Private Arrangements (13 page)

Camden was drinking cognac directly from a decanter when the connecting door between the bedchambers opened. He turned around and took another swig, barely feeling the fire sliding down his throat.

She was swathed in a blaze of virginal white. But her hair, a great glossy mass of it, tumbled free and unbound, like a cascade of the river Styx. The tips of her toes, round and pretty, peeked out from the hem of the white robe. He suddenly felt drunk.

“You didn't come,” she said softly, plaintively.

He glanced at the clock on the mantel. It had been only a few minutes since her maid had left. “I made a bet with myself that you'd come for me first.”

“You made me nervous,” she said, twirling one end of the silk sash that held her robe together. “I thought . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“What did you think?”

“I was afraid you might be having second thoughts.”

A ray of hope pierced him. If she confessed now, if she was drowning in remorse, rightfully fearful but still courageous enough to admit what she had done and take responsibility, he would forgive her. Not in an instant, but he would. And in return, he would come clean about his own fiendish plot.

“Why would you think that?” he said.

Do the right thing, Gigi. Do the right thing.

She hesitated. For a fleeting instant, she looked conflicted and frightened. But in the next moment, she was again in control of herself, a young Cleopatra out for her own best advantage. Her eyes traveled down his person and slowly back up again. “Wedding-night jitters, I suppose. Nothing more.”

Instead of honesty, she had fallen back on that old cliché: feminine wiles. She thought him so stupid that he'd go on in an erotic daze and never notice that he sported an ass's head.

Rage, great and raw, exploded in him. He tossed aside the decanter. In a heartbeat, he'd already covered half the distance between them. He was going to dangle her lying, scheming rump out the window until she screamed, begged, and sobbed the truth at last.

She opened her robe and let it fall. Beneath the robe she wore a chemise as transparent as a water goblet, a layer of gossamer that hid nothing.

He stopped and stared, his body reacting instantly. She was a pornographer's dream: high, firm breasts, rosy nipples pointed at a man's eyes, miles of legs, and hips that flared decadently, magnificently, hips meant for a man's hard grasp as he drove himself full hilt into her.

You bitch,
he thought, in a dozen languages.
You prick.
That was for himself. The die was cast at last, the choice finally made. The high roads would be deserted and untrod. He had embarked on the path to purgatory.

Fire blazed in the grate, but the English winter crept damp and insidious along walls and floors. He closed the distance between them. “Come to bed,” he said, taking her by the wrist. “You must be cold.”

Beneath the pad of his index finger, her pulse raced madly—her mind was cold and calculating, but her blood certainly ran hot. She followed him obediently and let him usher her up the stool and under the bedspread.

She sat straight against a mound of pillows, the bedspread reaching only slightly past her abdomen. Her gaze flitted to him, then darted to a corner of the room. Her fingers clutched the covers.

What was she afraid of now? Solomon himself could not discern Camden's ultimate goals, so eclipsed were they by the inferno of lust that threatened to flame out of control.

Understanding dawned with all the gentleness of an artillery-shell impact. She was nervous because she was a virgin, and this would be her first time with a man. He almost laughed. How normal. How charming. How frigging sweet.

God help him.

He undressed slowly, shedding honor and rectitude alongside waistcoat and shirt. Her curiosity must have prevailed over her uncharacteristic shyness, for she watched him as if he were the very miracle for which she'd spent a lifetime on her knees, devoutly praying.

Don't look at me like that!
he wanted to bellow.
I am as unprincipled, disingenuous, and blackhearted as you. More, if anything. God, don't look at me like that.
But she did, her eyes shining with the kind of trust and devotion that hadn't been seen since the Age of Chivalry.

He climbed onto the treacherously soft bed on the side away from her and sat as she did, upright, a wall of pillows behind his back, the bedspread drawn over his trousers. For once, he wished he'd debauched his way through St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Paris. His body burned with hellfire, but his mind was an abysmal blank. How did one make love, exactly, to a girl one despised with greater intensity than all the love in the world put together?

She cleared her throat. “Would you . . . uh . . . be needing a nightshirt?”

He chuckled despite himself, and the answer came to him. The only way to do it was to make love to her as if the past thirty hours had never taken place, as if his heart still overflowed with optimism and tenderness.

He slid a strand of her hair between his unsteady fingers. It was as cool as well water. He lifted it and pressed it to his lips, inhaling its sweet cleanness, as fragrant as a blade of young leaf. “No, thank you,” he said. “I don't think I'll need a nightshirt tonight.”

She cleared her throat again, more softly. “Well, then, should we say our prayers and go to sleep?”

He laughed. Frightening how easy it was to slip back into the earlier hours of the day before, to be amused and delighted with her every utterance. He gathered her to him, kissed her, and tasted the lingering astringency of her tooth powder, flavored with sweet birch oil.

Her mouth was all warm eagerness. Her hair cascaded over his arm and chest, jolting him with its featherlight caresses. And her scent. He was driven to distraction by the fiendish freshness of her skin, as wholesome as new milk that still faintly steamed.

He would never have her again. Never. The realization bludgeoned him. The unfairness of it. He wanted to smash the bed, the windowpanes, the fireplace. He wanted to shake her until her thick skull rattled.
What have you done to me? What have you done to
us?

Instead, he became slower, more gentle, more tender. He kissed every square inch of her face and undressed and worshipped every undulation of her body. The satiny texture of her nipples was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted, the moans of her pleasure the most melodious sounds to ever vibrate the air of this earth.

And how she responded to him. She was a school-boy's wet dream come to life, fervent, willing, all but trembling with desire. Her hands roved avid and avaricious, searing him with their unchaste touches. Her mouth followed her hands, nibbling, licking, loving every nook and cranny of his body.

When he at last entered her, she branded him with her scorching heat. His invasion hurt her. He apologized incoherently, barely comprehending his hypocrisy—he was despondent at causing her physical pain, yet he looked forward with savagery to breaking her spirit.

To slide completely into her, to penetrate those silken, strong walls of her sheath, with her gasps and whimpers and little breaths of “yes” and “more” scalding his ears, was to lose a bit of his mind each time. He whispered sweet nothings into her ear, words both reverent and wicked, and ate up her moans of arousal. He touched her where he filled her, reveled in her melted-butter sleekness, and loved the frenzy it drove her into.

If only the pain in his heart didn't multiply a little with each thrust, each caress, each endearment. But pleasure swelled and roiled through him despite his desolation. Her rich voluptuousness possessed him. Conquered and defeated him. When she wrapped her long legs entirely about him, he lost his last shred of control.

The sensations walloped him, keener, wilder, more powerfully delicious than any he'd known or even imagined. He gave in, surrendered, only vaguely aware of his grunts and imprecations, of the heavy motions of his body as he ground into her, emptied into her.

“Oh, God, Gigi,” he mumbled. “Gigi.”

There, he'd done it. The most despicable act of his life. Now she would go to sleep, leaving him to stare at the ceiling for the rest of the night. He would rise before dawn, dismiss the servants for the day, and deal with her as necessary in the cold light of morning.

But she didn't go to sleep. She clung to him, rained kisses upon his shoulder and arm, giggled, and said, “Do it again.”

And he was rock hard again, just like that.

As he turned to her, in stupefied desire, in craving that corroded him from the inside out, he saw the enormity of his mistake. He hadn't embarked on the path to purgatory. He had knocked on the gates of hell.

Chapter Fifteen

22 May 1893

G
igi prepared the Dutch cap with a French ointment. She had obtained both the day after her husband's return, at the shop of a very discreet chemist not far from Piccadilly Circus. The ointment promised to greatly reduce the potency of a man's ejaculate, and the cap should block what could not be weakened.

With the Dutch cap lodged in place, she donned the blue chemise she had pulled out from the bottom of a chest.
“Très special,”
the Parisienne who'd sold it to her had said, and winked at her. It was special because most chemises did not have a décolletage that formed a saddle beneath the breasts, pushing them up high and bare for a man's delectation.

The silk smelled of the sachets of dried lavender that had been packed with it. She had bought it eons ago, before she gave up on Camden. She no longer remembered why she hadn't gotten rid of it.

The chemise, alas, did not feel seductive, only grimly ridiculous. But she had to put some effort into it, had to do
something.
She pulled on a robe and left her dressing room, praying that whatever valor she mustered would be enough to see her through the humiliation of the night.

Croesus was there, sleeping in his basket next to her bed. She crouched down and touched his head, running her fingers through his soft fur. The connecting door between her bedroom and Camden's opened. Camden stepped in.

Except for his shoes, he was fully dressed, as if he had just returned from a night on the town. Her heart lurched. She supposed it was because he was as beautiful as an avenging angel. Because he had been her first love. And—added her cynical voice—because she couldn't have him.

She slowly straightened, tightening the belt on her robe as she rose. “My lord Tremaine, what brings you to my lair of vices?”

“I had dinner with your mother.” He set down a book on her vanity table. “She wants you to have this book.”

She barely glanced at the book. “Surely that could wait 'til tomorrow.”

The corners of his lips lifted, reminding her of the way he used to smile at her, in those antediluvian days. She had ribbed him for smiling too much, for not being thin-lipped and icy-miened enough for all his aristocratic lineage. “I suppose it could have waited,” he said. “But as I was coming this way anyway . . .”

Given all his avowals of aversion and antipathy, she could scarcely believe what she was hearing. “I thought you couldn't stand bedding me.”

“I asked myself, who am I to stand in the way of your effulgent future happiness?”

She should be relieved. She should be leaping and cartwheeling, she who had been pushing him from day one. Yet a mixture of chagrin and panic suddenly assaulted her. She could not take it. She could not bear for him to touch her tonight. She had to fight not to step back and put greater distance between them.

“I'm surprised you haven't broken out in boils at the mere prospect of it.”

“I have a slop bucket ready in my room,” he said. “You will excuse me if I rush back afterward. Now, shall we?”

Belatedly, she remembered her
“très spécial”
chemise. She didn't want him to see it. “The light switch is behind you.”

He shook his head. “I don't want to accidentally step on Croesus. Or grope for the door on my way out, in”— he looked at the clock—“three minutes.”

Three minutes. Had they come to this? Unbidden, the memories of her wedding night returned. He had stoked the fires of her desire with such exquisite patience, such finely attuned caresses, that she had literally trembled with the force of her need.

He was suddenly before her, separated from her by nothing but a sliver of air. His hand went to the belt of her robe.

“No!” She gripped his wrist. “There is no need.”

His gaze made her feel about as desirable as a barnyard sow. “It's nothing personal. A view of breasts and buttocks moves the process along.”

“Let me go to my dressing room for a minute, and then—”

He tugged at the belt. It came loose, and the front of her robe fell open, exposing the injudicious chemise.

If she were truly the woman of infinite cheekiness he believed her to be, she'd thrust out her chest and stare him straight in the eye. But all she could think of were the chilly spring nights in Paris, during those months when she had repeatedly thrown herself at him, wearing equally salacious bits of lace and satin. What had he said the last time he dragged her out of his garret and threw her coat at her?
You look like a tenpenny whore.

And still she had gone back, only to see him admit a woman beautiful enough to shame the stars. She had stood on the stair landing below his door, stunned, as if he had grabbed her head and slammed it into a wall.

Slowly, almost gently, he drew her robe closed. But his eyes were ungentle. “Did you really expect it to change my mind?”

She shrugged, a bit of her defiance returning. “No. But I would do anything to marry Freddie.”

Abruptly, he reached forward and lifted her. She gasped, but he had already set her down again, with her back against a bedpost. He leaned into her, every inch of his body pressed into hers. With a blaze of heat like rivulets of molten ore, she realized that he was full hard against her.

He lowered his head toward hers, as if he were inhaling her. Her heart pounded painfully. When his breath caressed the helix of her ear, she nearly jumped. But he only said, “Poor Lord Frederick. What did he do to deserve you?”

She felt his fingers work the fastening of his trousers. Without once touching her skin, he separated her robe below the belt and lifted the hem of her chemise. Which made it all the more shocking as his erection came into contact with her bare abdomen. He was burning hot.

She closed her eyes and turned her face away from him. But she could not block the sensations he provoked. He entered her with an ease that shamed her, long, slow thrusts that had her clenching at her robe, the wretchedness in her heart cutting deeper with each flare of pleasure.

The slight catch in his breath, the sudden pressure of his hands on her hips, and the abrupt stillness of his lower body signaled his release. He withdrew. Fifteen seconds later he was already walking away from her. She opened her eyes to see him stooping over Croesus's sleeping form. He touched one of the old dog's ears, then moved on, opening and closing the door behind him with barely a sound.

She looked at the clock. Exactly three minutes had passed.

This was what they had come to.