His Harlot (Victorian Decadence Series Book 1)

by S. M. LaViolette

  As for what happened after her sessions? Well, she’d not had to pay anyone for that yet, either male or female.

  The group of men who gathered in her lodgings—uninvited—and consumed her food and drink while arguing art and politics into the night, were the ever-changing members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. As much as these men—her fellow painters—liked to consider themselves the type of artists who innovated and forged paths, they were actually quite shocked by Nora’s casual attitude toward nudity and sex.

  None of them knew she’d been a whore. She’d not kept the matter a secret out of shame, but because she wanted no connections between Natalie Hartwicke—her real name—and Nora Hudson, the woman she’d left behind and the only name Edward knew her by.

  Thus far her identity had remained secret, mostly because the men she mingled with were too self-absorbed to ask questions about her past. Nor was she likely to encounter anyone who’d known her in her past life as they were they the type of men who could hardly afford a loaf of bread, not to mention an expensive whore from a place like Tosca’s.

  It hurt her to cut off contact with Tosca’s—specifically with Charles—but she knew once Edward recovered from his mad fit of jealousy he would not be able to resist finding her, even if wasn’t to forgive her, but just to know what she was doing.

  When she’d left him that day, she’d gone to an inexpensive, unobtrusive, hotel in a part of town she was unlikely to see him. She’d stayed there until she’d spoken to Lord Anthony’s solicitors about the house and attendant trust fund.

  What she’d learned had left her breathless; her generous lover had not only left her a sizeable property—and one which paid its expenses from its rents—but enough money to make her a very wealthy woman.

  So, she’d packed up her meager possessions—along with fresh supplies, as she’d left everything but her paintings at Edward’s house—and went to Rose Cottage.

  It was every bit as nourishing to her bruised soul as she could have hoped. But the beautiful light, expansive vistas, and lush landscapes were no longer the views she saw in her mind’s eye. She knew, after painting Edward and then Cat, that her preference, at least for now, was for the human form.

  So, after six months in the country she’d closed up Rose Cottage, leaving it in the hands of the competent couple who’d once worked for Lord Anthony, and headed for a new start in London, a city she’d somehow grown to care for, like a certain too big, crude, and brutal lover.

  Once again, she took a room in a modest hotel and then spent her days roaming the city on foot, the way she’d never been allowed to do before. It hadn’t taken her long to recognize those people she now thought of as ‘hers’: those men—and even some women—who lived on the fringes of wealthy society, both despising and dependent on their rich patrons for their survival and art.

  A man named Dante Rossetti, the nominal leader of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—a grand name for a fractious, jealous, and back-biting collection of men with very rigid notions of art—had taken her under his wing. Well, to be honest, he’d wanted to take her under his body—or any way he could get her—but she’d made her position about fucking artists clear.

  Rather than be offended, he’d been amused and brought her into his small society, but as an observer to their high-flown ideals rather than a fully-fledged member.

  He’d helped her find exactly the type of place a painter needed and connected her to other painters, models, and the lively social circle that thrived on the fringes of fashionable society.

  They would gather in somebody’s garret or meager apartment—increasingly Nora’s—and argue and drink and smoke well until dawn.

  At first Nora had found the subjects—the nature of art—interesting. She’d been amused by how fiery they could become over their opinions—like their enduring hatred for Sir Joshua Reynolds—the founder of the Royal Academy, whom they’d dubbed Sir Sloshua.

  Eventually, however, she found them rather tedious. All this talking just took time away from doing, from painting. And she had much to catch up on, her mind brimming with projects.

  They, on the other hand, seemed to become increasingly determined to pull her—or her expensive brandy—into their circle, spending hours haranguing her, all but ordering her to switch from her Goyaesque or Blakeian methods to the Quattrocento style.

  Unlike most of them, Nora had no formal training and had, at first, avidly looked up and read about all the paintings and painters they’d mentioned. Even now, almost three months later, there were books covering almost every surface in her sparsely furnished house. After a time, however, she viewed their fixations as a distraction.

  She painted how and what she wanted to paint. Unlike most of them, she didn’t need to ever sell another painting—a luxury that should have made her feel at least some guilt but didn’t. Although she had no reason to put her art for sale, she did it anyway. Her apartment was small and rapidly filling—there was no room for her increasing output. Besides, it made her smile to think of her art hanging on some stranger’s walls. She’d instructed the small gallery who handled her paintings to never disclose her location. Now that she was a rich woman, she didn’t hesitate to give such orders, not to be cruel or contrary, but to protect her fragile privacy

  She began to settle into her new life and, quite astonishingly, found herself in some demand as a model. Mainly she sat for the men she befriended, who, when they discovered she wouldn’t bed them, begged to capture her image. Nora never said no to such a request because she knew, from her own experience, that the desire to paint something or someone could be intense—an almost physical obsession.

  As a result of her willingness to pose, clothed or unclothed or anywhere in between, she was in great demand. Of course, she also did not charge her friends for her time, which she suspected was the true reason behind her popularity.

  It didn’t matter the reason, it amused her to see paintings of herself in medieval garb bearing a flaming torch, floating naked like a dryad or naiad—she could never recall which—lounging nude (never naked—it was art, after all) in a woodland lake, thundering across a dramatic landscape, wearing flowing garments, on a white steed, and many others.

  Her own painting was going very well. Despite the taunts of her associates, she was finding her way, learning to paint only for her pleasure.

  She laid down her brush and picked up her forgotten cup of coffee, grimacing at the cold liquid, and putting it aside, her eyes still on her canvas. She must have taken more away from Edward than a broken heart because she appeared to be obsessed with his naked body.

  No matter how often she paid for models, she ended up painting from her hoard of sketches and three paintings. The paintings had thankfully been waiting at the Academy that day Edward entered her studio for the first time, or she suspected they might be lying torn at the bottom of the Thames. As it was, they hung in her bedroom—the only art on her walls.

  While he was nude in all three, she had no qualms about displaying them because his face was not visible in any of them. The ones she’d painted after leaving him, however, that was a different story. Those she stored in her studio, stretched and framed but under protective covers to keep them from prying eyes. Every few days or so she would lock the door to the room—a necessity in an apartment which others felt free to enter at any time of the day or night without permission—and gorge on Edward.

  The one she was working on today, was of him sitting on his black leather throne, his powerful arms resting on the arms of the chair, muscular thighs spread enough to display a glimpse of his heavy balls, and his thick, ruddy cock glistening with need. His lips were curved in a slight smile, his eyes glittering with the thought of what he’d just done to her, or what he was about to do.

  Looking at it now made her heated and wet.

  “Lord, Nat—that’s a bit fierce first thing in the morning, innit?”

  She startled at the sound of Derek’s sleepy voice, the sight of him never f
ailing to bring a smile to her face. He was eighteen, with the body of a god and the stamina of a draft horse, and, she had to admit, the wits of a turnip—and not a particularly wise turnip at that. Still, one couldn’t have everything.

  She went towards him, pulling off her apron and tossing it to the floor, exposing her naked body to his eyes. She slid her work-roughened hand around his lovely thick cock. “You’re one to talk,” she murmured up at him when he gasped at her rough stroke. “This is more than a little fierce, itself. Is it for me?”

  He pouted in a way she’d captured on canvas, his muscular body as hard and toned as the sculptures of him that were scattered around the city. He heaved a fake yawn, an excellent excuse to flex his torso for her viewing pleasure.

  “Perhaps,” he said, with a smirk. “But first you’d need to earn it, ducks.”

  Nora had to swallow the liquid that flooded her mouth before she drown in it, her eyes on his defined torso. She could never get enough of looking at the corrugated ‘V’ of muscles that separated his smooth, muscular hips. He flexed his abdomen for her, the taut, ridged flesh dropping her to her knees.

  She opened her mouth and he slid into her the way she’d taught him to do—the way Edward liked—not stopping until the hard head of his beautiful cock bumped the back of her throat and her lips touched the blond hair surrounding his thick root.

  Once he’d filled her, his hands slid into her hair—which she kept even shorter, much to the chagrin of the men who painted her—and he held her there, immobile, groaning as he ground himself into her, bruising her lips, his erection stretching her throat and jaw, rubbing painfully at the back of her throat.

  Her sex swelled and evidence of her arousal ran down her thighs as a picture of Edward coalesced. Slowly, almost as slowly as laying paint on a canvas, an image of Edward built in her fertile mind’s eye.

  And then he began to fuck her mouth, languidly at first, pulling all the way out—until the crown, which he’d let her suck and tongue, tolerating her fascination with the tiny hole she found so very erotic—and then he’d slide all the way into her, filling her in one long glide, harder with each thrust.

  And then he began to grunt as he pounded into her with a savagery that never failed to evoke what she craved: Edward—big and hard and cruel.

  His dark eyes looked down into her soul, consuming her pain like a delicacy, building on it, taking her further—

  “Ooh, that’s lovely,” Derek cooed.

  Nora startled.

  “Ah, careful with the teeth, ducks.”

  His cockney voice obliterated her fantasy lover like a cannon ball blowing a hole through a castle wall.

  He rammed himself deep, throating her painfully, fucking her so hard his heels lifted off the ground, his thigh and abdominal muscles taut, hard, and glorious. It was good—painful the way she liked it—but it was Derek.

  Edward was gone, and once she lost him, he remained elusive.

  Next time, she promised herself, as her orgasm drifted out of reach, her eyes teared, and Derek emptied himself deep in her burning throat—next time she’d instruct him to be silent when he took her.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Iwant a divorce.”

  Edward looked up from his desk. He’d not even heard her enter he’d been so absorbed in the syndicate’s newest project—a machine that could harvest in one hour as much as one hundred men could harvest in a day, all by itself. Why, with such an invention a farmer’s reliance on labor would disappear almost overnight. It would mean—

  “Edward!”

  He realized she looked blurry—he couldn’t see her features, only an outline. For a moment he debated about leaving on his glasses, but that would be childish.

  When he looked at her without them, he had to blink, suppressing the urge to shade his eyes. She was dressed in the color of the season—Magenta—which some duchess or other had just made popular. He wondered what she’d say if he told her the dye for the cloth had been invented by one of his weavers? No, actually he didn’t wonder—he knew she’d tell him to sod himself.

  “Did you hear me, Tedward?”

  His lips smiled without any order from his brain. He’d begun to enjoy her nickname, never having had one before. He knew it was not meant as a sign of affection, but he liked it all the same. “You want a divorce—was that it”?

  She sneered. “So glad to know your hearing isn’t going the way of so many other things.”

  She meant his appearance, not doubt, which was gaunt and haggard. And then there was his hair, which had seemed to go white almost overnight.

  She flounced forward and threw herself in a chair.

  “That color looks well on you,” he said, lying. For such a beautiful woman, she didn’t appear to have any sense of style or fashion. The color she was wearing was for a dark beauty—not her sunny blond loveliness. He kept that observation to himself, too.

  “Save it for somebody who wants it—although I can’t imagine who that would be. Perhaps one of your whores.”

  It was true he’d begun going back to paying women—not that he’d ever really stopped, he supposed. Not to Tosca’s or Bernina’s or even the Bellaire—where he’d made such an ass of himself all those months ago—but to a new place. A place that was devoted to the sorts of perversions he and Nora had always adored. Nora.

  He pushed her face away and sat back in his chair, relaxed rather than tense around Catherine as he used to be. Everything had changed the night she lost the baby.

  Well, except for her hating him, of course.

  She was a lovely, lovely woman and grew more attractive every day. He’d not been the only one to start visiting whores. He knew—not through spies, which he’d never set on her, but from Smith, that she was frequenting Bernina’s, that she’d gotten herself pierced, that she employed the whore named Emma, and that she spent enough there to buy a whorehouse all her own.

  Smith had seemed surprised when Edward said and did nothing. In fact, it was the only time he’d ever seen his mysterious partner out of temper.

  “You need to set your house in order,” he’d snapped when Edward said nothing.

  “Do I?” he was curious why Smith thought such a thing was necessary.

  They’d been in Smith’s coal black study at the time and he’d flung his arm at a mirror. “Look at yourself. You look like hell.”

  Edward couldn’t argue; he did. He shrugged. “What of it? Is my contribution to the syndicate suffering? Am I not pulling my weight, doing my share?”

  “Goddammit Edward you know you’re making more money than ever. It’s not that—it’s—”

  “Yes?” Edward prodded, not really curious to hear the rest but feeling like it was expected.

  Smith heaved a huge sigh, rolled his eyes, and flung himself into his chair with enough drama to give Catherine competition. “You’re my friend, dammit. And a man doesn’t let his friend slowly kill himself.”

  Edward was his friend? That had surprised him.

  “Edward? Edward!”

  He looked up from his thoughts to find Catherine standing in front of the desk, her expression furious. “Did you fall asleep?” She stamped her foot, not waiting for him to answer. “I want you to tell me right now—will you grant me a divorce, or make things difficult?”

  “Contact your father’s solicitor,” Edward wrote down a name and direction on a piece of paper and handed to her, amused by her opened-mouthed expression. “Tell them to contact mine and arrange something.”

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “If you try to draw this out like one of your vulgar business negotiations—”

  “I won’t.” He was surprised she’d even noticed his negotiations, vulgar or otherwise, not to mention whether they proceeded quickly or slowly.

  “I warn you, I shan’t be left a pauper.”

  “How about half of everything I have? Will that do?” he asked curiously.

  She made a squeaky sound in the back of her throat and the
n swallowed convulsively. “I don’t know. I shall have to ask my solicitor.”

  Edward smiled with genuine amusement. “You do that, Catherine.”

  She cut him a look of disgust. “You’ve always been awful and odd, Edward, but since you threw out N-Nora,” he was pleased to see some emotion on her face other than hatred. “Well, you’ve become pathetic.” On that note, she stormed from the room.

  “How nice to find another thing we agree on, Catherine,” he said to the closed door. And then he put on his glasses and turned back to the farm machinery.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  December 1869

  Nora was reading about Cat’s latest escapades in the society pages of the paper. It seemed that people of every class and from every walk of life had talked of nothing but the scandalous divorcee since the news had been made public four months ago.

  The gossip columns claimed it was the biggest divorce settlement in recent history—and speculation was rampant as to how much money she’d taken from the reclusive King of Tin, a name Nora suspected Cat had helped the newspapermen come up with.

  “Nat?”

  She looked up. “Oh, hello Angus—I didn’t know anyone else was here.” Why should I? It’s only my house.

  He flushed and she realized he must have read some of her sarcasm in her face or voice.

  She gave him a genuine smile and gestured to the chair nearest. “Shove all those books onto the floor and have a seat.”

  “Oh, I can’t stay long. I just came to tell you I sold that painting—the one of you with—”

  Nora didn’t know how he could have painted her in the nude and yet still not be able to articulate the word.

  She had mercy on him. “I recall the one. Congratulations, Angus.”