Potent Pleasures (3 page)

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.

“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.