she felt snaking along her body.

  She shouldn’t be doing this. He was a lord, a peer of the realm. Again, she reminded herself that she was no one, and if he were to discover her identity and expose her secret, she would be thrust back to the same horrific world she had once crawled out from.

  “Your name?”

  “Emmy,” she told him, using the name her father had called her when she was a small child. He cocked his head to the side and studied her with his blue-green eyes.

  “I am Adrian, Emmy.”

  She shuddered at the intimacy of hearing her voice murmur his name; wished she possessed the strength to say it aloud, but she couldn’t bring herself to.

  “Who are you, Emmy?”

  “No one,” she replied, savoring the gentle touch of his fingers running along the back of her hand.

  How many nights had she dreamt of this, his touch, his large warm hands caressing her? So many nights. So many long, cold—empty—nights.

  “Do you come here to write?” he asked. “I’ve seen you with pen and book.”

  “No.”

  “An artist, then? You study the statuary as if you were a connoisseur.”

  “I am just a woman.”

  “Not just. If you were just any sort of female I would not be here. I would not have come every week for over a month just to see you and watch you from afar. No, not just any woman, Emmy.”

  “I…I must leave,” she stuttered, pulling away from him, fearing her weakness. It frightened her, this unbridled response to him. It terrified her to know it was not only her body responding to this man, but her mind, her heart—her soul.

  “Don’t run, Emmy. We have both waited for this moment.”

  “I…I can’t.”

  “Next week you will be here. You won’t run and never come back to me?”

  When she did not immediately answer, he brought her chest up to his and held her close. Her body absorbed the heat radiating from his broad chest, chasing away the dampness of the morning. “You will promise me now, that next week you will be here. You have to return, Emmy because I have to see you. I have to.”

  Her heart soared upon hearing his low, fervent words. Dazed, Amelia nodded, unable to do anything else but clasp his words to her breast and hold them tight. One more week, she told herself, just once more, and then she would never again return to Highgate.

  Chapter Two

  Fog hovered above the wet grass, swirling until it wrapped itself around her body like a shroud. The light from the sun, struggling to break free of the black clouds that hung low overhead, cast her in an incandescent glow that made her appear more ghostly spectre than woman.

  As if in a trance, Adrian pushed open the black and gilt iron gate. It protested on its hinges, but with a scrape along the fieldstone path, the gate swung open. He stepped into the cemetery, his feet carrying him over to Emmy.

  The mist grew thicker, engulfing her so he nearly lost sight of her in the gloomy cocoon of fog. But then a cloud parted, revealing her as she sat on the bench, her head lowered, the long black veil billowing softly in the crisp spring breeze.

  She was holding a book and he saw that her hands were bare. His gut reacted to the sight of those small white hands. It was strange that such a simple thing should arouse him so.

  As he neared her, his gaze remained focused on her delicate, pale hands; his mind filled with images of her palms sliding along his chest and traversing over his belly. Three little brown freckles lay enticingly between her thumb and index finger, spaced far enough apart so that he could kiss each one. He wanted to fall to his knees and clutch her hand to his mouth, kissing the freckles then stroking his tongue along each one, wetting her hand for the easy glide along his skin. He imagined that hand—her left hand—with its freckles, sliding up his shaft. He wanted to feel her fingers stroking him, soothing his flesh that burned. It had been too long since he enjoyed the simple pleasure of touching—of being touched.

  He stood beside her, looking down at her bent head which was covered with her plain bonnet. “I despise the dawn. I loathe it with a passion. It is only the thought of meeting you that draws me out of my bed to brave the morning light.”

  She raised her head and studied him from behind her veil. “I adore the morn. It is a time of peace and tranquility. A part of the day for quiet reflection and memories. It is truly the only time that is entirely mine.”

  What drove her here? Was she grieving for a fiancé? A lover? Had she been meeting someone else here all this time? The thought tore him apart and he was amazed at how damned jealous he felt. She was his….

  “Walk with me?” he asked, offering her his arm while fighting to contain the riotous emotions inside him. He would not think of other men, would not imagine her waiting here in this secluded spot for any man other than him.

  She stopped them before a weathered statue of a woman kneeling, her stone hands cupped before her in supplication. The statue was garbed in a long flowing robe while a veil shielded her features.

  “This one is my favourite.”

  He felt those words, said in Emmy’s quiet voice. He felt that touch as he watched her hand, slight and freckled, skate down the length of the wind-worn sculpture. He was entranced by that hand gliding over the shoulder and waist of the statue. It was as if he could feel that same hand caressing his naked flesh. And he burned. Christ, every inch of his flesh grew hot as he imagined Emmy’s white little fingers trailing along his body.

  Touch me that way, he wanted to say. Look at me that way. But he kept silent, and instead allowed himself to become mesmerized by the sight of Emmy’s gentle hands and imagining her soothing touch roaming along his aching, lonely body.

  “How forlorn she looks residing over this tangled patch of overgrown shrubbery and brambles. It is as though she has been utterly abandoned—sentenced to years of loneliness until she crumbles to dust. No one will remember her and her presence here. No one but me.”

  Reaching for Emmy’s hand, he covered it with his, watching with a sense of power how his large hand engulfed her little one. Never had his body been so hard with anticipation, with passion and simple seduction. Never had he felt a more visceral connection to a woman. It was more than lust that drew him to her.

  “From the moment I first glimpsed her through the brush she captured my heart. She has been left all alone, abandoned to this beautiful but lonely spot.”

  Had Emmy been abandoned? Left alone in the world by a husband taken too soon, or a man who no longer cared for her? He experienced a mad, almost desperate urge to ask her, but then she spoke, her voice so quiet and without artifice.

  “It is her face, I think, that draws me. It is veiled and concealed from us, yet one can imagine what she looks like beneath the veil and her crown of blossoms.”

  He stepped closer to her so that his coat caressed her cloak and the toe of his boots touched the tips of her half boots. “What is the purpose of the veil, do you think?”

  “I know little of art.” She smiled tremulously and lowered her head, as if she were ashamed of that admission. He tipped her face up and brushed the pad of his thumb along her cheek as he looked through the lace to the blue of her eyes.

  “You needn’t know anything of art to appreciate it, Emmy. You only need to feel it and experience the emotion the work gives you.”

  “Perhaps the sculptor thought her too beautifu
l to be standing in such a sorrowful place. Perhaps the veil is there so we do not see her lack of beauty, so that we look beyond the physical and into the heart of her, so that we may take the time to know her as something more than a physical beauty. What do you see in her?”

  “Sadness. Loneliness. Need.” He was not looking at the statue, but at Emmy, her shrouded face showing those very same things. “She needs to be understood and loved by a man who would protect her. A man who could pleasure her. A man who would guard her secrets and not allow her to crumble to dust.”

  A faint smile broke from her lips and she lowered her head to study her hands which were clasped before her. He tipped her chin up once again, wishing he could lift the veil from her face to see just how beautiful Emmy truly was. For he knew she was.

  She had eyes a man could drown in. Lips made to be kissed for hours and designed to provide immense pleasure to a man. Her skin was the sort men wanted to touch over and over, and each time he would marvel at the softness, the suppleness, the astonishing purity of it.

  She looked at the statue once again. “Because thou has the power and own’st the grace to look through and behind this mask of me, and behold my soul’s true face. The words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

  He pressed closer, felt her sway ever so slightly into him. He wanted to touch her. To feel her beneath his hands before she melted into the gray fog, leaving him alone, frustrated, yearning to see her once again.

  “Emmy, you cannot know what you do to me with your honesty. It empowers me,” he said, unable to control his thoughts. “I can’t explain it. You give me such strength. Somehow you have been able to reach deep within me and touch the man. It is more than a physical attraction between us. It is something I have never before experienced. Something powerful and beautiful—”

  “Sssh, don’t say it,” she begged, pressing her cold fingertips atop his lips. “Words are so very difficult to take back and forget. Memories fade with time, but words never do. They linger in our minds, our hearts, haunting us. Right now, silence and memories would serve us much better.”