Forsaking Hope

by Beverley Oakley

  “If that is what you want.”

  “Is it what you want?”

  “It’s of no concern what I want.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” He straightened and looked out of the window. “So…I could be any man, and you’d do what was asked of you…as long as you were paid.”

  “It’s how I keep from starving.”

  “Dear God,” he muttered, turning, his eyes boring into hers. “What happened to you?”

  She couldn’t help herself. She moved slowly forward for the connection was too strong to ignore. He wanted her back. For another precious half an hour she could drown in his arms and imagine the life she might have had.

  “I made a miscalculation.” She stood only a couple of feet from him now. “But that’s not a conversation I want to pursue. I am here for your pleasure now.”

  He raised his eyebrows with faint scepticism. “Certainly not for yours. Pleasure is the preserve of the man willing to pay for it. Not for the woman?”

  “I don’t think that’s quite accurate.” She smiled as she put her hand on his cheek, for she could when she was playing a role. The coquette. That’s what he’d enjoy for it was safely removed from earnest, innocent Miss Merriweather. “I think gentlemen like to use that as their excuse for variety after they’ve wed.”

  “You don’t think a wife would prefer to be spared the excessive attentions of her husband?”

  “Only a husband who does not share a mutual love with his wife would believe that.” He moved his cheek into her hand, and she raised her other hand to gently ruffle his hair. Just as she’d always dreamed of doing. “You must feel something for Miss Hunt to have gone so far as to contemplate marriage. Tenderness, perhaps? A desire to do with her what we’ve done today? Why would she not feel the same?”

  He closed his eyes and gently gripped her wrist. “When I kissed her, I hoped I’d feel more.”

  Hope experienced a sense of grim satisfaction at the admission. She also knew that Wilfred’s promise not to sully Charlotte’s wedding aspirations hinged on Hope doing all in her power to promote the shaky union between Felix and his sister.

  “Sometimes it’s better not to hurl oneself into a union in a surfeit of desire only to be disappointed. Love grows.”

  “And a harlot would know? Have you ever been in love?”

  Hope was glad he couldn’t see her expression. “I’ve felt desire, contrary to what you apparently believe. And I’m not an aberration. Every woman wants to feel desired by the man she loves. Every woman wishes for love when she must take a husband. Annabelle would be no different. She loves you, doesn’t she?”

  Hope lowered herself onto his lap and put her head on his shoulder. It was nice to feel him like this. Yes, he was angry but in a more contained, contemplative way. Passion spent, they could, perhaps, go some way towards being honest with one another. Honest in voicing their disappointment. And Hope could persuade him that Annabelle was the woman for him. If she could manage just that without having to damn herself in his eyes at the same time—with the thoroughness Wilfred wanted—it would be some small victory. Satisfying Wilfred was all that mattered.

  “Yes.” He began to stroke her hair, moving his hand to her cheek which he caressed gently.

  “And she would make a good wife.” Hope squeezed shut her eyes as she remembered the malice in Annabelle’s when the girl had raised her gaze from Hope and Felix’s clasped hands after she’d come upon them in the shadows after the Hunt Ball.

  “She would.” He cupped her chin and moved his face closer. “She would make an excellent wife.” He touched his lips to hers, and Hope felt the familiar need and want within her flower as it took on a life of its own. A deep throbbing sensation began at her core and made her tremble as he increased the pressure of his lips. She felt she was breathing him in. It was a powerful aphrodisiac. Until he murmured, “And you could be my mistress.”

  She drew back, rising rapidly to her feet. She should have expected it, she berated herself silently. She should have been prepared for the lash that followed the loving. It was not good form to show her emotions like this.

  “You don’t like the idea?” he asked. There was a strange insolence in the tone of the question. Or was she just imagining it?

  Hope raised one shoulder slightly as she affected a amusement. It was hard to pretend the heartless jade when she threatened to combust with feeling. “You’d not be able to afford me.” She tried for a trill, or at least a lighthearted tinkle of a laugh, but it sounded hard and mercenary. Just as he believed her to be.

  He rolled onto his side, full length on the bed, and regarded her from this semi-recumbent position, naked on the vast expanse of white linen. What an exquisite vision he was. She turned her head to look through the window, blinking away the scalding tears she must save until later.

  “A man of my means and station is almost expected to take a woman to please his carnal needs. I’m confident we could negotiate a price.”

  This was not the Felix she knew. There was a brittle edge to his words she’d not heard before. Had she truly not known him? Was her love based on a false effigy? It would be easier if she did believe that.

  She glanced at him, trying to read him, and found she could not. Flailing in uncharted waters, she was unsure how to respond. “I don’t think Annabelle would like that.”

  “We are talking about what I want, not Annabelle.”

  “Would you be so cruel that you’d do that to her within…within a month of marriage?”

  “I was thinking now might be a good time.” He smiled at her. “A good time to take a mistress, that is. If Annabelle learned of it and wished to seek a husband elsewhere, then I would not try to persuade her otherwise.”

  Hope almost felt sorry for Annabelle. But then, it would be rough justice.

  “I’ve been under pressure to take a wife,” Felix went on. “I’ve been contemplating the prospect of Annabelle with no real joy.” He regarded her stonily. “Now that you’ve reentered my life in the guise of a woman of pleasure, I like the idea of taking you as my mistress and marrying Annabelle.”

  She had no response. Was he really so base and shallow that it made no difference she was a whore just so long as his desires were fulfilled? But she knew he wasn’t like that. He was testing her.

  He cleared his throat. “Or do you have objections?”

  Hope turned away. She could be his mistress. The idea was agonisingly appealing. She could never be his wife, after all. And she’d be the exclusive property of the man she loved. Not shared around by those who could pay for her.

  “Or would you miss the variety?”

  Stung, she turned on her heel. How could she agree? Wilfred would never sanction it. It would demean his sister and, in turn, himself.

  “I don’t know how to answer you,” she whispered.

  “Come closer.” His command was uttered in little more than a whisper, but she was like a toy in his hands, unable to deny him.

  Except where her sister’s future happiness lie.

  She approached him warily.

  “Sit on the bed.”

  She sat and he came up behind her, kneeling to twine his arms about her neck, dipping his hands into her bodice and kneading her nipples. She breathed in deeply. Was he going to punish her now?

  She still couldn’t read him.

  His mouth was hot on her neck. “Do you want to be my mistress?”

  She exhaled on a sob, inclining her head the slightest fraction as she whispered tearfully, “I never thought you the kind of man to take a mistress.”

  “I never thought myself the kind of man to take a mistress until I realised it was the only way to have you.”

  The harshness in his tone was at odds with the gentleness of his loving for his hands were roaming beneath the bodice of her cuirass as he nipped her earlobe. “How do I take this off?”

  She guided his hands to the fastenings, and he unclasped her skirt, taking obvious pleasure in f
ollowing its progress to the ground, kissing his way down the length of her thigh then removing her bodice and, finally, her corset, before he lay her on the bed.

  When he leant over her, looking into her eyes, he murmured, “You know nothing of me. Do you expect I’ll be generous?”

  “If you’re a generous lover you’ll be generous in other ways.” She tried not to cry. His tenderness hurt, his harshness was as painful. She suspected revenge might be his motive, but she could not be sure. She’d not thought Felix to have a vengeful nature. But then, what did she really know of men? Or women?

  “And would you call me a generous lover?’ His breath was hot on her neck as he curled his body round hers. She was naked now except for her stockings and corset.

  “You’ll have to remind me.” She injected salaciousness into her tone and he responded as she’d hoped he would. No more of this dancing around the edges of what they were both about. It was too exhausting, too disorientating.

  With a growl that suggested he was actually enjoying himself, he rolled on top of her and latched onto her nipple, filling her with a pleasure so exquisite she gasped aloud. She ruffled his hair, the smooth brown waves caressing her skin as he kissed her breasts, her throat, her mouth, before working his way down her belly.

  A deep throbbing at her core filled her with a cocktail of the most intense ecstasy.

  Skitters of desire made her tremble in his arms.

  This time he held her tenderly and made love to her generously.

  And Hope thought it was how she would like to die.

  Chapter 7

  Their lovemaking had been slow, intense, and deeply satisfying. Until this man, Hope had never enjoyed the act before. Now, as she stared at Felix’s rested, angelic face while he slept, she supposed she never would again.

  She glanced between the bed, the writing desk, and the door. Wilfred’s promissory note was in Felix’s wallet, which was in the drawer. She’d caught a glimpse earlier of what she believed was the document Wilfred demanded she retrieve. Once she’d seized that, together with whatever money she could find, her job would be done.

  She stopped. No, she’d not take the money. She was not a grubby thief. Wilfred would get the promissory note for five hundred pounds that he’d signed over to Felix when he’d lost at the gaming tables ten days previously but that would be all. Just possibly, he’d not find the opportunity to hand it over to Felix before Charlotte’s wedding in which case, Hope’s reputation in Felix’s eyes mightn’t be completely shredded. Just possibly, there might be some kind of future for Hope and Felix.

  But her first duty was safeguarding her sister’s happiness.

  As for Hope, she’d be no different than she had been three days before: a sinful, shameless, harlot destined for hell.

  Only now, she’d be one who’d discovered that the scar tissue surrounding her heart was less impermeable than she’d feared.

  Felix awoke, conscious of a great emptiness. It was usually so, but this time, in addition to the emptiness in his heart, was his consciousness of the emptiness of his bed.

  As if something had been actively taken away from him.

  For two years, he’d felt a sense of loss, but during the last six months that feeling had been augmented by a sense of utter devastation. There was nothing, he felt, that could cut through the despair and blame he felt at his sister’s death. He’d been spared when everyone had thought he’d die.

  His mother couldn’t hide her devastation at the loss of her only daughter, and at each tortured look she directed at her son, Felix felt the guilt all over again.

  Rolling onto his stomach, Felix put his face into the pillow where Hope’s head had rested and breathed in her scent. It was a bolder scent than he remembered. The innocent Miss Merriweather of two years ago had smelled of something light and floral. The sensual and experienced Miss Merriweather who had come to him last night had smelled of something more exotic, but that had not lessened his desire.

  He kept his eyes closed while he continued to breathe in the lingering traces of her.

  A deep and strange out-of-body lethargy had overcome him, yet the feeling was more healing than the lethargy that had sapped him of his desire to live for the past few months.

  Now, a life-affirming conviction stole through him, like a thread of something giving him strength. The circumstances were not ideal, but Hope would be his.

  He shifted position and stared at the ceiling. Thinking.

  For two years, he’d dreamed of making Hope his wife. After receiving no response to the three letters Felix had written to the address Mrs Merriweather had given him, Felix accepted that her daughter had become swallowed up by the Continent and her new life there and, understanding she wanted to sever her past ties, he’d resumed his desultory courtship of Annabelle; mostly because Lady Durham seemed always to be inviting the girl to the house and planning social events which Annabelle invariably attended.

  When Miss Charlotte Merriweather had said she had news that suggested her sister was in some kind of danger or difficulty, hence her lack of communication, Felix had been spurred on by the greatest sense of at last having a quest to fulfill. He’d told Annabelle, kindly, that she must lay to rest her dreams of a shared future now that Miss Merriweather was again within reach.

  Yet even the discovery of learning what Miss Merriweather had had not exorcised the tenderness and passion he felt for her. She was, he believed, evading the truth when she’d hinted at how she’d come to follow her degraded path. She’d not denied it when he suggested another man.

  Was it someone with whom she had a pre-existing affection and Felix had misinterpreted Miss Merriweather’s interest in him at the Hunt Ball?

  Whatever had happened, Hope had apparently been abandoned and resorted to the only employment open to women in her situation, it would seem.

  He drew in a deep breath. If he could just rise above his repugnance and set aside his pique, anguish and all the other emotions he felt, Miss Merriweather was willing to be his.

  His.

  That, in truth, was what he wanted above all else, and it wasn’t just about the sex.

  As he continued to stare at the plaster cherubs adorning the ceiling, Felix contemplated the road ahead—marriage to Annabelle and nights in the arms of the woman he loved. Hope. He could reconcile the double life because each woman would know what he offered beforehand.

  He would not lie to them or pretend it could be otherwise.

  The ornate collection of plasterwork winged creatures that frolicked with bucolic abandon around the ceiling edges seemed to smile down at him. Since he’d inherited his grandfather’s townhouse, he’d been in the habit of seeing Hope’s features in their innocent gazes. Of course, they were not representations of innocence. They were from another age. A more ribald age that celebrated the pleasures of the flesh.

  Felix had not thought himself a sensuous man, but by God he’d taken his fill of it this afternoon and been left wanting.

  In typical fashion, his father had taken him to visit a prostitute on his twenty-first birthday. The experience had left him cold although he’d returned recently on a couple of violently ribald occasions instigated by his friends who were determined to cheer him.

  While he’d have been unable to name the house or location to save his life, he wondered if it might have been the residence to which Miss Merriweather was attached. Thank God he’d not encountered her within its precincts. It was bad enough that she’d come from there, but that was the reality he’d have to get used to. The virtuous creature he’d put on a pedestal had lost her wings and taken on an earthly guise, but she was just as desirable.

  Hope had mentioned the name Madame Chambon. Her brothel madam.

  His nostrils flared as he breathed through his disappointment. For two years, he’d dreamed of discovering her, saving her…she was too late for saving now.

  But he could still have her. The thought was accompanied by a surge of bile. He would still have her
, but he would not punish her for disappointing him like he might have, once.

  Like he might have as a callow youth whose notions of womanly virtue were so at odds with who and what a woman really was.

  A loud knocking disturbed these reveries that might have gone on for hours, and if he’d been sucking on the pipe again, might have put him out of contention for the evening Millament obviously desired for him.

  “Gad’s teeth but you look like the cat that’s swallowed the cream and is contemplating a second foray with much wickeder consequences,” his friend declared as he strode through the door.

  Millament was dressed for the theatre, looking the debonair man of fashion as he glanced at the rumpled sheets and his friend’s disarray.

  “Not like you at all, Felix.” He shook his head, his expression bemused and interested. “But a little light entertainment seems to have done you the world of good. What a shining star she was. A magical, mystical creature of the night. I wonder where the boys found her?”

  Felix raised himself on his elbows. “What do you mean, the boys?” The thought she might have given herself to a number of his friends presented itself as a sudden, shocking possibility.

  Millament shrugged. “After that disastrous game of poker the other night when you were so very far from yourself, someone proposed—I forget who—that he procure you a creature who would take your mind of your earthly woes. You’ve been a monk, Felix, and that damned pipe is making you no fun to be around.” He glanced at the smoking apparatus by the bed and his smile brightened. “But a glorious woman has brought you back to life. She came to you three nights ago when your senses were addled and she clearly was prepared to come again, which augurs well for you, judging by the egg-like look on your face.” He walked to the wardrobe and pulled out a coat, anxious clearly to get his friend ready for the evening. “Remind me of where this divine create can be found.”

  “She’s mine.” Felix sat up. The energy fuelling him now was unlike anything he’d experienced for as long as he could remember.