Potent Pleasures Read online

  “What the hell!” he said in a furious tone, rearing up on his arms. Charlotte shrunk back, suddenly coldly sober.

  Alex McDonough Foakes, future Earl of Sheffield and Downes, looked down at the girl in stupefaction. She was a virgin, for God’s sake. She was staring up at him, absolutely white in the face, her lips swollen with his kisses. Lovely lips, he thought wonderingly: such a dark, dark red, and she tasted like honey…. And, not thinking at all, he lowered his body back down onto her softness and claimed her lips again.

  She was devastatingly beautiful, this serving girl: so wild even if she was a virgin. He didn’t remember ever feeling so frantic with need. He ran a slow hand down her lovely languorous thigh, and in spite of herself, Charlotte squirmed against his hand.

  He cupped her delicate, triangular face in his large hands and pressed kisses on her eyelids. Still she didn’t make a sound, just opened her mouth a bit and gasped when he drew his tongue over her eyelids. Which was such an entrancing sound that even though Alex knew he had to get out of there, stand up, deal with the unpleasant fact of having deflowered a wench, he bent back to her lips and brushed his across hers, tantalizing, asking, demanding.

  His hand ran down her thigh again and then up the inside, sliding slowly over the gossamer silkiness of her stocking, over the slight bump of a garter at her knee, into the creamy smoothness of her inner thigh. His hand closed over her, and her body arched again, surprised by desire for something she had never felt before. Gasping, Charlotte stared blindly into the dark leaves overhead. Mindlessness descended and she moaned, small ragged sounds, parting her lips. The burning pain of a moment ago was forgotten.

  Alex stared down at her, almost puzzled. She had a perfect, aristocratic nose, and such delicate, flyaway eyebrows…. She turned her head and looked squarely into his face. Her eyes were glazed, her mouth swollen. Alex was struck by such a bolt of lust that he shuddered all over. He reared over her again, easing his fingers from her, his knee thrusting between her legs.

  But in that instant—before he could reclaim her, virgin or no—Charlotte struggled, a belated instinct for self-preservation replacing the unwelcome coolness when his fingers left her.

  Alex let her go instantly, rolled himself off to the side. Charlotte ignored how unpleasant the loss of his heat and weight felt. She was shaking slightly all over, her heart pounding as if she’d run for miles. She tried not to look at him as she stood up, almost stumbling from the sudden pain between her legs, pulling her bodice up.

  But she couldn’t not look. He was much younger than she thought, probably only a few years older than her brother Horace, and Horace was only twenty-five. And he was so lovely: His skin looked golden as shadows of leaves played over his white shirt. Her eyes fell. He was politely looking away so she rearranged herself, straightened her cloak, and put her mask back on.

  The only thing she could think of, besides throwing herself back into his arms, was getting home, so she gently laid her hand on his arm and said (with an inborn politeness which was natural to her), “Thank you. Goodbye.”

  She didn’t think how odd it was to say thank you for being ravished—the worst thing that could happen to a young lady, after all.

  His face jerked up when he heard her voice, but she slipped away without a backward glance and dashed through the tall windows into the crowded ballroom before he even moved. And when Alex cursed and sprinted after her, he couldn’t distinguish her among all the cloaks and dominoes and masks moving about the floor. Burnt yellow silk brushed shoulders with rose cotton and the occasional greeny gold taffeta. Men dressed in shabby black coats peppered the floor. But there wasn’t a slender girl wearing a black domino to be seen.

  Alex sighed. The girl couldn’t have just disappeared. She must have rejoined her party. And like a guilty thief, struck with remorse and eager to compensate for his crimes, he needed to find her. With a muttered curse he mentally divided the room into quarters and then patiently wove through each quarter, surveying all the young women who reached his shoulder. But he couldn’t find her. Yet even when he knew rationally that she must have left the ball, he kept searching, doggedly, until the dance closed down.

  She was gone. And whoever she was, she’d gone with her loss of virginity, and he’d paid nothing. But that wasn’t it, and he knew it. He wanted to see her again. The thief was only hiding behind a wish to compensate for his crimes: In fact, he wanted her, with an urgency that made him feel slightly insane. He wanted to reclaim that lovely, untouched body, to kiss away her little pants, to repeat the crime again and again and again.

  The odd thing was that she sounded like a lady. And she looked like a lady. But of course no ladies came to the Cyprians’ Ball on a Saturday night, and so she was just a very clever whore—but what was a whore thinking, to give away her most prized possession for free, in the gardens? Alex left the ball in a ferocious temper.

  That night he woke from dreams of wild seduction completely confused, gazing around his room as if he’d never seen it before. His garden girl … her body had been just there, and he had been tracing the shape of her breast with his tongue, and she was moaning in his arms. For some reason she had stolen into his mind and wouldn’t go away.

  For a few weeks Alex treasured the hope that he’d receive some sort of a ransom note from her protectors or perhaps even from her parents, if she were a serving girl rather than a whore. He rather hoped she was; he would protect her, and find her a house in London, a quiet little house. But there never was a note.

  And even though he went back to the Cyprians’ Ball the next Saturday night, to the distress of his brother, Patrick, who had had no fun at all the week before, she wasn’t there. He also went to a few society balls in the next two weeks, thinking if she was a lady he might see her, but he couldn’t find any tall, slender girls with green eyes. The young girls in London were bouncy and curled and small, whereas he was looking for willowy and composed.

  If only he knew the color of her hair it would be easier, but she had been wearing a ridiculous amount of powder. Alex’s domino smelled faintly of lavender for weeks. He thought about it carefully and decided that she had red hair. With skin that white, her hair had to be red. So he looked for a red-haired girl who smelled of lavender, and Charlotte, whose hair was jet-black and who smelled of orange blossoms, never crossed his path.

  When Alex wasn’t dreaming about making love to her (and he didn’t even think how odd it was to use that term about a probable whore), he dreamt she was weeping, and he was comforting her, and saying tender things. Probably, Alex told himself rationally, he kept thinking of her because he hadn’t gone through with it and finished: But even thinking about how wet she had been, and how small, made him pale. She couldn’t be a lady; there was proof positive. No lady enjoyed sex, let alone a virginal lady.

  On her side, the truth came slowly to Charlotte. She ran into the ballroom and thankfully saw Julia and Mr. Colby standing by the statue of Narcissus, although she didn’t notice the mutinous set of Julia’s mouth. She didn’t have to say anything; Julia simply shoved her across the ballroom and out into Mr. Colby’s carriage. In fact, she didn’t even think until later how odd it was that no one said a word on the way home. Her mind was so tumbled that she barely felt as if she were in the carriage at all.

  And when they got home and Julia babbled about Mr. Colby, that he had tried to kiss her—to kiss her, Julia!—and she had had to grind her foot into his in order to make him let go, Charlotte just sat numbly on a chair and nodded occasionally. Finally Julia stopped.

  “Are you all right, Charlotte?” she asked, seeing that Charlotte’s eyes were shadowed and her face was waxen.

  And Charlotte simply said, “I think I shall be ill.” And she was, right on the Axminster carpet in Julia’s bedchamber. Which was problematic because it was the middle of the night and Julia did not want to sleep in a sour-smelling room, so finally they both went into Charlotte’s bedchamber and prepared for sleep.

  E
xcept that Julia gasped when Charlotte was undressing, and when Charlotte looked down she saw blood on her thighs and nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Oh, aren’t I silly,” said Julia. “You’ve got your monthly: Do you have the right cloths?” And when Charlotte shook her head silently (it wasn’t even due for weeks), Julia tripped off into her room and got the necessary items.

  Charlotte washed at the basin in the corner, delicately touching that part of her which stung and ached and throbbed, and which she’d never really thought about before.

  He’d ruined her, she suddenly realized. This is what is meant by ruined. She must be torn inside, changed.

  And then, like a chill blowing down her back, she understood that she could never get married, because any man she married would find out, would know that she was ruined. Charlotte’s mind went very, very quiet, and she even managed to smile at Julia when she rushed back in the room.

  She put on her soft white nightgown and curled up in bed, facing away from Julia. But she couldn’t go to sleep for a long time. And when she did, she sobbed aloud and woke up, imagining the faces of her mother and father. What would they say if they knew?

  The next morning Charlotte lay in bed feeling miserable. Julia sat next to her, sipping hot chocolate and talking. Luckily, Julia never needed much of a response to engage in lively conversation.

  “I simply cannot believe Mr. Colby’s perfidy!” she repeated again and again. Charlotte noticed that “Christopher” was now definitively “Mr. Colby.”

  “I just can’t believe that he tried to take liberties with me!” Julia elbowed Charlotte again, trying to get her attention. “Charlotte! This is important! He didn’t just try to kiss me, you know. He put his hand—on my breast, Charlotte! On my breast” Julia said again, emphasizing each word. “I could have been ruined,” she said with relish.

  Charlotte didn’t respond. Julia peered at her. “Are you quite all right, Charlotte? You’re very quiet. I could ask my mother … she has some good remedies for a bad monthly. Would you like that? Oh, no,” she wailed, “I couldn’t! Why, she would take one look at me and see that I was almost ruined last night!”

  Charlotte thought dully that Julia certainly was enjoying herself.

  “Why,” Julia continued, “if I hadn’t trampled on his foot, just at the right moment, well, who knows? He might have overcome my resistance!” Julia giggled. “But you know, Charlotte,” she said. “His lips were rather wet, and it was revolting … I don’t know what came over me! Kissing the curate!” She giggled again.

  Charlotte listened silently. What was the matter with her? At least Julia knew Mr. Colby. She even adored him. But Julia hadn’t lost her head. They both knew that if Julia had been able to tell her mother, which of course she couldn’t, Lady Brentorton would have approved of her response to the curate’s kiss.

  But when a stranger, a total stranger, kissed Charlotte out of the blue, she collapsed into his arms as if she were begging for more. So Charlotte separated her guilt from her anger. How evil could the man be? He must have thought … she didn’t want to think what he must have thought, and quickly covered her burning cheeks with her hands.

  It was only when the huge house was quiet, around two in the afternoon, that Charlotte started to cry. Julia had gone riding with her parents; her maid was down in the kitchen. Charlotte soaked her pillow with tears: for the husband she would never have, for the babies she thought to have, for the unfairness of discovering that she—she, Charlotte—was an insatiable woman. She’d have to stay away from men, she thought finally, after crying hopelessly for a long time. She couldn’t trust herself, that was clear. And she couldn’t allow herself to be publicly ruined; her parents would be devastated.

  Finally she got out of bed and rang for a bath. She sent the maid out of the room because she wasn’t sure whether there might be other signs of her ruination. But she didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.

  It was only when she leaned back into the steaming water that Charlotte remembered her paintings, and given the way the world had shifted in the last few hours, she allowed that to shift too. Since she couldn’t have a husband, or a baby, she could learn how to paint properly. She would make a focus for her life in the easy sweep of new canvas and wet paint, far from the humiliation she felt at the moment. The thought—the plan—calmed the agonizing jumble of feelings inside Charlotte; she rose from the bath and allowed Julia’s maid to button her into a chaste white gown.

  Chapter 2

  As Charlotte’s world fell into before and after, so did the world of her mother. When Charlotte returned to Albemarle Square the next day, she didn’t say much. She looked at her mother with a tearless, somber look that made her mother want simultaneously to shake her and to burst into tears. What on earth had happened to Charlotte? She wasn’t herself anymore, as the duchess told her husband in bewilderment. Charlotte became moody and even harsh.

  If the truth be told, Adelaide was exhausted, too exhausted to deal with a new, irritable Charlotte. Presentations were tiring. The planning had taken weeks, and just this week Gunter’s had put up a fuss about the ices. She had ordered ices colored a delicate violet, and they appeared with a violently purple sample. The footman who was set to washing the center chandelier broke seventeen crystals before anyone noticed he was dead drunk. The new gown she had ordered (blue velvet, embroidered with silver fleur-de-lis) was ghastly. The sleeves were short and far too tight, and the overdress sagged, making her look old and matronly. So she had to pay four times the price to have Madame Flancot create a new gown of rose brocade, practically overnight.

  And then, the very day before the ball, Charlotte announced that she wouldn’t go to any balls, including her own presentation. Adelaide stared at her in disbelief. She turned sharply to Charlotte’s maid, Marie.

  “Fetch Violetta, please, Marie. And then you may go.”

  Marie slipped from the room. Her mistress must have gone crazy. That beautiful dress! How could she even think of not wearing it?

  Charlotte’s sister Violetta strolled into the bedroom with all the nonchalance of someone with two seasons behind her and an almost-for-certain marriage proposal from the Marquess of Blass.

  Violetta tried persuasion. “You know, Lottie,” she said, reverting to Charlotte’s pet name from childhood, “I was terrified at my coming out ball. Mama had the place absolutely covered in white lilies—which was very nice, Mama,” she hastened to add, “but the perfume was so powerful. When I slipped downstairs to see the ballroom in the afternoon, I just kept sneezing and sneezing, and we all panicked. But then Campion suggested scotch, which he said was a perfect remedy for sneezing, and he was right. Of course,” she said meditatively, “I don’t remember much of what happened after the glass of scotch, but at least I didn’t sneeze all evening.”

  Charlotte just looked at her sister miserably. She hadn’t cried since leaving Julia’s house, but she felt like it, all the time. One minute she was desperate to see that man again; the next she was consumed with rage and self-pity.

  Violetta sat down next to her on the bed, so close their shoulders were touching. “I wouldn’t worry, Charlotte. You’re the most beautiful of us three, you know. You always have been. And you’re the reason for the whole ball: You don’t have to worry about not having someone to dance with….”

  Charlotte just shook her head. Why go? She couldn’t get married; she might as well start the way she meant to go on. She felt, in her old nurse’s phrase, as stubborn as a pig about it.

  “It’s no use, Violetta,” her mother broke in. “She’s set against it! Why? Why, Charlotte!” Adelaide’s voice rose perilously near a shriek. “At the least you owe me an explanation, after all the work I’ve done. If you’d said four months ago you didn’t want this ball we could have discussed it rationally. But now you must tell me why you won’t attend the ball or I shall summon your father!”

  Adelaide was sitting on the stool of the dressing table, her eyes fixed on Charlott
e’s face. Violetta was staring at her equally intently from her other side. Charlotte felt as if she were being squeezed between two walls, as if she couldn’t breathe. She looked down at her lap. Her hands were twisting, one over the other, around and around. She felt hot and nauseated. From outside her window came the rhythmic pounding of workmen building a huge marquee in the garden, for the supper at her ball.

  “All right, Mama,” she finally said.

  “All right what!” snapped her mother.

  “I’ll tell you why,” said Charlotte slowly. She couldn’t look up, so she steadily regarded her linked fingers. “I went to a ball in Kent,” she said, “secretly. It wasn’t Julia’s fault; I wanted to go too. It was a masked ball and I powdered my hair, so no one could recognize me.”

  Violetta had gone very still next to her. Her mother was staring at her in fascinated horror. She was too dumbfounded to ask why Charlotte had broken all the rules she spent years drilling into each of her three daughters’ heads.

  “And what happened?” Adelaide finally said, evenly, when the room had been silent for several minutes.

  Charlotte raised her miserable eyes to her mother’s. “I met a man,” she said, her voice trembling. “I met a man and I went into the garden with him.”

  Whatever was in Charlotte’s eyes made all the anger in Adelaide’s chest melt like snow. She whisked over to Charlotte’s side, tucked herself against the headboard, and pulled her daughter into her arms.

  “It’s all right, darling,” she whispered, rubbing Charlotte’s arm and kissing the top of her head, just as she had when Charlotte was a little girl and stubbed her toe. Charlotte didn’t respond, but she didn’t pull away. A silky curtain of hair fell over her face as she leaned on her mother’s chest.

  “But—what happened then?” Violetta asked. “What do you mean, you went into the garden? Did you let him kiss you? What was it like? Did you enjoy it?” She reached over and gave Charlotte’s hip a little poke.