Three Times the Scandal (28 page)

“
They go on your legs, Fortuna.”

With a humph of discontent, she lowered them towards the floor and kicked off her delicate pumps. “You could at least turn your head.”

“
You weren’t so coy when you were thrusting your tits in my face earlier.”

The coarseness of his language brought blood rushing to her cheeks. Fortuna clapped a hand across her mouth, and felt the first sting of tears in her eyes. Blindly, she tugged the breeches on beneath her chemise, aware that he was watching her every move.

“
I have to wonder what exactly you were trying to goad me into earlier. It wasn’t as if my involvement was required. You could have taken them both upstairs and had them fuck you all night. Ain’t two men enough for you? Do you need a third for satisfaction?”

Fortuna quietly shook her head, not looking at him.

He leaned forward and his fingertips traced along her freshly dressed inner thigh. Scarlet heat washed across her skin. She jerked upwards off the seat, only to be thrown back down by the motion of the carriage. “Don’t touch me.”

Darleston grabbed the hem of her chemise and pulled it over her head, leaving her bared from the waist up. Fortuna crossed her arms across her breast, but he touched her wrist, surprisingly gently and she let him ease her hands away from her chest.

He seemed almost like Neddy in that moment. It took no imagination to envisage how he would feel above her, pressing into her. His long lean body was the mirror of his twin’s. Fortuna hardly dared look at him, knowing that he was staring at her breasts, but the frisson between them only built. “Why are you doing this?” she sobbed.

“
I’m curious. I’ve known Giles a long time.” His hand closed around her breast, his finger and thumb pinched the already steepled nipple, causing it to further pucker and a dart of arousal to fly down to her cunt. “I’ve never seen him this enthralled, and I confess I find you rather intriguing myself, though I can’t fathom why.”

Fortuna pushed herself back into the leather upholstery.

Darleston’s expression softened and for a moment his gaze lost focus. “Maybe it’s his enchantment with you. The fact that he loves you.”

Tentatively, she inched herself forward again, hooked and reeled in by Darleston’s words.

“
Can you satisfy him? Feed all his base hungers in the way he feeds yours? Do you know how to rouse him so he’ll spill his seed even when he’s exhausted and riddled with guilt? He wants a soul mate, Fortuna. Can you be passionate and loyal, faithful, even when offered the freedom to be anything but?”

He kissed her, the invasion aggressive. He tasted of brandy and tobacco, love and deceit. His questions spun in her head even as the various tastes blended upon her tongue. In idle moments she’d imagined how he would taste. His shape was so familiar, but the way he moved, the hunger of the kiss, that was very different to the indolent tangling of tongues and bodies she’d shared with Neddy. Lord Darleston, she realized was all about pent up rage. Up close she could feel it, the heat of it, wild anger burning just below the surface, passion ready to explode. His hands crushed her breasts, somewhat uncomfortably. With his mouth, he possessed her. The seam of her newly donned breeches rubbed into the slick heat of her puss.

Blessed heavens, she wanted to see him come. She wanted to watch his cultivated, debonair mask slip and see pleasure lick across his irises, making the grey flare as if a phoenix were rising from the ashes. She wanted to see him lose control. That was it. It wasn’t the same as what she wanted from Giles, it was more about gratification of her curiosity than love or pleasure.

The realization left her cold. Darleston was not the man she wanted. He never had been. She could have sex with him, and it would be intensely good, but the passion that raged between herself and Giles ran infinitely deeper. Darleston would not cocoon her in his warmth after he’d rutted with her. With Giles there was an emotional connection.

She pushed Darleston away and grabbed hold of one of the swinging tassels to keep her steady. “Yes, I can do all those things. I want that opportunity, but I’ve a family to think of too.”

Darleston’s gaze didn’t leave her face. He was so damned difficult to read. “There’s always a way, Fortuna. You simply have to find it.”

“
What way?”

He shook his head.

Fortuna hid her face in her palms. Fate was spinning her in circles. She barely knew who she was or what she wanted anymore. Conflicting images of life with Giles and Sir Hector, of her family merry, and then ruined, ran through her thoughts. Destroy herself, or her whole family. What sort of choice was that?

Darleston’s attention returned to the cloth bag. He pulled out a billowing white shirt, which he tugged over her head, the followed that with a waistcoat. “Sit still and I’ll fasten the buttons.”

It was a relief to have him manipulate the score of delicate pearls. All done, he took one of her hands in his and folded her fingers over his thumb. “I hope Leach packed some gloves, you’ll not pass for a man without them.”

“
I’ll not pass for a man regardless.”

“
You will.” His breath warmed her ear. “Once a few sacrifices have been made.” He raised his hand to the sheet of flaxen hair that fell across her shoulders and let the strands run across the back of his hand. He spread his fingers and the tresses fell between them like a buttery waterfall.

Fortuna rocketed up off his lap. “No,” she pleaded. Surely they could bind it. He wore his own hair long.

“
It grows back.”

“
Will you cut yours?”

Darleston tugged the solitaire from his hair and drew the fiery strands over his shoulders. “Pass me the scissors.”

With the gulp, she hurriedly sought them in the bag and handed them to him. He sheared away the tresses with long cuts, leaving the locks to fall, shimmering auburn, to the floor like autumn leaves.

“
Your turn. Leach has packed you a top hat. There is no way to hide this beneath it.” He let the tresses run though his fingers again.

With his shortened dark red hair framing his face, and his lips drawn into a smile, he looked even more like his twin. Fortuna anxiously pressed her teeth into her lower lip. The carriage had stopped. She could end this folly and go home, or else simply run into the night and keep going until she dropped into a ditch from sheer exhaustion.

No. No, she was going to do this. Face Sir Hector on her terms, and give herself her promised last night with Giles.

Darleston gathered her hair into a thick bunch at the nape of her neck. The cold steel of the scissors pressed against the skin, and made a horrid crunch as they closed. She felt strangely light headed when he’d finished. He dropped two feet of blonde hair onto the seat behind her. Fortuna moved her head, trying to accustom herself to the new weight.

“
Hold still.” With a dozen more snips he shaped the front so that a long fringe masked her bright eyes. “Coat,” he said brusquely and drew more russet-coloured cloth about her shoulders. She shivered and a cold tear trickled across her cheek.

Darleston’s startled gasp caused her to tilt her chin towards him, but despite her attempt at a watery smile the tears still fell.

“
Don’t,” he hissed, and fear rang in his voice.

She couldn’t help it.

“
Fortuna,” he pleaded, so that his concern wrenched her innards. He caught one glittering droplet upon his thumb, and rubbed it against his lips. Perplexed she watched his tongue flick out and taste the saltiness. His eyes burned with indescribable intensity. “You mustn’t cry. Mustn’t. Not ever.” His insistence bore an edge of desperation. He licked more of the drops from his fingertips and gave a deep felt groan.

“
Milord?” she said in confusion.

“
Never cry.” He turned away from her. “We’re here. We’ll go inside now.”

Fortuna nodded at his back. Still facing away from her, he flicked a kerchief in her direction. Fortuna took it and wiped the remaining tear streaks from her face. When he turned back round once she’d done, his typical mask had slipped back into place.

He helped her tie the cravat, and offered up Hessian boots for her feet. They were over large around the foot, but clove to her shapely calves. What she could see of herself seemed passably male, since she was not particularly curvaceous by nature.

“
Stay silent,” he warned her. “Let me speak for you and I think you’ll pass. They’ll see what they want to see, and the lighting within is dim. Avoid making eye contact with anyone but me.” He planted the top hat upon her head.

“
It was your wife who told him, wasn’t it?” she said.

Darleston’s eyes glittered like frost. “Don’t worry, she’ll pay for it.”

Chapter Eleven

The ceiling was low, and the walls made of thin cream-colored wattle. Fortuna peered around at the sea of faces in gobsmacked disbelief. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop herself from staring. What layer of hell had Darleston brought her to? This was a quiet part of town, not precisely unsavoury but not entirely fashionable either. Her hackles had risen just from the way they were greeted at the door. No liveried servant here, just a bald meaty thug with a stout stick. He was all smiles for Darleston, though.

“
Not used to seeing you quite so regular as this, milord. Must be the third time this week.”

“
It’s the turn of the season, Joan. I like to know what’s on offer.” Darleston gave an elegant swish of his cane, before handing it over, along with his hat.

“
Seems to me as though you’ve probably already discovered it.”

Fortuna hid behind her newly fashioned long fringe as the man eyed her up as he might a cow at a fair. He stuck his hand out towards her and she flinched.

Darleston laughed, and pried the hat from her head, which he plopped into Joan’s waiting hand. “Bit raw, this ‘en, Joan.”

“
Aye, I can see that. Fresh in town, is he?”

“
That’s right,” said Darleston, as he scrawled his signature, or something that looked as if it might be a signature, onto a paper in a thick ledger.

Fortuna’s frown deepened. Darleston had clearly called the doorman Joan, not Jonas or John. That couldn’t really be his name.

“
Have a good evening.” Joan nodded to them both and waved them along the hall.

The smell of many bodies undisguised by perfume wafted down the narrow corridor along which Darleston ushered her. Raucous noise and heat bled through the wattling. The ceiling seemed to get lower the further through the building they moved, being just shy of Darleston’s head in places.

There were no carpets in the place, and less decorum. No women either, she realized after a few moments of watching figures grope one another.

Fortuna gaped at two men who sat facing one another kissing, their hands pressed down the fronts of one another’s breeches.

On a bench in the corner, one man, naked from the waist down, sat astride another fellow’s lap. It took no great leap of intellect to realize they were swiving. So too were another pair. The one fair-haired man standing bent, with his hands against the wall, while his partner ploughed him from behind. Mouth dry she watched the blond man wriggle and twist, and his lips open to cry out soft murmured complaints, while his partner added more spittle to make things glib. Once he had his cock in deep, his partner’s complaints entirely ceased and instead he let loose a string of lusty grunts, particularly when his prick was taken in hand by a third man.

“
This way.” Darleston drew her close, and headed for a door at the back of the room. They passed another open door en route, through which she glimpsed a bed-chamber, where another all male couple with a marriage knot tied around their wrists were jumming it face to face, kissing as they did it.

What is this place?
she wondered, but dared not ask.

In contrast to the raw, squalid baseness of the first room, the second room into which Darleston led her was elegantly furnished, and far less pungently fragranced. Here gentleman paid court to a refined lady in a silk evening gown. Only when they drew close, did Fortuna realize the lady had very masculine hands beneath her delicate crocheted gloves.

“
Darleston.” A portly chap, with a bristly growth of ginger whiskers bowed at her companion, who in turn responded with an elegant nod. “Hughes. Mistress Jenkins,” he addressed the
lady
on the chaise.

She simpered behind her fan, a rosy flush delicately creeping across her cheeks. Then she fixed her gaze smartly upon Fortuna. “You always do manage to find us the pretty ones, don’t you my lord?”

Darleston quirked an eyebrow. “Well, it would be a shame to waste my charm on the ugly ones.”

With a delicate turn on her crocheted-encased hand, she beckoned, obliging Fortuna to lean towards her. “Don’t you be taken in by his gentlemanly façade, for he is a wicked and crude punk. There are plenty of gentler souls around if you require companionship.”

Fortuna bit her tongue, although tempted to ask what precisely she meant by describing him as a punk, for clearly she didn’t mean to compare him to pile of kindling.

Just then a further door opened and three bucks swaggered in off a stairwell, all lip-stained with port and curiously loose limbed. Glasses in hands, the front two launched into a recounting of their marriage bed, while the third, a man with an unruly shock of dark hair and a scar that split his top lip assessed the assembled group with a sneer. After a moment, the dark-haired man sidled up to Darleston, and pushed between him and Fortuna. “Another new ‘un to tease us with, I see. Fie. If only you’d dally with us so handsomely. Shall you prick him here for us, milord?”