Lady Charlotte's First Love Read online

  His face, that handsome face, once so dear to her. He was handsome still—more so, even, now that life had filled in the hollows of youth and etched faint lines of experience into the corners of his eyes. He had the same dark waves falling in a silky drift across his forehead and the same wide mouth with the full, sensuous bottom lip. She’d spent hours tracing his lips with the tips of her fingers.

  But his eyes… They were wrong. They were still dark and liquid, with a slight upward tilt at the corners and a long, thick fringe of sooty lashes, but there was no joy in them. No kindness. They were suspicious. Watchful.

  At one time she’d thought his eyes the very essence of him. Perhaps they still were.

  Her silence didn’t seem to matter to him.

  “I’m afraid it makes no difference whether you like it or not.” He eased his coat over his shoulders and tossed it onto a bench at the end of the bed. “It matters only that I like what I see, and I do, sweet. I like it very much, and I’ve paid to see all of it, so remove your clothing.”

  His tone was bland now, nearly inflectionless. If she hadn’t known every nuance of his voice, hadn’t heard it echo in her dreams, she might have missed the subtle note of challenge. But she heard it, and as soon as she did, she knew. Her masque hadn’t fooled him. He knew who she was. He’d known from the first moment he saw her. She was sure of it. How could he not? He’d brought her up here on purpose then, so he could…

  What? Teach her a lesson. Put her in her place.

  Her breath caught on a strange, grim little laugh. Did he really believe there was a lesson she hadn’t yet learned? Did he truly think she hadn’t been shoved into her place, again and again, and with such brutal force it had taken every shred of strength she could muster to crawl out of it?

  “Remove your clothing.”

  Charlotte crossed her arms over her chest. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what, sweet? Getting what I paid for?”

  If he felt any remorse—or any emotion at all—it didn’t show in his face. He was utterly composed, in perfect control of himself. Bored, even, like a lazy cat who held a mouse’s tail under his paw and was biding his time until he slashed a claw through its belly.

  Bored, yes, but not so bored he was ready to end his game. Very well. She’d end it for him.

  Charlotte reached behind her head to untie the silken cords of her masque, but Julian grabbed her wrists to stop her. “No. I said remove your clothing, not your masque. I’m not interested in your face. Leave the masque on.”

  Oh, yes. He knew who she was.

  Charlotte stared up into his hard, dark eyes. He thought she wouldn’t do it—he didn’t even want her to do it. He wanted her to admit she’d been a fool to risk her reputation by entering a whorehouse, to crumple at his feet and beg his forgiveness so he could refuse to give it to her.

  But she was done begging for forgiveness. His, or anyone else’s.

  So instead she did the one thing she could think to do under the circumstances. She curled her lips in a slow, seductive smile and turned around to present him with her back. “Aw right, guv, if ye say so. It’s yer coin, right enough. Help wif my buttons, won’t ye, luv?”

  Oh, how she wanted to see his face then, to read his expression as she gave him just what he asked for.

  But not what he wanted.

  He made a faint sound, an angry, strangled word or a harshly exhaled breath. “Do you think I won’t?”

  He would, or he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter which. Either way he’d lose, because this wasn’t what he wanted. “Aw, come on, luv. Why should I think that? Ye’ve got a right lusty look about ye, ye do, and ye did say you liked what ye seen. Or mayhap,” she added, her voice as smooth as silk, “Ye don’t like it as well as ye thought ye did, eh?”

  She felt his hands against the back of her neck, his fingers twisting the top button of her gown. “Or maybe I like it even better.”

  Cool air touched her skin through the flimsy material of her shift as he worked her buttons one by one until her gown was open all the way down to the small of her back. He settled his hands against her waist, his fingers stroking over the soft flesh there before he eased her hips back against the front of his falls.

  A tremor passed through her, but otherwise she didn’t move. He was calling her bluff? Surely he wouldn’t—

  “What’s the matter, luv?” He grazed his teeth over the sensitive skin under her ear. “You haven’t changed your mind, I hope? It’s a bit late for that. Once a man’s desires are roused, there’s only one way to satisfy him. I would think you’d know that, being a prostitute.”

  Anger stiffened her spine and her resolve. “A woman don’t get ter change ‘er mind no matter what, prostitute or not. I’d a thought ye’d know that, being a man.”

  A low chuckle was his only answer, but he gripped her shoulders, his palms hot, heavy. She braced herself to resist him, to dive across the room for the washbasin, but his touch turned gentle as he slipped his fingers under the edge of her shift to stroke her bare shoulders. She sucked back a gasp as he moved closer, so close his warm breath drifted over her skin. Her eyes fell closed, but just when she thought he’d put his mouth on her, he grasped her shoulders and turned her around to face him.

  Charlotte caught her breath.

  His perfect impassivity was gone. His eyes were no longer cold, his face no longer composed. His cheekbones were flushed with color and his breath came fast and hard. “Unbutton my waistcoat.”

  “No need fer that, luv.” Her voice wasn’t quite steady. “If ye’ll just strip off yer breeches—”

  He made a harsh sound in his throat and caught her wrists to press her hands against his chest. She could feel the thud of his heart through the silk of his waistcoat. “Do it. Unbutton my waistcoat.”

  He held her wrists until she worked the buttons loose; then he dragged her hands up his chest and pressed them tight against his neck. He stared down at her, his dark eyes burning. “Take off my cravat.”

  The command was low and hoarse, almost inaudible, but his voice throbbed with an intensity that brooked no argument. His words echoed inside her, and this time Charlotte didn’t think to resist him, but untied the knot, unwound the long piece of linen, and drew it away from his neck.

  He took the cravat in shaking hands, and let it slip through his fingers and flutter to the floor. “Put your arms around my neck.”

  She stared at the smooth olive-tinted skin left bare by the loose neck of his shirt, and a sense of unreality swept over her, as if time had somehow shifted, reversed, and they weren’t here at all, in a whorehouse, with long months of bitterness and unanswered questions between them, and suddenly she wished it were so, longed for it with an ache so deep she staggered under it.

  She closed her eyes and slid her arms around his neck, but even as she sifted the soft waves of his hair through her fingers, she knew it was hopeless. No matter how brief, how fleeting that sweet, perfect first love might be, one only ever got a single chance at it.

  She’d had her chance, and she’d lost it. She’d never get another.

  Chapter Three

  She did as he bid her and twined her arms around his neck. For a single, baffling moment her touch felt like home, but with his next breath the strange sensation dissipated on a wave of panic.

  She thinks to send me to my knees again…

  No. Not this time. He hadn’t survived blood and battles and chaos only to be brought to his knees by her. “Open your eyes.”

  Fear made his voice harsh, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyelids lifted on command, as if he’d jerked a string, but somehow her compliance only made him angry. “So obedient. But what now, sweet?”

  “Wot? Ye mean ye don’t know? Aw, well, don’t worry, guv. I’ll help ye along.”

  “Will you? Very well, then. Go to the bed and hike up yo
ur skirts.” There. That should earn him a slap to the face. One sharp crack and they could end this farce.

  Without a word she turned, marched over to the bed, lay on her back, and reached a hand down to lift her skirts.

  He almost laughed. Some things hadn’t changed, then. Charlotte had never been one to settle for a farce when she could have a drama. Julian crossed the room in two long strides, took her by the arm, and drew her to her feet. “How far do you plan to take this?”

  She ran a teasing finger down his arm, but her eyes narrowed to dark slits. “Why, as far as you will, luv. Further.”

  “You’d let me bed you?” His laugh was harsh, incredulous. “Do you have so little regard for yourself? Or are you a whore now, after all?”

  As soon as the ugly words left his mouth Julian flinched away from them, as if someone else had said them. How had they gotten to this point? He’d only thought to bring her upstairs and show her how foolish she was to trifle with her reputation, and now he was calling her a whore?

  Jesus. He had to calm down, to go easier. “I beg your—”

  “’Course I’m a whore.” Her eyes flashed, and an echo of it reverberated in his belly, the feeling both strange and familiar at once. He’d seen that spark before. He’d always thought her more glorious than ever when she was in a passion. So much passion, as if she carried a flame inside her. But as quickly as the flame sparked to life it was gone, and she regarded him with cool, dark eyes. “That’s what ye paid for, innit?”

  Ah. So that’s what this was. Not a farce or a drama, but charades, and she’d continue to play until he removed her masque, and once he did, neither of them would be able to hide anymore. Pity. Charades were much more entertaining than reality. More truthful, too, because they didn’t pretend to be anything other than what they were.

  He didn’t want to see her face, but it was inevitable, this moment between them. It wouldn’t be cheated, and masked or not, her face would never cease to haunt him. It was printed indelibly inside his eyelids, waiting there to torment him every time he closed his eyes.

  For months after he left London, every dark-haired woman he happened across was her. Every red lip, every long, white neck, every husky, teasing laugh—her. There were days when he thought he’d go mad from it, and yet still it was her, always, even after she’d tossed him away without a thought, much as she’d tossed her cheroot into the fire when she’d finished with it this evening—tossed it away to never think on it again.

  Remove the masque, and end this.

  He watched his hand reach for her as if he were trapped in a nightmare. The masque’s silk tie was slippery under his fingers and he struggled with the knot, but then the scrap of jewels and ribbon fell to the floor at their feet, the black silk stark against the white linen of his cravat.

  He caught her chin in his fingers and turned her face up to his. So soft and warm still, her skin so fine, so smooth. The perfect curve of her cheek, the wide dark eyes tipped with those feathery lashes—in another lifetime they’d made his chest ache with want, and her lips, so full and red, had made his knees buckle.

  “Do you like what you see?”

  She stood before him, her loosened gown slipping off her shoulders. He’d unfastened every button, all the way down to that sweet spot at the arch of her back. He knew it was sweet because he’d tasted her there, had trailed his lips over that fragrant arch again and again…

  But he’d been gone for months—no, for a lifetime, and everything inside him had gone so jagged, so sideways he didn’t recognized himself anymore. He was no longer the same man who’d been taken in by the promise of those eyes, those lips, and on a stab of inexplicable loss he thought some part of him must despise her now, in her fine gown and her elaborate jeweled masque, with her lovely face and hard eyes.

  “No. Not quite the same, after all.” He released her chin to trail his fingertips down her cheek. His touch was gentle, deceptively so, for his words were cruel. “Beautiful still, of course, but I find myself curiously unmoved, Lady Hadley.”

  He waited for another flash of temper in her eyes, but she might have been a marble statue or a porcelain doll, for not a ripple of emotion disturbed her blank face. “Ah, well. It’s for the best, I suppose. It didn’t end well for me when my face did move you, did it, Captain West?”

  His hand dropped away from her cheek. “Have you rewritten our history, my lady? As I recall it didn’t end well for either of us—”

  “Charlotte!” A loud thump at the door made them both jump. “Are you in there?”

  “Hush, Aurelie!” another voice hissed. “Or you’ll have dozens of whores and their bare-arsed lords out here with us.”

  Someone rattled the handle, but the door remained firmly shut. “That devil has her locked in there with him!”

  Another thump, this one followed by an incredulous laugh. “Lissie! Do you intend to knock down the door with your slipper?”

  “I suppose you have a better idea, Annabel?” This question was accompanied by another dull slap on the door, then a shockingly unladylike curse.

  “Well, yes. We’ll have Charlotte let us in.”

  “But that devil must have restrained her,” wailed the first lady, “or she’d have answered our knock by now! He likely has her secured to a chair, or worse, to the bed!”

  There was a brief pause, then a smothered laugh. “That could be worse or better, depending on what he looks like. Did either of you see him?”

  “That is not amusing, Annabel. Charlotte! Can you hear us? Maybe he has her gagged.”

  Julian raised an eyebrow. Gagged?

  “Hush!” snapped the one called Annabel. “I think it far more likely we have the wrong room.”

  “But the blond-haired doxy said it was the last door on the left.”

  Thud. This time the door shuddered in its frame. The one wielding the slipper—Lissie—must have exchanged her shoe for her fist. “She must have lied. No doubt he paid her well to do so. Aurelie, go back down and give her a guinea.”

  There was another pause, then, “Oh, dear. I don’t have a guinea. Do you suppose she’ll take a crown and a half-smoked cheroot, instead?”

  “What’s a whore going to do with a half-smoked cheroot, for heaven’s sake?”

  “I don’t know. Smoke the other half?”

  Julian retrieved his cravat from the floor and looped it around his neck. “You’d better let your friends in.” He plucked his waistcoat from the bench at the end of the bed and withdrew the key from his pocket. “Quickly, before they tear down the door.”

  He handed Charlotte the key, donned his waistcoat, snatched his coat up from the bench and braced himself for the inevitable uproar as all three ladies tumbled into the room at once.

  “Charlotte! Oh, dieu merci!” The petite blonde rushed forward and clasped Charlotte in her arms. “We thought you were right behind us earlier! We would have missed you sooner, but when we got outside Lord Devon was waiting for us, and what do you think? The wicked man tried to argue we hadn’t won the wager because Lissie didn’t smoke her cheroot, and—”

  “I bloody well did smoke it! Let Devon sniff my breath if he doesn’t believe me.”

  The tall, slender blonde closed the door behind them, strolled into the room, and stopped in front of Julian. “Shall we discuss it later? I’d like to be introduced to this, ah, gentleman first.”

  The redhead, Lissie, placed her hands on her hips. “Right. Who the bloody hell are you?”

  Julian shrugged and began to button his waistcoat. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m the devil who locked the door, secured Lady Hadley to the bed, and gagged her.”

  “I knew it!” Aurelie crowed.

  Charlotte glared at him, then turned to Aurelie. “For goodness’ sake. You can see for yourselves that’s not what happened.”

  The taller blonde continued to eye Julian
. “I see. Was yours a random attack, sir, or do you often force your attentions on unwilling ladies?”

  “Ladies?” Julian gave her a bland smile. “Need I remind you you’re in a brothel? Generally speaking, whores are willing to receive a gentleman’s attentions.”

  The redhead snorted. “Gentleman? I hope you don’t refer to yourself.”

  “And this lady isn’t a whore,” the blonde added. “Anyone can see that, and I’d wager you knew it well enough when you brought her up here.”

  “Another wager?” Julian waved a hand around the room. “You’re still in a brothel, madam. Perhaps you should conclude your last wager before you undertake a second one. After all, I may have rope and gags enough for all four of you.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if you did,” snapped the redhead. “We’re not afraid of you, and we’ll have an explanation for your infamous behavior at once.”

  He shrugged. “Very well. The marchioness and I are…acquaintances.”

  “Acquaintances?” The little blonde grasped Charlotte’s shoulders, turned her around, and began to fasten the back of her gown. “Are you in the habit of ripping your acquaintances’ clothing from their backs?”

  “Ah. Well. That depends on the acquaintance.”

  A corner of the tall blonde’s mouth twitched. “Indeed. What is your name, sir?”

  Julian tugged the ends of his cravat into place and began to tie it with smooth, precise movements, but he remained silent. He’d answered enough of her questions, and since he meant to stay far away from Charlotte after tonight, her blonde friend didn’t need to know his name.

  “Perhaps it’s just as well,” she murmured, when it became clear he wasn’t going to reply. “All buttoned up again, Charlotte? Ah, very good. Then I see no reason to linger. Let’s be certain we all leave together this time, all right, my dears?”

  Julian pulled his coat on. “No. I don’t think so.”