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Dominic stayed her. ‘Leave them,’ he murmured. ‘I want to look at you.’
She misunderstood and took a few steps away, opening up a small distance between them so that he might view her. He could not ignore the invitation, swallowing hard as his gaze swept over the long white legs that rose out of her dark stockings, over the smooth curve of her hips and the small triangle of fair hair that sat between her legs, and the soft feminine belly.
She blushed beneath his scrutiny, as if she were not a well-practised courtesan that rode different men every night of the week, as if she really were his Arabella. His manhood strained all the harder against the fine wool of his pantaloons.
She made no move to unfasten the mask from her face, nor did he ask her to do so, for he had no wish to shatter the illusion that had him standing here in the first place.
He stripped off his clothing and then took her in his arms once more.
Arabella, he mouthed silently against her throat as she wound her arms around his neck.
Arabella, as he carried her to the bed and laid her down. The contrast of her pale naked skin against the black silken sheets seemed to emphasise her similarity to Arabella all the more. He wanted her so much he was aching for her, so much that he could think of nothing else. His body covered hers, one hand thrumming at her nipple as he positioned himself between her legs.
She was open to him, moist and ready, and he was rock hard as he stroked against her. Everything of her—the scent, the taste, the feel—was so like Arabella that as he slid into her silken heat in his mind it was Arabella he was entering. And when he rode her it was Arabella he was riding until both their breaths were ragged and their bodies were slick with sweat. He rode her until he found the relief of his climax, pulling out of her just before he spilled his seed.
Such exquisite torture.
But the minute that his body was spent he rolled off her, already regretting his decision to come upstairs with her.
She was not Arabella, and all that he had done was tear asunder ill-healed wounds of the past. He felt as empty and alone and unhappy as ever he had been and longed to be gone from this place. Throwing the covers back, he climbed from the bed.
‘Thank you,’ he said awkwardly, but could not bring himself to use the woman’s name. He walked away, found his shirt and pantaloons and pulled them on.
A faint breathy noise sounded from the bed, a noise that sounded suspiciously like a silenced sob.
Dominic looked back at the bed and the woman who lay there so still and unmoving. And as his gaze found hers, she turned quickly away, rolling on to her side to present him with her back, as if she sought to block him out.
His eyes traced the golden tendrils that had escaped from the pile of curls pinned upon her head, over her pale shoulders and down the straight line of her back. Her waist was narrow before the flair of her hips and her perfect bottom.
His fingers froze in the act of fastening the buttons of his pantaloons. His blood turned to ice. He could not move, could not so much as take a breath. He stared at the fullness of her rounded buttocks, stared at the soft white skin … and the distinctive dark mole upon her right cheek that he remembered so well.
The shock was as explosive as if someone had taken a pistol and shot him at point-blank range. Everything else in the world seemed to diminish. Dominic gaped with utter incredulity, staring at a truth so blatant that he marvelled he had not realised right from the very start.
‘Arabella?’ His whisper was barely more than a breath, yet it seemed to resonate within the room as loudly as if he had roared it at the top of his voice.
Every line of her body stiffened and tensed, the reaction confirming the suspicion his mind had been too slow to form. He saw the small shiver that rippled through her before she pulled the top cover free and then, holding it against her body to cover her nakedness, climbed from the bed. Only then did she turn to face him.
They stared at one another across the rumpled mess of sheets, and the very air seemed to vibrate with a barely contained tension.
Even now his mind could not accept the enormity of the discovery. Even now he thought she would deny it. But in her silence and stillness there was nothing of denial.
Dominic reached her in an instant. With one hand he pulled her to him, barely noticing that he had displaced the bedcover from her in the process. He was too busy untying the ribbons of her face mask, too busy tearing it from her. Even as she gasped, the black-feathered object tumbled to lie at their feet. And he stared down with horror into the shocked white face of Arabella Tatton, or Arabella Marlbrook as she was now.
Chapter Two (#ulink_4b06bf8e-e3a2-53e9-b9fd-f0f18003410a)
Arabella’s naked body was hard against the length of Dominic’s, their hips so snug that she could feel the press of his manhood. For a moment the shock of him discovering her was so great that she could do nothing other than stare right back into the eyes of the man she had loved. But then she recovered something of her wits and struggled to free herself.
‘Arabella!’ He tried to still her.
She hit out at him and tried to escape. But Dominic caught her flailing arms and hauled her back to him, securing her wrists behind her in a grip that was gentle yet unbreakable.
‘Arabella.’ Quieter this time, but no less dangerous.
‘No!’ she cried, but Dominic was unyielding. He stared down at her with implacable demand.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ His eyes had darkened to a black glower that smouldered within the pallor of his face. And there was about him a simmering, barely contained rage so unlike the man she remembered.
She strove to stay calm, but her breath was as ragged as if she had been running at full pelt and with every breath she took she could feel the swollen tips of her breasts brush against his unfastened shirt.
‘At least grant me the honour of allowing me to clothe myself before we have this conversation,’ she said with a calmness that belied everything she was feeling.
His gaze dropped to rove over her nakedness with deliberate and provocative measure so that she thought he meant to refuse her but, just as she thought it, she felt his grip loosen and drop away.
She gathered up the black dress from where it lay on the floor and, turning her back to him, quickly garbed herself. She stretched around and tightened the laces of the bodice that she could reach, but had no other option than to leave the remainder loose. The dress gaped from the untied laces, revealing far too much of the pale swell of her bosom. It was the antithesis of respectable clothing, but it was better than facing him naked. She hoisted the neckline of the dress and clutched it in place. Dominic had finished his own dressing and now watched her with eyes burning with a shock that mirrored her own and an unmistakable anger.
‘I will ask you again, Arabella,’ he said with a quietness that was deadly, ‘what are you doing here?’
‘The same as any woman does in a place such as this.’ She faced him defiantly, and with a determination to hide the shame and wretchedness beneath that façade.
‘Whoring.’ His voice was harsh.
‘Surviving,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster and stared down his contempt.
‘And where in damnation is Henry Marlbrook while you are “surviving” in a brothel? What manner of husband is he that you have been reduced to this?’ His voice changed, hardened, as he spoke Henry’s name and the word ‘husband.’
‘Do not dare to mention Henry’s name.’ Arabella would not stand here and hear it.
‘Why ever not?’ he threw back at her. ‘Frightened that I find him and run him through?’
‘Damn you, Dominic! He is dead!’
‘Then he has saved me the trouble,’ he said coldly.
Arabella gasped at Dominic’s cruelty and then, before she could think better of it, she slapped him hard across his face. The crack resounded in the room around them and was followed by silence. Even in the soft flickering candlelight she could see the mark her palm had left upon his cheek.
His eyes had been dark before, but now they appeared as black and deadly as the night that surrounded them. But Arabella would not back down.
‘You deserved that.’ For everything he had done. ‘Henry was a good man, a better man by far than you, Dominic Furneaux!’
Henry had been kind.
And Arabella had been grateful.
She saw something flicker in the darkness of Dominic’s eyes.
‘Just as he was all those years ago,’ he said in a chilled voice. ‘I have not forgotten, Arabella, not for one single day.’
Neither had she. With those few words all the past was back in an instant. Of the joy of losing her heart to Dominic, of her happiness and expectations for the future, of the lovemaking they had shared. Lies and illusions, all of it. It had meant nothing to him. She had meant nothing to him, other than another notch upon his bedpost. At nineteen she had not understood the base side of men and their desires. At four-and-twenty Arabella knew better.
‘You wasted no time in wedding him. Less than four months from what I hear.’
She could hear the accusation in his voice, the jealousy, and it fanned the flames of her ire. ‘What on earth did you expect?’ she shouted.
‘I expected you to wait, Arabella!’
‘To wait?’ She stared at him in disbelief. ‘What manner of woman did you think me?’ Did he honestly think that she would have welcomed him back with open arms? That she would have given herself to him again after he had discarded her in such a humiliating way? ‘I could not wait, Dominic,’ she said harshly. ‘I was—’ Her eyes sought his.
His gaze was dark and angry and arrogant, every inch the hard, ruthless nobleman she knew him to be.
‘You were …?’
She hesitated and felt the pulse in her throat beat a warning tattoo.
‘A fool,’ she finished. A fool to have believed his lies. A fool to have trusted him. ‘You have what you came here for, Dominic. Now be gone and leave me alone.’
‘So that you might rush down to Mrs Silver’s drawing room to offer a “glass of champagne” to the next gentleman who is doubtless already waiting there.’ Contempt dripped from his every word. ‘I do not think so.’
How dare he? she thought. How damnably dare he stand there and judge me after what he has done? And in that moment she hated him with a passion that was in danger of driving every last vestige of control from her head. She wanted to scream at him and hit him and unleash all of her anger, for all that he had done then, and for all that he had done now. But she hung on to her self-control by the finest of threads.
His eyes held hers for a moment longer and the very air seemed to hiss between them. Then he walked over to stand behind one of the two black armchairs by the fireplace.
‘Sit down, Arabella. We need to talk.’
She gave a shake of her head. ‘I think not, your Grace,’ she said and she was proud that her voice came out as cold and unemotional as his, for beneath it she was shaking like a leaf.
‘If it is the money you are concerned over, rest assured that I have paid for the whole night through.’ He looked at her with flint in his eyes.
There was a lump the size of a boulder in her throat that no amount of swallowing would shift. She faced him squarely, pretending she was not ravaged with shame, pretending that she was standing there completely untouched by the fury of emotion that roared and clashed between them.
Pretending that she had no secrets to hide.
He gestured to the armchair before him. ‘Come, Arabella, sit. After what has just passed between us there is no room for coyness.’ His voice was harsh and his face was set harder, more handsome, more resolute than ever she had seen it. And she knew that he would not change his mind.
‘Damn you,’ she whispered and the scars throbbed as if they had never healed and his reappearance, after all these years when Arabella had thought never to see him again, sparked fears that she was only just beginning to grasp.
Only once Arabella was seated did Dominic take the chair opposite hers.
‘Did you know it was me from the start?’
‘Of course I did not!’ The fury he felt for both her and himself made his voice harsh. It did not matter what she had done, he would never have taken her out of vengeance.
‘Then how did you realise?’
‘How did I not realise sooner?’ he demanded, but the question was not really for her but, rather, for himself. ‘Me, who has known every inch of your body, Arabella.’ One flimsy black-feathered mask alone had been enough to fool him, he thought bitterly, and knew that was not quite true. It was the fact that this, a bordello, a bawdy house, a brothel, was the last place on earth he would have ever thought of finding her.
The thought of what she had become shocked him to the core. The thought that he had treated her as such shocked him even more. He had dreamt of finding her, both longed for it and dreaded it. But never in all of his imaginings had it been like this. He raked a hand through his hair, trying to control his feelings.
He glanced across at her. Her face was pale, her expression guarded.
Time had only served to ripen her beauty so that she was now a beautiful woman when once she had been a beautiful girl. There was about her a wariness that had not been there before. Then, she had been innocent and carefree and filled with an irrepressible joy. Now what he saw when he looked at Arabella was a cold, angry, determined stranger he did not recognise. And then he remembered the muffled sob he had heard and the sheen of tears in her eyes … and something of his own anger died away.
‘You said Marlbrook died.’
She gave a cautious nod. ‘Two years since.’
‘And left you unprovided for?’ He could not keep the accusation from his tone.
‘No!’ The denial shot from her lips in her desperation to defend the bastard she had married. ‘No,’ she said again, this time more calmly. ‘There was money enough left for a careful existence.’ She hesitated as if deliberating how much to tell him.
The questions were crowding upon his lips, angry and demanding, but he spoke none of them, choosing instead to wait with a patience that he did not feel for her explanation.
But Arabella’s explanation was not forthcoming. Her expression closed. Her mouth pressed firm and she glanced away.
The seconds ticked by to become minutes.
‘Then you are here by choice rather than necessity?’ he said eventually and raised an eyebrow.
‘Yes.’ She tipped her chin up and met his gaze unflinchingly, almost taunting him. ‘So now you see the woman I have become, have you not changed your mind about leaving?’
‘I am staying, Arabella,’ he said, his eyes still holding hers with every inch of the determination he felt.
She bowed her head and glanced away, sullen and angry.
‘What does your father make of your chosen profession?’ he demanded. ‘What does your brother?’
‘My father and Tom were taken by the same consumption that claimed Henry.’
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said. The news shocked him, for he had known the family well and liked them. ‘And Mrs Tatton? What of her?’
‘My mother was brought low by the disease, but she survived.’
‘Does she know that you are here, Arabella?’
A whisper of guilt moved across her face. ‘She does not.’ She tilted her chin, defiant again. ‘Not that it is any of your concern.’
In the ensuing silence they could hear the faint rhythmic banging of a bedstead against a wall. Neither of them paid it the slightest attention.
His eyes raked hers. There was another question he needed to ask, even though he already knew the answer by the very fact that she was here in Mrs Silver’s House of Rainbow Pleasures.
‘There is no other man since Marlbrook? No new husband or protector?’
‘No,’ she said in a tight voice and eyed him with unmistakable disdain. ‘But if there were, it would be no business of yours.’
Their eyes held for a moment and a storm of anger seemed to fire and crackle between them before she rose and moved away to stand over by the long black curtains that covered the window.
Arabella could not just sit there and let the questions continue, not when she feared where they might lead. Besides, Dominic had no right to question her. He had forfeited the right to know anything of her life when he had made his decision all those years ago. Let him think the worst of her if it prevented his questions and made him leave. Let him think she was the whore he had just made her. Better that than the alternative.
She could not bear for him to see how much she was hurting. And she could not bear for him to know the truth of her situation, of the desperation that had led her to this place. Better his contempt than his pity, and better still that he left knowing nothing at all.
