She watched him as if waiting for him to say something, to do something.
He stepped closer and reached out, cradling her face in his hands. Her eyelashes fluttered down to rest against her cheeks.
“Lucy,” he whispered. “Don’t close your eyes now.”
Finally, she opened her eyes, the clear green irises meeting his gaze.
He let go of her face and caught her up in his arms—taking her to the bed. He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to see her naked face when he climaxed inside her.
He covered her with his body, sliding in easily, his hands cradling her face once more.
In the aftermath of his release, Lucy nestled against him, finding all the hollows where her body fit perfectly, her face in the space between his shoulder and neck, her legs hooked just below his buttocks.
She’d let him see her. See almost all of her…her hair, her face…
There was a tension to the quiet of their embrace, an inevitability, as if having started the motion, there was nothing Lucy could do to prevent the consequences of her actions.
Nothing to do but face them when they came, whatever they may be.
Chapter Ten
Walking through Mr. Clarke’s warehouse, viewing the bolts of silk, the rich fabrics, all of it made him think of Lucy, of the silk of her mask, her gloves—her body laid upon silken sheets.
He found himself at Harridan House hours before he had said he would come, not quite certain how he had gotten himself there. He caught a glimpse of red from the bottom of the stairs. A surge of fierce pleasure filled him. She was here, there would be no waiting. He ascended the stairs quickly, two at a time.
And then froze, one foot still paused in the air.
There, in a torrid embrace with a gentleman he had neither the time nor the inclination to recognize, was Lucy.
It was instinct that propelled Robert forward, pulling the man off her and connecting his fist to the man’s shoulder even as he wrestled him to the ground.
When the man pushed him away, stumbling back, Robert followed.
“Stop it!” He heard the feminine cry but he didn’t heed it. No one touched Lucy but him. No one.
He swung again, the pain of fist striking jaw barely registering.
“Sir Robert!” He felt the desperate tug on his arm and heard the strange timbre of Lucy’s voice even as he turned, ready to let her know…
His gaze focused on her face—pale beneath the red silk. Pale and strange. Pale and strange and not her.
His hands dropped to his sides. His fists unclenched. The anger that had filled him so quickly dissipated in an instant.
And then he saw the pieces of the puzzle fitting together—she wore no gloves.
“Charles, Douglas,” the woman said, this other Madame Rouge who was not Lucy, “Escort Sir Robert off the premises.” She focused her steely gaze on him. “You are no longer welcome at Harridan House, sir. Please remove yourself.”
He didn’t speak, he couldn’t. What on earth could he say that would make any sense? He bowed, ever so slightly, shrugging off the footmen who reached to restrain him. Then Robert, a more simmering anger building inside him, pivoted on his heel and walked out of Harridan House for the last time.
Chapter Eleven
Lucy was in Madame Rouge’s dressing room, mending a small tear in the dress Lady Blount had been wearing before changing, when she heard Diana call for her. She dropped the dress onto the chair and quickly answered the summons.
“We need ice if there is any left, and bandages perhaps,” Lady Blount snapped uncharacteristically.
One look at Sir Jason Blount’s bruised face and hobbled stance and Lucy understood the tone. Violence was not frequent at Harridan House, but on occasion, men brought their enmities with them to the club.
“What happened?”
“Sir Robert George has gone mad.” Diana barely looked at her, so intent was she on her new lover. “He’s been barred from Harridan House. Remember that.”
Lucy nodded, not trusting herself to speak, her mind racing even as her feet flew down the back stairs.
Robert had attacked Sir Jason Blount. Why?
It was all too clear—he must have seen Madame Rouge and Sir Jason together and thought Lady Blount was Lucy.
She’d never pegged Sir Robert for the jealous type. Then again, they had been exclusive lovers for the last two weeks. As far as she knew, he’d been with no one else and he knew intimately that he had been her first.
Which explained his possessiveness. Men had a thing about virginity—it was why it was so highly prized, why she’d even intended to wait until marriage.
The kitchen was oppressively hot. Almost blindly, Lucy looked around the busy room.
She had to go. She had to tell him it wasn’t her so that he understood.
“Eleanor.” Lucy grabbed the nearest girl. “Madame Rouge needs ice, if we have some, right away.”
Lucy didn’t wait to see if the girl obeyed her. She let herself out into the kitchen garden, tearing off her apron as she went.
She had to see him.
The footman didn’t want to let her in, until she explained she was Lucy from Sir Robert’s club and most certainly he would wish to see her. The footman clearly knew about his employer’s reputation and he let her into the hall to wait.
Other than the clicking of her heels on the floor while she paced, she had only the vaguest impression of her surroundings.
Hardly a minute later she followed the footman down the hall toward the rear. His study, she thought, or the library.
Sir Robert was standing by the fireplace when she entered the room, in the act of pouring a glass of liquor. From the way he focused on his movement, she knew it was not his first.
He put the decanter down and faced her. He looked worse for the evening, his blond hair unruly and flopping over his brow, his shirt torn.
“Here you are,” he said softly. Dangerously, she thought, as if everything had changed between them.
He held the glass in his hand precariously, gesturing with it, as if he didn’t notice that the liquid within was near to sloshing over the sides and staining the fine wool carpet beneath their feet.
“I need to explain,” Lucy rushed her words, desperate to convince him. “It wasn’t me.”
“I know.”
“My lady, she came back and…” Suddenly Lucy stopped and stared at him. “You know?”
“I’m too old to be running around in a jealous rage, but that’s what I did.” He walked toward her, his gaze boring into hers. The corner of his right eyebrow twitched. “I’ve been stripped of my membership, but I don’t think I can let you go that easily.”
He still held his glass, but he laid his free hand on her cheek, his fingers tangling in her hair. His palm burned her skin where he touched but she didn’t move.
“I want you.”
She knew that and she wanted him too, but somehow, hearing those words, stark and potent, left her struggling for breath, struggling for clarity of mind.
“In my bed and my bed alone,” he continued, “as my mistress.” It wasn’t a question and he didn’t wait for an answer. He lowered his head and took her mouth with his own. She could taste the brandy on his breath and opened up to him, drunk with the kiss, with the night, with his demand.
His mistress. A vision of that life flashed through her mind—a life devoted solely to his pleasure.
She could feel the cool glass of brandy pressed against her back as he pulled her closer to him. She wanted to wrap her legs around him and hold him against her, against the need and heat building up inside.
Then he moved away, just enough that she opened her eyes and saw him looking down at her.
“I will take care of you, Lucy. You will want for nothing.”
She pulled out of his grasp, pressing her palms to the sides of her head, turning so that she did not see his face. She needed to think and she simply could not do so in his presence. Even turned from hi
m, she felt him. He filled every room he was in, permeated every one of her senses. She had never before met a man who made her forget everything so that even her name sounded by his deep voice was foreign and strange.
“How I didn’t realize there were two of you playing one role, I will never understand,” he said with a chagrined laugh. “The only similarity is the way you both fill the bodice of that red dress.”
She turned back to him, stunned.
“She is softer than you, more curvy and round like a ripe peach. You are like my mare, Dancing Girl, well-developed, voluptuous in all the right places, but sleekly muscled and strong.”
Never in her life had Lucy heard herself described that way. Indeed if any man had ever compared her to a horse, she might have slapped him. Somehow, the way Sir Robert said those words, the appreciative gleam in his eyes, she knew it was a compliment.
“Indeed, I’ll give you Dancing Girl as a gift. Yes, it’s fitting.”
“I don’t ride,” Lucy admitted, for want of anything else to say.
“I’ll teach you,” Robert growled, reaching for her again. “I’ve found you to be a fast learner.”
She hadn’t said yes, Lucy reminded herself, even as she gave herself over to his embrace. She could think about it all later. Later, when he’d quenched this fire within her.
Contained it at least—if she waited for it to be quenched, she might as well say yes now.
Chapter Twelve
Sleepily, Lucy peered at him. The morning light peeked through the crack in the heavy draperies. Heavy, masculine draperies.
Morning. Oh, dear. With morning came decisions, consequences, confessions. Lucy wanted to close her eyes again and sink back into the erotic dream of his bed.
He moved, catching one of her wrists in his hand, running the pad of his thumb over the rough skin of her bare hand. They were the hands of a woman who worked, she thought unashamedly. She had covered them as Rouge only to conceal her identity.
But this morning her identity was a shiftless thing, unmotivated to commit to any one possibility, to choose any one way.
“So explain to me everything.” Even as he spoke, he brought her palm to his lips.
Lucy did. She told him some of it, much of it. That she was lady’s maid to Madame Rouge and that her duties had required the disguise.
“And who is Madame Rouge?” His tongue worked its way down to her wrist, distracting her.
“I can’t tell you,” Lucy said, hesitantly. “I did promise.” When his mouth paused in its ministrations, she rushed on: “She has been exceedingly generous and good to me.”
He held her wrist several inches away from him and stared at her, his eyebrows knitting together.
“You are now in my employ,” he reminded her. She didn’t correct him, didn’t remind him that she hadn’t yet agreed. It was all too clear to both of them that last night she had chosen. Lucy wondered briefly if he was disappointed with her, if he wished it had been the other Madame Rouge with whom he had engaged.
“Her secret is her own,” Lucy said firmly, drawing her hand back. He didn’t let go. “I cannot tell you.”
Robert moved swiftly, rolling over till she was beneath him, bracing himself with his hands on either side of her shoulders.
“Then tell me,” he pressed, the intensity of his gaze pinning her in place even if his hips were not pressed against hers, “who is Lucy? Besides being an impressively loyal woman?”
She let her breath out in a shaky laugh.
“I am exactly what you see, Sir Robert. Your new mistress who is quite distracted by…” She didn’t bother finishing her sentence. He was sliding inside her, thick and hard, and he knew exactly what was distracting her.
She would be loyal to him, she promised herself, even if she had betrayed Lady Blount, even if she had no idea what she was doing other than following the inevitable path of her desires.
She reached up to thread her fingers through his and he lowered himself atop her, his hips thrusting against hers. She wrapped her legs around him, echoing his movements, meeting his hips with her own, his cock with the tight squeeze of her cunt.
They writhed together, each focused on their own pleasure, on the sensations emanating from the place where they joined. He came before her, his cock pulsing and throbbing and just when she thought she would leave this encounter unfulfilled, her own climax overtook her.
He collapsed over her and she ran her hands over his body, until finally, she simply hugged him tightly.
She envisioned him as a starfish spread out above her and she clung to him in every way possible, thighs gripping him, ankles linked, hands clutching around his back, kneading his muscles.
This was some dreamlike world, where all that mattered was his body entwined with hers.
“I’ll be back soon,” he whispered into her ear. “Don’t move. I want to come back to you here, exactly as you are.”
He disengaged his body from hers, returning her to reality. Despite his words, she sat up quickly.
“I must though, Sir Robert. I have to tell La…give my resignation. I can’t just disappear.” There were choices and then there were consequences. Returning to face Lady Blount was the very least she could do.
Robert stared at her for a moment, as if frozen. Then he moved again, ringing for his valet.
“Naturally. And you wish to do so in person?”
Lucy nodded, clutching the sheets to her body as the valet entered the room. The man, somewhere in his thirties, was dressed impeccably in the height of fashion.
“Peters, this is Miss…” Robert shot her a quick look, his left eyebrow quirked in question.
“Miss Leigh,” Lucy offered, biting her lower lip. It was the same name she’d given to Lady Blount two years ago. She did not wish to be the other Lucy, the one who still had a family in Cornwall, a family that might very well be as ashamed of her as they had been of Mary.
“Right. Miss Leigh. She’ll be staying with us for a few days.”
“Very good, sir,” Peters said mildly. Of course, he looked to be a man who did everything mildly—as valets often were.
“Lucy,” Robert turned his attention back to her just before he followed his valet into the dressing room. “Hurry back then, will you?”
“And you as well,” she agreed. The thin paneled door closed between the rooms and she looked about his bedroom for the first time since she had arrived the day before, noticing the elegant, masculine decor. Everything in the room breathed of Robert.
Even her body, she thought with a laugh.
She was cutting off the life she had known, moving on yet again, but she didn’t have to do this, she reminded herself. Even if Lady Blount would not keep her on after she learned of Lucy’s actions, there were other jobs she could take. Other respectable jobs…
She pushed the thoughts out of her head as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. She wanted Robert, so the consequences be damned.
Chapter Thirteen
The bedroom was dim—dimmer than usual. Lucy hardly expected Lady Blount to be there, but there she was, lying on the bed, staring at the wall. Or in the direction of the wall.
“Where have you been?”
Lucy strained to hear the soft, plaintive words. Her employer didn’t even turn to look at her.
“I…I had to attend to…Lady Blount, I am very sorry, but I can no longer work here.”
That seemed to rouse the lady out of her malaise. She turned her head and peered at Lucy.
“You have found a better position?” The doubt in the lady’s voice was obvious.
“No, I mean, well, it’s a different position and it starts immediately.”
Lucy hadn’t intended to say more but there was that heavy silence, and Lady Blount stared at her.
“I…I will be Sir Robert George’s mistress.”
Again silence. Then Lady Blount began to laugh.
“You slept with him, as Madame Rouge, in my absence?”
; Lucy nodded, embarrassed, guilty. She had known this would be difficult but knowing was no preparation.
“And thus it was jealousy, only, not for me.”
Lucy bit her lip, nodding again.
“Go on Lucy, leave me then. It’s all too ridiculous for words. Sir Robert George, indeed.” Diana pressed her face back down in the pillow as she laughed again.
The laugh sounded rather close to tears. Lucy had never seen her employer cry. She did not wish to now.
It was cowardly, Lucy knew, but she fled.
Lucy didn’t have many belongings to retrieve from Harridan House, and with the one small, worn leather valise that she had brought with her to London eight years earlier, she began the long walk back to Sir Robert’s home.
A new beginning. Two years earlier, she had made a similar walk, one that had landed her in Harridan House. Now she was to be a mistress. Clearly, hers was a path of sin.
Walking in her sturdy black half boots and her plain gray dress, Lucy didn’t feel in any way the temptress she had played at these past weeks. She felt like a maid. Like the servant she had been her whole life.
Sir Robert was not at home when she arrived, but the butler expressionlessly let her in, handed her belongings to the footman and asked if she would care for some tea while she waited or if she would prefer to be shown to the room that had been prepared for her.
There were too many people here in the hall watching her. She could feel the stares of all the servants, even though they blended in very well to the background, as she had done just days before.
The man snapped his fingers and a young maid stepped forward.
“Corrine, please show Miss Leigh to her room.”
Lucy followed the girl up the stairs. Just like his bedroom, the hallway was elegant and tasteful, exceedingly masculine, as had been the entry hall. Of course, Sir Robert had lived here alone for over a decade, so naturally the decor would reflect his own tastes.
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