“I must protect Bliss from her bad decision. For all her history as a courtesan, she is a simple girl.” Noelle recalled the tears with which Bliss begged for her help. She’d done wrong but didn’t know how to fix it. “She sees the world through childlike eyes, as if all people are good. It was the influence of her maid that caused her to take the piece. If anyone is to blame and deserves time in Newgate, it is that woman.”
Brenna fell silent for a long moment to ponder the information as Noelle’s mind flicked to Gavin.
A little tremor tickled her skin. The adventuress he knew would have pulled him down to his bunk and torn open his shirt to expose his magnificent chest. She would have taken him into her body and let him show her all the pleasures one found outside the cold marital bed.
It was the Lady Seymour in her who could not take a man to her bed, in spite of her deep desire to do so.
But not just any man could relieve the ache in her body. Mister Blackwell had shaken her to her foundation and shown her what desire was. And unchecked desire had led many women to ruin.
If she found herself unwed and with a child growing in her belly, the scandal would knock the entire Harrington family tree onto their collective rumps, and they would be shunned by society.
The elder members would weather the storm. Wealth and titles always opened doors. But what of her young and unwed female cousins who were not yet launched into society? Would her fall from grace drag them down, too?
Finally, Brenna sighed. “There is only one thing you can do, my dear.” She made a dramatic pause. “You must become his courtesan.”
Noelle’s jaw dropped. “Have you lost your wits?”
Brenna smiled widely. “What choice do you have?” She indicated the flowers with her hand. “He is determined. Eventually, he will begin to ask questions and want to know the real reason why you climbed through his window.”
Noelle groaned. “I suspect he believes I was looking for a lover, then panicked. At the moment, he has no connection between my appearance and the necklace.” She stared blankly at the ceiling. A spiderweb fluttered in a corner of the room, moved by the breeze from an open window. “Can I sell my innocence to a stranger to keep Bliss safe? I know little about her. She might have a long history of thievery. She could come from an entire family of thieves.”
“Do you believe that?” Brenna asked.
How easy it would be if she did. She could confess her deed and allow the magistrate to decide both their fates. “I do not. She was far too upset to make that plausible. Besides, why wouldn’t she take the necklace and flee? Its value alone could allow a thieving family to retire into obscurity. No. It was an impulsive act. I will have to keep her secret.”
While Brenna stared at the flowers, Noelle pondered a way out of this fix. Of course she could not become his courtesan, but perchance there was another solution. If she could figure out exactly what it was. A powerful attraction wasn’t reason to throw off years of semiproper behavior to frolic between the sheets with a most improper man.
Even if it meant it could save a life?
“I think I shall take a few days to contemplate what to do about Mister Blackwell,” Noelle said, her heart heavy. “I cannot rush into a rash decision. Becoming a courtesan is not a bargain one enters into lightly.”
Gavin worked until nightfall, hoping to get the sloop ready by morning. He’d sent his workers home when daylight faded enough to make dangling from the rigging dangerous. But it wasn’t just the danger of falling to the deck on his head that finally forced him to quit. It was thoughts of Noelle and the unfinished business between them. He knew if he died of a broken skull, he’d never know the pleasure of seducing Lady Seymour, and that would be the real tragedy.
He grinned and silenced a happy whistle as he walked the short distance to the stable to retrieve his horse. The evening was quiet but for the sounds of revelry from a tavern one street over and a few crickets in song. The area was what one could call seedy, and not the type of neighborhood for Noelle to visit unchaperoned and without an armed escort. But as it seemed to be her wont to stumble into mischief, she hadn’t allowed something such as traveling to a dangerous part of London to deter her from seeking him out.
Noelle. His extremities tightened with the image of her smoky eyes and delightful mouth. She was certainly an unusual mixture of prickly quills and the softest silk. One had to traverse the barbs to get to the latter, but it was well worth the effort for a chance to taste her mouth.
So caught up was he in his musings about what she would look like sans clothing, he failed to hear running footfalls behind him until a footpad was upon him.
Gavin spun about just in time to take a cudgel to his left brow. Thankfully the blow was ill-aimed and glanced off his head. He dropped back and managed to keep his footing. He faced his attacker and quickly realized the blow had been meant not to kill but to weaken his defenses. The giant of a man could have killed him quite easily.
A second man rushed from the darkness, and then another. There was a time in his youth when the odds would have been against the men, but age had certainly slowed him down, and his fighting skills had grown rusty.
He had no time to clear his head and come up with a plan to outwit the footpads when he caught a fist to the chin. Fireflies danced in his eyes. The man landing the blow was huge in both height and proportions. He didn’t wait before taking Gavin to his knees with a ham-sized fist to the side of his face.
Gavin briefly considered staying down and letting them have his purse. Unfortunately, his pride wouldn’t allow such a thing.
Wobbling back to his feet, he felt one of the men catch his arms behind him, and the stranger with the cudgel circled around to bend and look into his face. The sour smell of an unwashed body drew Gavin upright, past the pain to his face. He met the man’s eyes with defiance. Any sign of weakness would please the trio, and he had no intention of adding to their fun.
“Where’s the necklace?” the cudgel wielder asked, his breath a foul mix of rotten teeth and ale.
“Necklace?” Through the tufts of linen currently occupying his muddled brain, he realized quite quickly these were no common footpads, trolling for any hapless victim who had the misfortune to cross their path. They clearly thought he possessed a treasure they wanted back. “I have no necklace.”
Ham-Fist cuffed him again, and it was the hands on Gavin’s arms that kept Gavin upright. Cudgel-Wielder chuckled. The two resembled each other enough to be kin.
“The necklace with the purdy blue stones.” Cudgel-Wielder tipped his head and stared. At least Gavin assumed he was staring. It was difficult to see anything in the darkness and through one good eye. The other was already swollen shut. By morning, the eye would be of little use. “Ye have it, and we want it.”
Gavin opened his mouth to protest, then snapped it shut. Could these dimwits be speaking about the necklace Charles had discovered the morning after Noelle’s visit? The item was a sapphire and diamond confection. The question remaining was how they could know about that particular necklace. It had spent most of its existence in Bath, decorating the neck of the lovely and sharp-tongued Lady Hortense.
His cousin had brought the item to London to repair its unusual clasp, but Gavin was certain Charles had it tucked away for safekeeping. There was no possible chance the trio had seen it in any public setting.
“Perhaps you gents should give me further details.” He peered up at Ham-Fist and relaxed his body in a sign he was cooperating. “I cannot recall the item of which you speak.”
Ham-Fist and Cudgel-Wielder darted befuddled glances at each other, then began a full minute of angry whispers back and forth. They outmanned him with brawn but were unarmed with wits. They had obviously been hired for the former.
Finally, they turned back to him. “The leidy stole the necklace with the spider clasp. The leidy with the pretty hair,” Ham-Fist said slowly, as if speaking thus would help Gavin to understand their request.
Noelle had lovely hair. Noelle stole Charles’s necklace? His confusion grew. He had a lot to contemplate with this curious turn of events. However, first he needed to get free of the trio and their desire to beat him senseless.
With his relaxed stance, the man holding his arms had loosened his hold slightly. It was enough for Gavin to pitch forward, breaking the hold. He came up under Cudgel-Wielder’s chin with his head, hitting him hard enough to loosen teeth.
The man let out a pained yelp as Gavin gripped his arms, swung him about, and shoved him into Ham-Fist. The two men staggered back. Gavin dipped down when the third, thinner man made an attempt to reclaim him, and launched the man over his back to the ground. The stranger landed with a choked grunt.
Seeing his opportunity, Gavin ran for the stable while his attackers untangled themselves and tried to regain their feet.
Thankfully, the stable boy, Elot, was efficient as always and had his horse saddled and waiting. The boy lay curled up in a corner of the stall. The lad barely opened an eye when Gavin rushed inside. Gavin pulled the beast from the stall and swung onto his back, kicking the horse into motion before he was fully settled in the saddle.
“My thanks, young man.”
The sound of running feet caused him to let out a whoop as he broke through the open stable doors. Cudgel-Wielder took the full force of Gavin’s boot to the chest. He cried out and fell backward into a post.
Gavin didn’t look back but bent over the bay’s neck and plunged into the comforting cover of darkness. The trio of attackers was quickly left behind, with nothing but shouted curses to show him their displeasure.
Normally, winning a fight would give him immense satisfaction and bring a confident grin. Not this time. Something stank tonight, and it wasn’t rotting fish bobbing lifeless on the Thames.
The game was over. It was time to get answers.
Chapter Eight
Noelle wandered the darkened halls and rooms of the
Harrington town house until well past midnight, unable to find any relief from the heavy burden of her thoughts. The house felt stuffy, and her body responded to the lack of any noticeable circulation of air with a thin sheen of perspiration dampening the entirety of the skin beneath her corset.
She could not imagine lowering herself to become the unwilling courtesan of an American colonist, yet if she couldn’t discover a way to convince him she was not his erstwhile lover, the consequences could be deadly.
Certainly, should she agree to the disturbing proposal, her body would keep him occupied and his mind off searching for the real reason for her nocturnal visit. The necklace. Maybe he hadn’t put her together with the sudden appearance of the sapphire beauty in his room. She could be worrying for naught.
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. It wasn’t her body that took issue with her becoming his courtesan. He made her feel hot and cold mingled together in a mishmash of sensations. How easily his touch caused her to lose any measure of sanity and sent her rushing eagerly down a path toward ruin. Like all young women of her class, she’d been raised with the deeply ingrained knowledge that a lady saves her virginity for her wedding night. She doesn’t fall headlong into the arms of a handsome groom, she doesn’t allow a wicked lord to take a close-up peek at her drawers, and she doesn’t get caught in the bushes with her father’s secretary. Innocence is the highest gift one gives to the man with whom she will spend her life.
Even if the marriage is unhappily arranged and she despises him with everything in her, a husband, and no other, is still entitled to that gift.
Regardless of the fact Noelle planned never to wed, she still had the virginity rule buried in her mind. She was fairly certain the layers of clothing women had been forced to wear throughout the ages had been specifically designed by some outraged father as an added barrier to male seduction. A man had to be determined to find his way clear down to the skin.
Even now, without boned corsets and hoops to tightly bind a body, a man still had to be resolute in his seduction.
Dragging a hand over a tabletop, she wandered through the dining room and back into the hallway. The staff had gone to bed, and the house was silent.
There had been a time in the not-too-distant past when she and her sister Margaret raced down these halls, their boots tapping on polished marble and wood as their mother called for the nanny to get them under control. Now, the house was hers alone, and she ached with loneliness.
Her shoulders slumped. No Margaret, no Eva, and now no Brenna. Brenna’s parents had shuffled her out of London to visit an ailing cousin and she wouldn’t be back for several days. Any decisions Noelle made about Mister Blackwell from this moment forward would be hers alone.
Noelle gathered her skirts and headed through the back of the house and out into the cool night air in the garden. Though she knew wandering alone in the garden at night wasn’t her best idea, she couldn’t stand the confinement of the house for another moment.
Mister Blackwell would certainly find her discomfiture amusing. He’d likely puff up his chest, knowing she couldn’t get him out of her mind. Lord help her if he ever discovered how he made her body ache in inappropriate places.
She had wandered halfway down the short path when a feeling came over her that something was gravely amiss. She stopped dead and listened for sounds out of place.
With only the flickering light of a distant streetlamp to illuminate the moonless evening, she darted a glance up and down the path, her heart pulsing wildly in her chest.
There was nothing to give her pause other than the odd notion she was being watched. She started to dismiss the thought as foolishness, until she heard a footstep crunch on a stick near a patch of lilac bushes.
Panic sent cold dread through her bones.
Realizing her servants and the residents on either side of the town house were probably tucked in their beds, leaving her without rescue should a thief be prowling the night, she lifted her skirts and walked briskly back toward the house.
She had managed to get within feet of the kitchen door when she slammed sideways into an immovable object. A large, obviously male object. Arms came up to catch her as she bounced backward and lost her footing. She let out a shriek and flailed her slippered foot. A grunt followed contact with some part of her attacker’s leg.
“Let me go,” she cried, and opened her mouth to scream. The scream became a muffled squeal when the man clamped a gloved hand over her mouth. She raised her eyes to get a good look at what was probably the last face she’d ever see.
She slumped with relief.
“Hush,” Gavin whispered. His eyes danced with amusement. “We wouldn’t want to awaken the neighbors.”
Noelle’s eyes widened, outrage replacing fear. She jerked free and slapped him several times on his hands and arms before settling back to stew.
“How dare you lurk around my garden in the middle of the night? You gave me a fright,” she snapped before casting a glance toward the windows and quieting her voice. If she was discovered trysting with him, no matter how innocent the meeting, she’d be ruined. “I demand you leave at once, lest someone see you.”
His soft chuckle boiled her blood. “You broke into my room first, Milady. I thought it fitting to return the favor.”
Footsteps along the sidewalk beyond the iron fence sent Noelle into a second panic. It was the night watchman taking his nightly stroll about the neighborhood.
She slammed both hands on Gavin’s chest, shoved him back into the shadows of a narrow hedge, and pressed one finger to her lips in warning. If he made any sound to expose their whereabouts, she swore to herself that he’d suffer greatly. Thankfully, he remained silent as a tomb, but for the sound of his light breaths near her forehead.
The watchman wandered off, unperturbed.
It took a few deep gulps of air to slow her own breathing enough to allow her to speak. When she did, he faced her full wrath. “I told you I did not break into your room,” she hissed between clenched teeth.
“When will you get that through your stubborn head?”
A hand slid up to caress her spine, and he tipped his head to brush his mouth against her temple. “Never.”
Her face burned. If she didn’t regain control of herself, and soon, she’d end up bearing the man a passel of bastard children, her life in shambles.
“Clearly you have mistaken me for someone else.” She shook out her skirts and tried not to think about his mouth, his eyes, his finely sculpted muscles; anything that he might use to get into her drawers. “You were very well into your cups and barely standing upright.”
The moment the words left her lips, she let out a gasp and clamped a hand over her mouth, horrified.
A grin tugged the corners of his mouth. “How could you know I’d been drinking if you weren’t there, My Lady?” He crossed his arms and leaned back on his heels. “Let us forget the charade and get to the business of you making good on your offer.”
Her fists clenched. “Oh! You are despicable!”
The man had no sense of honor or decorum. His shirt strained over defined, muscled arms. Clearly, wearing a coat wasn’t part of the costume of a prowler. She noticed the garden’s ancient oak tree was close enough to the house for a climb through her second-floor bedroom window.
She grimaced. “You were plotting to break in and seduce me in my very own bed. Had I not been walking about instead of sleeping, you’d have been free to wander into my room and pounce on me before I could awaken and defend myself.”
Gavin shrugged. “That was not my most pressing reason for coming. However, we can discuss your seduction after I have my questions answered.”
“You are a cad, a bounder,” she whispered angrily.
“I am.” He nodded. “Now that we’ve settled that matter, my little thief, we have some arrangements to make.” He gave her a thorough once-over. “You broke into my cousin’s town house, sneaked into my room, kissed me at least twice, and offered to be my courtesan. I must say, I knew you noble classes like to pretend to be proper while secretly playing lascivious games, but I was quite stunned by the scandalous offer. However, in spite of the unorthodox manner in which the offer was made, I accept.”
The Accidental Courtesan Page 8