Viscountess of Vice Read online

  But as she mechanically fed herself and chewed, the many splendid dishes Cook had produced going unappreciated, her stays grew increasingly uncomfortable. A rogue thought sprang up in her mind. A terrible thought. He wasn’t coming.

  She set down her fork with a clatter, unable to finish the perfectly cooked grass lamb on her plate. “It’s happened again,” she said, her voice ringing out over the silent, cherry-paneled room.

  The footman stepped forward, confused.

  Waving him off, she stood and lifted her chin. “I am for bed. Tell Lucinda I won’t need her.” Forcing herself to walk at a slow, measured pace, she made her way out of the dining room and up the stairs.

  It wasn’t until she’d closed the bedchamber door behind her that she allowed herself to really examine the thought: it’s happened again. Once more, she had allowed herself to be let down by a man. First Thomas, now James. Promises made, promises broken. Except James never made any promises. She sat on the edge of her bed. That was the cold truth.

  She expected to feel devastated, to be insensate with grief, as she had that night at Madame’s after she’d stripped for Biedermeier. Instead, she just felt numb. She also felt the unmistakable persona of Lady V, arriving unbidden in her mind and soul. Lady V didn’t get hurt. She just did what needed to be done. And right now what needed to be done was to start a school for pauper children in her drawing room.

  A small part of her rebelled. I don’t want to be Lady V. She swallowed hard. She would survive this. Lady V didn’t have to come back. In fact, Lady V wasn’t welcome here anymore. Catharine had friends, allies—and twenty-one children depending on her.

  It was just that…

  “I thought you were different, James,” she said, as if the walls of her room could bear witness to her innermost betrayal, as if speaking it aloud and forcing it out into the open might help her release it.

  A thud on the windowpane made her jump. Seeing the window begin to open of its own accord, and a hand snake in over the sill, she clasped her hands over her mouth, knowing that to scream would betray her presence to the intruder.

  “I am different. If by ‘different’ you mean, ‘cracked in the head.’”

  “James!” She rushed to him, laughing and crying both as he slung a leg over the sill and levered his body into her room. “What in heaven’s name are you doing?”

  He glanced over his shoulder, back out the window. “I got you a trellis.” Shooting her a crooked smile, he gestured at his clothing, which was covered with dirt and bits of dead leaves. “Had a little trouble securing it to the house, what with the lack of mature foliage.”

  Catharine couldn’t think of anything more intelligent to say than, “Excuse me?”

  “I told you I had things to do today.” With a final brush of his topcoat, his smile faded, transforming his face into the hunter she’d seen hints of before. Her mouth had fallen open, so she clamped it shut. He took a step toward her, and she compensated by moving closer to the wall behind her, heart thudding.

  “I understood that you preferred your suitors to arrive via trellis.” His low, seductive tone made her shiver.

  She took another step back. “Is that what you are? A suitor?”

  He stepped forward. “Point taken. I’m not sure ‘suitor’ conveys the particular nuance of meaning I’m striving for.”

  For a moment she thought perhaps he was angry. He had every right to be, but he didn’t know yet what she’d done. “James,” she said.

  One more step and he pressed her back against the wall. She saw the green fire of his eyes for an instant as his head dipped. Then he was kissing her, his hot palms clamping down on her flaming cheeks. Rational thought receded as pure, animal want shot through her. She could not swallow a moan that rose to the surface. There were no preliminary explorations, no tender exhortations, only the hunter. Using his tongue to set his trap, he stroked deep inside her open mouth, surging rhythmically, hypnotically, pulling away just enough that she felt the coolness of the loss before he plunged back in.

  She could almost surrender, but there were things she needed to tell him. “James,” she whispered, pressing her palms against the stone of his chest. Though he pulled his head back enough to glance at her face, his body did not yield to her protestations. He slid one of his legs between hers, pressing his hip bone against her core. She was so wet, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he could feel it through all the layers of clothing that separated them.

  Moving his hands against the wall, one palm flat on either side of her, his body formed a protective cage around her. But he had stopped his assault on her mouth, so she began again, trying to extract a coherent thought from her fevered mind. “James—”

  She was interrupted by the resumption of his ministrations, this time to the side of her neck. “Don’t think,” he hissed, his freshly shaven face sliding against her cheek. He slid down and placed his tongue in the notch between her collarbones.

  Then he pulled back again and looked directly into her eyes, maintaining the weight of his leg against her. “Don’t think. I learned that from your friend the earl.” Increasing the pressure of his thigh, he slid it back and forth against her. “Remarkably good advice, don’t you think?” he rasped, watching her face.

  Another moan escaped, and he smirked triumphantly as his thigh continued its wicked incursion. She understood he meant to defer conversation in favor of action, and she could no longer fight the need building inside her. He lifted a hand from the wall and slid it down her bodice, working his fingers under her shift and taking a nipple between thumb and forefinger.

  Fire shot through her, a white-hot filament that arose from nowhere, connecting the wet heat between her legs to the sensitive bud James so mercilessly kneaded.

  “Oh!” she gasped, giving in to the overpowering need to let her head fall back, though she didn’t want to stop watching him.

  He was there in an instant, hungry mouth relentless, brooking no resistance. Not that she wanted to resist him. She never had. Her last rational thought before she gave herself over to the exquisite onslaught was that she had always wanted him, wanted him in a way that was utterly unlike the way she had ever wanted anyone else. This wanting, it wasn’t fleeting. It wasn’t about entertainment, or comfort. It was its own self-contained thing, and it was so immense, it required absolute surrender. He knew it, somehow, because he knew things about her, sometimes before she did. He knew it, and he was forcing the issue, right here, right now, against the wall in her bedchamber.

  Pulling her bodice down to expose her breasts, he bowed his head and laved one nipple with his tongue. There was no light teasing, no tickling, just his insistent tongue and—“oh!”—his teeth, nipping at the tender flesh.

  She’d been limp in his arms, unable to do anything but moan under his continuous ministrations. But the little nip jolted her awake, even as it poured fuel on the flames within her. She fumbled with the fall of his breeches. She had to have him.

  He brushed away her inefficient fingers and made quick work of the buttons, freeing his magnificent member. Before she could reach out to stroke him, he’d lifted her skirts, lightning-fast. Crushing his chest against her to keep the skirts up, he slipped two fingers inside her. She was impossibly wet, could feel her juices dribbling down her inner thigh.

  With a low, guttural growl he drove into her in a single, slick, deep stroke. “Unnnnh,” he groaned, as he buried himself to the hilt, pausing only a moment before pulling back.

  Gasping at the loss of sensation, the sudden emptiness, she grabbed his shoulders, entreating him to return. Breathing heavily, he stared at her as he grasped her hips and established a slow rhythm. She wasn’t going to last long, could feel the approach of her inevitable crisis. Her single exposed nipple grew impossibly tight as the cool air hit it. James stoked the fire between them, provoking a gasp from her at the end of every stroke, when he was fully seated. She tried to prolong the moment by closing her eyes and focusing on sounds othe
r than their own animalistic utterings. With every thrust, her gasp and his moan coincided with the dull thud of her back hitting the wall. Gasp, moan, thud. Gasp, moan, thud.

  A sharp rap from outside the door across the room interrupted the sequence. Her eyes flew open. “Not now, thank you!” she called out, praying that Lucinda or whoever was at the door would retreat.

  James, though he had ceased moving, had not stepped away from her. He stared at her, intently and evenly. A slow, wicked smile blossomed.

  “Be quiet!” she whispered, “or they’ll hear us.”

  His response was to remember her neglected nipple, reaching for it with a thumb and forefinger and twisting. Her already-hot face burned. “They might,” he said, voice full of gravel. He pressed into her harder, obeying her insistence on quiet in the sense that he did not resume his thrusting, but the hard, silent grinding of his hips ratcheted up the tension inside her until it was nearly unbearable. It was as if he were building a tower inside her. Slowly, methodically he worked, building up, up, floor by floor, constructing a careful scaffolding around her very soul.

  “I wish they would hear,” James rasped into her ear. “I want everyone to know you’re mine.”

  The tower fell, shattered. She was helpless against the wave of pleasure that cascaded through her body. Single-minded still, he did not break from his rhythm. She’d thrown her head back in her release, and she felt strong fingers curl behind her neck and lift her head, forcing her to look at him.

  “Again,” he said.

  She shook her head in admiration of his sheer audaciousness. “I can’t.” She smiled a little, sheepish over the force of the release he’d witnessed. “I never can.” Though she had learned how to give herself over to pleasure, the tales she sometimes heard, both in the ballrooms of Mayfair and at Madame Cherie’s, about women who could find their release again and again, seemed to her impossible tall tales.

  “Again.” He burrowed one hand under her skirts till he found the tender bud of her desire. Not caring that she was spent, overstimulated, he traced tight circles around it, all the while continuing to thrust, in and out.

  “Once is all I can ever—”

  “Shhh.” His mouth returned to hers, his tongue prodding her lips open and then beginning an assault that mirrored the one he was conducting between her legs. Working in tandem, he traced circles in both places.

  She heard his gruff command inside her head—“Again”—and trained her focus on the torturous circling of his finger. He was drawing a spiral that began outside her body but twisted inside, winding its way deeper and deeper, producing the telltale tension again. He added his other hand to a breast, cupping and lifting it before flicking a thumb back and forth over its reddened tip.

  It was the final exhortation, the one she needed to heave a great breath and cry out, body pulsating, less intensely this time, but it kept going on and on. As her shudders continued, he allowed himself to lose control. His meticulous attention to the regular rhythm fell off as his stroking became uneven, his breathing strangled.

  His lips left hers, and his hands fell away from her body as he rocked against her one final time, an impossibly deep stroke that he held, crying out, filling her utterly as her own pulsing tapered off.

  The only thing keeping them apart all this time, through everything, thought James, had been their ill-advised codes of conduct. His breath returned to normal as he stroked Catharine’s hair. They had both spent years holding themselves in check, adhering to a set of rules that strictly governed not only conduct, but also the expenditure of emotion. These codes had, on the surface, been different, but really, he and she were very much the same. He huffed a quiet chuckle at the irony of it all.

  “What’s so amusing?” she murmured, lifting her head from his chest and mock scowling. After their explosive releases, he had guided them to her bed, divested them of their clothing, and gathered her in his arms while their heated flesh cooled.

  He answered with a question of his own, one that had been dogging him for entirely too long. “What is that scent?”

  She lifted her head and rotated it like a periscope, crinkling her nose adorably as she took a big, loud sniff. “What scent?”

  “You.” He lowered his nose to her neck and breathed in. “This. Citrus, I think, but not lemon. Not quite lemon.”

  “Oh! It’s grapefruit! It’s my soap! I bought some in a shop in Lisbon, and fell in love.” She dipped her chin. “I still buy it from a smuggler. It’s bad of me.”

  “Grapefruit, yes.” He lifted her chin with a forefinger and dropped a kiss on it. “It was always there, even at Madame Cherie’s, underneath everything.”

  Her eyes shone. “Leave it to you to notice such a subtle detail, Dr. Burnham.” They were silent for a moment until she spoke again. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why were you chuckling just now?” She laid her head on his chest. “I insist you tell me.”

  There was that luminous hair again, trailing along his chest. Would he ever get used to it? He hoped not. Twirling a tendril around his finger, he said, “Two things. First, you have to agree that it is rather absurd we didn’t remove our clothing until after our coupling.”

  She grinned. “Indeed, I concede the point, but you have only yourself to blame.” When he raised his brows with teasing innocence, she swatted his chest. “You made it quite clear that you would tolerate no…deviation from your plan.” She glanced down and blushed prettily.

  “Yes. I must concede your point. But at least I’ve remedied the situation.” James lazily caressed a breast.

  “Mmm. You said two things. What’s the second thing?”

  “I was thinking how alike we are. Elementally, I mean. Even though on the surface one might not think that a social reformer and a—”

  “A prostitute?”

  He noted the catch in her tone as she interrupted him, though she exhibited no other sign of distress. “You weren’t a prostitute.”

  “Wasn’t I?”

  “You were a spy.”

  “James.” She sat up and her face grew serious. “You need to know that I did not have sexual congress with Biedermeier, though it hardly matters because I think I would have, had it come to that. But it’s important to me you understand exactly what I’ve done and why.”

  He sighed. There was no way to postpone this conversation indefinitely, so they might as well dispense with it now. He could only hope his earlier actions had convinced her that none of it mattered. “I saw you.”

  “What? In the drawing room that night?”

  “No. I saw you with him. In your room at Madame Cherie’s.”

  She sat bolt upright in the bed and moved away from him a little. “That’s not possible!”

  “I came here to your house to tell you I’d uncovered evidence of sabotage at the gun works. When I found you weren’t at home, I went to Madame’s.” He looked at his hands. There was no way to tell the rest without making himself seem like a jealous schoolboy. “Seeing the light in your window, I climbed the tree outside and crawled to your sill.”

  Her eyes widened. “You saw everything?”

  “Yes. I saw you…” It was difficult to verbalize, despite the fact that he’d resolved not to let what he’d seen come between them. “I saw you strip for him. I heard you asking him about his business. I see now, in retrospect, what you were doing.” He cleared his throat, not at all sure if he wanted to know more, but compelled to continue nonetheless. “I left after that. I couldn’t watch anymore. So I don’t know what else—”

  “Nothing else,” she said, her voice high, stricken. “There’s no reason for you to believe me, but nothing more happened.”

  “I believe you.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, as if she had not heard him. “It was all…an act.”

  “I know. As soon as I saw you at the soirée, I knew.”

  “But you spent the preceding week thinking I’d betrayed you.” Her voice caught. “I did betray you.�
� He shook his head, but she pressed on. “My agreement with Blackstone stipulated I would not engage in relations with my clients. What Madame said about Lady V offering only conversation was true. That night all the arrangements were in place for him to be entertained by another woman. We’d paid her to lead the conversation in certain directions, and one of Blackstone’s spies was hidden in her room. It was supposed to be my last night.”

  He squeezed her hand, understanding that she needed to get the words out, to tell the story so it didn’t remain between them.

  “It all fell apart when he refused her. He made it clear I was his only choice. That he would leave unless I…entertained him.”

  “And that meant more than the usual conversation.”

  She nodded, miserable.

  He reached out to brush away a tear gathering in the corner of her eye.

  “Yes. So we negotiated a striptease.”

  “You did what you had to do. Nothing that happened before this moment matters. We start anew, now.”

  She shook her head vigorously. “No, there’s more.” Training her eyes on his, she whispered, “Some small part of me wanted to do it, in a perverse sort of way. Not that I wanted him.” She shuddered, and he suppressed the urge to haul her back into his arms. “But I wanted to punish myself. I wasn’t worthy of you.” She held up a hand to forestall his disagreement. “Not only because of that night, but because of everything I had done, everything I had been, in the years since I’d come back to England. Entertaining myself with meaningless, shallow pursuits. I have never done anything worth doing. And then, in the end, I couldn’t even do the one thing you asked of me. I went back to Madame’s after promising you I wouldn’t.”

  “That isn’t true. You told me yourself you supported homes for orphans.”

  “Money,” she said. “Money is a cowardly substitute for action.”