Her Husband's Harlot (2 page)

Surely
they will hear me! Sweet heavens, what shall I do if ...?

Then
she saw it, a dark wall rising in front of her. She raised a trembling hand to
touch it. The surface slid smooth and solid beneath her fingertips.
A desk
.
She followed its perimeter and scurried into the cove beneath. Hugging her
knees to her chest, Helena waited for the pounding in her ears to subside.

"Do
you like what you see, milords?" Lucy's throaty laughter seemed to
reverberate within the wooden cave and sent an odd shiver over Helena's skin.

"Yes,
that's it, show your wares," the man called St. John drawled. "Lift
those tits a bit higher, won't you? Yes, that's it, press them together, frig
those nipples for us. Make them wet, love. Brookeston here prefers his fruit
juicy."

The
other man—Brookeston presumably—groaned in agreement.

Then came
the sound of rustling, the whispered fall of something onto the carpet. Silence
followed, broken by a very low sound. Helena strained to hear as her
imagination raced. Lucy's mewling groan tore the quiet asunder. The voices of
the men joined her, urging her on. As embers of tension heated the room, Helena
felt the air in her lungs grow heavy and humid. She bit down upon her fist.

"Now
spread that sweet little cunt of yours. Hmm, very nice. Brookeston, what do you
think? Would you care to examine the merchandise?"

After
a pause, Lucy moaned out a lusty, "Oh,
yes"
,
and
Brookeston made a strangled sound. "God, St. John. She's wetter than the
streets after a rain. I want to fuck her now."

"Perhaps,
my impatient friend, we might start off with an
amuse bouche
, so to
speak." St. John laughed softly. "There's a love, go suck on
Brookeston's cock, the monster is fairly twitching for you."

A
charged stillness followed. Helena waited with held breath. Suddenly, a loud slurping
pierced the air. Then more noises, redolent of decadent feasting, of sucking
succulent meat off the bone. Even to her inexperienced ears, the animal sounds conveyed
a frenzied enjoyment. The lapping of wet flesh against wet flesh pulled eager
cries from Brookeston. An odd tingling spread over Helena's skin. Feeling a
wave of dizziness, she lowered her head to her knees.

"You
taste delicious, milord." Lucy's voice purred over the words. "How
enormous you are, I can hardly get my mouth around your rod ..."

"Like
being stuffed full of cock, do you now?" Brookeston crowed. "Like
having me thrust into your naughty little mouth. Take some more of it then,
take it deep!"

Lucy's
obliging gurgles, issued from a mouth clearly preoccupied, made Helena's heart
race even faster. Her face flamed as images flooded her mind. Was it
possible
,
what she envisioned? Her mind flashed to the statue of the satyr. This time,
however, a woman knelt in front of it, her lips parted in salacious
anticipation ... Was
this
what men desired? Was this why Nicolas avoided
her bed, because he wanted
this
? For in all her wildest imaginings, she had
never even conceived of such a notion ...

Feverishly,
she recalled the one time she had seen her husband unclothed. Over a month ago,
on their wedding night. He had doused the candles, and it had been darker than
a tomb. At the time, she had been grateful for the cover of darkness; it hid
her altogether too plump figure and her nervousness. Trembling beneath the
sheets and not knowing what else to do, she had clung to her mother's precise
instructions:

"Close
your eyes, my darling, and pretend yourself elsewhere. Or better still,
engaging in a pleasant activity of your choosing. I myself have always been partial
to visiting the milliner. I imagine a lovely pink silk hat, embroidered with
peonies and topped with an ostrich feather. Sometimes it is a rather rakish
poke bonnet of green straw accented with a sprig of apple blossoms, but ..."—here
her mother had patted her awkwardly on the hand—"the important thing is to
lie still as can be and practice forbearance with a ladylike demeanor.
Remember, you are first and foremost a
lady
. With any luck, before your
bonnet shopping is complete, you will have done your duty and the dreadful
business will be over."

So Helena had lain in her voluminous frilled night rail, still as death, eyes closed, waiting
for Nicholas to do his duty. She had peeped once, enough to see that he wore a
white nightshirt with laces that had become untied at his throat. She had just glimpsed
a rather intriguing patch of dark, curling hair when his bleak voice made her
shut her eyes again.

Be
a lady
, she had repeated to herself.
Practice
ladylike forbearance
.

"I'm
sorry, Helena. I will—I will be as gentle as I can."

For a
moment, she had wondered at the starkness of his voice. Then she had felt
something hard, massive, pushing between her legs. With rising panic, she had
realized that he meant to pierce her there, a space too small for so large ...
and then the pain, the sudden, intense hot edge of it that cut off her breath.
She had not remembered to shop for bonnets or pick wildflowers for a bouquet.
With shame, Helena remembered that she had shrieked aloud without any resemblance
to ladylike comportment.

Nicholas
had sprung off her, a look of horror on his face.

He
had avoided her ever since.

Oh,
he remained polite, exquisitely so, the brief moments they encountered one
another in the breakfast parlor or at a soiree. Inevitably, he would be leaving
just as she arrived. As Helena recalled their last exchange at Lady Wetherly's
ball five nights ago, a tear leaked out of one eye and trickled slowly below
her mask. Her husband had bowed over her hand, his eyes impenetrable as smoked
glass. He might have been a stranger and that their first introduction. He had
been so different during their whirlwind courtship. Though their embraces had
been few and chaste then, she could still remember the exotic male spice of his
scent, the gentle brush of his lips against her hand.

What
had she done to lose his affection?

"Has
your mouth had enough of my cock? Perhaps you'd like to beg for it elsewhere,
another wet, juicy hole waiting to be had."

The
man's stunning words jarred Helena back to the room. Perhaps, she thought
dizzily, it had been what she
hadn't
done. Could her mother have been
wrong? Could the conjugal act be about something other than visits to the
milliner or passive acceptance of one's wifely duty?

"Yes,
yes
! That's it, milord, harder, oooh, like that, how my cunny craves to
be fed ..."

Surely
Nicholas could not want a similar sort of behavior from me ... Could he?

'Twas
almost unthinkable, but he
was
a man. Yesterday, in one of her secret,
wistful meanderings through her husband's rooms, she had discovered the
admission ticket to the bawdy house. Protruding from an envelope, the gleam of
silver had caught her eye. Though she had chastised herself for intruding upon
her husband's privacy, curiosity had nevertheless compelled her to extract the
thinly pressed metal billet. The size of a playing card, the entry ticket had appeared
innocuous enough at first. Embossed on the surface were the words "Get
Thee to The Nunnery".

Turning
the ticket over, her jaw had dropped. The crude image depicted an unclothed
woman with enormous breasts genuflecting in a mockery of prayer. A date of
admission had been inscribed beneath the figure. A sudden ringing had exploded in
her ears as she had realized Nicholas was planning on attending this den of
inequity the very next night.

Sheltered
though she was, Helena had heard whispers about the infamous club. The Nunnery
was rumored to be an expensive gaming and bawdy house where the classes
mingled. During the weekly masquerade, peers of the realm hob-nobbed with
merchants and solicitors and whoever else possessed sufficient coin to drink,
gamble, and enjoy the company of the exquisite demi-monde. Even more shocking,
according to her friend Lady Marianne Draven, certain married ladies of the
ton
frequented the masquerade as well.

"When
one is disguised, one's true nature is unleashed," Marianne had said, with
an indifferent wave of her fan. "After all, the need for amorous diversion
is not the sole province of men. What is sauce for the gander and all that."

Helena
knew she had risked all—her pride, her very reputation—to come tonight. She had
thought in her love-addled mind to beg Nicholas to reconsider consorting with a
whore; for her, the pain of a shattered heart would far surpass the physical
pain she had experienced during their wedding consummation. She would do
whatever he wanted to lift the fog from his eyes, to feel again the warmth of
his affection. Fierce longing surged through her to be the kind of wife
Nicholas would want. She would do anything to have him love her again.
Anything
.

And,
she reasoned now with renewed determination, learning to please her husband in
the bedchamber could not differ much from learning any other skill, could it?
If she felt confident in anything, it rested in her aptitude as a pupil. She
prided herself on being a student with good sense. Had not her tutors always
commented on her quickness in acquiring proficiency in various subjects, from
French to watercolors? Why, much to the amazement of her piano instructor it
had taken her only a fortnight's practice to competently render a tricky
passage of Master Bach's fugue in C-minor.

So,
too, could she learn to be a wife.

All
she required was instruction. Or, at the very least, the benefit of careful observation.

Emboldened
by hope and desperation, Helena edged out of her hiding space and peered around
the desk. With her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she could make out the lines
of the furniture and—
Heavens!
—the soles of the woman's feet waving madly
above the back of the settee. The figures themselves hovered below her line of
vision. How could she observe and remain hidden at the same time? As she
pondered the dilemma, she noticed the heavy velvet drapes to the left of the
seating area. The curtains hung from ceiling to floor, and there looked to be voluminous
layers of drapery behind them. Deep enough to conceal even several persons.

Perfect.

Only one
task remained: to reach the curtains undetected. Helena ran her palms against
the loose material of her tunic and felt the rustle of her petticoats. Her
stays, too, restricted her movement. They would have to go. After several minutes
of struggle, she managed to release the strings that bound the layers of
undergarments to her and eased out of them like a butterfly shedding its
fragile skin. Hoarse cries provided the perfect cover.

'Tis
now or never.

She
took a deep breath and crawled toward the curtains, her skirt barely a whisper
against the carpet. With each movement forward, the distance seemed to lengthen.
She expected discovery at any moment, an angry voice or a hand to halt her
progress. Still, she crept onward with blind determination. By the time she
slipped into the safety of the velvety folds, her palms were clammy, and her
body shook with nervous excitement.

Then
she bumped into a hard, warm object.

Her
breath froze in her throat. As she thought to scream, a large hand clamped over
her mouth while another trapped her at the waist. She was rendered immobile.
Shock warred with a horrifying realization.

She
was not alone.

"Be
still or we risk discovery," a familiar voice whispered in her ear.

If
possible, her heart thudded even faster.

"Do
you understand?" His voice was so low she could barely hear it, but she
would know those deep masculine tones anywhere. The mixture of dread and relief
made her giddy. Slowly, she turned her head around and looked up into orbs of
fathomless darkness.
Nicholas
. In the silvery moonlight from the windows
behind them, she could see that he had removed his mask. Shadows obscured the
details of his face, but she could make out the granite set of his jaw, the
tight line of his lips.

She
held her breath, waiting for her husband's reaction. What would he say to
encountering his wife at such a time, in such a fashion?

"Do
you understand?" he repeated as quietly as the last.

Numb
with shock, she nodded.

Merciful
heavens, he does not recognize me!

He
released her, and belatedly she reached up to touch her cheek. She felt the
feathery shell of the mask securely in place. Her fingers wandered to the
profusion of brassy curls—red, she'd chosen, to disguise her own straight brown
locks. Likely the paints, too, retained their concealing power. At the start of
the evening she'd dipped her brush into the tiny copper pots with a liberal hand
to complete the disguise. She'd felt a thrill of excitement peering into the
looking glass. No one would recognize the demure Lady Helena in the brazenly
red lips, smoky eyelids, and darkened lashes. No one would look at the water
nymph with shamelessly red hair and scandalously low décolletage and see the
Marchioness of Harteford.