The Secrets of a Courtesan (5 page)

Hawkesbury he had fully anticipated leading Eve into the lion’s den and watching as she was

thrown to her fate. Yet now, seeing her fear and the courageous way in which she confronted

danger, he had been forced to reappraise the situation. Seeing Eve again, speaking to her,

witnessing her bravery and her resilience and her determination under threat had reminded him

of what a fine person he had once believed her to be, before betrayal had so disillusioned him.

His instinct was stubbornly telling him that Eve simply could not be complicit with Warren

Sampson, that she must be a victim of the man’s criminality rather than a partner in it. Which

meant that his urge was to protect her rather than use her, to defend her instead of sacrificing her.

And yet he felt so angry at this impulse to shield her. Eve Nightingale deserved nothing from

him. She had ruthlessly cut her ties with him years before. Now it was his turn to use her equally

ruthlessly.

The torches that lit the driveway to the house shone through the carriage windows and

illuminated Eve’s translucent complexion, highlighting the scattering of freckles across her nose

and dusting her cheeks with a golden glow. Her lips were painted a deep red and looked luscious

and impossibly tempting. In accordance with Rowarth’s instructions, she had chosen a

fashionable red evening gown that was cut almost indecently low across her breasts. It clung

lovingly to her curves and rustled as she moved, emphasizing the swing of her hips. As soon as

he had seen her that night Rowarth had found himself possessed by an impatient and

overwhelming masculine desire to peel the gown from her body and make love to her on the

carriage seat. He wanted to rediscover where else she had those freckles. He wanted to relearn

the taste of her, to inhale the scent of her skin and to let himself drown in the warm, silky

sweetness of her body as she closed around him tight and hot. Lust, painfully sharp and

predatory, twisted within him again as he thought about it. He was in an advanced state of sexual

frustration, desperate to take his former mistress with a hunger that had dissipated not one whit.

Yet she had spurned him, left him flat. He despised himself for his lack of self-control.

“Where did you go when you left London?” He spoke abruptly.

He had not meant to ask. After he had seen her at the shop he had resolved not to rake up

anything of the past, simply to do his job tonight and then go back to London and never see her

again. But now old emotions were aroused and old memories stirred and there were some things

that he had to know.

He thought for a moment that Eve was not going to reply. The light from the torches skipped

across her face in bars of flame and shadow.

“I came here,” she said slowly, after a moment. “I have been here for five years. Did Lord

Hawkesbury’s intelligence not provide you with that information?”

It had. It had been something that had puzzled Rowarth, a doubt nibbling at the corner of his

mind. Why choose Fortune’s Folly? And if she had run off with another lover, as she had told

him in her farewell note, where was he? Who was he? Rowarth had assumed it must be Warren

Sampson but now he was not so sure. None of Hawkesbury’s informants had mentioned that Eve

had a new protector. Either she and her lover had been extraordinarily discreet or the man had

not existed at all.

“You told me in your parting note that you had found a new protector,” he said slowly, watching

her, “but my information is that no such person ever existed.”

He saw her stiffen, a quick, instinctive gesture she could not hide, before she turned her face

away and feigned indifference. But it was too late and he was too quick, too perceptive.

“Eve?” he said. “Did you run off with a lover?”

She was stubbornly silent but he already knew the answer. Even after five years apart he knew

her so well he did not need words.

“You did not,” he said. Urgency beat within him. “There was no new lover, was there, Eve?”

He saw her lips set in a tight line as she capitulated. “No, there was not.” Her words fell starkly

into the darkness of the carriage. The torchlight flickered over her face and for a split second he

saw utter honesty reflected in her eyes.

No new lover
. Rowarth’s mind reeled. She had not left him for another man. She had not been

another man’s mistress. Stupefaction, relief,
pleasure
flooded him at her words. He grabbed her

hands, his heart lifting with absurd hope.

“Then why…” He had to clear his throat. “Why did you tell me that you had run away with

someone else?”

Again it seemed forever before she answered as the carriage drew closer and closer to the door of

Juniper Hill.

“I lied because I wanted to be sure that you would never seek me out.” She spoke the words so

quietly that he had to lean closer to hear them and when he did they were like a blow to the heart.

“I did not wish to be your mistress anymore, Rowarth. I had to leave you.”

I had to leave you
…

Rowarth’s hopes crashed before they were barely born. He dropped her hands as he felt a dull

pain spread though his chest. Eve had not wanted to be with him. She had felt so strongly that

she wanted to make sure that they never saw one another again. The affinity they had apparently

shared, physical and emotional, had been nothing to her. She had quenched the restlessness in his

soul, she had anchored him and fulfilled the empty need within him and yet she had felt nothing.

She had wanted to be free.

“I see.” He spoke slowly as he absorbed the blow. “I had no idea that you were so unhappy as

my mistress. You should have told me. I would have paid you off. There was no need to run

away.”

Eve did not reply. She turned away and the light and shadows skipped across her face, hiding all

expression.

Rowarth knew that he should be humiliated. He should not want to pursue this further. And

yet…And yet once again his instinct prompted him that there was something here that did not

make sense, something he strove to understand.

“I tried to find you,” he said.

He had never intended to admit it. She had made him a laughingstock in the
ton
, the rich,

handsome duke who could not hold on to his mistress and was in danger of making as much of a

fool of himself over a woman as his father had done before him. He had looked everywhere for

her in such a fever that he could not tell anger, fear and desperation apart; he had inquired

everywhere but found no trace of her so that in the end he had been forced to accept that she did

not want to be found, that maybe she had gone abroad, that he would never see her again.

“I am sorry.” Again her words dropped softly into the silence. She sounded indifferent, as though

she were apologizing for stepping on his foot. Her apparent coldness, her pity, when his feelings

for her were still so strong, was intolerable. His anger broke through five years of restraint. He

grabbed her upper arms. The cerise wrap slipped from her shoulders to puddle on the carriage

floor.

“Did it really mean so little to you, Eve?” he said fiercely. “After all we had shared could you

really walk away from me so easily?”

The fury inside him was volcanic in its power. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to kiss her, to

ravish her, to make her his once more and claim her with all the passion and anger within him.

He pulled her close and she closed her eyes, her lashes spiky sharp against the pale curve of her

cheek, as though she were warding off the fury in him, trying to defend herself. Her expression

was stark in its misery and Rowarth felt in that instant, with a sudden, terrifying conviction that

whatever she claimed, she had not left him by choice. Something terrible had happened to her,

something she had felt unable to tell him, something that still pierced her soul. All the evidence

supported it. Her false claim that she had left him for another man, the fact that she had left

behind all her money and jewelry when she could have taken it and lived in luxury, the fact that

she had hidden herself away in this little backwater…Whatever she had told him she had not run

because she had been unhappy as his mistress. There had to be something else…

All the rage left him then, banished by the misery he could see in her face and feel in every line

of her body. He picked up the wrap and placed it gently about her shoulders, wanting to draw her

close, shaken by the instinct he felt to comfort her. But again she drew away from him, lonely

but indomitable in her strength.

“Do not pursue this, Rowarth,” she said. He could see her hands shaking as she wrapped the

shawl about herself. “It was a long time ago.”

Frustration and determination gripped him in equal measure. Pride and anger prompted him to let

the matter drop and yet he found he could not.

“I don’t believe you,” he said brutally. “I don’t believe that you left me through choice, Eve. You

must tell me what happened.”

For a brief moment she looked him directly in the eyes. “Nothing happened,” she said. Her voice

was cool and light again, devoid of emotion. It was as though the unhappiness he was sure he

had seen in her only a moment before had never existed.

“You mistake,” she said. “I appreciate that it must be difficult for you to accept, but I am afraid

that I discovered that the role of your mistress was not one that suited me. So I left. That is all.”

Rowarth swore. “So you preferred to go back to an existence where you struggled to hold body

and soul together as you had done once before?” he challenged. “You ask too much if you expect

me to believe that, sweetheart.”

“I never wanted you for your money and status.” There was a thread of anger in her voice now.

At last he had provoked her out of her self-control. She had always had a temper. “Oh, it was

nice to be
rich
—” she invested the word with scorn “—but it was never really my money, was

it?” She sighed. “I wanted respect,” she said. “
Self-respect
I had earned. I did not have that as a

courtesan, using my body to buy survival.”

Again Rowarth thought she was dealing in half-truths. He knew how fiercely she hated the

depths to which poverty and desperation made men sink and that she had deplored the necessity

of selling her body in order to save her life. But he had also thought that between them there had

surely been mutual respect and trust.

“You had my respect,” he said. “I wanted to
marry
you.”

Again she was silent for a moment, biting her lip. “I did not wish to be a duchess.”

“No,” Rowarth said. “Apparently you wished to be a pawnbroker.”

Again she showed a flash of temper. “Is it inconceivable that I might want an honest trade?”

“Rather than be a duchess?” Rowarth drawled. “Frankly, my dear, it is. And besides,

pawnbroking is not generally considered to be an honest profession.”

She looked furious. “Enough,” she said. She turned her shoulder to him. “I am afraid that you

will simply have to accept that I left you because I did not wish to be with you. There is no point

in discussing the matter further.”

The carriage had drawn up in front of the steps of Sampson’s mansion and a liveried footman

opened the door. Rowarth descended and held out a hand to help Eve down. Her face was serene

again, concealing any emotion she might feel inside, but he felt her fingers tremble a little in his.

You will simply have to accept that I left you because I did not wish to be with you
…

The words echoed in Rowarth’s head as he guided her into the entrance hall. So be it. Eve had

made her feelings clear. His instinct that there was more to her betrayal than met the eye was

clearly wrong and he would be a fool to pursue it further. She had wanted to be free of him.

There was no more to be said.

The hallway at Juniper Hill was a riot of bad taste. Eve’s fascinated gaze was drawn upward to

the ceiling where naked painted cherubs romped amidst fluffy blue clouds. In the alcoves were

statues of hugely endowed Greek gods and artfully draped goddesses, whose state of undress was

only equalled by the scandalous deshabillée of Warren Sampson’s female guests. Those invited

tonight were not the respectable citizens of Fortune’s Folly but those of the local gentry who

hunted hard, especially when it came to women, plus some actresses from the theaters of York

and Harrogate, a smattering of Sampson’s business associates and those of their wives bold

enough to attend.

Servants were circulating with trays of champagne. In the center of the hall was a gigantic ice

sculpture of a naked, rampant god Poseidon, his icy erection almost as enormous as the trident in

his hand. It rather spelled out the point of the entertainment, Eve thought. And in the middle of

all this splendid ostentation was Warren Sampson himself, preening in peacock blue, expansive

and vulgar and most frightfully proud, as far as Eve could see, of displaying his money in such

an opulent style. He was surrounded by a positive plethora of hangers-on, including the squire’s

brother Tom Fortune, who smiled very suggestively as Eve approached. As she and Rowarth

stepped forward Eve registered the sudden excitement that ran through the ranks of Sampson’s

guests. The men raised their quizzing glasses and looked Eve up and down from the diamond