Edward turned to the poor man, who was crouched behind his small writing desk. “Will you give me and my wife a moment, Powell.” It wasn’t a request.
As soon as Powell scuttled from the room Edward strode toward the door and closed it before turning to the woman who hated him more than anyone she’d ever met—or so she told him daily.
He took her arm. “Please, Catherine, will you sit.”
She shook his hand away violently enough to cause herself to stagger back. He considered letting her fall on her cute little arse, but relented, catching her, steadying her, and just as quickly releasing her. “Sit,” he ordered, using a tone he’d never thought to employ on an aristocrat, but now used daily.
She dropped into a chair hard enough to make him wince.
He considered sitting on the chair beside her but then decided he wanted a desk between them if she started hurling things again.
“Now,” he said, adjusting his waistcoat and cravat before sitting back. “What is the problem?”
She glared at him through eyes that were red-rimmed from crying. She was one of those women who looked beautiful even when she cried. She was the most exquisite woman he’d ever seen. She was also a hellcat of exactly the wrong type—not a spitfire in bed, like Nora, but a willful, demanding, ungrateful, frigid little bitch who hated him and took no pains to hide it.
“I’m p-p-pregnant!” she wailed and then collapsed her head onto the arm of the chair and cried noisily.
Edward had a devil of a time not leaping up and yelling Huzzah! But he decided that reaction would only upset her more, and he’d read somewhere that pregnant women needed peace and quiet and calm.
“Why are you so furious?” he asked, hoping to make her see reason and get her the hell out of his office as quickly as possible. “That means you won’t have to allow me into your bedchamber for nine,” he amended, “ten months.”
Her sobbing briefly paused and then she wailed, “But I shan’t be able to go to parties or balls and I’ll have to sequester myself in the country and get big and fat and—”
Edward’s brain latched on to one thing she said and started whirring: yes, she needed to be in the country. There was too much excitement in the city—especially with the bloody Season still in roar. He’d pack her off to the country immediately. He’d have to lease something first—but only until he built a new house. He didn’t like the notion of living in a used house.
His mind leapt ahead as she complained.
Once he’d established her in the country, he and Nora could go back to the way things were. Oh, it wasn’t that things had been bad since his marriage, but Catherine’s incessant demands for balls and parties and routs had turned everyone’s life upside down. Although he wasn’t expected to attend her at these functions—indeed, she’d made it quite plain she did not want his presence—she’d somehow managed to do the impossible and convince Nora to be her companion on some of these miserable romps. The two women had become as close as sisters in the two months since he’d been married. Who knew what they’d be like after six months?
And if Nora went to a bloody ball with her, that meant Edward had to go. Because God only knew what Nora might get up to without him watching her. And he could hardly employ a footman to spy on her at balls.
He’d been almost too furious to yell at her when he’d learned she’d agreed to accompany Catherine to some fool function.
“But you always refuse to accompany me to such ton functions when I asked during the courtship process,” he’d whined in a most mortifying manner.
Nora, as impervious and unreadable as ever, had merely said, “Yes, well Catherine asked me as a favor.”
That had made him howl. “What about me? When are you going to do me any favors?”
Her lips had twitched in that slight way that gave him an almost instant erection. “I believe I have at least three favors plugged up inside me as we speak.”
He’d blinked at her unexpectedly vulgar response—which also made him hard as it reminded him of his virility, and his responsibility to break the current record for ejaculations—which had been, rather disturbingly, eluding him.
So, that had been the end of that discussion. The woman was a wizard at distracting him and they’d not had a moment since that night to re-negotiate this foolishness.
“Edward!”
“Hmm?” He looked up and saw his furious wife glaring at him. Ah, that was right—she was pregnant.
“It’s no use trying to hide your disgusting smile,” she said. “I know you’re over the moon.”
Edward grinned. “Of course I am.” He cut a glance at her midriff. “I want to see your belly.” She shrieked so loud he had to cover his ears.
“You-you-you—”
“Degenerate pig?” he suggested, when he thought she might be stuck.
“I hate you. And I hate the thought of having your child inside me.”
Edward loved it—but he suspected she already knew that. He shrugged and stood up, tired of her dramatics. “That child is costing me hundreds of thousands of pounds, Catherine,” he pointed out as he strode toward the door. “And the way your idiot brother is running around the Continent strewing money it will only cost me more.” The little bastard hadn’t even returned to London for their wedding. Well, based on what Edward had heard of Ceddy that was just as well.
“Now,” he said, jerking the door open. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’ve got work to do.”
She flounced up from her chair and came toward him with narrowed eyes.
“Oh,” he said, placing himself in front of the door so she couldn’t leave just yet. “You will curtail your frantic pace for the duration of the Season. I will look through your invitations and decide which functions you might attend.”
She was flushed, her substantial breasts heaving, and very, very lovely. “You are not the master of me.”
He winked down at her, amused when her jaw dropped. “Oh, but sweetheart, I am your master—in every sense of the word. The sooner you accept it, the better off you’ll be.”
She was fast—amazingly so—and her palm struck his left cheek—bloody hard—before he even saw it coming.
He automatically reached up to feel his cheek, grinning down at her. “My, my, is that a love swat, Kitten? Because it feels like an invitation to play, to me.”
He laughed at her expression of horror as she fled, grinning from ear-to-ear once he’d shut the door behind her—she was pregnant. He couldn’t wait to tell Nora!
❈❈❈
Nora knew when she heard the sound of glass breaking all the way up in her chambers that she would soon have company. She glanced yearningly at her sunroom door, where she’d hoped to take an hour or two to paint. But that had become an impossibility of late. If it wasn’t Edward complaining about Catherine, it was Catherine running to her with her most recent complaint about Edward.
Not more than a few moments passed before the door flew open and Catherine—or Cat as Nora now called her, came charging inside.
“He’s a revolting pig and I don’t know how the two of you can be related,” she cried, throwing herself into Nora’s arms. “Oh, Nora!” she sobbed, her soft, curvy body shaking with the force of her crying. “I hate it, I just hate it.”
Nora petted her back and made soothing noises. She wasn’t surprised to see her. Indeed, Cat had begun to come to Nora for friendship even before she married Edward. For such a beautiful, spirited, clever girl, she had remarkably few friends. Nora supposed they must all be back in the country, as she’d had little opportunity to meet girls her age—and class—during this rather hectic Season.
So, by default, Nora supposed, she’d become Cat’s sister, dearest friend, mother, and confessor.
When Cat learned she was pregnant this morning—from the midwife Edward had hired to hound and harry the poor girl when she’d failed to become pregnant that first month—it had taken Cat less than five seconds to sprint from her chambers at the far end of
the hall to Nora’s rooms.
She had cried and Nora had cried with her. She’d cried for poor little Cat—who didn’t want a baby; she’d cried for herself—who’d never even once had a pregnancy scare in all her years of whoring; and she even cried for Edward, who’d done this to all three of them and couldn’t seem to see the disaster that loomed on the horizon.
Nora held Cat at arm’s length and gave her a gentle shake. “Come now, you will make yourself ill. And now you have the baby’s health to consider.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me—the baby.” Cat scowled and flung herself back against the settee in a dramatic pose and closed her eyes, but at least she’d stopped wailing. “His baby,” she added in a voice that pulsed with loathing.
Nora was glad the girl couldn’t see her right then. She would give up everything—even painting—if she could carry Edward’s baby inside her.
“I suppose the good news is that I shan’t have to put up with his loathsome pawing for ten months at least.”
That was good news. Nora knew her thought was selfish—she’d missed having Edward to herself—but the girl had nearly driven herself hysterical whenever Edward went near her and Edward, being Edward, had persisted in exercising his conjugal rights, twice a week. Apparently, that was the frequency the doctor recommended as the most efficacious for pregnancy while not traumatizing a gently bred young lady.
“I hope you are gentle and kind to her,” Nora had told him—a rare volunteering of opinion—one night when he’d come to her complaining of his wretched duty.
“Good God, Nora,” he’d snapped. “You’d think I was some sort of monster.” That had made her smile. “I never hurt the chit—unless you consider me putting my cock in her precious cunt hurting her. Lord, I’m as gentle as bloody lamb but she barely allows me to spend in her before she drives me out of her room. I’ve taken to fisting myself right to the point of coming so that I can get in and out before she stars screeching at me.” He turned his scowl on her. “And you. You’re supposed to be mine—why are you taking her side?”
Nora hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. Sides? “I’m not taking anyone’s side, Edward, I just can’t conscience cruelty in the bedroom.”
That had made his eyes pop open. “But you love—”
She’d sighed at his thick-headedness. “Not that kind of cruelty.”
He’d snorted. “That’s just as well—she won’t let me put a finger on her, I can’t imagine what she’d do if I came after her with a crop.”
Nora shuddered even now recalling that.
“Nora?”
“Hmm?” She looked up to find Cat staring at her, intense. “You won’t leave me here, will you? I mean … I know that Tedward and I row all the time and it’s unpleasant.”
Nora couldn’t help smiling at Cat’s derogatory nickname for Edward—a silly, childish name which infuriated him.
“I suppose listening to us must be miserable.”
It was, Nora conceded, but also entertaining at times—like watching two children—although it often made her feel a hundred years old.
Cat took her hand and squeezed it. “But it shall be better now that I don’t have to let him—” She shivered and then continued, “Although it will mean I shan’t be able to enjoy the rest of the Season as he told me that he will select what invitations I might accept.”
Thank the Lord. Not only would it be better for Nora’s sexual needs, but her sanity, as well; she’d hated accompanying Cat to all these vapid, endless affairs but couldn’t seem to deny her.
Their late nights had left her exhausted—and sexually frustrated—and she’d been quite surprised Edward hadn’t curtailed his wife’s behavior before now. But Edward had been allowing Cat a range of freedom he’d never extended to Nora. That, she was sure, was over now that his child was inside her. Nora shuddered to think how Cat would react to Edward’s iron control. Unlike Nora—who craved and relished Edward’s high-handed, domineering ways—Cat was a remarkably headstrong young woman who appeared just as determined as her husband to get her own way. The two of them never backed away from a fight.
Cat leaned up against her, snuggling under her arm. “You won’t go? I’ll need you here if I’m to bear having this dreadful baby getting bigger inside me. And I’m terrified of giving birth to it; if his baby is anywhere near as big as his wretched instrument of torture it will likely be a fifty-pound monster.”
Nora chuckled at that. “Women have babies every day; you shall be fine.” Yes, women died all the time, too, but what would such information do to help Catherine?
“But you’ll stay,” Cat persisted.
“Yes, I’ll stay.” Nora sighed, how had this happened to her?
❈❈❈
Nora could feel the Thomas’s anger as he trotted along behind her. She didn’t care—this was the first day in over two bloody months that she’d been Edward- and Cat-free and she needed to talk to Charles.
And the day was beautiful and she’d refused the carriage the pushy footman had tried to thrust on her. Although the servants were all too terrified of Edward to show her any disrespect, Nora wasn’t under an illusions about how they felt about her. Only Mary, apparently too naïve to understand the veiled, vulgar comments, continued to believe the laughable fiction that she was Edward’s niece.
Nora had hoped the tension in the house would dissipate after the announcement of Cat’s pregnancy, but the two were at each other’s throats all the time. They didn’t just dislike each other, they hated one another.
She’d also hoped for some peace and quiet when Edward had been called away to Manchester for ten days but it had just been ten days in which she’d had to rein in Cat rather than paint.
And, oh, but she had wanted to paint! She had a lovely idea for yet another painting of Edward. It would be something that only she would ever see, of course, but that just made her idea more enticing.
But at this rate, she’d be lucky to see a paintbrush, not to mention work on an actual painting.
She simply couldn’t say no to accompany poor Cat when she asked. The girl—woman, really—seemed younger than her years and was truly lonely. The marquess and marchioness had departed from London even before the Season was over, each of them doubtlessly off to pursue their own pleasure. And Cat’s only sibling—Ceddy?
Well, Nora shivered at the coincidence that Edward’s new brother-in-law was the vile Viscount Redmond. Luckily the nasty little toad appeared to be killing himself in France or Spain in some brothel—along with some poor whore, she suspected—so Nora would likely be gone from Edward’s house before Ceddy ever materialized.
Nora knew she would have to tell Edward eventually—it would be a disaster if Ceddy showed up and opened his poisonous little mouth, but she was afraid what Edward would do. Once, when he’d lighted a half a hundred candles and then fucked her, he’d seen the scars on her inner thighs—he was certainly down there enough—and had demanded repeatedly who’d done that to her.
It had taken all her will to stand against him.
Now that he’d impregnated Cat, Edward behaved as if she didn’t even exist—at least not as a person—but only as the vessel carrying his child. He ordered her life, exerting more and more control over what she ate, how much sleep she got, along with a dozen other small, invasive details. As much as Nora loved him, she couldn’t help wanting to strangle him.
He’d begun to come to her every night, just like he used to, well-pleased that he was having his cake and eating it, too—that his life was running on the path he’d charted for them all.
But there was a restless to him and she knew he was seeking some kind of distraction from the tension in the house. So, she wasn’t surprised when he’d told her several nights ago that he wanted to pierce her nipples. It was inevitable—especially now that his mind had filed away the wife and child problems.
While she would adore being pierced or tattooed or even branded for him (yes, he’d suggested them all at one time o
r another) she couldn’t help being angry with his utter refusal to face reality. Did he not see his young, neglected wife was a volcano waiting to explode? Did he really believe he would just get his two children off her and put her neatly in one of his files? Didn’t he understand that someday Cat would learn what went on between them and when she did she would be furious—not because she was jealous—but because they’d made a fool of her?
“We’re here, Miss.”
Nora stopped and saw that, indeed, she’d marched right past Tosca’s.
“Go wait in the kitchen,” she told the Thomas, knowing the whores always enjoyed teasing her thick, humorless jailers.
Nora didn’t bother sending a maid for Charles but took the back stairs to his room. She tapped lightly on his door and heard a muffled groan before entering his room.
As she’d suspected, he was tangled in bedding, his torso naked and sweaty in the heat of the attic.
“Phew,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face and going to his window. “It stinks like sweaty whore in here.” She flung open the window and turned to find him propped against his cushion, yawning and not bothering to hide his sleep erection.
“My goodness,” she said going closer to look at his cock.
Being the exhibitionist that he was, he grinned up at her and took his surprisingly meaty prick in his hand and shifted it from side to side for her admiration.
“It’s an apadravya,” he boasted.
“I’ve seen it before.” Times beyond counting. But she sat on the bed, curious to actually look at it now that she had her own piercing. She had to admit it was very erotic. Edward’s enormous crown would look spectacular with a heavy silver bar through it. Her belly tightened at the thought. It was too bad she could never see him submitting to such a thing.
“I can see you swallowing and know your mouth is watering. I’ll let you suck me off if you like.” He grinned and stared through slitted eyes as he resumed his stroking. “Anything for a friend, you know.”
His Harlot (Victorian Decadence Series Book 1) Page 17