Praise for Minerva Spencer's Outcasts series:
"Minerva Spencer's writing is sophisticated and wickedly witty. Dangerous is a delight from start to finish with swashbuckling action, scorching love scenes, and a coolly arrogant hero to die for. Spencer is my new auto-buy!"
-NYT Bestselling Author Elizabeth Hoyt
"[SCANDALOUS is] A standout...Spencer's brilliant and original tale of the high seas bursts with wonderfully real protagonists, plenty of action, and passionate romance."
★Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW
"Fans of Amanda Quick's early historicals will find much to savor."
★Booklist STARRED REVIEW
"Sexy, witty, and fiercely entertaining."
★Kirkus STARRED REVIEW
"A remarkably resourceful heroine who can more than hold her own against any character invented by best-selling Bertrice Small, a suavely sophisticated hero with sex appeal to spare, and a cascade of lushly detailed love scenes give Spencer's dazzling debut its deliciously fun retro flavor."
★Booklist STARRED REVIEW
"Readers will love this lusty and unusual marriage of convenience story."
-NYT Bestselling Author MADELINE HUNTER
"Smart, witty, graceful, sensual, elegant and gritty all at once. It has all of the meticulous attention to detail I love in Georgette Heyer, BUT WITH SEX!"
RITA-Award Winning Author JEFFE KENNEDY
CROOKED SIXPENCE BOOKS are published by
CROOKED SIXPENCE PRESS
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Copyright © 2020 Shantal M. LaViolette
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address above.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
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First printing May 2020
ASIN: B0861C34RT
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Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.
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Printed in the United States of America.
Chapter One
London
1868
“His Nibs Mr. Fanshawe is here for you, Nora, you’ve got fifteen minutes to get your arse up to the Silesia.” Charles snickered and shut the door to Nora’s tiny attic bedroom without waiting for an answer.
Charles Smith was her dearest friend, but Nora was glad he’d taken his handsome, smirking face and catty ways off quickly. He would tease her mercilessly if she didn’t do a perfect job of concealing her body’s response to the news that Mr. Fanshawe was here.
She cleaned her brush, taking care to not damage the fragile bristles as her hand shook—just the way it always did when Edward Fanshawe came to see her—especially now when she’d given up on ever seeing him again.
Her heart was beating a rapid tattoo as she stripped off her huge dun apron. Beneath it she was dressed for working, garbed in the same simple, modest muslin morning gowns all the female employees wore at Madame Tosca’s exclusive establishment for gentlemen.
Mr. Fanshawe had not come to see her this early in the day before; he’d never come during the daylight. Nora shivered at the thought of what awaited her as she pulled the pins from her waist length pale blond hair and brushed it to a shine. Mr. Fanshawe like her to wear her hair a specific way when she came to him and her hands—long accustomed to their task—divided and braided without any instructions from her brain.
It had been six weeks since she’d seen him last. He never told her when he would return—or even if he would return. He’d been coming to her for eight months. Nora knew she wasn’t the only woman he visited—at least not when he’d first started coming. Early on, when he’d come to Tosca’s every night for six days running, he’d have a different woman each night.
Gradually, over the next five or six months, he’d come to Nora more and more. If she was taken, he might engage another woman, or he might leave.
He frequently paid for her in advance but, just as frequently, didn’t return for his appointment and might show up two nights later, paying yet again.
While Madame Tosca would have liked to work Nora those nights he scheduled and never arrived—because Mr. Fanshawe always paid for the entire night—the greedy madam feared angering him if he either learned of her actions or, God forbid, came for Nora when she was with another.
So, Mr. Fanshawe’s absences always meant more free time for Nora. She should have suspected something was wrong when she’d started to want him to show for an appointment rather than appreciate the unexpected liberty.
For three heady and glorious months he’d come only to her, their games intensifying with each visit.
But then—on January fifth—he’d not appeared for an appointment and she’d not seen him for almost six weeks. Six. Long. Weeks.
What kind of whore missed a client?
Her kind, apparently.
Nora secured the braid with a string and let it fall heavily down her back. She pushed her stockinged feet into her worn pink satin slippers, picked up her best shawl, and left her room.
She took the servant stairs from the attic down to the fourth floor, which is where the four largest suites were located: Silesia, Dordogne, Cantal, and Savoie. Madame Tosca was from one of the Italian States and had named her rooms after regions in the various European countries.
When she reached the door to the Silesia she paused, took several deep breaths, and tried to clear her mind. That was Nora’s special trick—usually—she could go to her client with a mind as empty as a cloudless sky. She’d found that showing nothing to anyone not only made her more appealing to many of her clients, it also gave her a feeling of control: they only saw what she wanted them to see.
But walling herself off had become impossible with Mr. Fanshawe. Not because she’d had to resist his prying—in fact, he’d never asked personal questions—but because she wanted to pry into him.
So, her walls had begun to crumble for Mr. Fanshawe and that was regrettable because it was from him that Nora most needed to guard her thoughts, her desires . . . her heart.
❈❈❈
Edward paced the large suite, well aware he was behaving like a caged and restless animal. He lifted the glass of brandy to his mouth and swallowed half of it. Madame Tosca had delivered the bottle to him personally; the wily old madam knew how to keep her customers happy.
Well, happy might be too strong a word; Edward was not happy. Had he ever been happy? If so, he couldn’t recall it. But Tosca at least knew how to soothe his irritation, whether it was with some special meal her superlative chef prepared, a fine bottle of liquor, or a girl she knew would appeal to his peculiar tastes.
This last thought made him throw back the remainder of his glass. Part of her reason for hand
delivering the bottle was to ensure he’d been pleased with his last visit. Edward knew she was concerned that he’d been away so long. Six. Long. Weeks. Oh yes, he’d counted every day, to his intense mortification and disgust. And concern.
He didn’t tell her why he’d been gone, or that one of her employees was behind his absence. No, that was not her affair. She was his abbess, procurer, bawd—not his confessor.
“Did Nora displease you the last time you were here, sir?” she’d asked after pouring them both drinks.
Edward didn’t want to tell her that Nora had pleased him too much. So instead he gave a noncommittal grunt.
“I have a new girl since your last visit. Would you care to inspect her?”
“Is Nora not available?” The words left his mouth before he could stop them and he heard the anxiety vibrating beneath them. His faced heated. Goddammit! That was the last bloody time he’d expose himself—at least in that manner.
But Edward could see it was already too late; Tosca now knew that she possessed what he wanted, and she would make him pay dearly for it.
“Nora is available and waiting for you, sir.”
Edward met the savvy whore’s hooded brown eyes and wanted to howl at her smug, knowing look. If ever there was a woman who knew men it would be this one. She was perhaps a decade older than his own one-and-forty years, although the sin in her eyes was ancient.
“What’s her name—this new girl?”
“Belinda. Shall I summon her?”
Well, why the hell not? “Yes, I’ll take a look at her.”
The madam rose. “I shall send her up and have Nora waiting.”
Edward turned away without answering, taking his glass to the huge window that looked over the street. It was swathed in layers of heavy velvet so that it might have been midnight rather than mid-day. Mid-day: when he should have been working rather than here.
He shoved the drapery aside along with his dithering and surveyed the scene spread out before him. Tosca’s was on a quiet street just on the fringes of fashionable Mayfair. The buildings were mostly of recent vintage. New structures constructed to offer housing and services to the growing number of clerks, bankers, and shopkeepers who served the city’s most affluent, but couldn’t afford to live among them.
Edward owned a goodly number of those buildings, including the one he was currently standing in. That was not common knowledge—even Madame Tosca was not aware he was her landlord.
He heard the door open and turned.
The girl who entered dropped a deep curtsy before lifting her face to him. His pulse quickened as he took in her voluptuous body.
Edward leaned against the window frame. “Come here.”
She came without hesitation, stopping a few feet away.
“Closer.”
A sly, teasing expression slid over her face but was quickly extinguished. Edward pointed to a spot on the floor a few inches from him.
She was very pretty; her dark brown hair braided the way he liked it. His lips twitched; Madame Tosca was up to all the tricks. Her skin was clear and creamy and slightly flushed. Big hazel eyes fringed with thick lashes held his gaze without flinching. Edward began to harden as his eyes dropped to her mouth, which was small but shapely, her pillowy lower lip just the type he liked to have wrapped around him.
He took a sip of brandy. “Turn for me.”
She was tall and shapely, her unbound breasts high and full. The white muslin was so fine it did little to hide her figure, which was long-legged and narrow hipped.
Yes, she was lovely. Not so young as to make him feel like a lecher, but still dewy and sweet.
“Do you know about me, Belinda?”
“Yes, Mr. Fanshawe.” Her voice was breathy and girlish but, he instinctively knew, false. She’d been schooled to behave the way he wanted. Or at least the way she thought he wanted. Belinda hoped to manipulate him. Edward smiled and, for the first time, the expression in her eyes carried a hint of anxiety.
“And what have you heard?”
She inhaled deeply, the action straining the fabric of her bodice. Large, dark nipples pressed against the fine material and his mouth watered. It was almost enough to make him forget all about her falsity. Almost.
“You like to bind and h-hurt your lovers—to humiliate them.” Her eyelids lowered and she shifted from foot to foot. The performance was nearly perfect, but the slight tightening of her full lips—a smug little smile—told him she was a good actress but would never be a great one.
Without speaking, he left her standing there and walked to the bell pull and gave it a tug before dropping into the big black leather wing chair nearest the fire.
While he waited, he examined Belinda, whose profile was to him. Her silhouette was as beautiful as the front of her and it also showed how rapidly her chest rose and fell; she wasn’t so certain any more that she’d land the big fish—him—Edward Fanshawe, a man whose whoring was legendary and who compensated well for his unusual tastes.
The door opened and Madame Tosca entered.
“Bring Nora to me,” he said before she could start speaking and annoy him.
“Of course, sir.” She nodded to somebody out in the hall and when she stepped back, Nora entered.
Chapter Two
All the lust that had drained away when Edward identified Belinda’s scheming for what it was came roaring back at the sight of Nora’s rather bland features. It was true that she was no beauty, only her thick, corn silk colored hair could ever be called such.
Her pale, pale eyes—too freakishly colorless to be attractive— moved immediately to the other whore. Not a muscle twitched or tightened in her face, but something that looked like heat, and perhaps even anger, flared in those opalescent eyes. Edward’s cock began to stiffen, throbbing more insistently at that tiny show of emotion than it would have done for a Dance of the Seven Veils.
The madam lifted her hand. “Belinda, if you will come with—”
“No,” he said, his eyes never leaving Nora’s face, worried he’d miss some emotion if he looked away, perhaps something . . . delicious. “I’ll employ both for the evening.” He could practically feel the older woman’s greedy pleasure all the way across the room. But it was Nora’s response that fed the monster inside him and brought him to full hardness.
Edward reveled in the almost imperceptible tightening of the fine, thin skin around her eyes and the slight flaring of her nostrils the same way another man would revel in having his cock sucked. Of course, he’d have that, too.
“You may go,” he told the madam. Although he never took his eyes from Nora he could feel Tosca’s annoyance at being dismissed like a lackey. Edward didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything except the woman who’d been haunting him for six bloody weeks.
He ached as he looked into her colorless eyes. Her features—nose, mouth, ears—were all small, tidy, and unremarkable. And her body was far less feminine than the girl on the other side of the room. Her breasts were smallish and topped with tiny pink nipples, the milky whiteness of her skin all but translucent, the network of blue veins clearly visible, adding to her fragile appearance: a fragility he personally knew was deceptive, having regularly taken her well beyond the point where most of his lovers had broken in the past.
Edward took a deep drink of brandy, savoring the smooth warmth of the liquid as he enjoyed the throbbing arousal that spread through his body like slow-moving honey. He marveled at the satisfaction he experienced merely looking at Nora: more satisfaction than he’d experienced in the six weeks since he’d last seen her.
But it was a satisfaction mingled with fear, not unlike opening the door to a lion’s cage to test his bravery.
“How have you been these past weeks, Nora?”
Her body stiffened slightly and Edward knew the question startled her. It should startle her; Edward never asked whores questions. And the fact that he wanted to ask her many questions worried the hell out of him.
“I’ve been v
ery well, sir, thank you.” Her voice was always a complete surprise to him: low and husky. Their first time together he’d ordered her to call him sir, as he always did with the women he paid.
“Have you missed me?” he asked, amused by his question.
“Yes, sir,” she answered without hesitation, her toneless voice inciting his lust, just as it always did. Nora had the most expressionless face he’d ever encountered. If she ever thought to enter the world of card sharping she certainly had the visage for it. Edward liked her taut, too-slender body, her heavy rope of hair, and those odd eyes very much indeed. But what he liked best about her was the slight flicker of emotion he only occasionally managed to elicit if he worked her hard enough to touch something deep inside her.
In fact, it was his unsettling ‘liking’ for her and his increasingly burning need to elicit her subtle responses that had caused him to keep away from Tosca’s for six weeks.
Edward recalled the day clearly. He’d been in negotiations across the table from three other men when Nora’s face—gleaming with sweat, tears, and sexual agony—had intruded on his thoughts. To his recollection, that had never happened before: a woman interfering with his business.
And Edward had not liked it.
He’d vowed that day to eradicate all thoughts of her. Over the coming weeks instead of visiting Tosca’s, he’d gone to another house, the Bellaire. There had been a time—before he’d discovered Nora—when he’d used the Bellaire as often as Madame Tosca’s. Somewhere along the way he’d lost track of his growing ...well, there was no other word for it except obsession.
So, he’d returned to the Bellaire, seeking pleasure there every night for two weeks, gorging on sexual excess.
And throughout it all, he’d seen one face: Nora’s.
He’d spent the four weeks after that abstaining, believing that perhaps sexual abstinence was the way to forget her.
But every time he’d woken in the middle of the night with a hard cock he’d wanted only one woman: Nora.
His Harlot (Victorian Decadence Series Book 1) Page 1