Julia Justiss (17 page)

“Clouds are gathering,” he said, his voice sounding
strained. “We’d better get back to the house. I wouldn’t want you to…to suffer a drenching.”

Disappointment and an overwhelming frustration flooded her. “Of—of course,” she stumbled. “With your lungs just recovering, you don’t need to get soaked.”

Why had he not kissed her? she wondered as they gathered up their belongings and trudged back to the gig. Surely he knew she would not have repulsed him.

Or had she been mistaken about what she thought she saw in his eyes?

Before she could puzzle it out, he was handing her into the carriage. This time, he let his hands linger, even as she left hers on his shoulders, her fingers tingling at the contact. He opened his lips as if to speak, then with a slight shake of his head, closed them.

But though he remained silent, she gazed into his still-smoldering eyes long enough for her to be certain she’d not imagined the desire in them.

Why, then, had he not acted upon it?

Her longing for the kiss they had not shared seemed to magnify the need pulsing through her to touch him, be touched by him. But as they set off, he remained stubbornly at his side of the carriage, close yet so out of reach that, but for the frenzy of her deprived nerves, she might as well have been in the carriage alone.

The air between them radiating with tension, the drive back passed with scarcely a syllable exchanged. Belle ought to have regretted the sudden loss of the easy camaraderie that had sprung up between them in the last several days.

Instead, all she could think of—all she wanted—was the kiss he’d denied her.

When they reached the stables, the captain left her with a stiff goodbye, saying he wished to rest before dinner. Belle turned the vehicle over to a waiting groom and wandered up to her chamber, the force of their near connection still reverberating through her.

Absently she sat at her dressing table and stared at the bemused face reflected in the mirror.

She might as well admit that she didn’t want the captain to leave. Not in a few days. Not for a long time.

She’d seen the expression too often to mistake the desire in his eyes. Was he being reticent out of guilt, not wishing to make advances toward the woman who had nursed and housed him? Or not wishing to take advantage of her guilt in having wounded him?

If that was all that restrained him, she could probably persuade him to become her lover.

He would have to return to his family soon. But if she pleased him—and in the days before Vauxhall revealed Bellingham’s deception, she had dutifully mastered every device known for pleasuring men—she could insure that he would come back to her as often as possible.

She might even return to London—and forestall pursuit by other men by becoming his acknowledged mistress.

His mistress.

As the word echoed in a chest gone suddenly hollow, Belle’s mind finally broke free of the sensual spell Carrington had cast over her. Guilt and shame slammed her with a roundhouse punch to the gut.

What in heaven had come over her? Surely she couldn’t have been entertaining, even for a moment, the possibility of becoming another man’s whore!

Revulsion followed the shame. For years, she’d told herself she’d done what she’d had to survive, had played a role that was forced upon her. That once free from it, she would let nothing and no one ever trap her in it again.

Yet here she was, hardly more than a month after Bellingham’s death, actually considering becoming the wanton the lechers of the ton believed her to be. Thereby destroying what little self-respect she still possessed.

Besides, even if she could stomach the role, what did she imagine would become of the cozy friendship that seemed to have blossomed between her and Captain Jack Carrington? Did she truly believe, once he had her in his bed, he would continue to treat her like a lady—instead of the skillful harlot who pleased him between the sheets?

She couldn’t bear to spoil what they’d shared by having it end like that.

She gave a bitter laugh. She might as well admit that she would be halfway in love with him, if she still believed in love. She mustn’t let his intoxicating presence make her forget the hard lesson that such schoolgirl emotions were but a pretty illusion.

But our friendship is real
, her heart protested.

Remember what you’ve learned, her head replied. Whatever compatibility of spirit and interest she thought existed between them was only on the surface. Fatherly affection excepted, males wanted females for one purpose.

For that, and to get heirs, they married—women of their
own station. The only connection possible between a woman like her and a man like Jack Carrington would be a crude exchange of sexual favors for money.

Beside, she mustn’t do anything that might place Kitty’s future in jeopardy.

If she had become so besotted by her fantasy of a relationship with Carrington that she had forgotten the girl who depended on her, it was past time to send the captain away.

That her heart immediately issued a protest only underlined the need to wean herself from this weakness for Carrington’s company. And since that same foolish heart resisted believing what her whole life’s experience taught her to be true, there was one simple way to destroy once and for all the myth that Jack Carrington was some godlike paragon, attracted by her interests and intellect.

By proving him to be a man like every other.

Not a kindred spirit whose soul called to hers. Not a friend she needed like the warmth of a fire in winter.

But rather a man who respected her no more than Lord Rupert. One she could live just as well without.

Better to make the break soon, before she wove herself any deeper into the fantasies she’d been spinning. And since Carrington was now well enough to travel, better do it immediately before the opiumlike effect he seemed to exert over her mind and senses dulled that clear purpose.

The joy she’d felt in the day drained away, leaving a gritty residue of certainty. She took a deep breath and tried to armor herself against the pain of it. Tonight she would insure that tomorrow, Jack Carrington would ride out of her life and her heart for good.

E
ARLY THAT EVENING
, Belle stood choosing a gown for the
intimate
dinner she’d told Mae she hoped to share with the captain. That comment had been enough to prompt a beaming Mae to reply that, as she feared she might have a cold coming on, she’d take a tray in her room.

Given her expectations of how Belle meant the night to end, Mae would probably applaud the gown Belle selected. Made of deep blue satin that matched her eyes and cut extremely low, it had been Bellingham’s favorite. So pretty was it, she’d considered having Jane remake it in a more modest style—but for now, it would serve the courtesan one last time.

The sapphire and diamond set Bellingham had given her to set off the dress now reposed in a London banker’s vault. Without the necklace and long dangling earrings, the gown would be even more scandalously bare, but Belle resisted the impulse to select some other jewelry to cover what would be a flagrant display of flesh.

Jane had come to help her dress and now waited quietly for her direction. Swallowing her distaste, Belle handed the shimmering blue gown over to the maid.

The effect, as she beheld her image in the glass after
Jane had fastened her into it, was all she could have hoped. The vast expanse of naked skin provoked a startled gasp even from the far-from-innocent Jane.

“Shall you be wanting your jewel case now?” Jane asked, giving her a troubled look.

“No, that will be all. I can finish on my own.”

“As you wish, my lady.” With another dubious glance, Jane curtsied and withdrew.

After applying some borrowed rouge to her cheeks and lips, she patted Mae’s powder on her face and chest, added a double dose of lavender scent, then turned to her mirror.

In place of the modest young woman who’d stared back at her this past month was an elegant stranger with gold hair pinned high upon her head, a single curl falling to her bared shoulder. Her powdered skin emphasized the blue of her eyes; the rouge made her mouth appear fuller, moister, as if she’d just been thoroughly kissed. The deep V of the décolletage led the eye to a swell of full breasts restrained beneath a bodice so brief it appeared her next breath might treat the viewer to a glimpse of her barely concealed nipples.

Voila Lady Belle, courtesan extraordinaire.

A wave of self-loathing shook her.

Resisting the urge to hide beneath a shawl, despite the chill, she headed for the dining room. To her annoyance, her stomach started churning.

Why she should be nervous she couldn’t imagine—unless she were already subconsciously mourning the death of her dream that Jack Carrington might be different. She knew perfectly well what would happen in her chamber
after dinner—if in fact they made it out of the dining room. Her late protector had enjoyed sampling her in the public rooms of the house, where at any moment a servant might, and sometimes had, come upon them.

So it wasn’t as if she were some terrified virgin, about to be thrust into intimacy for the first time.

And yet, the low vibration humming along her nerves, the sensitivity of her nipples brushing against the satin, the flutter of expectancy in the pit of her stomach—all were sensations she had not experienced before.

She had to admit that, knowing Jack would be the man who would use her, she was not dreading the imminent invasion of her flesh as much as she ordinarily would. She even felt a mild curiosity to see his lean body naked, to caress his hardened shaft, to use her lips and tongue to pleasure him.

A spiral of something hot and dizzying curled from her belly outward, tingling her thighs, her breasts.

Surprised by that unexpected reaction, she halted outside the dining-room door, hand on her stomach.

Add one more to the list of uncomfortable, atypical responses Jack Carrington seemed to provoke in her.

He affected her too strongly in every way. She was too aware of his presence, too appreciative of his wit, too grateful for his kindness and the gentility with which he treated her—and far too complaisant about the idea of being touched by him. All compelling reasons why she must force herself to follow through with her plan and send him away.

Having been so sure the evening would end with Belle
taking a new, more amenable lover to satisfy her restlessness, Mae was going to be sorely disappointed, Belle thought, swallowing the lump in her throat.

If only Belle could be satisfied with just that.

Was she so sure she could not? an insidious doubt whispered. Would it not be enough to have Carrington’s company as well as his body in her bed morning after morning, to tease over breakfast, to consult about the estate, to discuss the latest plays and politics and ton posturing in London?

Until he left her to marry.

And what would Lady Belle, his former mistress, do then? For even if this most improbable of her fantasies turned out to be true and Jack Carrington really did show himself capable of treating her mind and heart with respect once he’d had the use of her body, somehow she knew that the honor so essentially a part of the man would preclude his keeping a mistress when he married. Especially if Jack Carrington proved to be the paragon she longed for, he would set her aside then.

To forever regret the shame of allowing herself to become his mistress. To suffer a heartbreak far beyond what she’d previously experienced, for this time she’d be relinquishing a man who truly was the embodiment of a dream.

No, far better to plunge the knife in now, excise the feelings cleanly while there was still a chance to bleed and heal. Destroy the dream while it was only a dream, not a reality whose loss would mean slow hemorrhage to emotional death.

Angrily she shook her head to stem the gathering tears. Enough melodrama. Time to get on with it. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

Jack turned at her entrance, on his face the smile that made her nerves hum and the hairs at the back of her neck prickle. Then the warmth in his gaze changed to shock and his lips froze, the words he’d been about to say unuttered.

“Good evening, Captain,” she said coolly, as if her heart were not hammering and her chest so tight she felt faint. She made herself walk forward with unhurried steps, deliberately taking the deep breaths that would treat him to near glimpses of her nipples.

By the time she reached the table, he had opened and closed his mouth several times without producing any sound.

“Mae, who is slightly indisposed, begs that you will excuse her this evening. Shall we begin?” Pasting on a smile, she motioned Watson to serve the first course, ignoring the look of patent disapproval on his face.

“You look…lovely,” the captain managed, sounding oddly breathless. “Different, but very beautiful.”

She slid him a sultry look from under a fringe of lashes. “I wanted this evening to be…special.”

“Any evening with you is special.”

Her heart contracted and the tension in her chest tightened, but she forced herself to continue. “I chose this dress to please you. It does…please you?”

His avid gaze devoured her, from the arrangement of curls atop her head down her face, her neck, the bareness of her shoulders and chest, to linger on her breasts. “Everything about you pleases me,” he said hoarsely.

“I hope that will be especially true…tonight.”

While he digested that remark, she took a sip of her wine. She’d not been a courtesan for more than six years
without learning, however inadvertently, what sparked a man’s response. Putting the glass down, she let a single drop of wine bead like a molten ruby on her rouged lips, then slowly licked it away.

As she expected, Carrington’s eyes riveted on that gesture, his hands locked on the wineglass suspended halfway to his mouth. Never taking his gaze from her, he set the glass back down abruptly, nearly upsetting it.

Knowing her nerves would be too on edge for her to have any appetite, Belle had ordered a succession of lighter courses—cold fowl, vegetables with removes of beef followed by savories and fruit. A menu which also permitted her to sample most of the offerings with her fingers, allowing her to use up a great deal of time while actually consuming very little as she caressed the foods against her lips, inserted them deeply in her mouth, licked her fingers as she slowly pulled them free.

To her sorrow, the captain appeared as mesmerized by this performance as the most callow of her admirers. Scarcely taking his gaze off her long enough to pick at his own food, he responded in monosyllables as, between taking sensual bites, she maintained a light flow of conversation.

By the time the last course was removed, Belle was having difficulty keeping her lips from trembling and the tears at bay. How different was this awkward charade from the warm, intimate sharing of ideas and opinions that had characterized their other dinners this week!

After motioning a dismissal to a glowering Watson, Belle said, “Neither you nor I appear to have had much appetite tonight…for dinner. Shall we…withdraw?”

Slowly she walked toward him, forcing herself to breathe past the constriction in her chest, shutting her ears to the protests of her heart. She had a dream to kill, and there was no point drawing out its execution.

Sitting still but for the turn of his head as he watched her approach, for a moment after she reached Jack, he simply stared at her. Then, as if comprehending all that bare, freely offered flesh was but a hand span away, he jumped up, nearly knocking over his chair.

Her heart uttered one last, desperate assertion that his abnormal silence and stunned demeanor meant he was confused by her unusual dress and manners—rather than spellbound with lust. Then she took a discreet glance downward and that pathetic hope expired in a wrench of grief and self-mocking triumph.

The bulge straining the front of his trousers confirmed his reaction to her whore’s performance was no different than that of Bellingham or that toad Markham or the distasteful, disturbingly persistent Lord Rupert.

Already hating herself and him, she took his limp hand and kissed it, caressing his knuckles with her tongue as well as her lips. Lowering that hand to rest on the swell of her breast so that his fingertips almost, but not quite, touched the nipple, she murmured, “Shall we?”

With a strangled groan, Carrington leaned down, pulled her roughly into his arms and kissed her.

Numbly she parted her lips, sought out his tongue and bid it enter. She would let him devour her mouth for a few moments, then break the kiss, lead him to her room, where he would separate her from her clothes in
seam-ripping haste while she undressed him in turn. She would pose on the bed, one hand parting her nether lips invitingly, the other cupping her breast so the nipple beckoned like a signal beacon. He would seize her by the shoulders and thrust himself in, bury and withdraw his shaft in deep, grinding lunges, biting her neck or roaring out as his climax took him. Which, since he’d been too ill to enjoy a woman for several weeks, shouldn’t take long.

Then, with his spilled seed within her making the matter easier, she would play with him where they were joined, nibble at his neck, his chin, run the wetness of her tongue over his mouth and down his throat to his chest, nipping and sucking at his nipples until he hardened within her once more. Depending on how fully he’d recovered from his wound, she should be able to bring him to completion several more times this night, send him away in the morning sated, with a teasing promise of meeting again soon.

While her heart strangled within her and the love-words tasted like bile in her mouth.

He was still kissing her, though by now he was far enough gone in passion that she didn’t need to kiss him back. Her mouth under his began to tremble and she felt the hot sting of tears on her cheeks.

Finally he broke the kiss, his breathing ragged. But instead of wrapping a possessive arm around her and hauling her toward the door, he stepped away.

“What the hell is all this about?”

His reaction was so unexpected, at first she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “All…this?” she echoed.

“The gown. The food. The seductive show. You are trying to drive me insane, and succeeding, but why?”

She struggled to make sense of his words. “I…isn’t it…obvious? You—you are recovered now. I thought you’d appreciate a…reward.”

“Reward? For what?”

“Being so understanding about my wounding you in the first place. Coming to our defense.”

He shook his head impatiently. “Belle, you don’t need to ‘reward’ me for any of that.”

“But I thought—” she began, stepping toward him.

“Don’t!” he said harshly, putting up a hand to halt her as he backed away. “For God’s sake, Belle!”

He was retreating from her.

She had never encountered such a reaction from a man before. Embarrassment roared through her, a blaze of heat igniting her skin.

He didn’t want her after all. Instead of attracting him with her harlot’s behavior, she’d repelled him.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…but you…” Confused, humiliated, her thoughts too tangled to summon words of explanation, she pointed to his still-prominent erection.

Only once before in her life had she felt such a sense of total degradation, an overwhelming desire to crawl out of her own skin. Backing away, she turned and ran, desperate to escape the distaste and censure in his eyes.