by Robin Schone
A whore’s woman.
A killer’s woman.
The two footmen clumsily lowered the brown leather trunk off the cab.
It was no doubt filled with drab, colorless clothes that befitted a drab, colorless spinster.
Each grasping an end of the trunk, the footmen walked underneath the arch where Anne and his butler had disappeared.
Michael glanced at the silk drape in his hand, at the pale, transparent blue that was reminiscent of Anne’s eyes.
He imagined her dressed in beautiful clothes. Revealing clothes. Clothes that defined her innate sensuality instead of her marital status.
A hand fisted inside his chest.
The identity of the man she had cared for a long, long time ago had been so painfully obvious.
Beautiful, cocksure Michel des Anges. A French courailleur who had seemingly escaped the threat of the Franco-Prussian War merely to take English ladies for the ride of their lives.
He had been so confident he would not be identified. So very sure he could finish what the boy he had once been could not.
Michael bitterly begrudged the man Anne Aimes had cared for—the man who had died in a blazing inferno—whereas she did not in the least begrudge the woman who haunted his past.
He was not used to generosity. Or kindness.
Anne had unstintingly given him both.
Distant steps traversed the marble stairs; not-so-distant steps echoed down the hallway toward the sitting room where Michael awaited Anne.
His spinster was a fighter.
Diane had been a beautiful woman whose reckless passion had matched his. They had shared laughter. Champagne. And sex.
Everything else had been superfluous.
When the man destroyed Diane’s passion, she had possessed nothing more enduring to sustain her.
Anne was strong as well as passionate. Intelligent. Familiar with death and suffering.
She might survive.
If she did, she would need more confidence to see her through the aftermath.
He could give her that.
The air behind Michael stirred. He could sense his butler, Raoul. But he could feel Anne in the very blood that pulsed through his veins.
His erection was instantaneous.
“Mademoiselle Aimes, monsieur.”
Michael dropped the curtain and turned toward the only female alive who couldn’t imagine another woman not wanting him.
Her pale blue eyes were guarded, her shoulders squared. She had not allowed Raoul to take her cloak.
Only sheer strength of will kept her from turning and running from the force of her desires.
Anne’s passion tonight was his enemy, as in the end it had been Diane’s enemy. It would make her nervous and restless.
He had to circumvent her thoughts before they led them both down a road that neither would enjoy traversing.
Michael smiled; behind his practiced charisma, he plotted. “You came.”
“As you see.”
But he did not see … how far he would go in order to restrain her.
He did not see how far she would venture on this sexual odyssey that both their needs had catapulted them into.
He did not see how long it would be before she pieced together the pattern of deception and seduction, and her passion turned to hatred.
Deliberately he played on her kindness—as he had earlier played on her sensuality. “Will you be seen with me outside these walls, Anne Aimes?”
His question took her by surprise. As it was supposed to.
Her expression took Michael by surprise. As well as the pain it engendered.
Even she hesitated to be openly seen with a man who bore the scars of his past.
Anne tilted her chin, denying the horror that had flitted across her face. As she denied her feminine attractions. But they existed—both the physical appeal she held for him and the repugnance he incited in her. “Yes. Of course I will be seen with you.”
Michael shrugged off the hurt. What he did to Anne would cause far more pain than any she could inflict upon him.
“Then I want to show you something. Something that is quite extraordinary. If you dare,” he challenged.
Anne rubbed the peacock blue velvet between her gloved fingers and silently damned both herself and Michel.
If she had known that he would take her to a dressmaker she would not have accompanied him.
She felt hurt. And used.
He had tricked her. Worse, he was obviously ashamed of her.
She pushed away the bolt of cloth. “I would prefer something more subdued, please. Perhaps a navy blue.”
Michel and Madame René, a petite, autocratic old woman with shocking red hair who wore a collar of pearls worthy of a queen, exchanged looks.
Anne correctly interpreted their silent communication.
She was an unsophisticated, gauche woman, their glances said, who did not know the slightest thing about what was fashionable.
And she did not.
But she knew how harshly the world judged an unmarried woman.
She knew that wearing peacock blue velvet would not make her less of a spinster.
It would not make her younger.
It would not make her more attractive.
What a fool she had been, to agree to stay with a man she knew nothing about other than that he had a perfect body and knew exactly how to make a woman forget she was not similarly blessed.
“Mademoiselle, we will take your measurements and then we will decide, oui?” The modiste held up a small, slim hand. A large diamond glittered on her right forefinger. “Claudette, take mademoiselle’s reticule—Angelique, her gloves—Babette, her cloak—ah, there is no need to worry, mademoiselle; Monsieur Michel will watch over your things.”
Short of creating a public row, there was little Anne could do to restrain madame’s feminine army. In due order her reticule was pried out of her clenched fingers; her gloves tugged off of her hands, and her cloak whisked away.
“Voilà,” Madame René said briskly. “If you will step this way, s’il vous plait.”
Anne found herself ushered behind a maroon velvet curtain into a plain, claustrophobically small dressing room. A crystal gas chandelier hissed and popped overhead. “There is no need to take my measurements, Madame René. I can tell you what they are.”
The modiste, shorter than Anne by several inches, reached up and pinched her left nipple.
The air froze in Anne’s lungs. It escaped in a blast of outrage. “How dare you—”
“Non, non, mademoiselle, this gown, it is not made to fit you ici—here—see? The wool—it balloons over your breast. Claudette! Ah, there you are, ma chère. Bring the new corset—the French one—that arrived yesterday. Now, mademoiselle, we will take off our dress.”
Anne stepped back from the modiste’s small, busy hands before they took even more shocking liberties. The hard press of a wall stopped her short. “I will send you my measurements, madame. Monsieur and I have a previous engagement that we will be late for. Pardon me ….”
Madame René did not step aside.
The modiste cocked her head, a conspiratorial gleam in her bright, tawny eyes. “It is Monsieur Michel, oui?” she whispered. “He is a much changed man. You dress the drab ensemble when you are with him, non? To attract less attention. No woman wants to draw the eye when she is with such a man, oui?”
Anne’s head jerked back. “You are mistaken, madame.”
“Non, I do not think so, mademoiselle. If I were, then you would want to please him, to be la belle for him. You would want every man to look at you when he is at your side, to say, quelle une femme incroyable—what an incredible woman! What a man he must be to possess a woman like her!”
“Monsieur des Anges is a remarkably handsome man,” Anne said icily. Despite his scars. “He is quite capable of holding his own in any company.”
“If you say so, mademoiselle. He is rumored to be built like un étalon—a stallion.” Madame’s mo
uth wrinkled in a moue of distaste. “But those scars ….”
The ice in Anne’s blood thawed; molten heat infused her.
Michel was built like a stallion.
“I am not ashamed of Monsieur des Anges,” she insisted, masking mortification with haughtiness.
Madame shrugged. The Gaelic gesture was more telling than words.
Clearly the modiste did not believe her.
“Madame René, I am not …” Anne forced the words out—painful words, hurtful words, truthful words. “I am not an attractive woman.”
A satisfied smile broke across the woman’s wizened face. “That is before you come to me, the so talented Madame René. After I finish with you, mademoiselle, you will be très magnifique!”
Anne raised an eyebrow ironically. “And how much will you charge for this miraculous transformation?”
“A fortune, mademoiselle. But if you did not possess it, you would not be with Monsieur Michel, non?”
Anne breathed slowly, deeply.
She would not be hurt.
The modiste said to her face what others would soon be saying behind her back.
She did possess a fortune. If not for her money, she would not be with the man who was named for his ability to bring women to orgasm.
Everything could be bought, Michel had said. Sexual satisfaction. Intimacy. Friendship.
Why not the illusion of beauty?
“Very well, Madame René.”
The modiste was not content merely to strip Anne of her dress. “Tout, mademoiselle. Tout.”
Everything went—bustle, petticoats, corset, chemise, drawers.
The dressmaker did not understand English modesty—very practical for a woman in her business, Anne thought bitingly.
As convenient as it was for a man in Michel’s business.
Goose bumps marched over her body.
She shivered, clothed only in a hat, drooping stockings, and garters that squeezed the very air from her lungs. The feminine articles did nothing to hide her swollen, tender breasts. The heels on her half boots forced her pelvis forward—as had the heels on the slippers she had worn when Michel undressed her.
But there was a world of difference between being stripped naked by a woman as opposed to a man. With Michel it had been exciting, titillating. Madame René inspected her as if she were a horse, first from the front, then from behind.
She felt like a great, clumsy horse, with the feather sticking out of her hat.
A measuring tape snaked around her neck, choked her, slithered away. It was summarily stretched across her shoulders. “Lift your arms, mademoiselle.” The tape was pressed into Anne’s armpit—a warm shock of fingers and cold metal tab—and extended to her wrist.
She had not undergone the humiliation of being measured for many, many years. Ridiculously, she found herself hoping—as she had hoped when being measured for her London wardrobe eighteen years past—that the modiste would find perfections her own mirror did not.
Anne stoically stared over Madame René’s head as the elderly woman leaned into her naked bosom. Above her the popping hiss of the gas chandelier was discordantly loud.
She did not have to glance down to see what the modiste saw. There was no mistaking the physical evidence of her night of passion—her breasts had been hungrily suckled by the man who waited on the other side of the drawn curtain.
The measuring tape circled her torso, pulled tight to nip her bruised, distended nipples.
“Small in the breast.” The modiste quickly scribbled a measurement onto a little ledger before dropping it into her apron pocket. Sinking to her knees, she drew the tape around Anne’s waist. “We are thickening here, mademoiselle. Perhaps we should forgo our desserts.”
Anne gritted her teeth. So much for hidden perfections.
The tape circled her hips; Madame René’s head dipped perilously close to parts that surely no woman should be near. Especially when those parts—tender and swollen from a man’s attentions—lasciviously jutted forward. “Hips a trifle broad.”
The tightness banding her left foot eased—Madame René expertly unlaced her half boot.
“Lift your foot, mademoiselle.” Anne awkwardly complied, grabbed madame’s perfectly coiffed, impossibly red hair to keep from toppling on top of the dressmaker when she jerked the shoe off of her foot. “Maintenant. Le droit.” The modiste tapped her right foot. “Up.”
Anne curled her stockinged toes into the wool carpet and concentrated on the maroon curtain instead of the small hand that pressed into her inseam in the exact same spot that Michel had nuzzled her. The intimate touch spiraled through her groin, rendering her breathlessly, painfully aware of the pulsating throb between her thighs and the man who waited behind the velvet curtain.
The modiste jotted down more measurements before springing up as sprightly as a child. “Claudette!”
Anne with a start became aware of a small, nervous woman who appraised her much in the same manner as Madame René did. She clutched a black satin garment to her thin chest.
“Claudette, lace mademoiselle into the corset—ah, we shall sew padding into it, ici—” Anne stiffened as the modiste thrust her hand inside the corset, sharp knuckles digging into her right breast—“and reinforce it with whalebone, so that it pushes her up and out, oui?”
“Oui, madame.”
“Vite, we must have a bolt of fabric—Angelique, bring the peacock velours!”
The curtain was thrust aside, affording Anne a fleeting glimpse of Michel—and he of her.
Un étalon, Madame René had said. A stallion.
Is there nothing that you will not do?
Nothing. Providing that it brings pleasure.
The violet in his eyes flared; then he was obliterated by a tall, bony woman who strode through the doorway with the bolt of peacock blue velvet as if on a mission of mercy. The maroon curtain flapped closed behind her.
The heat of Michel’s gaze remained.
Madame took the material and draped it about Anne’s hips and legs. “We must showcase her legs—they are passably fair, non? The panel must be tight—tighter, with an overdress caught up to the side, so. For une robe de jour, a day dress, we will sew little kick pleats so that she may stride unhindered. Oui?”
A resounding chorus of “ouis” followed.
The dressing room was too crowded; the attention Anne received was too overwhelming. French perfume and gas from the overhead chandelier swirled inside her head.
What more could Michel possibly do to her that he had not already done? she wondered dizzily.
What would she talk about, these coming hours, days, weeks?
He was an anomaly: a sophisticated man who possessed both the uninhibited manners of his French forebears and the cool civility of the English.
What if her wealth could not hold his attention?
Suddenly the bolt of material was gone, as was the corset.
“Never fear; we will do well by you, mademoiselle. You may join Monsieur Michel and I when you are dressed.”
Madame René regally exited through the curtain while the two contrasting assistants, one short and wiry, the other tall and gangly, dressed Anne.
Coldly. Methodically. As if she were a mannequin instead of a woman who for the first time in her life flouted society and all it represented.
Anne dimly realized that her hands were icy cold.
She was afraid.
And she did not like being afraid.
It made her feel as if she were eighteen instead of thirty-six.
Anne joined Madame René and Michel only to find that they sat side by side. They were surrounded by bolts and bolts of fabrics. Bright, vivid colors spilled over the gold brocade couch and the Aubusson-covered floor. Some hues she had never before seen; others she had admired but never dared wear.
Their heads were pressed together. Afternoon sunlight glinted on their hair. Michel’s was untainted by gray; madame’s was brazenly dyed red. They conferred over a c
luster of sketches.
As if she did not exist.
The client, having provided the necessary monies, was no longer of any import.
The fear and excitement that had dogged her decision to stay with Michel found a focus.
He was not the one who would be wearing these exotic colors that represented every hue of the rainbow. And he certainly was not paying for them.
“I believe it is I you should be consulting, madame,” Anne said frigidly.
Madame René regarded her as if she were a child who had rudely spoken out of turn.
Anne’s anger grew disproportionately. “I will take a gown in navy blue serge, but I would like to see fashion plates, please.”
Madame René stiffened, rather like a small bantam hen. The collar of pearls circling her throat glowed. “I am a couturière, mademoiselle. An artiste. Do you question my talent?”
Michel smoothly intervened. “Mademoiselle merely wondered when you could deliver your masterpieces, madame. She would like a day dress for tomorrow.”
“Impossible.” The couturier’s French accent was strangely lacking.
“Nothing is impossible, madame,” Michel said softly.
Greed replaced the stubborn implacability in her bright, golden brown eyes. “Are you willing to pay the price, Monsieur Michel?”
Michel’s violet gaze rested on Anne.
Every word they had exchanged—every touch, every intimate act—was reflected in his eyes.
The shocking insinuation of his finger.
His uninhibited tongue-bath.
Complete access …
Suddenly the busy city of London invaded the small, elegant shop. Muffin boys rang their bells. Vendors shouted their wares. Carriage wheels sang. A whistle sliced through the noise—a street sweeper hailing a cab in the hopes of earning an extra halfpence.
“Yes, madame.” Michel’s voice was hard, implacable. “I am willing to pay the price.”
“Then it is done.” Madame René rose from the couch, back straight, head regally held high. “It has been a pleasure, mademoiselle. Do not stay away so long next time, monsieur. Claudette! Angelique! Babette! Bring the bolts of material—we have other customers who await our services.”
Customers who were not as ungracious as the spinster Mademoiselle Aimes.