Dukes of the Demi-Monde

by Felicia Greene

  Who she had become, despite James Calcourt.

  ‘You were wearing purple when we first met.’

  Damn her unruly heart for skipping a beat. How many times had she told young women that absolute control, especially of one’s own body, had to be maintained when one’s morals were at risk? Breathing deeply could quell an unruly heart—it could stop one’s hands trembling. Still, despite all her careful training of both herself and others, her spirit had rebelled before she could stop it.

  Turning to face him was her next mistake. No matter how crowded the space, Calcourt’s eyes had always managed to make her feel as if there was no-one else in the room.

  ‘You looked beautiful. Just as you do now.’ Calcourt’s stare was gentle but uncompromising, as it had always been ‘And don’t tell me you don’t remember.’

  Lying was a sin, but a necessary one. ‘I don’t remember wearing purple. Or meeting you.’

  ‘Purple, with tiny yellow flowers embroidered at the hem. You looked like a spring night. And I know when you’re lying to me.’

  ‘We do not speak with nearly enough regularity to understand when I am telling falsehoods.’

  ‘We spoke plentifully when we were younger. I remember every word. And we can always speak more now.’ Calcourt paused. ‘You have only to ask.’

  This was a conversation that couldn’t occur. She would have to walk away—but how could she perform the cut direct with so many eyes upon her? Everyone could see her standing in the doorway with the priest, speaking to him—if she were to walk away from him without a curtsey, the whole room would soon be speaking of the famously moral Mary Atterson and her sudden swerve into impoliteness.

  ‘Yes. I’m speaking to you here and now because many people can see us.’

  ‘We have been in the same room together before, and you have been gentlemanly enough to keep your distance.’

  ‘I am not being ungentlemanly now. I haven’t been ungentlemanly for years.’

  ‘I consider this most ungentlemanly.’

  ‘Then you don’t remember me at all.’

  ‘I… I wish I didn’t remember you.’

  ‘You see? I do know when you’re lying.’

  Mary sighed, her breath quivering in her chest as it came to her throat. ‘All right. I am lying because you are being ungentlemanly. Why are you being ungentlemanly?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She heard Calcourt sigh. ‘Your dress. The occasion. My years of cowardice.’

  ‘It is not the correct time to discuss any of this.’

  ‘I know. Believe me, I know. But when will it be the correct time?’

  The elderflower cordial was suddenly bitter in Mary’s mouth. The moment she had thought of—longed for, in darker days—was suddenly here, shining in front of her.

  Calcourt, asking to speak to her again. Asking to… to be something different to what they were now. Angry, solitary strangers.

  She caught Rebecca’s eye as she danced. The sudden curiosity in her friend’s face, the slightly lingering look she gave as she turned and whispered something in her husband’s ear, cast a chill over the strange heat burgeoning in her breast.

  The past could not be changed, and neither could her unimpeachable reputation. She turned to face Calcourt, steeling herself for the man’s beauty, still wilting a little at the feeling that came when looking at him face-to-face.

  ‘What’s done is done, Reverend Calcourt. The correct time was many years ago—and those years cannot be brought back and altered, however much we may wish that it was so.’ She performed a curtsey of such rigid politeness that no-one in the room could fail to see it. ‘Good night.’

  ‘Miss Atterson—’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Later, lying in bed, she knew she had been dishonest from the start. She was a craven liar, no matter how much she tried to avoid it.

  She knew she had worn purple, the first time she had met James Calcourt. The gown lay folded in a chest in the attic, jasmine blossoms pressed between the folds of silk and tulle. When her seamstress had asked her what colour she wished to wear for the Peterson wedding, she had chosen purple in full knowledge of what she was doing.

  She had hoped to spark the memory in him. Hoped for the very approach that he had made. Even if she hadn’t been able to admit it to herself until here and now, in the safety of her own bed, that had to have driven her actions.

  She had wanted James Calcourt to remember. She had wanted him to come to her. But when he did, when he spoke to her… oh, it had been torture. The sweetest, most terrible form of torture.

  It made her want to be sinful. Made her want to do the things she advised other women against doing—conversations conducted in the most euphemistic of terms, but which everyone understood. Touching oneself in a manner that no respectable woman should ever do, even under the harshest of duress.

  She had never felt quite so lonely as an adult woman as she did now. So vulnerable. So ready to go against her careful years of morality, her reconstruction after such complete ruin, and touch herself as he had touched her.

  It wouldn’t be the same. Nothing had ever been the same. But maybe, just maybe, it would lay the ghost to rest…

  ‘No.’ Mary spoke the words aloud to the unsympathetic night, bringing her hands to her sides. She clenched the sheets, desperate to avoid temptation. ‘No, I shall not.’

  Sleep took a long time to come, but it came in the end. It brought visions of James Calcourt, his dark eyes burning into hers.

  The celebrations carried on until a reasonable hour. John and Rebecca Peterson were both excessively reasonable people—dull people, in the best and brightest sense of the word—and champagne and merriment were to be enjoyed only to a certain point, discarded while the sun was still just about in the sky. Calcourt walked back to the vicarage alone, clear-headed, memories sending small but persistent chills through him as he opened the door.

  He threw his coat onto the back of a chair, kicking his shoes into the corner with some difficulty as he made his way to bed.

  The vicarage suited him as well as any place could be expected to. It was sparse, yes, and devoid of home comforts—but home comforts tended to arrive with wives, and he remained unmarried. Mrs. Smith, the small, wiry old woman who came to clean and cook, attempted to brighten up the dreary space with jars of daffodils and prominently displayed portraits of lambs and shepherdesses—but despite her efforts, and Calcourt’s politeness, the vicarage kept a rather unlived-in look.

  Putting his hands behind his head, he sighed. He had no head for decoration, and neither did he wish to develop one. He was built for articulating God’s word, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and growing a garden that could feed as many parishioners as possible.

  And for loving Mary Atterson. From afar, and silently—apart from today. Today he hadn’t been able to bear it, watching her as she sat in her magnificent purple dress in the wallflower section of the festivities.

  Mary had never been a wallflower. She wasn’t a wallflower now, despite her spinsterhood and large collection of charitable causes. She had always been the queen of any space she had inhabited, when she and Calcourt were both young…

  … but he had stolen her crown, and trampled upon it. And now, when he came to her, the sadness in her eyes frightened him.

  Had he really been so unrepentant a rake? Yes. He couldn’t deny it, and neither could anyone who had known him from that vivid, shocking period of his youth. The braying pack of titled men who had surrounded him had gone onto greater things—their inherited titles, their country estates, their loveless marriages. Calcourt, without wealth or natural arrogance to protect him, had been left with nothing but his own mistakes.

  Mary Atterson was his worst mistake. Abandoning her after taking her virtue, giving her the time and space to loathe him to the core—that was the worst mistake that any man could ever make. And going into the Church, working as a curate, and painstakingly toiling his way into a vicar’s garb would never
be enough to assuage the enormous guilt.

  It wasn’t enough to kill the love, either. A love that had never ebbed, not with the passing years, not with Mary’s apparent indifference. A love that grew stronger now, every day, now that the passing of time was growing more and more evident.

  He had been brave, today. Braver than he thought he could be. But he would need to be brave again, if he ever stood a chance of speaking to Mary Atterson for more than a quarter-hour—and in a less crowded place. If he ever wanted to touch her again.

  She hadn’t been his first, but he had been hers. It had been clumsy, and difficult, and—and sacred. The times that came after had grown more and more perfect, more sure, more right…

  But he had been young and idiotic, searching for greener pastures, sewing wild oats. And when he had wished to return to Mary, hoping to feel her in his arms again, she had rightly sent him to the devil.

  If only she would come to him now. It was impossible; her carriage had already taken her back to the heart of the city, to a bed as lonely as his own. But if she came to him, still clad in that crocus-purple gown, her eyes still as wide and brown and lovely as they had been all those years ago…

  I don’t hate you anymore. I have forgiven you. I still feel what I felt for you, all those years ago.

  Show me the man you have become.

  It wasn’t right, touching himself, thinking of her. But fantasy was so much harder to control than reality—so much more difficult to bend to one’s will. Calcourt slid his hands along his thighs, finding his rigid cock with a sigh of harsh abandonment.

  His body was still young, when he thought of Mary coming to him. Just as she used to, all those years ago. She would take off her cloak, her bonnet tumbling to the ground as he took hold of her, kissing her, his impatient hands moving to her breasts before they had even managed to greet one another.

  He would be slower, now. Age brought experience, empathy. He would take his time, slowly stripping away each garment, kissing her with the heartfelt gratitude of a man given a second chance.

  There would be no second chances. He tried to tell himself that. But it was far too late now, his hand gripping his rigid shaft, his hips straining upward as more pleasure came.

  Mary’s hand had felt different, more tentative, but the feeling had been a thousand times more potent. Perhaps it had been her shy smile as she knelt over him, touching him, leaning down to breath over the head of his cock with a gasp of excitement.

  Being inside her had felt like home. Like coming back to what was most important. She had welcomed him with each thrust, each small exquisite movement, her fingers digging into his shoulders until his flesh turned white. Her face, flushed with ecstasy, transfigured with the meaning of what they were doing.

  Her whispers in his ear came back to him now, stronger than ever. More. Please.

  He would give her more. He would give her everything, everything in the world, if only she would let him.

  ‘Mary.’ He mumbled the word into his pillow, his teeth gritted, too far gone to keep the name to himself. He slid his hand along his shaft with more urgency, more force—almost the point of pain as the pleasure grew in him, intense and frightening. Succumbing to bliss was something he rarely indulged in—but oh, God, Mary had looked so beautiful this evening. Too beautiful to ignore.

  He grunted, biting his lip, as he came in a vivid burst of sensation. Once, twice, again her spurted into his palm, not wanting it to finish, but unable to stop in the face of such perfect feeling—a brief, stunning moment of union with the best part of his past. Only when he lay panting in his bed, spent and exhausted, did the tendrils of doubt creep in again.

  This was all he could ever hope for, when it came to Mary Atterson. He had already ruined their budding love beyond measure with his youthful indiscretions. This lonely recall of what had been was the most he could ever have.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mary.’ Only the linen of the pillow could hear his melancholy plea. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The wisteria-covered cottage on the corner of the street was small, but perfectly-formed. Given that John Peterson had moved out of his London rooms and received a generous wedding gift from his former master, Sir Marcus Bennington, the tiny cottage in the country joined a larger townhouse in an emerging but respectable part of London as homes for the couple currently lying in lavender-scented sheets.

  ‘I would swear to it, my love.’ Rebecca Peterson nodded as she rested her head against her husband’s chest. ‘Reverend Calcourt is the dashing rake of Mary Atterson’s past.’

  ‘He is the vicar of a parish on the outskirts of London, and she is one of London’s most stridently moral women. The only time they could have met one another is giving charity baskets to the poor, or feeding sparrows in the square.’

  ‘She told me that a holy man had ruined her when she was younger. Just after I had met you—it was a strange conversation, full of unsaid words, but the words she said were shocking enough.’

  ‘I still can’t imagine Mary Atterson within twenty feet of a morally dubious male. She has more morals in her little finger than in several of London’s most splendid charitable associations.’

  ‘Anyone can fall. Look at me—look at you.’ Rebecca smiled. ‘I honestly believe it has to be him. No-one else makes sense.’

  ‘It would be an astonishing coincidence.’

  ‘No it wouldn’t. They were both born in the same part of London—they both move in same circles.’ Rebecca looked at her husband, her eyes wide with excitement. ‘And the vicarage certainly wasn’t destined for him. My father says Reverend Calcourt was something of a tearaway when he was younger.’

  Peterson gazed into the middle distance, musing. ‘And she spoke to you of him?’

  ‘Not in so many words. She spoke of a man who had been very wicked, and who had left her heartbroken.’

  ‘There are many men like that in the world.’

  ‘Yes—but did you see them speak when we were dancing? They looked most passionately attuned to one another.’

  ‘I can’t believe you were so focused on the passionate attunement of others during our first dance.’

  ‘It certainly was not our first dance. We danced many times in your rooms, before this house was so much as a glint in your eye.’

  ‘That we did.’ Peterson gently stroked his finger along his wife’s forearm. ‘And ate, and drank, and talked, and laughed, and…’

  ‘And, yes.’ Rebecca laughed. ‘As many times as we possibly could.’

  ‘It seems criminal not to at least attempt it now.’

  ‘I completely agree.’ Rebecca lowered her voice, a touch of irrepressible playfulness in her tone. ‘But before we do… could we try to arrange a little mischief?’

  Peterson sighed. ‘I sense that I’m about to become involved in intrigue.’

  ‘Wholesome intrigue. Pleasant intrigue.’

  ‘You shall owe me a month of absolute obedience.’

  ‘What an astonishingly funny thing to say.’

  ‘I thought I’d try.’ Peterson gently brushed against the curve of Rebecca’s breast. ‘But really, now that I think about it—you’re beautiful when you’re disobedient.’

  An invitation to the Peterson’s cottage was expected, of course, but not the day after the wedding. Mary looked at the hastily-scrawled letter with a touch of surprise as she prepared herself for a day of visits, charities and good works performed with kindness. It wasn’t like Rebecca to pull her away from necessary work, and it certainly wasn’t like her to write so insistently—but she was a tremendous friend, and Mary could hardly refuse her.

  Her doubts, too formless to be called suspicions, only grew as her carriage arrived at the wisteria-covered property. Another curricle sat idling on the gravel drive, small and plain, its horses snorting at Mary as she made her way to the door.

  ‘My dear!’ Rebecca’s smile as the maid let her into the drawing room dissolved a little of her unease, as did the table set for tea. Mary sat
gratefully, only to rise again as John Peterson entered.

  ‘Please Miss Atterson, sit down.’ John bowed, his habitual frown softening. ‘It is wonderful to have you here.’

  ‘And so soon.’ Mary reached for her teacup, only to abruptly set it down as Reverend Calcourt walked into the room. She curtseyed, noting the shocked look in Calcourt’s eyes as he bowed.

  He was awfully pleasant-looking when he was surprised. He was awfully pleasant-looking when he did anything. He had even looked wildly attractive when he had broken her heart—which had Mary on the verge of scowling in the most unbecoming fashion as she sank into her seat.

  The general taking of tea began in silence. Eventually, picking up a biscuit, Rebecca looked at Mary and Reverend Calcourt with a general air of expectation.

  ‘You know the Reverend, do you not? I’m sure you have met more than once.’ Rebecca’s pleasant tone revealed absolutely nothing; Mary bit her tongue, determined not to say or do anything that would reveal her discomfort. ‘You have both been involved in so many charitable causes—causes that required help when I was little more than a child.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mary took a deliberate sip of tea, not wanting to watch Calcourt as he sat opposite her. ‘We have both been involved in a great number of ventures, both—both together, and apart.’

  ‘We have been a part of many of the same causes.’ Calcourt’s sip of tea looked decidedly more deliberate than hers. Mary looked down at the crockery, wondering if counting the cakes on the prettily-laid table would ease her tension. ‘We have helped many people together.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mary didn’t mean to set her cup down with a clatter, but the harsh sound of cup on saucer echoed through the room. ‘And we have also helped many people separately.’

  The silence that followed was slightly more awkward than the one that preceded it. Eventually, with a decisive clearing of her throat, Rebecca spoke with a touch more brightness than before.