Fair Cyprians of London Boxset Read online

  But she could not. Not like this. She could not even move.

  “Not the man you were expecting?” His voice was bitter. Devoid of the energy and warmth she remembered. He made an expressive gesture with his hands. “My mother does not intend for me to disappoint my future wife. Of course, that’s not the real reason she asked for … a professional. Apparently this is my birthday present.”

  When Grace said nothing he gave a short laugh, adding with a note of apology, “I am not in the habit of entertaining prostitutes. I’m not even sure what to do with you. Perhaps you’d care to take a seat and entertain me instead with your erudite view on the state of English politics.” He shrugged, adding carelessly, “If I’m so very repugnant to you, you’re free to leave.”

  Grace blinked, stupidly, only galvanised into action when he snapped, “Well, Miss Fortune, what’s it to be? I can offer you nothing. Nothing you’d enjoy anyway.”

  Forcing aside the emotion, she managed to call upon the breathy, suggestive tone of the practised whore she was while she feasted her gaze upon him. “I don’t do this for the enjoyment,” she murmured, stepping forward and running her hands down his well-cut woollen coat, “but I believe in honouring a bargain.”

  He jerked at her touch and then laughed, a humourless sound that brought chillingly to mind David’s cousin. The horrible thought that Laurence might be in residence made Grace drop her hands in fear. However the urgency to learn more of what had changed the young man before her from the ardent boy she’d loved compelled her to resume the charade . Seeing David like this, so helpless and vulnerable, unleashed a flood of tenderness which was fast eroding the bitterness she’d cultivated towards him. It was clear he’d met with some accident to his sight yet his dark eyes were still just as expressive. She was struck by the most powerful urge to touch her lips to his beautifully shaped mouth, just as she had …

  … the night before they parted.

  No, she could not afford to have him send her away. She twined her arms behind his neck and nuzzled him, adding, “So don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth, sir. You’ll have a wife, soon. Enjoy me in the meantime. That’s what I’m here for.”

  “An honest whore,” he said, crisply, though with less surety in his tone as he swayed, seemingly unwilling to touch her but not wanting to push her away either. “Still, lying on your back can’t be too difficult a way to earn your living.”

  She was not surprised by the sentiment. David had been an innocent with a revulsion for women like herself. It appeared he still felt the same.

  She was suddenly terrified he’d assert his moral compass and decide she should leave. That would never do. Not before she discovered more. She had to play on his fascination. Make him want to sample her wares now that her ridiculous longing for him had been so unexpectedly reactivated.

  For she realised she was as susceptible to his vulnerability as she ever had been to his kind companionship.

  “Honest toil is hard to come by when you’ve lost your reputation,” she murmured, pressing herself to him and raising her hands to trace the contours of his beautiful face. “But an honest whore prides herself on giving value.”

  He swallowed and a nerve twitched in the corner of his mouth. It was clear by his reaction that he was struck by indecision, yet intrigued. The David she’d known would have been too disgusted by a woman of the night to suffer her touch. But then, he’d had Grace.

  The fact he did not step away suggested that while he was prepared to give his future wife his name he’d not yet given her his heart.

  Well, it would be a small victory for Grace to make him want her now, when she hadn’t been able to make him want her enough to discover her whereabouts three years ago after his mother dismissed her.

  Steadying herself with her hands on his shoulders she put the tip of her tongue to his throat, to his Adam’s apple, as he swallowed his … Desire? Concern? Apprehension?

  He shivered and with seeming reluctance his arms went round her, eventually straying to her lower back, as if he was both fascinated and afraid of moving beyond the realms of propriety.

  Grace reached behind her and guided his hand to her lower back. Having been given permission, he gently skimmed his hands over the contours of her figure-hugging gown.

  Yet it was she who had to stifle her arousal, forcing out the words, “Would you like to feel more of me?” as she placed his hands on her breasts.

  He swallowed as he tentatively contoured the striped silk of her cuirass, making her weak-kneed with wanting as she rubbed herself against him.

  His voice was full of doubt. “What will you do? What must I expect? I’m blind. A virgin.”

  “An honest whore will give you all the pleasure of which her body is capable,” she murmured.

  “Anything?”

  She raised herself on tiptoe and ran her fingers through his fair hair, revelling in the springy softness she remembered so well. “Anything except a kiss.”

  He tilted his head enquiringly and Grace gave a soft, throaty laugh. “An honest whore does not tangle with a man’s heart unless she’s prepared to give him hers. A kiss is a dangerous conduit.” She touched her mouth to his jawline, as close as she dared, whispering, “Now, if you like the feel of my breasts, you can unbutton me.”

  How different from the honest relationship she and David had once enjoyed—but if she were to survive this encounter she needed to block her mind to the past and maintain the charade.

  He stiffened. “I’d rather start from the top,” he muttered, groping helplessly before she grasped his wrists and brought his hands to her face. The face he’d caressed so many years ago. The face he’d called an angel’s face.

  A whore’s mask. Smooth and ravishing on the outside, ravaged by experience on the inside. No longer the face he knew. She had no fear of being recognised. Only the desire to be close. To take what she could in the short allotted time and hope that her heart did not shatter.

  Reaching up, she removed the hatpin which secured her veiled confection and placed it on the ground beside his chair. Angling herself to give him comfortable access, she guided his fingers to the neat ringlets trained to fall over one shoulder. Very different from the wild mane which used to cascade down her back when he’d beg her to loosen her housemaid’s serviceable topknot.

  At first he touched it tentatively, then he fisted both hands in it, his expression suddenly animated.

  She drew back. “What is it?”

  “The texture,” he muttered. “It’s the same texture.” He shook his head, unwilling to say more until she pressed him, wanting to hear it. Wanting confirmation that the long hours of companionship they’d shared hadn’t been only in her imagination.

  “I loved a girl once—” His voice was barely above a whisper, “—who had hair like this.”

  “What happened to that girl?” Grace asked, willing him to recognise her and acknowledge that he had ruined her life. To say he was sorry for it so that …

  She could forgive him.

  “She betrayed me.”

  This was not what she’d expected. Gasping, she stepped back, causing him to drop his hand and say mockingly, “Yes, imagine it! I loved her yet all the while that she pretended to be my ally, urging me to stand up to my mother, promising to protect my most valuable possession, my most dangerous secrets … she was betraying me behind my back.”

  No, no, no … How could you think it? Grace’s voice shook from the effort of reining in her heated denials. “How did she betray you?”

  “I found a photograph—” He swallowed as he steadied himself with a hand on the back of the chair, his twisted mouth pushing out the words as if they were foul and bitter—“of her in circumstances no woman of any decency would allow.”

  Oh God. Grace stumbled backwards as she put her hands to her face. She knew which photograph. Laurence had forced her to sit for him. Blackmailed her. He’d spent the summer with his aunt and, to while away the dullness of country life, had indulg
ed himself with the latest craze: photography. When he had her alone in the little room Mrs Willowbank allowed him to use as a studio he’d made her remove her clothes and drape herself over the plush chaise longue and then he’d …

  David’s voice was thick was emotion. He drew his hand across his eyes as if the image were still branded on his vision. “I saw what only I had ever hoped to see but here she was parading her body before … before the world.” His voice dropped to a thread of bitter accusation. “It was the last thing I saw.”

  The silence drew out until she could bear it no longer. “What do you mean … the last thing you saw?”

  David glared, seemingly oblivious to the hand she tentatively lay upon his shoulder. “I suppose it’s part of your job to pander to me. To sound interested. To sound as if you care.”

  It was difficult not to betray the extent to which Grace did care. She stepped forward and gently took both his hands in hers. “Whores have feelings, too.”

  This elicited a small laugh.

  “And curiosity,” she added.

  Perhaps he needed an opportunity to unburden himself to a supposed stranger. Perhaps something about Grace made him trust her, for he went on, “My cousin invited me to his new photography studio to show me the portraits he’d taken of my mother. Of course it was his intention that I see more. More than just the face of the girl I loved. Laurence told me how much she’d wanted to be admired through the camera’s lens … and more intimately. He told me how smooth and soft she was. How moist her lips were. Of the little mole on her breast.”

  Helplessly, Grace felt his pain as he twisted away from her, fisting his hands. “Her betrayal cut through me and I picked up the first thing that came to hand so I could hurl it at him and remove the gloating smirk from his face. A bottle. I had no idea it was acid. Something he used to develop his work. Laurence went for me. We fought and the bottle smashed, splashing liquid into my face.”

  Oh my God. Horror made her mute.

  David had been blinded in a fight over her.

  “But she’d already gone by then. The woman I loved. The woman I trusted.” His voice hitched as he sat heavily upon the bed, hunched over with his hands covering his face. “Without a word.”

  No, that’s not true, Grace wanted to say but she was helpless in the strange new emotional landscape she inhabited, caught between the urge to tell him everything while knowing the truth would only make things worse.

  She heaved in a breath. “Do you see … nothing?”

  He looked up, unseeing. “I’m aware of light and dark. Sometimes I wish I was dead … now that she’s gone.”

  Grace fought to keep her voice steady, tears stinging her lids as she whispered, “Why did she leave?”

  “Mother dismissed her when I went up to Cambridge for my first term.”

  Rage and hurt swept away her sympathy. Here was her chance to ask the question that had haunted her for three years—Why did you do nothing?—but his voice, harsh, bitter, cut in, giving her the brutal answer. “The girl who said she loved me had given herself to someone else. She was pregnant. Mother said her father told Mrs Medley, our housekeeper, that she’d run off to London with the blacksmith. I saw the way he looked at her in church but I never thought she returned his interest. But I was away at university and he was a handsome man, working now and perhaps persuading her I’d never marry her. I suppose that’s why she took off her clothes for Laurence. So she could get money to be with her blacksmith.”

  She gasped aloud. Lies! All of them! Well, except for her being pregnant.

  She reined in her emotions. Nothing she said or did would change a thing. It was some comfort David hadn’t stopped loving her, though she forced herself to subdue the ray of hope that breached her hardened heart. Hope always had a bitter lining. In this case it was that the truth of what she’d become was worse than the fiction his mother had created.

  If Grace told David his mother had lied, then what?

  She’d only have to tell him that she’d descended to vice far greater than he could ever imagine.

  No, Grace was not the girl he remembered. He loved the pure, idealistic Grace, full of hope for the future. Not the debased, ground-down whore before him who bartered herself, body and soul, to stop from starving. She might despise what she’d been reduced to but the fact was she was a whore.

  Oh God, a whore who did this with strangers for a living when all she’d ever wanted was to marry David and have his children.

  Chapter 4

  “Forget the past.” Grace forced the suggestive, sympathetic tone into her voice as she moved forward, drawing him to his feet so she could inveigle herself back into his embrace. “And enjoy the present. I can take your mind off your sorrows.”

  She might not have David beyond this evening but for the next hour he would be the lover she might have had if things had been different. It would be a bright memory to mitigate the miserable future which stretched before her.

  Slipping her hands beneath his shirt she ran them up his smooth chest. No longer the chest of the sapling she remembered. Gently she rubbed his nipples, ridiculously gratified by his shivers of reaction. He was putty in her hands and his fascination for her and what she could do for him was growing. What would he think if she tried to entice him further down?

  Dare she?

  The Grace he’d known would never have been so bold and brazen but she was a woman who played on men’s fantasies for a living. A whore who’d never experienced desire in the course of her work. Now, with the young, healthy body of the only man she’d loved showing increasing willingness, she was desperately conscious of her own lustful urges. They frightened her. How little time she had to revel in the intimacies she’d once hoped to enjoy for a lifetime.

  He was highly aroused by the time she slid her hand into the opening of his trousers, his sudden hardening echoing her own need as she felt the rush of warm liquid pooling in her lower belly.

  “Oh God, what are you doing?” he gasped, gripping her shoulders as she knelt in front of him and gently circled the end of his manhood with her tongue. Clearly he was caught between pushing her away and keeping her prisoner.

  “I shall disgrace myself!” he warned as she trailed her tongue the length of his shaft before taking him deeply into her mouth, but she ignored him, caught up by her own responses to his growing excitement. She could feel her desire roaring in her ears. His breathing was coming fast and even, his body was tense and his hands fisted in her hair as she moved him deeper into the cavern of her mouth, flicking her tongue over the ridges of his swollen shaft, squeezing gently, pushing him back and forth.

  “Oh God!” he cried, convulsing as he came. He could barely speak through his shame. “I’m sorry.”

  Exultant, Grace slithered upright and held him tightly, as if to comfort him, her heart pounding at the simple fact she’d elicited such powerful reactions. That she was responsible for giving her beloved David such pleasure. “A virgin does not have to apologise for the brevity of his first time,” she murmured, her mind whirling, every sense on high alert as she kissed his earlobe, revelling in the intimacy, though he seemed caught up in confusion, not knowing where to put his hands.

  She raised them to her breasts still contained by her low cut bodice. Again, so brazen. The Grace he’d known would never have done such a thing. The David she’d known would have been repulsed by such behaviour.

  “You can undo me, if you like.” She wriggled invitingly in his embrace and he seemed to gain confidence, his exploring hands fumbling with the row of tiny buttons down the front of her tight-fitting cuirass. Touching her lips to his right ear, she whispered, “There, I’ll help you.”

  When the fabric fell away she quickly divested herself of her upper bodice, pushing him down upon the bed again and settling herself on his lap so he could feel her bare arms and the swell of her breasts above her corset.

  At first tentative but with increasing surety he ran his hands over her skin, myriad respo
nses reflected in his rapt expression. Grace closed her eyes and offered herself to him, her heart engaged like it had never been since she and David had been close.

  “Is this how it’s done?”

  “Seduction?” she murmured as she snuggled against him and toyed with his nipples.

  “Whoring.”

  Deflated, she froze. Whoring. Yes, that’s all it was to him. She was a stranger. A woman off the streets sent to service him for an afternoon.

  “Don’t leave. I’m sorry.” He pulled her back. “I didn’t mean to offend you. You’re very good and I need tutoring.” Unseeing, he groped for her breasts, at first ashamed, then obviously enjoying their size and feel as he trailed his fingertips over their exposed fullness as if committing them to memory.

  “Tutoring?” She heard the dullness in her voice. “You make it sound like a lesson when I thought I was here to indulge you. Would you like me to take off my corset so you can weigh them in your hands?” She did not add: That’s what many of the gentlemen like to do? It gives them satisfaction to weigh up the inventory.

  Without waiting for his response she stood up, guiding his hands to the strings at the back of the constraining garment. Twisting her head to study his concentration as he worked the laces, she was struck by memory. This was the way he’d once looked at her. Eyes bright with determination as his hands trailed over her—respectfully, lovingly—while vowing that the day he reached his majority and was free of his mother he would marry her.

  “Very good. And now for my skirt. Here are the buttons. That’s right. My, but you’re very deft with your fingers.” She took refuge in briskness, her tone falsely admiring. As her skirt slithered to the floor she kicked it aside. A shabby way to treat a garment which cost her what she’d have to earn through servicing more than two dozen clients.

  Next, she attended to her princess petticoat, a simple, embroidered linen shift which she removed from over her head leaving her naked save for her stockings. A girl in her line of work had no need for the additional petticoat and combinations modesty required the respectable debutante or matron to wear.