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He felt her come, felt the muscles close against him rigid, thick in ecstasy, her sigh all that remained of breath. Spent and replete!
His whore now. God, Beraud had the measure of him after all, Cristo thought, as he unlaced his breeches and readied himself to mount her. Her wetness beckoned, the solace of women inciting a particular appetite in him that could no longer be denied. Straddling her open thighs, he positioned himself above, parting the soft lips of her core and fitting them around his heavy thickness.
The warmth of her crept into his soul as he thrust in hard to be confronted by the one barrier he had never expected to feel there.
Virgin?
The thought was as fleeting as the breakage and the giving and his full, tight engorgement. He could not have stopped himself even had he wanted to and the seed that he seldom left in any woman spilled warm against her womb, the last whimpering of his cock a question of flesh against better judgement.
A virgin whore. A trick. His mind sharpened as he lifted himself off her, the liquid of sex on her skin.
She had turned away from him now, eyes closed against seeing, languid abandon reforming itself into a tight kind of anger that he recognised. The corruption of innocence made him swear.
Who the hell was she? Who the hell had done this? To him? To her? The look in her eyes, as he had demanded a name and the incoherent reply—asking for help?
Lord above. He had been in the game of intelligence for years now and he had missed that? Real regret surfaced and guilt that held consent sacred in any relationship. He had never been a man to use force with a woman and virginity was something to be protected and given with full knowledge. He swore again, hating Beraud anew for sending him a brandy-filled whore-virgin completely new to the game.
More questions surfaced as her medallion suddenly glinted against the pillow, the long gold necklace no longer hidden by her blonde curls. Removing it from her throat, he took it into the light and knew that the past had found him.
Tricked. Duped. Another link in the chain that bound him here, lost to the pathways of proper society and for ever shamed.
Eleanor felt a rush of imbalance engulf her. Her palms fanned wider against the whiteness beneath and she struggled to find reality.
Naked. She was naked, though such a consideration was nothing against the sudden and dreadful knowledge of what had happened. Keeping her eyes shut tightly, she wished she were dead.
‘I know you to be awake.’ In French.
She turned her head, even as she knew she meant not to.
‘Why do you wear this? ‘
He sat in a chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him and her grandfather’s medallion dangling from his fingers, the lines drawn in gold catching the candlelight and sending rainbows spinning across the ceiling. His breeches were loose and his shirt was unbuttoned at the front, the breadth and definition of his chest so remarkably foreign that she could not look away.
Parts of the last hour were coming back. A great rush of redness covered her cheeks, though when his eyes passed across the juncture at her thighs she understood that what motivated him now was only anger.
‘Who the hell are you?’
When he reached out to press the heel of his hand hard against her stomach she was mortified by the tight need that echoed from the gesture.
A whore. He had made her such! The play of his fingers against her skin made her stretch towards him, every sinew wanting …
His palm broke contact.
‘For a woman without experience you are surprisingly wanton.’
Eleanor turned her head. Below the shouts of people became louder, glass falling against a harder surface and shattering from the clumsiness of inebriation.
A brothel.
She was in a brothel on the bed of a man whose very den of iniquity it was. Deflowered.
She smiled at such a term and then felt a single tear trace its way down her cheek to be soaked up by the burgundy velvet in the pillow behind. His string of French curses told her that he had seen it too.
Lady Eleanor Bracewell-Lowen? England and the rarefied world of the ton seemed a long, long way from here.
Chapter Two
Cristo held the medallion in his fingers and hated the fear in her face.
‘Who are you?’ he repeated, his voice not quite steady. He wished he might have left her there, just walked out into the night and waited until she had gone, but life was no longer that simple for him. Beraud had brought her to him and if the woman should know anything of his past, what then? For years he had held the secrets safe. He shook his head, hard. With her maidenhead lost he felt he owed her at least something.
One moment ran into two and then five more. But still she did not speak and the heat of fury leaked out of his vengeance.
Sitting back, he weighed up the options.
She would not talk and he no longer felt the desire to make her. She was shivering, too, for the fire had long since died out, as the cold of an early Parisian November crept into the space of his chamber, raising the fine hairs on her arms.
He caught at an eiderdown of goose feathers folded on a chest at the foot of the bed and placed it across her and when one foot was still exposed he was careful to tuck it into warmness.
The first stirring of dawn was lighting the room and the bells of Sacré Coeur rang in those souls who still believed in the goodness of Our Lady. Striking a light, he breathed in the mellow taste of a cheroot, the smoke winding its way up through the lonely morning dark, another small reminder of all that he had become.
‘Mon Dieu, et quel bordel tout ceci.’
My God, and what a hell of a mess all this is.
He saw small toes wiggle free from the thick down covering as she tried to sit up.
‘Could I please have a drink?’
Six words that nearly undid him, for the quiet dignity in her request was undeniable. When he filled a glass and handed it to her she made a point of saying thank you, though the realisation that he still could not place her French accent kept him edgy.
‘How came you here?’
She remained quiet, but as the flints of blame in pale eyes continued to prick at his conscience he made an attempt at explanation.
‘I didn’t know that you had not lain with a man before. This is a place that never shelters innocents and by the time I found out that you were one, it was too late.’
An apology of sorts. It was all he could manage.
‘Then you will let me go now, monsieur?’
Turning his face towards the window, Cristo wished that he could have taken her from this room right then and there before the need his body shook with was too much to deny. But he could not, for the party below was far from over and men made careless from too much drink were always dangerous.
A temptress. A siren. The full line of her lips and the rise of her ample breasts against the softness of the cover. The sheer need of her made his voice sharper than he intended.
‘Where are your clothes?’
‘Downstairs. I took a drink … more than one.’
‘You came in with the other women, les prostituées?’
She nodded.
‘And the chain?’
‘My aunt was once given it by an English client she serviced. A bauble that was not to her taste! I liked the shape and she said that if I came with her tonight I might have it, should the evening prove a success …’
‘Your aunt is one of those below?’
When she nodded his hand closed around the engraved coat of arms and he felt the edge of the rondel dig into his palm. Was such a coincidence even possible? With a lifetime of deception behind him he knew that it was seldom the case. Could he make her talk now that she was more sober? His world reformed into only suspicion and his heart began to thump as he wondered how much Beraud might have gleaned about the meaning behind the crest.
Keep talking, Eleanor thought to herself, the fog of the drink she had been forced into taking receding into the sharper play for survival. Already the velvet darkness in his eyes looked harder, more removed. Just a whore plying her trade in a market driven by a commodity that could be given many times, the first of as little importance as the hundredth. She had to make him trust exactly that if she had any chance at all of escaping with her name intact.
‘I do not believe anything you have told me. Do you work for Beraud?’
‘Beraud?’
‘From the Parisian Police. The man who sent you to my room.’
‘I do not know the man. I came with my aunt and—’
He stopped her simply by raising a hand. ‘You lie, mademoiselle, and I intend to find out why.’
Her laugh was harsh as she bit back a reply, but he no longer seemed interested, the drag of his chair shrill against the parquet flooring as he stood and walked towards the windows.
‘Perhaps you would prefer to join the others downstairs and further your trade? You could no doubt turn a trick or two with the one who brought you in here. He certainly looked willing enough.’
True fear squeezed the very beat out of her heart. ‘Oh, I think I would rather stay with you, monsieur.’
His smile held no humour whatsoever. ‘Take care, ma chérie, of expressing any such yearning, for there are many in this game who would not give you the luxury of choice.’
Her hands fisted beneath the soft warmth of down. As you gave me no choice. She almost said it. Almost let the scalding shame escape, but didn’t, as sense embedded itself into silence.
Ruined.
The very word was written in her blood on the sheets, and the laughter from below seemed only to emphasise the silence between them, making everything more awkward again. She saw him pick up a tumbler and then place it down, undrunk, and the swell of the vessel was engraved with a crest.
Isobel had warned her of the intemperance of men such as this one when she had first arrived in Paris, but her friend’s timely cautions had been buried by need. Her grandfather had instructed her to make certain that she delivered a letter into exactly the right hands.
‘Le Comte de Caviglione at the Château Giraudon. Give this letter only to him, Lainie,’ he had said time and time again as life had left him. ‘Only to him. On your oath, promise me that you will do this, for he is a good man, a man to be trusted and he needs to know the truth.’
How naïve she had been to imagine she could just walk up to the door of the Château Giraudon and demand the ear of its master or expect the dignity and decorum that honourable men in the courts of England might have afforded her. Her dress had been a little gaudy, but the wig was an expensive one she had procured before leaving London. Perhaps it had been the presence of the women installed there already, their brightly coloured gowns and heaving bosoms giving an illusion of something that was normal here in Paris.
It had taken less than an hour for those downstairs to ply her with too much brandy as she had waited, trying not to appear as nervous as she felt.
Lord, if the Comte had come earlier she would have placed the missive in his hands and left as she intended: a dutiful granddaughter undertaking a final wish for a beloved grandfather. But now? She dared do nothing else to raise this man’s suspicions with all that lay between them, for if he ever guessed her name …
Against the breaking light Eleanor could see his profile. He was almost as young as she was and for that at least she was thankful.
‘Where are you from?’
His words held distrust and the caution of one used to betrayal. She noticed the small finger on his right hand was missing altogether as he laid his palm against his thigh.
‘Do you speak English?’ He had switched languages now and his accent was pure aristocracy. The change made her tense as layers of mystery clouded truth. Who was he? Why had he asked her that? She swallowed before she answered.
‘Pardon, monsieur, I do not understand what you are saying.’ She tried with all her might to make her words sound the same as one of the maids at Bornehaven, the soft Provençal French easy to mimic. The lines of his shoulders relaxed.
‘The south is a long way from the streets of Paris, ma petite. If you need money to return there …?’ He switched easily to French.
She shook her head. Payment could only mean obligation and with nothing to trade save her body, she was careful. He took the words a different way completely.
‘Then if you are hell-bent on staying in the city, perhaps you and I could come to some agreement.’ The fire in his eyes was searing sharp.
Eleanor pressed back against the bed, watching as he came closer. ‘Agreement?’
‘Your line of work is somewhat … insecure. I could offer you a less uncertain future.’
‘Uncertain?’
He began to laugh, his teeth white against the dawn, and in that moment Eleanor knew the pull of beauty, fierce and undeniable, his eyes marked with arrogance and temperance and authority. Not a man to be trifled with. But it was the hint of something else that held her still. A sadness, she thought, written beneath a careful detachment.
He stopped as he reached her and ran his thumb along her cheek. Without force. A bolt of awareness sizzled between them, making her heart beat faster.
‘Though if you truly wish me to halt, mademoiselle, then I will.’
He meant it. Honour came in unexpected places, she thought as she caught the depth of his dark, dark eyes, and the silence between them lengthened.
She should pull back, should shake her head and put an end to it all, but she was held immobile, her nipples tightening and the want in her belly finding a home in the place between her legs.
Le Comte de Caviglione! Her grandfather had said he was a good man, a trustworthy man, a man with some tie to the Duke of Carisbrook …
One time or ten more, what did it matter when the urgency in her being called only for release and already the damage was done, was it not? The pressing insistence of some emotion that was uncontrollable made her turn to him!
She did not flinch when he rolled down the cover and exposed her breasts, cold tightening desire and adding to the allure of surrender.
The velvet counterpane was burgundy, and stitched in gaudy golden thread. She felt the ridges of it against her feet when his hand ran across her throat and made them stiffen. Above the bed a net of gauze was anchored by ribbon, the cane hoop that held it painted in an antique peeling silver, so that the colour bled into the fabric. Beyond that, a mirror was fastened to the ceiling, catching the movement of them both through a veil of muslin, the pale outline of her breasts surprisingly wanton.
The reflection of the man beside her with his night-black eyes and magnetism left her little chance of refusal. The length of his hair fell past his shoulders, pale spun silver as she reached up to touch the colour.
He smiled, his glance allowing no modesty, and the distant sounds of a waking Paris were a counterpoint against her growing need.
‘How old are you?’
‘Eighteen.’
He turned her leg into the light. ‘What happened?’
The rings of blistering skin on her thigh stung as he touched it. ‘I tried to keep my gown on.’
