Nora picked up the letter she’d just finished, her eyes drifting restlessly across the pages.
The story of his success did not surprise her as she knew first-hand that he worked all the time, even though he was already a wealthy, powerful man. But what it had cost him—years of work and, it sounded to her, a largely joyless existence? That did surprise her.
For years he’d eschewed everything for his success: family, children, friends and even, it seemed, sexual satisfaction.
Compared to her life, his seemed impoverished. While whoring had had its costs—some quite high—it had thrown her together with a kindred spirit like Lord Anthony, kind and caring lovers like Felix Lombard. And had also given her friends like Charles, who—admittedly—could be a pest but would still give his last penny to help her.
She smiled at that last thought—he would, but he’d charge bloody high interest.
Nora opened the bedside table and extracted the—she hoped—erotic letter, turning it around and around in her hands.
Nora knew that sexual gratification was not everything in life, but to people like her and Edward—for whom intimacy was inextricably bound up with physical acts—it was terribly important.
Besides, who was to say Edward day had to be a Wednesday. Why not a Tuesday? Why not any day?
Perhaps she should send a message to Clive—the model she’d fucked in a closet during an agonizingly tedious party thrown by one of The Brotherhood last week—and tell him she couldn’t see him tonight?
Thinking about Clive, unfortunately, brought to mind Derek and the last time she’d seen him, the day after that party.
Nora grimaced at the ugly recollection. She’d been in a hurry to leave when, as usual, he’d barged in without knocking.
“You fucked him!”
Nora had reminded herself to start locking her door.
“You fucked Clive Newcomb,” he repeated in a less certain tone when Nora ignored him, instead continuing her search for a pair of gloves that both matched and had no holes in them.
“Did you hear me?” he demanded.
“I fucked Clive Newcomb.” Nora shook her head; she really needed to employ a maid. Her glove drawer—along with every other part of her house—was a disaster.
“What do you have to say about it?” he demanded behind her.
“I don’t have time for this right now, Derek.”
“Oh?” he’d sneered. “Going to see bloody Clive? Or are you already moving on to your new Sapphic lover, that nasty old cunt Simmons?”
News travelled fast in artistic circles.
Nora was indeed headed out to meet with Helen Simmons, a painter she’d met at the same party where she’d enjoyed time in the closet with Clive.
Nora had liked the wry, witty older woman immediately. She’d just been about to ask her to luncheon when Helen beat her to it.
“You’d fuck anything, wouldn’t you?” Derek demanded.
Nora held up a brown kid glove that appeared to be brand new and frowned at it; where the devil was the other one? “You’re behaving like a child, Derek. You have other lovers and I don’t make a fuss. We never agreed to—”
The glove disappeared in a blur as Derek spun her and slammed her against the bureau, the violent action sending bottles, jars, and the inevitable stack of books tumbling to the floor.
“You listen to me, you bitch.”
Nora reacted instinctively, her knee coming up with all the force she could summon. Luckily, she wore one of the loose, artistic gowns she favored and there was no huge crinoline to get in the way.
Derek’s strangled yelp filled the room and he staggered back, his head clipping the arm of a chair as he fell.
“Don’t ever touch me in anger, Derek,” she’d said more coolly than she felt.
He’d rolled back and forth on the floor, his hands cupping his genitals, tears streaming from his eyes. Nora tried to dredge up some sympathy for him and failed.
“I’d hoped we might end our association without me having to bring this up, but you forced the issue. I know you took the emergency money I kept in my study desk drawer—which was at least two hundred pounds. I also know you’ve taken some of my more expensive pigments and sold them. So, you are mistaken in your belief that Clive supplanted you in my affections, Derek—you did that. I cannot conscience a thief. You have less than a minute to evacuate my house or I shall stop off at the constable’s office on my way to my appointment.”
Nora turned back to her drawer as he grunted and shuffled his way toward the door. “I won’t forget this,” he said in a squeaky growl.
“Don’t forget not to steal from your next lover while you’re at it,” she’d tossed after him, as he slammed the front door hard enough to knock a picture off the wall.
Nora groaned as she recalled that scene. Was it not possible for her to end things with a lover without such pyrotechnics?
A sharp knock came from the front door and Nora frowned, who could that be? None of her friends would ever knock.
But then she recalled she’d begun locking the door after the Derek incident.
She put Edward’s letter in the drawer and locked it before pocketing the gold key and heading toward the door. Nora supposed it was telling that the items in the locked drawer weren’t jewels or money, but letters from Edward.
She briefly checked her reflection in the entry hall mirror—adequate—before unlocking the door and opening it.
And then freezing.
“Hallo, Nora.”
Nora steadied herself against the doorframe. “Catherine.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Cat’s laugh, that same carefree, slightly wicked laugh, made Nora shiver.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you speechless before,” Cat confessed, her tone jocular, but her eyes flickering about in a nervous fashion. “Did I call at a bad time?” She laughed again, not the carefree one. “Is any time a good time for me to call?”
Nora reached out and took her elegantly gloved hand, squeezing the delicate bones hard.
“I’m happy to see you,” she said, wondering if that was really true. “I was just surprised.” She opened the door wider. “Please, come in.”
Cat entered and looked around, her forehead becoming gradually more furrowed as she took in the narrow, dark entry hall, which was strewn with the detritus of Nora’s life: a broken easel, several worn, forgotten, male coats, a hat with no top, and other random items.
Looking at Cat’s almost horrified expression created an urge within Nora that she couldn’t recall experiencing before: the urge to tidy like a frantic hostess.
“Do you have time to stay for tea, Catherine? Or I have coffee if you’d rather?”
“Well, if you’re sure I’m not interrupting.”
“Oh no, of course not.” Nora cringed at her over-hearty tone.
“I have time. Loads of it,” Cat laughed again, and this time Nora noticed how brittle it sounded.
She wished, suddenly, that she’d not answered the door, or that she’d told Cat she was on her way out—anything but this. Even when she wasn’t looking directly at Cat she could sense the familiar need and desperation that had always simmered just below the surface of her beautiful veneer.
“Please, come into my sitting room.”
Nora couldn’t help grimacing as she saw it all through Cat’s eyes.
What was wrong with her? She never cared about such things!
“Can I take your coat and hat?” she offered, likely oozing a bit of desperation herself.
Once she’d helped Cat out of her elegant coat she realized there was nowhere to put it, so she laid it over her desk and returned for Cat’s hat.
“Would you like tea or coffee?” she asked as she deposited the hat along with the coat. “I’m afraid today is one of the days my housekeeper does not work, but it would only take a moment to make it for you.” A moment Nora could use to gather her scattered wits.
She could tell by Cat’s ar
ched eyebrows—which had been lightened just like her hair, the shade rather close to Nora’s own pale blond.
“Actually,” Cat said with a wry smile. “I can spare you the effort.” She gestured toward the small table of decanters.
It was barely noon; Nora suddenly understood the other woman’s gauntness.
“Of course, what would you like? Although, to be honest, I’m not sure exactly what I have. I keep a good selection for several of my friends who are quite demanding.” She couldn’t seem to quit babbling.
“Anything is fine,” Cat said, casually stripping off her elegant gloves, which were a spectacular magenta shade Nora had recently tried to replicate with some pigments. The color was beautiful but it did not, she thought, suit Cat’s coloring.
“I’ve heard about your rather famous—some would say infamous—circle,” Cat said, looking around at the cluttered tables for a place to set her gloves before tossing them onto the settee behind her—which, Nora noticed with a grimace—was loaded with sketches she’d been making for her portrait of Smith.
She hastened forward and held out a glass.
“Here you are,” she said when Cat didn’t immediately look up from the pictures of Smith, whom she certainly must recognize.
Cat took the glass, her expression dazed. “I see you have drawings of Mr. Smith—are these from—before, or are you still acquainted?”
Nora cleared a place to sit while conveniently removing the drawings at the same time, pretending as if she’d not heard the question.
She sat but Cat was still looking with bemusement at the stack of drawings, now on the end table.
“You have?” Nora prodded.
Cat downed fully half the glass of whiskey in one sip. “I’m sorry, what was that, Nora?”
Nora struggled to mask her horror. “Er, I was referring to what you just said—that you’d heard of my friends?”
“Ah, yes, that. Don’t worry,” she said, reading Nora’s expression correctly. “I’ve not heard the name Nora Hudson, only about the elusive Natalie Hartwicke, whom all the men in the only interesting part of London want to fuck.”
Nora flinched at the word, but Cat was too amused by her own thoughts to notice.
“I saw one of your paintings and knew immediately it was you.”
That was both flattering and worrisome. “Oh, and which one was that?” She’d not sold many, but she often gave them away. After all, most of them she felt no attachment to when she was done. Only those three.
“Some young Adonis posing as Atlas.”
That would be Derek.
“I met him at a party given by a very wealthy and wicked woman I know—Amelia St. John."
Yes, Nora knew who she was: a very wealthy woman in her fifties who collected young males along with paintings. Nora had met her a few times and liked the older woman, who could be a bit cattish, but was clever and amusing while doing it.
Cat shrugged. “I knew immediately N. Hartwicke was you. Your style is very distinctive.” Her mouth softened a little. “It was a brilliant painting.”
Nora’s face heated. Even now—after she’d sold pieces for several hundred pounds—she snatched at every morsel of praise.
“He was quite thrilled with the price—Amelia apparently paid a packet for it.”
Nora was disappointed, but not surprised, that Derek sold a picture she’d given him as a gift. He was poor and needed to eat and St. John’s offer must have been irresistible.
“However, my dear Nora,” Cat drawled, her sly smile giving Nora a hint at what was coming. “When I asked him about what it was like to pose for N. Hartwicke he seemed quite . . . well, hostile, I suppose.” Cat laughed, a malicious glint in her eyes. “He’s terribly miffed that you threw him over but I told him to cheer up, that he was now part of an exclusive club.”
No doubt he’d conveniently forgotten that his thieving, and not his person or lack of sexual skills, had been the real reason she’d ended their liaison.
“I shouldn’t worry about breaking his heart too badly,” Cat said, “Lady St. John appears pleased to add him to her current stable. I daresay he’s forgotten you by now.”
Nora smiled; Cat’s tongue always had been a sharp one, just never aimed at her.
“That one you did of me—the unfinished one—it hangs in your little playroom, you know.”
Nora knew which painting and which he Cat referred to—the one Edward had been holding when Nora found him in her sunroom that day. Why hadn’t Edward destroyed the portrait? Didn’t it remind him of Nora’s betrayal?
“I know he keeps it because it reminds him of you—not because it’s a painting of me.” Cat laughed harshly. “The only time he ever got truly angry with me is when he realized I possessed a key to his little . . . shrine to you.”
Nora opened her mouth to say—what? Cat was correct: she’d been a piece in a game between Nora and Edward.
Cat lifted her glass, which was empty. “May I? Oh, no—you sit,” she said when Nora began to get up. “I’ll see to my own needs. We are old friends, after all, aren’t we? We don’t need to stand on formality.” Her back was to Nora when she said the words, but they were bitter and it cut her: because she deserved it.
Cat turned, holding a glass that was so full the amber liquid touched the top rim.
“Did you know I kept expecting you to contact me?” Pain and rejection mixed in Cat’s eyes.
Yes, Nora knew.
Cat gave a scathing laugh. “He told me he’d forbidden you to do so and said your obedience to him would always outstrip any feelings you had for me.”
Nora did not contradict her—it would have been a lie.
“He didn’t even say it in a taunting way, but with calm certainty. Even so, I didn’t—I couldn’t—believe it. I knew you loved me. Every day I waited for something—some sign.” Her voice pulsed with self-loathing and she swirled the liquid in her glass, staring down at it. “You were wise never to come back. The two of us had been bad before, but after you left? Well there was nobody left to act as a buffer between us—to keep us from employing every weapon we could find. But do you know what his greatest weapon was? The one that spread destruction like those terrible guns the Prussians are said to use on defenseless villages?” She paused, her blue eyes leaking tears and hatred in equal measure. “We’d been fighting for days and I’d accused him, again, of separating us—you and me. And that was when he told me what I should have guessed all along. You know what that was, don’t you, Nora?” Her laughter held a hint of madness, and she didn’t wait for Nora’s answer. “It was when he told me that I was just another prop, toy, or implement—no more than a whip or chunk of marble—for the two of you to use to heighten your twisted, perverted pleasures.”
Nora knew she should open her mouth and accept the blame, but her jaw was frozen. Besides, what could she say? It was true, and there was nothing she could say to excuse her behavior, nothing she could do to undo it.
Cat stared at the glass in her hand, which shook hard enough to spill amber liquid on the rug. “I know you were in on his plans from the beginning.”
Nora startled. Surely Edward would not have been that cruel—?
“No, he didn’t tell me.” She said as though Nora had spoken out loud, her look sharper than a sabre. “But I know him. And I also know you—now. He would have come to you as he planned his courtship,” she spat the word, “And he would have told you everything. And then he would have whipped you and the two of you would fuck each other into a frenzy of twisted passion.”
Nora’s soul felt sick and her stomach churned so badly she had to clench her jaws tight to keep back the bile.
But the sad, revolting truth? The images Cat’s words evoked made her sex and belly clench for those lost days.
“I’ll bet he even came to you on our wedding night.”
Nora remained rigid, silent, but Cat laughed.
“Yes, I guessed as much. How you must have laughed together—especially lat
er when I came to you for comfort after those horrid nights with him. I’ll bet—” she choked and the rattle in her chest was more than a little alarming.
“Cat—” Nora half-stood but Cat waved her back, shaking her head until the bout cleared.
“Stay away from me,” she said in a hoarse voice, blinking hard, as if she could stop the tears that had already fallen. She lowered the glass without looking and it hit the edge of the table and tumbled to the floor.
They both stared at it.
Cat jostled the overloaded coffee table and sent books and sketches tumbling. “I never should have come. You did me a favor by ignoring me—showing me how little I meant to you. You continued to obey his orders even after I’d divorced him, when you knew exactly where to find me. I’ve been a fool; you made your feelings—or lack of them—clear.” She shook her head, as if trying to dislodge something. “I never should have come,” she repeated, snatching up her coat, hat, and gloves and stumbling blindly, bumping into tables and chairs as she left the crowded room, scattering books and other detritus in her wake.
Nora opened her mouth to call after her, to beg her not to go. But Cat’s words had been like arrows dipped in poison—the poisonous truth of what Edward and Nora had done to her—and they had hit their mark with deadly accuracy.
They’d both treated Cat abominably—Nora just as much as Edward. He might have been the one to begin their game, but Nora had never hesitated to join him.
She didn’t know if she could have stopped him, but she could have tried. She could have told him she loved him any time before he’d offered another woman marriage. She could have threatened to leave him if he married. He might not have heeded her. He might have let her go—or she might have stayed, anyway.
Nora could have put some effort into saving an innocent bystander. But no, just like Edward, she’d sacrificed Cat to her needs, not stopping even after she began to know and like her.
That night when she’d crawled into Nora’s bed there had been other options. While none of them were good ones, at least she could have chosen one that didn’t put Cat into the middle of their sexual games.
His Harlot (Victorian Decadence Series Book 1) Page 27