Potent Pleasures Read online

  “Christopher!”

  “Well, Reverend Colby, then, but I don’t like his last name. Anyway, it is nothing serious, Charlotte. It’s a masquerade ball that lots of, well, merchants and servants attend, and Christopher—Mr. Colby—says that people of our class never get to see real life, and especially how everyone else lives. He says young girls, society misses, are like houseplants. We never do anything, and then we’re sold to the highest bidder, and he says that it is a perfectly amiable dance, and everyone wears masks the whole time, so no one could see our faces and—”

  “Our! Our faces!” repeated Charlotte.

  Julia leaned forward. “You must come with me, Charlotte. You see, don’t you? If you’re with me everything is quite proper. Mama knows how correct you are, and even if she found out, she wouldn’t be horrendously angry.”

  “Yes, she would,” Charlotte replied, picturing Julia’s brisk and forthright mother.

  “Don’t you see, Charlotte? We’re just like sheep, being sold to the highest bidder, and—”

  “What are you talking about, Julia?” Charlotte asked with exasperation. “What does being a sheep have to do with sneaking off to go to a ball?”

  Julia wasn’t sure she remembered. It all made so much sense when Christopher explained it to her, his sweet face downcast as he talked of her sheeplike docility.

  “You know,” she said vaguely. “We just have to get married, and we never get to see anything. Oh, Charlotte,” she said, abandoning the messy question of ethics, “it will be fun, don’t you see? There’s nothing improper about going to a party chaperoned by … by a theologian!”

  A small thread of rebellion lit in Charlotte. After all, had anyone asked her whether she wanted to come out? Whether she wanted to get married? But of course she did want to get married, and the only way to do it was to come out, so that train of thought didn’t lead anywhere.

  “I won’t go if you don’t,” said Julia in a small voice. “We’ll just look.”

  The corner of Charlotte’s mouth quirked up in a grin and Julia answered her unspoken consent with a squeal.

  “You must promise me that you won’t run off to dance with your curate and leave me alone,” Charlotte said sternly.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t, Charlotte!” Julia’s eyes were glowing. “We’ll have to go up to the attic and find something to wear. Costumes. I think there are some old dominoes up there.”

  Charlotte tried to remain calm but it was no use. Her reasonable, unexcitable temperament had deserted her, leaving a racing pulse and a seductive taste of excitement.

  Julia jumped up. “This is the perfect time to go to the attic. Mama and Papa always visit the tenants on Sundays until time for luncheon.”

  So the girls crept up the stairs, all the way past the servants’ floor into the huge, echoing attics that lay under the timbers of Squire Brentorton’s manor roof. Blocks of pale sunshine fell across old pine boards, the dusty shapes of covered furniture, trunks of outdated clothing. Charlotte paused for a moment and watched dust specks eddy and dance in the light as Julia briskly trotted across the floor toward the trunks. Within a minute she had found two voluminous black cloaks that would cover their whole bodies. At first it appeared that there were no masks, but then with a little shriek Julia pulled them from the corner of another trunk.

  “Hush, Julia!” Charlotte’s heart raced.

  “It’s quite all right,” Julia replied, looking up from where she was bundling the dominoes into a clumsy parcel. “No one except one of the servants could possibly hear us.”

  “And what if one of the servants did hear a noise and came to investigate?” Charlotte demanded.

  “Oh, Charlotte, you’re such an innocent.” Julia laughed. “We would bribe him, of course.”

  And, in fact, that very night Julia bribed her maid into airing out the dominoes and by the time she returned them a week later, pressed and sweet-smelling, the excursion had come to seem inevitable. Giggling wildly, Julia powdered Charlotte’s hair with face powder so that it looked vaguely like the old-fashioned hairstyles of twenty years ago.

  Julia was delighted. “Look at me! I look just like that portrait of my mother upstairs on the landing! And no one would recognize you, Charlotte,” she said encouragingly. “With your mask on, all I can see is powdered hair and a little bit of your face. Do you think we used too much powder?”

  Charlotte looked at herself. Julia had certainly been liberal with the powder.

  “Well, at least we don’t have to worry about being asked to dance,” Julia said, giggling. “A gentleman would probably start sneezing if he got too close!”

  It should do, Charlotte thought dubiously. They could go see how the other half of the world danced, and then come home. Escaping the house was no problem. The east wing, where Julia’s bedroom was, had stairs in the back for servants, but the servants were in bed in the west wing when the girls stole out at nine o’clock at night.

  The curate was waiting around the curve of the drive as Charlotte and Julia rounded the bend. Seeing a dark figure leaning against the carriage door, Charlotte’s footsteps faltered. She felt a wave of passionate conviction that this masquerade was a mistake. But Julia danced forward irresistibly, shouting “Christopher” and generally acting as if surreptitious meetings on dark roads were nothing new to her. Charlotte followed slowly, feeling that she really ought to tell the curate that they had made a mistake and drag Julia home.

  Yet to Charlotte’s relief, Mr. Colby was respectful when the two girls reached the carriage. He bowed solemnly when Julia introduced him to Charlotte, and mentioned that he had visited the chapel at Calverstill while at Oxford. Somehow that comment managed to give the whole excursion the air of a school outing. Charlotte felt immeasurably relieved, and at any rate Julia bounded into the carriage before Charlotte had a chance to say anything about returning home. She found herself seated on the dusty seats of a hired hack, sitting forward gingerly so as not to crush the folds of her domino.

  Then Mr. Colby pulled a bottle of champagne from a basket with such a flourish that it seemed they must join him. Did people really drink on the way to balls? Charlotte sipped at her wine uncertainly as the carriage gathered speed, lurching along the main road. Julia babbled of dances and balls and servants.

  Finally Charlotte pulled herself together. Mr. Colby must think she was dreadfully ill-bred, sitting in total silence. She cleared her throat, a small uncertain noise, but Julia was deep in her normal flow of distracted chatter and there was no space for Charlotte to speak. In fact, Julia paused only to cast fascinated glances at the curate seated across from them, his head politely bent toward Julia.

  Finally Charlotte seized an opening and began asking the kind of question she had heard her mother ask the curate: about his flock, so to speak, and how were the poorer people doing?

  “This is a fortunate area,” Mr. Colby replied courteously. “Miss Brentorton’s father is more than generous in his support of the parish.”

  “My mother says—” Julia broke in and dashed away with the new subject, and so Charlotte relaxed even more and felt that while the excursion was daringly bold, it wasn’t beyond reproach. Someday she might even be able to tell her mother, and laugh about it with her.

  Charlotte was able to keep her feeling of calm equanimity when they arrived at Stuart Hall. It was an imposing brick building with long windows casting light across gardens: not so different from any gentleman’s house, she thought. Inside, everyone was in costume, and most people had masks, just as Mr. Colby had said. There were many, many people there, pushing slowly through crowds in the hallway, and she could see, down the steps into the ballroom, couples lined up in close rows on the floor.

  They wormed their way into the ballroom, and found a little space over to one side, between a statue of Narcissus and the open doors to the gardens. Mr. Colby pushed off and came back with some rather vile lemonade, and they stood about sipping the drink.

  “Do you know,” Julia s
aid, “I think there’s some liquor in this lemonade.”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” was all Mr. Colby said. “They simply can’t afford the best lemons here, the way you can at home.”

  Charlotte and Julia both felt a flash of shame at all the best lemons they’d eaten in their lives, and they drank with renewed fervor.

  Mr. Colby turned to Julia: “Shall we dance?” He looked respectfully at Charlotte. “You’ll be perfectly safe here, and Julia and I shall return in a moment. They’re playing a minuet, which was my dear mother’s favorite dance, and I should love to honor her memory….”

  He looked so apologetic and sad about his mother (she must be recently deceased) that Charlotte nodded, even though she had made Julia swear that she wouldn’t dance, no matter what happened. And Julia, of course, turned quickly and vanished into the press of people.

  He’s not wearing a cassock, Charlotte thought rather stupidly.

  And then, vaguely, one doesn’t think of the mother of a curate whisking about the dance floor.

  It was rather embarrassing standing alone in the ballroom. Charlotte gazed out over the dancers as if she were looking for someone. Slowly she realized that the party wasn’t, in fact, exactly what she might have expected. Quite a few of the ladies seemed to have taken their masks off, and their costumes were—well, revealing. For example, there was a lady dressed as Marie Antoinette. She was carrying a shepherd’s crook and was wearing a towering wig. But her dress was so bright, and so low, Charlotte thought. Really, if it was any lower, her bosom would pop right out. And look what she was doing with that shepherd’s crook! Charlotte felt pink creeping up her cheeks. The lady’s escort was laughing and laughing, but every instinct told her that no one behaved like that at the balls her mother attended.

  But after all, this was why she and Julia had come tonight, wasn’t it? Of course the atmosphere wouldn’t be exactly as it might be in London. Mr. Colby said young ladies were kept like houseplants, and not allowed to see anything, she reminded herself. Well, this must be how ladies and gentlemen actually behaved when they were not at debutante balls.

  And so she lifted her eyes and tried to find Marie Antoinette again, but she just caught a glimpse of her going up the stairs; actually she must have taken ill, because it looked as if her escort was carrying her up toward the ladies’ dressing room.

  Then her gaze was caught by a man standing on the stairs. He leaned back against the railing as Marie Antoinette’s thick skirts brushed past him. He was tall, taller than her father, wearing a dark green domino rather than a black one like most of the men. He looked … he looked arrogant, and lordly, and very handsome, even given his mask. He had broad shoulders and curly black hair shot through with silver.

  Just then a very pretty girl, dressed as Cleopatra, stopped next to him. She seemed to know him; they were laughing and he rubbed a finger against her face. Charlotte instinctively touched her own cheek and kept staring. From here, his eyes looked black and his eyebrows arched just as her own did. People always said that she looked as if she had a perpetual question in mind; his eyebrows gave an entirely different impression. They made him look a little devilish: not childishly naughty, like Julia’s curate, but altogether more dangerous. Something stirred warmly, deep in her belly. For the first time, she saw a man whom she would like to … to what? To kiss, she decided. Yes, she would even like to kiss him, she thought with a delicious shiver. Although kissing, Lady Sipperstein had said over and over, was something one did only with one’s betrothed, and then only after all the papers were signed.

  Suddenly the stranger’s green domino swung elegantly out from his shoulder as he turned down the stairs and escorted the laughing Cleopatra to the dance floor. Charlotte tried to follow them with her eyes, even standing a bit on tiptoe, but there were too many people. He was taller than most men so she occasionally caught glimpses of his silver-black curls. Her heart thumped loudly.

  “Oh, for goodness sake!” she said aloud. A tiny smile lit her face. She was behaving just like Julia, falling for the first handsome man she saw. He was probably a footman. But where was Julia? The orchestra had played at least two or three dances since she left; Charlotte had lost track. She felt a little anger stir inside her. How could Julia leave her alone, when the ballroom was full of people who were definitely behaving in a less than restrained manner? Even as she watched, a stout man dressed in a frayed domino grabbed his partner by her bare shoulders and kissed her, and they didn’t even seem to notice the hissing annoyance of the other dancers who bumped into them.

  Charlotte turned a bit and stared into the corner behind the statue. The room was papered in a perfectly unexceptional blue with gold flock. She drank up the rest of her lemonade.

  Suddenly she felt a push and she toppled into the corner. She would have caught her balance, but her head was fuzzy and so she teetered and fell forward. And the person who had shoved her fell on top of her, heavily.

  “Ow,” Charlotte said. Her mask was twisted, she could feel that, and powder had fallen from her hair all over the polished floor.

  But she was whisked to her feet in a second and large hands brushed the powder from her cloak.

  She looked up. It was the man from the steps. Charlotte looked at him a bit owlishly. Just at that moment he looked up from brushing off her cloak, met her eyes, and froze.

  “Thank you,” she said, remembering to smile.

  He didn’t move. Charlotte looked away from his eyes. They were so intent: black and deep, like polished obsidian, she thought absurdly, and almost giggled. Would a footman wear a domino made of thick green silk? She stole another look at him. He was younger than she thought, and even handsomer. His eyebrows formed thick peaks over his eyes. He was still staring at her. At her mouth, actually. Nervously she bit her lip, unable to move, caught by the intensity of his gaze.

  Then without saying a word he put his arms around her waist and pulled her against his body.

  “What!” Charlotte managed to say, but he bent his head and a warm strong mouth descended on hers. She didn’t say another word, not even when his lips opened hers and his tongue lunged into her mouth, not when he pulled back slightly and delicately traced the shape of her lips with his tongue, and certainly not when she—she!—leaned toward him in a silent request and his mouth took hers again.

  He swung her about so that they were shadowed behind the Narcissus statue, safe from people’s eyes. Then he swiftly pulled her mask over her head. Charlotte looked up at him. He wasn’t wearing a mask anymore either. The light in the corner was rather dim, and it enhanced the strong planes of his face. He was staring down at her, his eyes glittering, as if she were a rhubarb tart ready for eating, she thought. She nervously wet her lips and his eyes darkened visibly.

  Charlotte still didn’t say a word. In fact, she had no thought of leaving, or of speaking. She was simply waiting. His large hands swept down her back and cupped her bottom through her cloak and dress, and even though she knew exactly what he was doing, she mutely raised her face for another kiss.

  His mouth left hers and she felt warm breath on her ear, and shivered instinctively. A tongue swept around her ear, and a husky voice murmured, “Very nice, a lovely ear,” and swept without a pause to reclaim her mouth again, his tongue stabbing into her mouth. Finally he stole her tongue altogether and sucked it into his mouth.

  All the time his large hands kept up a disturbing rhythm on her back, and even on her bottom. He molded her to him, his fingers caressing her through the worn domino and her frock. He pulled her body up against his hard muscled body; Charlotte’s legs felt as if they were made of jelly.

  Thinking back, she knew she couldn’t have protested, even if she’d thought of it. Her body was hardly even hers anymore. Maybe she could have said something when he put an arm behind her shoulders and another under her knees and simply, smoothly, picked her up and backed out into the warm garden. Instead she just leaned against his chest and felt his fast-beating heart against
her cheek.

  He was gazing at her, his eyes black as jet and thickly fringed with lashes. Charlotte blinked, her mind possessed by the idea of licking those lashes.

  The insanity of this notion almost jerked her back to reality but then he was kissing her again and she heard herself moan faintly. He lowered her to the ground, and she smelled flowers and fresh grass, and felt the fierce warmth of the large male body hovering just above her. And so it was she who wound her hands in his curls and pulled his masculine pressure down onto her softness.

  He pushed aside her cloak, but her eyes were shut tight and she was lost in the intense pleasure of the moment. When he ducked his head and his mouth closed on her breast, Charlotte—uncaring of the ballroom a few feet away, just on the other side of some trees—gave a moan that wasn’t a moan but almost a scream.

  His mouth sent trails of fire up and down her body and especially down her legs, and she gasped and twisted in his arms, her body instinctively arching up, her hips lifting off the soft grass. And he was murmuring something, murmuring his strange, delicious kisses against her skin. Charlotte strained to listen and then forgot to understand; lips moved down her body as if he were tracing messages, teaching her a language of which she had known nothing until now.

  Charlotte was on fire and exploding at the same time, and so when his face appeared over hers, all she did was delicately put her tongue to his lips, and run her hands through his curls again. With a muffled groan, he did something, she didn’t know what, and he was pushing about her clothing, but his hands were on her breasts and she couldn’t think. And when he said, “Would you like …” in a deep, velvety hoarse voice that she still shivered to think about, she whispered, “Please,” and strained toward him for another kiss.

  A knee pushed between her legs, but he was bending down to kiss her and she swept into a swirling, breathless haze, her body ignited by the closeness of his. But then, in a split second, pain shot through her and she screamed.