SEDUCTION in Regency Society August 2014

DECEPTION in Regency Society September 2014

PROPOSALS in Regency Society October 2014

PRIDE in Regency Society November 2014

MISCHIEF in Regency Society December 2014

INNOCENCE in Regency Society January 2015

ENCHANTED in Regency Society February 2015

HEIRESS in Regency Society March 2015

PREJUDICE in Regency Society April 2015

FORBIDDEN in Regency Society May 2015

TEMPTATION in Regency Society June 2015

REVENGE in Regency Society July 2015

MARGARET McPHEE loves to use her imagination—an essential requirement for a trained scientist. However, when she realised that her imagination was inspired more by the historical romances she loves to read rather than by her experiments, she decided to put the ideas down on paper. She has since left her scientific life behind, retaining only the romance—her husband, whom she met in a laboratory. In summer, Margaret enjoys cycling along the coastline overlooking the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, where she lives. In winter, tea, cakes and a good book suffice.

Temptation in

Regency

Society

Unmasking the Duke’s Mistress

A Dark and

Brooding Gentleman

Margaret McPhee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Unmasking the Duke’s Mistress

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

A Dark and Brooding Gentleman

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Copyright

Unmasking the Duke’s Mistress

Margaret McPhee

For Patricia—

I hope that it’s not too saucy for you!

Chapter One

April 1809

Within the large and tastefully decorated drawing room of Mrs Silver’s House of Rainbow Pleasures in the St James’s district of London, Arabella Marlbrook paced and tried to ignore the feeling of dread that coiled deep in the pit of her stomach.

The black silk dress she was wearing had been made for a thinner woman and clung in an indecent fashion to the curves of her hips and breasts and she was all too aware that she was wearing neither petticoats nor stays. Her skin was like ice to touch, yet she could feel the smear of clamminess upon her palms. And she worried that the black feathers of the mask across her eyes did not obscure her identity well enough.

There were five other women artfully arranged around the drawing room, each one in a different colour and all in attires that made Arabella look positively overdressed.

‘Do sit down, Arabella,’ Miss Rouge said from where she reclined in her scarlet underwear and stockings upon one of the sofas. ‘You are making me quite dizzy. You would do better to save your strength for there’ll be gentlemen aplenty and eager tonight. And some of what they’ll ask for will be demanding, to say the least.’ She gave a sly smile and from behind the bright red feathers of her facemask her eyes looked almost black.

‘Leave her be, Alice. Think how you felt on your first night. It is only natural that she is nervous,’ said pale pink Miss Rose who was leaning against the mantelpiece so that the flicker of the flames illuminated her legs through the pale pink silk as if she were not wearing a skirt at all. Then she looked across at Arabella. ‘You’ll be fine, girl. Don’t you worry.’

Arabella shot Miss Rose a grateful look, before turning to Miss Rouge, ‘Please do not address me by my given name. I thought we were supposed to use the names Mrs Silver told us.’ Arabella had no wish for the man she must lie with this night—her stomach turned over again at the thought—to know her true identity. It was vital that not the slightest hint of her shame attach itself to those that she loved.

‘It’s only a name, Miss Noir, keep your skirt in place!’ snapped Miss Rouge.

‘Leastways till she gets her gent upstairs!’ quipped the small blonde in the armchair who was all in blue. She cackled at the joke and all of the other women, except for Arabella, joined in.

Arabella turned away from them so that they would not see the degree of her humiliation, and moved to stand before the bookcase as if she were perusing the titles upon the shelf. Only when her expression was quite composed did she face the room once more.

Alice, Miss Rouge, was buffing her nails. Ellen, Miss Vert, yawned and closed her eyes to nap upon the day bed. Lizzie, Miss Bleu, and Louisa, Miss Jaune, were engaged in a quiet conversation and Tilly, Miss Rose, was reading a romantic novel.

Arabella studied the décor of the room in an attempt to distract her mind from the prospect of what lay ahead. It was a fine room, she noted, perhaps one of the finest she had seen. The floorboards were polished oak, and covered with a large gold-and-blue-and-ivory Turkey carpet. The walls were a pale duck-egg blue that lent the room a peaceful ambience. In the centre of the ornate plasterwork ceiling was a double-layered crystal-drop chandelier and around the room several matching wall sconces sat against large, elegant looking-glasses so that the light of the candle flames was magnified in glittering excellence. The furniture was mainly oak, all of it finely turned, understated and tasteful.

There were five armchairs, two sofas and a daybed, some of which were upholstered in ivory and duck-egg blue stripes, some in plain ivory and others in a pale gold material that seemed to shimmer beneath the candlelight. On a table in the corner of the room was a vase filled with fresh flowers, the blooms all whites and creams and shades of yellow.

It might have been a drawing room in any respectable wealthy house in London. Arabella marvelled at the contrast between the calm elegance of the décor and the crude reality of what went on within these walls … and was faced once more with the stark truth of what she was here to do.

She dreaded the moment when some gentleman would arrive and buy her ‘services.’ Indeed, she had to fight every minute not just to walk out the door and keep on walking all the way home. But she knew she could not do that. She knew very well why she was here and the reason she must go through with this.

She closed her eyes and tried to calm the nausea and dread that was prickling a cold sweat upon her forehead and upper lip. A hundred guineas a week, Mrs Silver had promised. A fortune, indeed.

A hundred guineas to sell herself. A hundred guineas to save them all.

Dominic Furneaux, otherwise known as his Grace the Duke of Arlesford, swirled the brandy in his glass while he deliberated over the four cards held in his hand. Then, having made his decision, he drained the contents of the glass in a single gulp and gestured to the banker to deal him another card.

There was an audible intake of air from the smartly dressed men gathered around the Duke’s gaming table in White’s Gentlemen’s Club. The pile of guineas heaped in the centre of the table was high, and most of it had been staked by the Duke himself.

The card was dealt with a flip so that it was placed face up on the green baize before the Duke.

Marcus Henshall, Viscount Stanley, craned his neck to look over the top of the heads of the gentlemen that stood before him.

The Ace of Hearts.

‘An omen of love,’ someone whispered.

The Duke ignored them. ‘Five-card trick. Vingt-et-un.’ He smiled lazily as if he cared and laid his cards upon the table for all to see.

‘Well, I will be damned, but Arlesford has the very luck of the devil!’ someone else exclaimed.

There was laughter and murmurs and the scrape of chairs against the polished wood of the floor as his friends threw in their cards and got to their feet.

‘What say you all to finding ourselves some entertainment of a different variety for what remains of the night?’ Lord Bullford said.

The suggestion was met with raucous approval.

‘I know just the place,’ Lord Devlin chipped in. ‘An establishment in which the wares are quite delicious enough to satisfy the most exacting of men!’

More laughter, and lewd comments.

Dominic watched as Stanley made his excuses and left, rushing home to his wife and baby. He felt a pang of jealousy and of bitterness. There was no woman or child awaiting Dominic. Indeed, there was nothing in Arlesford House that he wanted, save perhaps the cellar of brandy. But that was the way he wanted it. Women were such faithless creatures.

‘Come on, Arlesford,’ drawled Sebastian Hunter, only son and heir to a vast fortune. ‘We cannot have you celebrating all alone.’

‘When have I ever celebrated alone?’ Dominic asked with a nonchalant shrug.

‘True, old man,’ said Bullford, ‘But I will warrant the pleasures to be had in the house of paradise to which Devlin will take us will beat that offered by whichever little ladybird you have waiting for you in your bed.’

Dominic’s smile was hollow. He had his share of women; indeed, he supposed that he truly did merit the title of rake that London bestowed upon him. But there was no ladybird waiting in his bed; there never had been. Dominic did not bring women home. He visited the beds of those women who understood the game and walked away afterwards. He gave them money and expensive gifts, but never anything of himself, nothing that mattered, nothing that could be hurt. And he was always discreet.

He had no notion to visit the establishment of which Devlin spoke. He glanced around the table, taking in how loud and bawdy and reckless was the mood of his friends. Too foxed and excited to exercise any morsel of discretion, young Northcote more so than the others. As if to prove his point Northcote accepted the bottle of wine that Fallingham offered and drank from its neck, so that some of the ruby-red liquid spilled down his chin to stain the boy’s cravat and shirt.

‘Arlesford is on his best behaviour. Wants to impress Misbourne and his daughter. Nice little heiress and even nicer big dowry!’ shouted young Northcote.

The party hooted and cheered.

‘Since you obviously appreciate her merits, Northcote, you may have her. I have no intention of being caught in parson’s mousetrap, as well you know.’

Fallingham sniggered. ‘Old Misbourne doesn’t think so. There is a hundred-guinea stake in the betting book in here that the Duke of A. will be affianced to a certain Miss W. before the Season is over.’

Dominic felt his blood run cold. ‘A fool and his money are soon parted. Someone is about to be a hundred guineas lighter in the pocket.’

‘Au contraire,’ said Bullford. ‘Misbourne was overheard discussing it in this very club. He is very determined to have you marry his daughter. Thinks it is some sort of matter of honour.’

‘Then Misbourne has misunderstood both honour and me.’ Dominic did not miss the meaningful glance Hunter threw him at Bullford’s words. Unlike the others, Hunter knew the truth. He knew what Dominic had come home to find in Amersham almost six years ago, and he understood why Dominic had no wish to marry.

Devlin’s eyes flicked to the doorway. ‘Speak of the devil! Misbourne and his cronies have just come in, no doubt hoping to engage the prospective son-in-law in a game of cards,’ he said with a chuckle.

‘Time indeed that we departed for Devlin’s house of pleasures,’ murmured Hunter.

‘And give young Northcote the education that he deserves,’ Devlin laughed.

‘With the amount Northcote has had to drink I doubt he’ll be up for that manner of education,’ said Dominic.

‘That’s monstrous unfair, Arlesford! I’ll have you know that my chap is more than capable of standing proud. Indeed, he’s stirring even at the thought of it.’

‘Prove it,’ sniggered Fallingham.

Northcote got to his feet and moved a hand to unfasten the fall on his pantaloons.

‘Don’t be such a bloody idiot,’ snapped Dominic. To which Northcote belched and sat down again.

‘You see you’ll have to come, Arlesford. Who else is going to stop Northcote making a complete cake of himself?’ said Hunter.

‘Who indeed?’ Dominic arched a brow, but the sarcasm was lost on Hunter.

Northcote was out of his depth in such company, and dangerously so. Dominic knew he could not just abandon the youngster. He supposed he could endure an evening of flirtation in an upmarket bordello for Northcote’s sake.

Dominic followed his friends towards the doorway and walked past Misbourne with only the briefest of nods in the man’s direction. As he had told his friends, he had no intention of entering the marriage mart.

Dominic Furneaux had learned his lesson regarding women very well indeed. And so he turned his thoughts away from the past to the rest of the evening that lay ahead.

Mrs Silver gave the women only a few minutes’ warning before showing the group of four gentlemen into the room.

Arabella felt the wave of panic go through her. Her stomach revolted and she felt physically sick at the prospect of what she was about to do with one of these men and for money. For one moment the desire to flee was overwhelming. She wanted so much just to run away. But then she remembered why she had to do this. And the memory resolved every trembling nerve in Arabella’s body and lent her the strength that she needed. She stilled, took a deep breath and raised her eyes to face the men.

They were all young, not much older than her own four-and-twenty years; all used expensive tailors if their tight-fitting dark coats and pantaloons were anything to go by. Ruddy cheeked and bright eyed, and most definitely the worse for drink, especially the youngest-looking man of the group. She could smell the wine and brandy from where she stood at the farthest side of the room behind the striped sofa, as if the distance and the barrier of the furniture could save her from what lay ahead.

Her eyes began to move over them and she wondered which man would choose her. And the worry struck her that perhaps none of them would and then what would she do? Much as she loathed being here in this awful position, the thought of returning home empty-handed was even worse.

The men looked eager, salivating almost, so that she could not suppress the shudder that rippled through her. She turned her glance to the two taller gentlemen who were only just entering the room to join their friends … and her stomach sank right down to her toes.

It felt to Arabella as if she had just stepped off the edge of a cliff. The breath froze in her throat, her blood turned to ice and her heart hammered so hard and fast that she thought she might faint. She gripped tight to the back of the sofa, oblivious to the fact that her fingernails were digging into the expensive ivory material.

It cannot be. The thought was loud in her mind.

‘It cannot be.’ The words were barely a whisper upon her lips.

She stared all the harder, sure that she must be mistaken. But there was no mistake. She would have known the tall dark-haired man anywhere, even though she had not seen him in almost six long years.

He had not changed so very much. His shoulders were broader, his body carried more muscle and there were a few more lines of life etched upon his handsome face, but there could be no doubting that the man was most definitely Dominic Furneaux, or the Duke of Arlesford, as he was now.

His expression was one of boredom as he surveyed the room and its inhabitants. He looked as if he had no interest in being here in Mrs Silver’s drawing room. His glance passed over her and then shot back to her face.

Please God, do not let Dominic, of all people, recognise her!

Her fingers touched the black feathered mask, checking that it was properly in place, but still he stared at her as if he could see right through it to the face of the woman beneath. His bored expression had vanished to be replaced by one of intense scrutiny.

The pop of the first champagne cork made her jump, but it was not the noise that set the tremor racing throughout her body. She averted her gaze and noticed that Mrs Silver was smiling meaningfully in her direction. Arabella saw the older woman gesture towards the glasses and suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be offering champagne to the gentlemen.

Miss Rouge had already dispensed with the first bottle and one of the men uncorked the second and began to pour. Arabella’s hands trembled so much that she feared she would be unable to disguise it, but she knew she could not just stand there staring at Dominic. Perhaps if she busied herself he would stop looking at her with that too-seeing gaze.

She crossed the room towards Mrs Silver and collected two crystal-cut glasses of champagne as she had been told. And all the while her mind was reeling from the impact of seeing Dominic after all this time. She felt panicked, agitated, unable to think straight. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to marshal her thoughts, struggling to control the shock that was roaring through her veins.

Of all the places to see him again, when she had learned to live with the weight of that which had almost crushed her. Maybe he would fix his attention on one of the other girls. Maybe. But would it be any easier to stand here and watch him take Miss Rouge or Miss Vert or any one of the other women upstairs? Could she feign a smile, pretend a flirtation and go willingly with another man, knowing that he was here? She shook her head in an infinitesimal movement of denial. This night had promised to be the most difficult and degrading of Arabella’s life. Dominic’s presence made it nigh on impossible.

A hand touched against her sleeve and she opened her eyes to find Mrs Silver looking at her with both warning and concern.

‘One hundred guineas a week,’ she mouthed almost silently. ‘Think of the money.’

Arabella gave a tiny nod at the reminder and reined in her emotions with a will of iron. A deep breath … and then she turned around.

Dominic was standing right before her.

‘Miss Noir, I presume.’ His gaze swept slowly over the transparent dress before coming back to rest upon her face. ‘Arlesford, at your service, ma’am.’

So he did not know her after all. Thank God! She breathed a silent sigh of relief at that small mercy and steeled her nerves to play the role of a woman she was not.

‘Your Grace.’ She forced the words to her lips and curtsied, but she could not bring herself to smile. Every bone in her body felt chilled to the marrow, every inch of her skin cold and bloodless. This was the meeting, albeit not under such circumstances, she had prayed so hard first for and then against. All her beliefs that she was over him, that she no longer cared, had been a delusion. She cared so much that it was as if the air had been knocked clean from her lungs.

They stared at one another and for Arabella it was as if the years had rolled back and she was looking at the man she would never manage to forget no matter how hard she tried. She averted her gaze, lest he see even a grain of her riotous emotions in her eyes, and glanced around the room.

The other women were smiling and conversing in coquettish teasing tones, each paired with a single gentleman. From the corner of the room Mrs Silver was looking at Arabella with a look of exasperation. The older woman gestured with her eyes from Dominic to the two glasses of champagne, that Arabella was still gripping for dear life, and back again.

There was no way out, no room for retreat. Arabella held her head high and forced her gaze back to Dominic. ‘Would you care for some champagne?’

He ignored her question and studied her with those dark brown eyes that were so disturbingly familiar. The seconds seemed to stretch to minutes as they stared at one another, the champagne seemingly forgotten. But then his eyes darkened and he accepted the glass from her hand.

‘I should …’ She glanced round for another gentleman to whom she might pass the second glass but all of the men were already drinking and their attentions most definitely engaged in so obvious a manner that made Arabella feel as embarrassed as if she had been an innocent.

‘It is for you, I believe,’ Dominic said. He paused and the dark gaze held hers once more before adding, ‘Perhaps we can drink our champagne together … upstairs?’

Arabella’s heart stumbled and missed a beat before galloping off at full tilt. The breath caught in her throat. The whole world seemed to turn upside down.

She knew what his suggestion meant.

Dominic had chosen her.

Her whole body trembled at the knowledge and she did not know whether it was the worst thing that could have happened or the best. Nearly six years, and yet it was as if her lips still burned from his kisses, her body still tingled from his love-making. To give herself to him again, and for money, flayed her pride more than anything.

Her hand itched to dash the contents of her glass in his face, to shout at him, to refuse him in the cruellest of terms. A vision of him standing there, his face and hair soaked from her champagne, his pride slurred before his friends swam in her mind, and that imagining was the one glimmer of light in the grim darkness of what was happening. But Arabella did not indulge her fantasy; she could not afford to. Even through the force of all that raged within her, she did not forget the stark truth of why she was here at Mrs Silver’s House of Rainbow Pleasures. She had her responsibilities.

And she was honest and practical enough to admit to herself that, if she must couple with a gentleman this night it was better that it was Dominic rather than some stranger.

She glanced again at the other men in the room, at their faces glistening with sweat and flushed from drink and the greedy lust and excitement in their eyes. No matter how much she was loathe to admit it, the knowledge that it would be Dominic, and not one of them, was something of a relief, albeit a bitter one.

And if she kept the mask in place he would never know the identity of the woman for whom he was paying. And that at least would make it tolerable.

Arabella swallowed her pride. Her eyes met his. She nodded and turned to lead the way to the room Mrs Silver had shown her.

Within the black-clad bedchamber Dominic could not take his gaze from Miss Noir. He knew that he was staring and still he could not stop. His intention of watching over Northcote had been forgotten the moment he had set eyes on her downstairs in Mrs Silver’s drawing room. God help him, but he could no more have turned away from her than stop breathing. It was as if the years had not passed and it was another woman standing before him.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.

Hell’s teeth, he thought, but she even sounded like her.

Miss Noir’s fingers fluttered nervously around the edges of her mask.

‘Forgive my manners, but your appearance stirs memories from my past. You have the very likeness of someone I once knew.’ It was the reason he was standing here with her now in the bordello’s bedchamber and the very same reason why he should have turned his back and walked away. The pain had returned, and the bitterness, but when he looked at this woman he wanted her with what could only be described as desperation.

He wanted her because she looked like Arabella Tatton.

She did not smile or simper or offer playful seductive words. She did not unlace her bodice or stand before the fire to reveal the outline of her legs or lie upon the daybed with her skirts arranged to show her stockings. Rather her expression was serious, and her manner, for all she tried to hide it, was one of unease. She just stood there and watched him, all calm stillness, yet the white-knuckled clasp of her hands gripping together betrayed that she was not as calm as she was pretending. And beside her on the small occasional table, amidst the coil of dark silken ropes and the feathers and fans, the bubbles sparkled and fizzed within her untouched glass of champagne.

He drained the contents of his own glass in an effort to dampen the strength of emotion the woman’s startling resemblance stirred.

‘You seem a little nervous this evening, Miss Noir.’

‘It is my first night here. Forgive me if I am unfamiliar with the usual etiquette. I …’ She hesitated and seemed to have to force the remainder of the sentence, ‘I wish only to please you.’ Her head was held high and the glint in her eyes belied the subservience of the words. She raised her chin a notch and everything of her stance was as defiant and tense as if she were facing a combatant rather than a man whom she was trying to seduce. ‘Do you wish me to undress now?’

He rose, setting his empty glass down next to her full one.

She looked so like Arabella that he felt like he had been kicked in the gut. His blood was rushing too hot, too fiercely. And no matter how hard he tried to suppress them, the memories were as strong and vivid as if all that had happened between them had been only yesterday.

The depth of his desire shocked him for he would have thought his anger at her to have long since tempered that. Yet his body was already hard and throbbing with impatience … as if it really were Arabella standing there. And because she looked so like Arabella, Dominic knew that he would not reject what she offered. He gave not another thought to Northcote and stripped off his tailcoat.

‘There is more pleasure for us both if I undress you,’ he said, never taking his eyes from hers. Her lashes swept low, not in a teasing manner, but as if she sought to hide something of herself from his scrutiny. He resolved to stop staring. But he could not.

‘As you wish.’ She walked to stand before him, and the dress she was wearing seemed to accentuate rather than hide the curves of her figure. In this, at least, she differed from Arabella, for although Arabella had been quite as tall as this woman, she had been more slimly built.

Arabella. Her very name seemed to whisper through the silence of the room. And the images were flashing through his mind, of Arabella lying beneath him, of her laughter and her smile; of him burying his face in the golden silk of her hair spread across his pillow, and his mouth whispering words of love upon hers while his hands stroked a caress over the naked satin of her skin.

And for all the anger in his heart, Dominic’s body grew harder. With an effort he reined himself back under some measure of control. Arabella Tatton. He despised her. He should walk away from this woman, she, whose resemblance to Arabella had unleashed all that he had hidden away in the dark recesses of his mind. The logical part of his mind knew that with absolute certainty. Yet Dominic did not leave.

Instead, he reached over and untied the laces of her dress, loosening them until the bodice gaped wide to reveal the lush perfect breasts beneath. They nosed at the fabric, the nipples a rosy pink beside the pale perfection of her skin. And when his fingers brushed against them he felt the nipples harden and peak.

He leaned down and touched his lips against the soft skin of first one cheek and then the other, and when he looked through the holes cut within the feathered mask he saw her pupils widen, black as ebony, within eyes that were the same colour as Arabella’s, the true clear blue of a sunlit summer sky.

Arabella. The pain was in equal measure to the depth of his desire.

His mouth traced down the slender column of her throat, to kiss each hollow of her collarbone as he eased the dress halfway down her arms. The laces were undone enough to expose her breasts in full and he moved his mouth over them so close yet without touching. Her nipples beaded harder as he caressed them with his breath. Slowly, teasingly he touched his tongue to her.

She closed her eyes and tried unsuccessfully to catch back the rush of breath that escaped her. Beneath his lips he felt the shiver pass right through her.

Very gently, very slowly he laved her, sucked her, measured the weight of each delicious breast within his hands. He could feel the fast hard beat of her heart and, more surprisingly, the slight tremor within her body.

And when he drew back her cheeks were faintly flushed and behind the mask her eyes were open again, and just for a moment he saw that they glittered with desire before she hid them once more from his view. She slid the rest of her dress from her arms and unfastened the buttons by her waist so that the skirts slithered down her legs to pool upon the floor. She stepped out of the pile of silk, naked save for her high-heeled shoes and stockings, and the mask upon her face.

Miss Noir did not posture to encourage him, not that she needed to. She just stood there, proud and watchful.

Arabella, he wanted to whisper, and even though the name had never left his memory for all of these years past, having this woman who bore so much of her resemblance had slashed the bindings on all of those old wounds. And yet he wanted her more than ever. He wanted her as if she were Arabella herself.

Dominic shrugged off his waistcoat, unfastened his cravat and peeled off his shirt. He saw Miss Noir’s gaze move over his chest and down to take in the bulge of his manhood straining in his pantaloons. And when her eyes met his again there was the strangest expression in them, one that he could not quite fathom.

He closed the distance between them and, pulling her into his arms, kissed her as thoroughly as he had wanted to from the moment he had laid eyes on her. She was rigid at first, but then she succumbed to his kisses and melted against him, and it was just like having the real Arabella in his arms. He did not even have to close his eyes to pretend it was her.

He kissed her as if she were the woman that he had loved. He kissed her with all the anguish that was in his soul … and in the answer of her lips he was shocked to feel an echo of how it had been between Arabella and himself. He stilled and eased back that he might look into her eyes but, just as quickly, Miss Noir turned away and bent to unfasten the garters of her stockings.

Dominic stayed her. ‘Leave them,’ he murmured. ‘I want to look at you.’

She misunderstood and took a few steps away, opening up a small distance between them so that he might view her. He could not ignore the invitation, swallowing hard as his gaze swept over the long white legs that rose out of her dark stockings, over the smooth curve of her hips and the small triangle of fair hair that sat between her legs, and the soft feminine belly.

She blushed beneath his scrutiny, as if she were not a well-practised courtesan that rode different men every night of the week, as if she really were his Arabella. His manhood strained all the harder against the fine wool of his pantaloons.

She made no move to unfasten the mask from her face, nor did he ask her to do so, for he had no wish to shatter the illusion that had him standing here in the first place.

He stripped off his clothing and then took her in his arms once more.

Arabella, he mouthed silently against her throat as she wound her arms around his neck.

Arabella, as he carried her to the bed and laid her down. The contrast of her pale naked skin against the black silken sheets seemed to emphasise her similarity to Arabella all the more. He wanted her so much he was aching for her, so much that he could think of nothing else. His body covered hers, one hand thrumming at her nipple as he positioned himself between her legs.

She was open to him, moist and ready, and he was rock hard as he stroked against her. Everything of her—the scent, the taste, the feel—was so like Arabella that as he slid into her silken heat in his mind it was Arabella he was entering. And when he rode her it was Arabella he was riding until both their breaths were ragged and their bodies were slick with sweat. He rode her until he found the relief of his climax, pulling out of her just before he spilled his seed.

Such exquisite torture.

But the minute that his body was spent he rolled off her, already regretting his decision to come upstairs with her.

She was not Arabella, and all that he had done was tear asunder ill-healed wounds of the past. He felt as empty and alone and unhappy as ever he had been and longed to be gone from this place. Throwing the covers back, he climbed from the bed.

‘Thank you,’ he said awkwardly, but could not bring himself to use the woman’s name. He walked away, found his shirt and pantaloons and pulled them on.

A faint breathy noise sounded from the bed, a noise that sounded suspiciously like a silenced sob.

Dominic looked back at the bed and the woman who lay there so still and unmoving. And as his gaze found hers, she turned quickly away, rolling on to her side to present him with her back, as if she sought to block him out.

His eyes traced the golden tendrils that had escaped from the pile of curls pinned upon her head, over her pale shoulders and down the straight line of her back. Her waist was narrow before the flair of her hips and her perfect bottom.

His fingers froze in the act of fastening the buttons of his pantaloons. His blood turned to ice. He could not move, could not so much as take a breath. He stared at the fullness of her rounded buttocks, stared at the soft white skin … and the distinctive dark mole upon her right cheek that he remembered so well.

The shock was as explosive as if someone had taken a pistol and shot him at point-blank range. Everything else in the world seemed to diminish. Dominic gaped with utter incredulity, staring at a truth so blatant that he marvelled he had not realised right from the very start.

‘Arabella?’ His whisper was barely more than a breath, yet it seemed to resonate within the room as loudly as if he had roared it at the top of his voice.

Every line of her body stiffened and tensed, the reaction confirming the suspicion his mind had been too slow to form. He saw the small shiver that rippled through her before she pulled the top cover free and then, holding it against her body to cover her nakedness, climbed from the bed. Only then did she turn to face him.

They stared at one another across the rumpled mess of sheets, and the very air seemed to vibrate with a barely contained tension.

Even now his mind could not accept the enormity of the discovery. Even now he thought she would deny it. But in her silence and stillness there was nothing of denial.

Dominic reached her in an instant. With one hand he pulled her to him, barely noticing that he had displaced the bedcover from her in the process. He was too busy untying the ribbons of her face mask, too busy tearing it from her. Even as she gasped, the black-feathered object tumbled to lie at their feet. And he stared down with horror into the shocked white face of Arabella Tatton, or Arabella Marlbrook as she was now.

Chapter Two

Arabella’s naked body was hard against the length of Dominic’s, their hips so snug that she could feel the press of his manhood. For a moment the shock of him discovering her was so great that she could do nothing other than stare right back into the eyes of the man she had loved. But then she recovered something of her wits and struggled to free herself.

‘Arabella!’ He tried to still her.

She hit out at him and tried to escape. But Dominic caught her flailing arms and hauled her back to him, securing her wrists behind her in a grip that was gentle yet unbreakable.

‘Arabella.’ Quieter this time, but no less dangerous.

‘No!’ she cried, but Dominic was unyielding. He stared down at her with implacable demand.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ His eyes had darkened to a black glower that smouldered within the pallor of his face. And there was about him a simmering, barely contained rage so unlike the man she remembered.

She strove to stay calm, but her breath was as ragged as if she had been running at full pelt and with every breath she took she could feel the swollen tips of her breasts brush against his unfastened shirt.

‘At least grant me the honour of allowing me to clothe myself before we have this conversation,’ she said with a calmness that belied everything she was feeling.

His gaze dropped to rove over her nakedness with deliberate and provocative measure so that she thought he meant to refuse her but, just as she thought it, she felt his grip loosen and drop away.

She gathered up the black dress from where it lay on the floor and, turning her back to him, quickly garbed herself. She stretched around and tightened the laces of the bodice that she could reach, but had no other option than to leave the remainder loose. The dress gaped from the untied laces, revealing far too much of the pale swell of her bosom. It was the antithesis of respectable clothing, but it was better than facing him naked. She hoisted the neckline of the dress and clutched it in place. Dominic had finished his own dressing and now watched her with eyes burning with a shock that mirrored her own and an unmistakable anger.

‘I will ask you again, Arabella,’ he said with a quietness that was deadly, ‘what are you doing here?’

‘The same as any woman does in a place such as this.’ She faced him defiantly, and with a determination to hide the shame and wretchedness beneath that façade.

‘Whoring.’ His voice was harsh.

‘Surviving,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster and stared down his contempt.

‘And where in damnation is Henry Marlbrook while you are “surviving” in a brothel? What manner of husband is he that you have been reduced to this?’ His voice changed, hardened, as he spoke Henry’s name and the word ‘husband.’

‘Do not dare to mention Henry’s name.’ Arabella would not stand here and hear it.

‘Why ever not?’ he threw back at her. ‘Frightened that I find him and run him through?’

‘Damn you, Dominic! He is dead!’

‘Then he has saved me the trouble,’ he said coldly.

Arabella gasped at Dominic’s cruelty and then, before she could think better of it, she slapped him hard across his face. The crack resounded in the room around them and was followed by silence. Even in the soft flickering candlelight she could see the mark her palm had left upon his cheek.

His eyes had been dark before, but now they appeared as black and deadly as the night that surrounded them. But Arabella would not back down.

‘You deserved that.’ For everything he had done. ‘Henry was a good man, a better man by far than you, Dominic Furneaux!’

Henry had been kind.

And Arabella had been grateful.

She saw something flicker in the darkness of Dominic’s eyes.

‘Just as he was all those years ago,’ he said in a chilled voice. ‘I have not forgotten, Arabella, not for one single day.’

Neither had she. With those few words all the past was back in an instant. Of the joy of losing her heart to Dominic, of her happiness and expectations for the future, of the lovemaking they had shared. Lies and illusions, all of it. It had meant nothing to him. She had meant nothing to him, other than another notch upon his bedpost. At nineteen she had not understood the base side of men and their desires. At four-and-twenty Arabella knew better.

‘You wasted no time in wedding him. Less than four months from what I hear.’

She could hear the accusation in his voice, the jealousy, and it fanned the flames of her ire. ‘What on earth did you expect?’ she shouted.

‘I expected you to wait, Arabella!’

‘To wait?’ She stared at him in disbelief. ‘What manner of woman did you think me?’ Did he honestly think that she would have welcomed him back with open arms? That she would have given herself to him again after he had discarded her in such a humiliating way? ‘I could not wait, Dominic,’ she said harshly. ‘I was—’ Her eyes sought his.

His gaze was dark and angry and arrogant, every inch the hard, ruthless nobleman she knew him to be.

‘You were …?’

She hesitated and felt the pulse in her throat beat a warning tattoo.

‘A fool,’ she finished. A fool to have believed his lies. A fool to have trusted him. ‘You have what you came here for, Dominic. Now be gone and leave me alone.’

‘So that you might rush down to Mrs Silver’s drawing room to offer a “glass of champagne” to the next gentleman who is doubtless already waiting there.’ Contempt dripped from his every word. ‘I do not think so.’

How dare he? she thought. How damnably dare he stand there and judge me after what he has done? And in that moment she hated him with a passion that was in danger of driving every last vestige of control from her head. She wanted to scream at him and hit him and unleash all of her anger, for all that he had done then, and for all that he had done now. But she hung on to her self-control by the finest of threads.

His eyes held hers for a moment longer and the very air seemed to hiss between them. Then he walked over to stand behind one of the two black armchairs by the fireplace.

‘Sit down, Arabella. We need to talk.’

She gave a shake of her head. ‘I think not, your Grace,’ she said and she was proud that her voice came out as cold and unemotional as his, for beneath it she was shaking like a leaf.

‘If it is the money you are concerned over, rest assured that I have paid for the whole night through.’ He looked at her with flint in his eyes.

There was a lump the size of a boulder in her throat that no amount of swallowing would shift. She faced him squarely, pretending she was not ravaged with shame, pretending that she was standing there completely untouched by the fury of emotion that roared and clashed between them.

Pretending that she had no secrets to hide.

He gestured to the armchair before him. ‘Come, Arabella, sit. After what has just passed between us there is no room for coyness.’ His voice was harsh and his face was set harder, more handsome, more resolute than ever she had seen it. And she knew that he would not change his mind.

‘Damn you,’ she whispered and the scars throbbed as if they had never healed and his reappearance, after all these years when Arabella had thought never to see him again, sparked fears that she was only just beginning to grasp.

Only once Arabella was seated did Dominic take the chair opposite hers.

‘Did you know it was me from the start?’

‘Of course I did not!’ The fury he felt for both her and himself made his voice harsh. It did not matter what she had done, he would never have taken her out of vengeance.

‘Then how did you realise?’

‘How did I not realise sooner?’ he demanded, but the question was not really for her but, rather, for himself. ‘Me, who has known every inch of your body, Arabella.’ One flimsy black-feathered mask alone had been enough to fool him, he thought bitterly, and knew that was not quite true. It was the fact that this, a bordello, a bawdy house, a brothel, was the last place on earth he would have ever thought of finding her.

The thought of what she had become shocked him to the core. The thought that he had treated her as such shocked him even more. He had dreamt of finding her, both longed for it and dreaded it. But never in all of his imaginings had it been like this. He raked a hand through his hair, trying to control his feelings.

He glanced across at her. Her face was pale, her expression guarded.

Time had only served to ripen her beauty so that she was now a beautiful woman when once she had been a beautiful girl. There was about her a wariness that had not been there before. Then, she had been innocent and carefree and filled with an irrepressible joy. Now what he saw when he looked at Arabella was a cold, angry, determined stranger he did not recognise. And then he remembered the muffled sob he had heard and the sheen of tears in her eyes … and something of his own anger died away.

‘You said Marlbrook died.’

She gave a cautious nod. ‘Two years since.’

‘And left you unprovided for?’ He could not keep the accusation from his tone.

‘No!’ The denial shot from her lips in her desperation to defend the bastard she had married. ‘No,’ she said again, this time more calmly. ‘There was money enough left for a careful existence.’ She hesitated as if deliberating how much to tell him.

The questions were crowding upon his lips, angry and demanding, but he spoke none of them, choosing instead to wait with a patience that he did not feel for her explanation.

But Arabella’s explanation was not forthcoming. Her expression closed. Her mouth pressed firm and she glanced away.

The seconds ticked by to become minutes.

‘Then you are here by choice rather than necessity?’ he said eventually and raised an eyebrow.

‘Yes.’ She tipped her chin up and met his gaze unflinchingly, almost taunting him. ‘So now you see the woman I have become, have you not changed your mind about leaving?’

‘I am staying, Arabella,’ he said, his eyes still holding hers with every inch of the determination he felt.

She bowed her head and glanced away, sullen and angry.

‘What does your father make of your chosen profession?’ he demanded. ‘What does your brother?’

‘My father and Tom were taken by the same consumption that claimed Henry.’

‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said. The news shocked him, for he had known the family well and liked them. ‘And Mrs Tatton? What of her?’

‘My mother was brought low by the disease, but she survived.’

‘Does she know that you are here, Arabella?’

A whisper of guilt moved across her face. ‘She does not.’ She tilted her chin, defiant again. ‘Not that it is any of your concern.’

In the ensuing silence they could hear the faint rhythmic banging of a bedstead against a wall. Neither of them paid it the slightest attention.

His eyes raked hers. There was another question he needed to ask, even though he already knew the answer by the very fact that she was here in Mrs Silver’s House of Rainbow Pleasures.

‘There is no other man since Marlbrook? No new husband or protector?’

‘No,’ she said in a tight voice and eyed him with unmistakable disdain. ‘But if there were, it would be no business of yours.’

Their eyes held for a moment and a storm of anger seemed to fire and crackle between them before she rose and moved away to stand over by the long black curtains that covered the window.

Arabella could not just sit there and let the questions continue, not when she feared where they might lead. Besides, Dominic had no right to question her. He had forfeited the right to know anything of her life when he had made his decision all those years ago. Let him think the worst of her if it prevented his questions and made him leave. Let him think she was the whore he had just made her. Better that than the alternative.

She could not bear for him to see how much she was hurting. And she could not bear for him to know the truth of her situation, of the desperation that had led her to this place. Better his contempt than his pity, and better still that he left knowing nothing at all.

The chink of night sky, between the edge of the curtain and the wall, was very dark. There were no stars, and the street lamps outside remained black and unlit and everything seemed to be waiting and edged with danger. And when she glanced round at Dominic he was sitting staring into the small flames that flickered amongst the glowing coals, the expression upon his face as dark and brooding as the night outside.

‘I cannot believe that I have found you here … in a damnable brothel!’ Dominic was still reeling from the shock of it. All these years he had imagined that one day he might find her. He had imagined a thousand different scenarios, but not one of them had come close to the reality. She was a lightskirt in an upmarket bordello. Miss Noir, in Mrs Silver’s rainbow selection for those men who had enough blunt to pay. He felt sick at the thought.

‘Then walk away and pretend that you have not,’ she said in a low voice, but she did not look round.

In the silence there was only the crack from the remains of the fire upon the hearth.

‘You know that I cannot do that, Arabella.’ It did not matter how aggrieved he was, she did not deserve life in such a place.

He glanced across at her standing there in the flimsy black silk that revealed more of her figure than it covered, and the nakedness of her back where the laces hung loose and, despite everything, he felt desire.

It disgusted him that he could still want her after her faithlessness with Marlbrook and after all he had already taken from her this night in such despicable circumstances. He was not proud of having treated her like a whore, even if that was what she was. And he swore to himself that, had he known that she was Arabella, he never would have touched her. But it was too late for that. He had done a great deal more than touch her.

‘Why not? It is what I want. For you to leave … and not come back.’

Dominic felt the stab of her words, but he did not retaliate, nor did he take his eyes from the fire. A section of the molten embers cracked and collapsed and in the space where they had been one small flame remained, burning hotter and more brightly than all the other.

‘For the sake of what was once between us, Arabella—’

‘I do not want your pity, Dominic!’ She swung round to face him, standing there with her hands on hips, her face proud and angry. ‘And whatever was between us is long dead.’

‘Oh, I am more than well aware of that, Arabella.’ Her eyes flashed with a fierceness he had never seen there before. Her lips were flushed and swollen from his kisses, and the creamy swell of her breasts rose and fell with the raggedness of her breath. His gaze dropped to where her rosy nipples were beginning to peep over the black silk.

She saw his gaze and, with a fury, wrenched the bodice higher and held it in place.

‘It is a bit late for that, Arabella.’

She might pretend otherwise but, unlike him, Arabella had known with whom she was coupling and Dominic had felt the spark in the response of her lips to his, an echo of what had once been. The love might be dead, but there was still a physical desire that burned strong between them.

His gaze dropped from her back to the fire.

He had not forgiven her, but he could not leave her here.

He could not forgive her, yet he wanted her still.

An idea started to form in his head, one that might finally allow Dominic to purge the demons that drove him.

She was watching him when he got to his feet and moved towards her. He saw the shiver that ran through her body and he found his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders.

Her eyes met his and he saw the surprise and wariness and unspoken question in them.

‘You do not have to do this, Arabella.’

‘I’ve already told you that what I do is none of your concern.’ Her voice was curt and her eyes cold.

‘I could help you.’

‘I do not need your help, your Grace,’ she countered.

‘That may be, but you will hear me out just the same, Arabella.’

She stared at him, her expression closed, yet he could sense her caution and suspicion.

‘It would mean that you would not have to sleep with one different man after another, at the mercy of whatever demands they might make of you. You would not fear to be cast out into the streets. Indeed, you would never want for anything again.’

She frowned slightly and shook her head as if she did not yet understand.

‘I would give you a house, as much money as you need. You would be safe. Protected.’

‘Protected?’ She echoed the word and he saw her eyes widen.

‘We would come to an arrangement that would be mutually beneficial to us both.’

‘You are asking me to be your mistress?’ She gaped at him.

‘If that is what you wish to call it,’ he said.

The silence was tense. From outside the room came the sound of a woman’s giggle and a man’s booted steps receding along the passageway.

He saw the shock so stark and clear upon her face and knew that whatever Arabella had been expecting it had been nothing of this. And just for a minute he thought he saw such a look of sadness in her eyes, of a pain that mirrored the one he had carried in his heart all of these years past, but it was gone so fast that he was not sure if he had imagined it.

‘Arabella,’ he said softly and could not help himself from touching a hand to her arm.

He felt the slight tremor that ran through her body before she snatched her arm away.

‘You think it to be done so very easily?’ she asked. Her tone was cynical and when she raised her face to his again there was the glitter of some strong emotion in her eyes.

‘It can be done easily enough,’ he said carefully. ‘I would pay off Mrs Silver; she would give us no trouble, I assure you.’

He saw her swallow, saw the way she gripped her hands together as if it was such a difficult decision to make.

‘I have come into my father’s title, Arabella. I am a very wealthy man. I would rent you a fine town house, furnish it as you wished. Your every want would be satisfied, your every whim met. I am offering you carte blanche, Arabella.’

‘I understand what you are offering me,’ she said and her voice was cool and her expression unmoving.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Will you give me your answer?’

‘I need time to think,’ she said stiffly. ‘Time to fully consider your offer.’

‘What else can you have to consider?’ He smiled a cynical smile. ‘Have I not covered it all already?’

Her pause was so slight that he barely noticed. A heartbeat of time in which their eyes met across the divide. And there was something in her gaze that was contrary in every way to the strong cold woman standing before him. A flash of misery and hurt and … fear. But as quickly as it had arrived, the moment was gone.

‘Nevertheless, your Grace, I will not give you an answer until I have had some time to think about it.’

Her sullen resolution irked him, as did her whole attitude of contempt. Any other woman in her position would have been eager for such an offer.

‘You may play your games, Arabella, but we both know that whores do as rich men bid, and I am now a very rich man. It is a new day. You have until my return tonight to make your decision. And in the meantime Mrs Silver will be paid so that you are not touched by another. What I have, I hold, Arabella. And what is mine, is mine alone. Be sure you understand that fully.’

Her lips pressed firmer as if she sought to suppress some sharp retort. She slipped his coat from her shoulders and handed it to him.

Dominic donned the rest of his clothing, gave a small bow and left.

And as dawn broke over the city he walked away from Mrs Silver’s House of Rainbow Pleasures, leaving behind its black-clad bedchamber with its dark drawn curtains. But his mind was still on the woman that he had left standing there, with the black silk dress clutched to her breasts.

Chapter Three

It was only a few hours later that Arabella made her way up the stairwell of the shabby lodging house in Flower and Dean Street. The early morning spring sunlight was so bright that it filtered through the windows, that the months of winter rain and wind had rendered opaque, and glinted on the newly replaced lock of the door that led from the first landing into her rented room.

The damp chill of the room hit her as soon as she opened the door and stepped over the threshold.

‘Mama!’ The small dark-haired boy glanced up from where he was sitting next to an elderly woman on the solitary piece of furniture that remained within the room, a mattress in the middle of the floor. He wriggled free of the thin grey woollen blanket that was wrapped around his shoulders and ran to greet her.

‘Archie.’ She smiled and felt her heart shift at the sight of his face. ‘Have you been a good boy for your grandmama?’

‘Yes, Mama,’ he answered dutifully. But Arabella could see the toll that hunger and poverty had taken in her son’s face. Already there were shadows beneath his eyes and a sharpness about his features that had not been there just a few days ago.

She hugged him to her, the weight of guilt heavy upon her.

‘I have brought a little bread and cake.’ She emptied the contents of her pocket on to the mattress. Everything was stale as she had pilfered it last night from the trays intended for Mrs Silver’s drawing room. ‘Wages are not paid until the end of the week.’

Arabella split the food into two piles. One pile she sat upon the window ledge to sate their hunger later, and the other she shared between her mother and son.

It broke her heart the way Archie looked at her for permission to eat those few stale slices, his brown eyes filled with a look which no mother should ever have to see in her child.

There was silence while they ate the first slice of bread as if it were a sumptuous feast.

Arabella slipped off her cloak and wrapped it around her mother’s hunched shoulders before sitting down beside her on the edge of the mattress.

‘You are not eating, Arabella.’ Her mother noticed and paused, her hand frozen en route to her mouth, the small chunk of bread still gripped within her fingers.

Arabella shook her head and smiled. ‘I have already breakfasted on the way home.’ It was a lie. But there was little enough as it was and she could not bear to see them so hungry.

The sun would not reach to shine in here until later in the day and there was no money for coal or logs. The room was cold and bare save for the mattress upon which they were now sitting. Empty, just as they had arrived home to find it four days ago.

‘How was the workshop?’ Mrs Tatton carefully picked the crumbs from her lap and ate them. ‘They were satisfied with your work?’

‘I believe so,’ Arabella answered and could not bring herself to meet her mother’s eyes in case something of the shame showed in them.

‘You look too pale, Arabella, and your eyes are as red as if you have been weeping.’ She could feel her mother’s gaze upon her.

‘I am merely tired and my eyes a little strained from stitching by candlelight.’ Arabella lied and wondered what her mother would say if she knew the truth of how her daughter had spent the night. ‘A few hours rest and I shall be fine.’ She glanced up at Mrs Tatton with a reassuring smile.

Mrs Tatton’s expression was worried. ‘I wish I could do more to help.’ She shook her head, and glanced away in misery. ‘I know that I am little more than a burden to you.’

‘Such foolish talk, Mama. How on earth would I manage without you to care for Archie?’

Her mother nodded and forced a smile, but her eyes were dull and sad. Arabella’s gaze did not miss the tremor in the swollen knuckled hands or the wheeze that rasped in the hollow chest as Mrs Tatton reached to stroke a lock of her grandson’s hair away from his eye.

Archie, having finished his bread and cake, wandered over to the other side of the room where there was a small wooden pail borrowed from one of the neighbours. He scooped up some water from the pail using the small wooden cup that sat beside it and gulped it down.

Mrs Tatton lowered her voice so that Archie would not hear. ‘He cried himself to sleep through hunger last night, Arabella. Poor little mite. It broke my heart to hear him.’

Arabella pressed a fist to her mouth and glanced away so her mother would not see her struggle against breaking down.

‘But this new job you have found is a miracle indeed, the answer to all our prayers. Without it, it would be the workhouse for us all.’

Arabella closed her eyes against that thought. They would be better off dead.

Archie brought the cup of water over and offered it to her. Arabella took a few sips and then gave it to her mother.

And when the food was all eaten and the water drunk, Archie and Mrs Tatton lay down beneath the blanket.

‘It was noisy last night,’ Mrs Tatton said by way of explanation. And Arabella understood, the men’s drunken shouts and women’s bawdy laughter echoing up from the street outside would have allowed her son and mother little sleep.

Arabella spread her cloak with her mother’s shawl on top of the lone blanket and then climbed beneath the covers. Archie’s little body snuggled into hers and she kissed that dark tangled tousle of hair and told him that everything would be well.

Soon the only sounds were of sleep: the wheeze of her mother’s lungs and Archie’s soft shallow rhythmic breathing. Arabella had not slept for one minute last night, not after all that had happened. And she knew that she would not sleep now. Her mind was a whirl of thoughts, all of them centred round Dominic Furneaux.

When she thought of their coupling of last night she felt like weeping, both from anger and from shame, and from a heart that ached from remembering how, when she had given herself to him before, there had been such love between them. And the anger that she felt was not just for him, but for herself.

For even from the first moment that he had come close and she had smelled that familiar scent of him, bergamot and soap and Dominic Furneaux, she had been unable to quell the reaction of her body. And when he had taken her, not out of love, not even knowing who she was, her traitorous lips and body had, in defiance of everything she knew and everything she felt, welcomed him. They had known his mouth, recognised his kiss and the caress of his hand, and responded to him. And the shame of that burned deeper than the knowledge that she had sold herself to him.

She thought of the offer he had made her. To buy her. To be at his beck and call whenever he wished to satisfy himself upon her. Dominic Furneaux, the man who had broken her heart. Lied to her with such skill that she had believed every one of those honeyed untruths. Could she put herself under the power of such a man? To be completely at his mercy? Could she really surrender herself to him, night after night, and hide the shameful response of her body to him, a man who did not love her, a man who believed her a whore for his use?

She clutched her hands to her face as the sense of despair rolled right through her, for she knew the answer to each of those questions and she knew, too, the ugly truth of the alternative.

Arabella relived the moment that the group of gentlemen had entered Mrs Silver’s drawing room, and it did not matter how hard she had tried to deaden her feelings, no matter how much she could rationalise the whole plan in her head, when it had come to the point of facing what must happen she had felt an overwhelming panic that she would not be able go through with it. She closed her eyes against the nightmare, knowing that there was only one decision she could make. Even if there were certain aspects of the negotiations that she would have to handle very carefully.

And as she lay there she could not help but think how differently things might have turned out if Dominic Furneux had been a different sort of man. If he had loved her, as he had sworn that he did, and married her, as he had promised that he would, how different all their lives would have been.

Dominic arrived at Mrs Silver’s early and alone. The drawing room was filled with a woman of every colour of Mrs Silver’s rainbow, every colour save for black. He knew with one sweep of the room that Arabella was not there and he felt a whisper of foreboding that perhaps everything was not going to go quite how he had planned.

‘Variety is the spice of life, your Grace. Perhaps I could tempt you with another colour from my assortment?’ Mrs Silver smiled at him and gestured towards the girls who had arrived looking a little breathless and rushed following his early arrival.

‘I find I prefer black,’ he said. ‘Miss Noir …’ He stopped as the thought struck him that perhaps following his discovery of her Arabella had gone, fled elsewhere, to another part of London, another bordello … somewhere he could not find her.

‘Will be here presently, your Grace, I am sure,’ the woman said with supreme confidence but her eyes told a different story.

He had not contemplated that Arabella would choose this wretched life over the wealth and comfort he had offered. That she would actually run away had not even occurred to him. His mouth hardened at his own naïvety. A man was supposed to learn from his mistakes.

‘If you are content to wait for a little.’ Mrs Silver smiled again and gestured to one of the sofas.

Dominic gave a curt nod of his head, but he did not sit down. He stood where he was and he waited, ignoring the plate of delicacies and the glass of champagne by his side.

Five minutes passed.

And another ten. The women ceased their attempts to engage him in seductive conversation.

What would he do if she did not come?

By twenty minutes he was close to pacing.

By forty minutes there was only Miss Rouge and himself left in the room and a very awkward silence.

At fifty minutes, Miss Rouge was gone and he felt like he had done that day almost six years ago—angry and disbelieving, a fool and his wounded pride.

He had requested his hat, cane and gloves and was about to leave when Arabella finally arrived.

‘Miss Noir, your Grace,’ announced Mrs Silver, all smiles and solicitude as she brought Arabella into the room and left.

The door closed behind Mrs Silver.

The clock on the mantel punctuated the silence.

Dominic’s glass sat beside it, the champagne flat and untouched.

She was wearing the same scandalous dress, the same black feathered mask and beneath it her face was powder white. She came to stand before him and he found he was holding his breath and his body was strung tight with tension.

He swallowed and the sound of it seemed too loud in the silence between them.

He waited, not daring to frame the question, any certainty of what her answer would be long forgotten.

‘I accept your offer, your Grace,’ she said and her voice was low and dead of any emotion. She seemed so pale, so stiff and cold, that he had the absurd urge to pull her into his arms and warm her and tell her everything would be well. But then she moved away to stand behind the cream-coloured armchair and the moment was gone. ‘Let us discuss the details.’

He nodded and, like two strangers arranging a business deal, they began to talk.

When Arabella returned to the little room in Flower and Dean Street later that same night it was to find Mrs Tatton and Archie curled again upon the mattress.

‘It is only me,’ Arabella whispered in the darkness, but Mrs Tatton was already struggling to her feet, armed with the chamber pot as a makeshift weapon.

‘Oh, Arabella, you startled me.’

‘Forgive me, Mama.’ Arabella made her way across the room by the light of a nearby street lamp that glowed through the little window.

‘What are you doing home so early? I had not thought to see you until the morning.’ Her mother’s hair hung in a heavy long grey braid over one shoulder and she was wearing the same crumpled dress she had worn for the last five days. Then her eyes widened with fear. ‘The workshop have turned you off!’

‘There has been a change of plan, it is true,’ Arabella said and quickly added, ‘But you need have no worry. It is for the better.’

‘What do you mean, Arabella? What change?’

‘It is an arrangement that will ensure we do not end up in the workhouse.’ She glanced towards the sleeping form of her son. ‘We will live in a warm furnished house in a good respectable area, wear clean clothes and have three square meals a day. I will have enough money that Archie need not go without. And you, Mama, can have the best of medicines in London. We will not be cold. We will not be hungry. And …’ She glanced towards the footsteps that passed on the landing outside. She lowered her voice, ‘We will be safe from robberies and fear of assault.’

Her mother set the chamber pot down on the floor and came to stand before Arabella, staring into her face.

‘What manner of arrangement?’

Arabella felt herself blush and had to force herself to meet her mother’s gaze. She had known this moment would come and could not shrink from it. Better they spoke of it while Archie was not awake to hear. They would be moving out of here in a few days and there was no way that Arabella could continue her pretence. She had to tell her mother the truth … just not all of it.

‘With a gentleman.’

‘Oh, Arabella!’ Her mother clasped a hand to her mouth. ‘You cannot!’

‘I know it is a very great shock to you,’ she said in a calm reassuring voice that belied everything she was feeling. ‘And I am not proud of it.’ She was ashamed to the very core of her being, but she knew in order to make this bearable she must hide her true emotions from her mother. She must stand firm. Be strong. ‘But believe me when I tell you it is the best of the choices available. Do not seek to dissuade me from this, Mama, for my mind is quite made up.’

‘There was no workshop, was there?’ her mother asked in a deadened voice.

‘No.’ She saw the tremble in the old swollen hand that Mrs Tatton still clutched to her mouth and felt as bad as if she had just reached across and dealt her mother a physical blow.

‘And the gentleman?’

Arabella swallowed and averted her gaze. ‘It is best that he remains nameless for now.’ If her mother knew it was Dominic to whom she was selling herself there would be no force in heaven or on earth that could stop the awful cascade that would ensue.

‘Really?’ Mrs Tatton said in a hard voice that revealed to Arabella everything of her mother’s disillusionment and hurt. ‘And have you told him yet of Archie and of me?’

‘No,’ said Arabella quietly and her heart was racing and all of her fears rushed back as fast and frantic as a spring tide racing up a shore. ‘He need know nothing of either of you.’

‘It will be his house, Arabella. Do you not think he will notice an old woman and a child cluttering his path to his fancy piece?’ Mrs Tatton’s nostrils flared, revealing the extent of her distress.

Oh, indeed, Dominic would more than notice Archie in his path, Arabella thought grimly.

‘It will be a large house and he will not visit very often.’ She had been very careful in her negotiations with Dominic, forcing herself to think only of Archie’s safety and not the baseness of what she was doing, laying out her demands like the most callous of harlots. ‘All we need do is keep you both hidden from his sight when he does come.’ Words so simply spoken for her mother’s sake, but Arabella knew that they would have to be very careful indeed to hide the truth.

‘You think you are so clever, Arabella. You think you have it all planned out, do you not?’ Mrs Tatton said. ‘But what of the servants? It is the gentleman’s money that will pay their wages. They will be loyal to him. At the first opportunity they will be running to him behind your back, eager to spill your secrets. And he shall send Archie and me away.’

‘Do you think I would stay without you?’ she demanded. ‘It is true that it is his money that will pay the servants. But it is also true that if I dissolve our agreement, which I would most certainly do were they to tell him of your and Archie’s presence, then they shall be out of a job as much as me. I shall put it to them that it is in their interest, as much as mine, that we keep your presence secret from the gentleman.’

‘For men like him there are plenty more where you came from. Do not hold yourself so precious to him, Arabella,’ her mother warned.

The smile that slipped across Arabella’s face was bitter. ‘Oh, Mama, I know that I am not precious to him at all. Do not think that I would ever make that mistake.’ The word again went unspoken. ‘But he will take the house and the servants for me. And were I to leave, he would let them go again just as easily.’

‘Then we best pray that you are right, Archie and I.’ Mrs Tatton turned her face away but not before Arabella saw the shimmer of wetness upon her cheeks.

Mrs Tatton did not look round again, nor did she return to bed. She just stood there by the empty black fireplace, staring down on to the bare hearth. And when Arabella would have placed an arm of comfort around her mother’s shoulders, Mrs Tatton pulled away as if she could not bear the touch of so fallen a woman.

Arabella’s hand dropped back down to her side; inside of her the shame ate away a little more of her soul. She wondered what her mother’s reaction would be if she knew what the alternative had been. And she wondered how much worse her mother’s reaction would be if she ever learned that the man in question was Dominic Furneaux.

Chapter Four

Dominic was supposed to be paying attention as his secretary continued working his way through the great pile of correspondence balanced on the desk between them.

‘The Philanthropic Society has invited you to a dinner in June.’ Barclay glanced up from checking Dominic’s appointments diary. ‘You are free on the evening in question.’

‘Then I will attend.’ Dominic gave a nod and heard Barclay’s pen nib scratch upon the paper. But Dominic’s attention was barely fixed on the task in hand. He was thinking of Arabella and the discomposure he had felt since seeing her last.

‘The Royal Humane Society has written of its need for more boats. As one of the society’s patron you are in receipt of a full report of …’

Barclay’s words faded into the background as Dominic’s mind drifted back to Arabella. While making her his mistress had seemed the perfect solution at the time, in the cold light of day and after a night of fitful sleep, Dominic was not so sure. He had revisited their meeting during the long hours of the night, seeing it again in his mind, hearing every word of their exchange, and he could not remain unaware of a growing uneasiness.

Surviving. The word seemed to niggle in his brain. Her explanation of what she was doing there did not sit well with the later claim that she was in Mrs Silver’s House out of choice. Surviving. The word pricked at him.

Barclay gave a cough in the silence and cleared his throat loudly.

‘Most interesting,’ Dominic said, having heard not a word of what the report had been about. ‘Organise that they receive a hundred pounds.’

‘Very good, your Grace.’

‘Is that all for today?’ He could barely conceal his impatience. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to think.

‘Indeed, your Grace.’ Barclay replied, checking the diary again. ‘Except to remind you that you are due at Somerset House for a Royal Society lecture this afternoon at two o’clock and that you are sitting in the House of Lords tomorrow to debate Sir John Craddock’s replacement in Portugal by Sir Arthur Wellesley.’

Dominic gave a nod. ‘Thank you, Barclay. That will be all.’

And when his secretary left, taking with him the great pile of paper, Dominic leaned back in his chair and focused his thoughts fully on Arabella.

***

Arabella had to endure two days of pleadings. Mrs Tatton begged that Arabella would not cheapen herself and warned her that once it was done there would be no going back. She cried and shouted, persuaded and coerced, but once the shock had lessened and her mother saw that Arabella would not be moved, then Mrs Tatton’s protestations fell by the wayside and, to Arabella’s relief, no more was said about it. She seemed to have accepted the inevitability and necessity of what would happen and steeled herself to the task every bit as much as Arabella.

Which was well, for on the Friday morning of that week a fine carriage and four arrived outside their lodgings in Flower and Dean Street. Every face in the street stared at the carriage, for nothing so grand had ever been seen there before. Archie stared in excitement at the team of bays and kept asking if he might run down the stairs to see them more closely. It pained Arabella to deny him and to force him away from the window for fear that Dominic himself might be within the carriage.

‘Soon,’ she whispered, ‘but not today.’

‘Ohh, Mama!’ Archie groaned.

‘He must be wealthy indeed,’ observed Mrs Tatton drily with a glance at her daughter that made Arabella curl up inside. And she was all the more glad that the carriage was a plain glossy black with no sign of the Arlesford coat of arms. She worried that her mother would recognise the smart green livery of the footman, groom and coach man, but Mrs Tatton showed no sign of realising the uniform’s significance.

‘I think he might be awaiting me in the house and I need time to speak to the servants. Either the carriage will come back for you, or I will return alone.’

Her mother nodded stoically and Arabella pushed away the little spasm of fear.

‘Either way we should not be parted for too long.’

She hugged Archie. ‘I have to go out for a little while, Archie.’

‘In the big black carriage?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Can I come with you?’

Arabella ignored the pain and the guilt and forced herself to smile. ‘Not just now, my darling. Be a good boy for your grandmama and I will see you soon.’

‘Yes, Mama.’

She kissed his head and took the time to blink away the tears before she rose to embrace her mother. ‘Look after him, Mama.’

Mrs Tatton nodded, and her eyes glistened with tears that she was fighting to hold back. ‘Have a care, Arabella, please. And …’ She took Arabella’s face between her worn hands and looked into her eyes. ‘For all that I dislike this I know why you are doing it and I thank you. I pray that your plan is successful and that it is the carriage that returns for Archie and for me.’

Those few words from her mother’s lips meant so much to Arabella. They strengthened her resolve that was fast crumbling at the prospect of facing Dominic once more.

‘Thank you, Mama,’ Arabella whispered and she kissed her mother’s cheek and, before she could weaken to the tears, she pulled the hood of her cloak over her hair and walked away, closing the door behind her.

The carriage was empty. Of that Arabella could only be glad, for she had no wish for Dominic to see her cry at the sight of her son and her mother peeping from the edge of the dirt-encrusted windows.

Nor was Dominic waiting in the town house that he had rented for her.

It was a fine property in respectable Curzon Street, as different from the hovel in Flower and Dean Street as was possible. The servants were lined up in the hallway for her arrival just as if she were Dominic’s duchess rather than his mistress. In some ways their respectful attitude made the whole thing easier, and in other ways, so much harder, for it reminded her of the hopes and expectations she had held for the future all those years ago when she had been a foolish naïve girl in love with a boy who would be duke.

The elderly butler bowed. ‘I am Gemmell. Welcome to Curzon Street, Miss Tatton. We are very glad that you are here.’

It was so long since anyone had called her that name. She was Arabella Marlbrook now, even though Henry was dead these two years past. It angered her that Dominic wished to remove any reminder of the man who had saved her. She wanted to correct the butler, to tell him that her name was Marlbrook and not Tatton, but that would only be foolish. It was Dominic’s house and Dominic’s money; besides, she had no wish to make matters awkward between her and the servants, not when she would be counting on their good favour to keep her secret. So she smiled and walked down the line of servants, smiling and repeating each of their names and telling them how pleased she was to meet them and how she was sure that they would deal very well together.

Gemmell gave her a tour of the house during which she worked hard to breach his wall of formal and very proper servitude. By the time he had served her tea in the drawing room she had managed to coax from him all about his three little granddaughters and ten little grandsons; that his wife Mary, who had been the best housekeeper in all of England, had died three years past; and that he and Mary had previously been employed in the Duke of Hamilton’s hunting lodge in Scotland for twenty years before moving south on account of their children and grandchildren because family was what was important.

Arabella knew then that the time was right to raise the subject of her own family, of her son and her mother. And after she had finished explaining, to a limited extent, the matter, Mr Gemmell was just as understanding as Arabella had hoped.

She knew that what she was asking the staff to do was not without risk and so did Gemmell. But she also knew she could do nothing other than ask. And the answer was yes. He promised to instruct the rest of the staff and then he brought her the note that Dominic had left for her.

She recognised the handwriting on the front of the note: determined lettering, bold and flowing from a nib that pressed firmly against the paper. She felt her heart begin to speed and her mouth dry as she broke the seal and unfolded the sheet.

The words were brief, just a couple of lines, saying that he hoped she approved of the house and its contents and that he would call upon her that evening.

Of course he would come in the evening; gentlemen did not visit their mistresses during the day. Not when everyone knew the purpose of their visit. She tried not to think ahead to the evening. She would deal with that when it came. For now she turned her mind to more comfortable thoughts.

She rang the bell for Gemmell, and sent the carriage back to Flower and Dean Street for Archie and her mother.

The sun came out that afternoon. It was a good omen, boding well for their future, Arabella told her mother as they wandered through the rooms of the town house in Curzon Street. Mrs Tatton kept stopping to examine and exclaim over the fineness of the furniture, the rich fabrics of the curtains and the sparkling crystal of the chandeliers.

‘Arabella, these chairs are made by Mr Chippendale’ and ‘Arabella, this damask costs almost thirty shillings a yard,’ and ‘I have heard that the Prince of Wales himself has a wallpaper similar to this in Carlton House.’

Arabella did not tell her that the gentlemen’s clothing hanging in one of the wardrobes within her bedchamber was made by the ton’s most expensive tailor, John Weston, nor that it bore the faint scent of Dominic and his cologne.

Having been cooped up for so long in the tiny room in Flower and Dean Street, Archie shouted and ran about in mad excitement at such space and freedom.

‘It is all so very grand that he must be very wealthy indeed, this … gentleman,’ said Mrs Tatton and she stopped and frowned before her face was filled with worry once more. ‘I blame myself that it has come to this,’ she said quietly so that her grandson would not hear. She dabbed a small white handkerchief to her eyes.

‘Hush now, Mama, you will upset Archie.’ Arabella glanced over towards her son and was relieved to see that he was too busy with his imaginary horse games to notice.

‘I am sorry, Arabella, but to think that you have become some rich man’s mistress.’

‘It is not so bad a bargain, Mama. I assure you it is the best I could have made.’ A vision of the crowd of drunken gentlemen in Mrs Silver’s drawing room appeared in her head and she could not stop the accompanying shiver. She thrust the thought away and forced herself to smile a reassurance at her mother. ‘And we will all do very well out of it.’

‘You have spoken to the servants?’

Arabella nodded.

‘And you are sure that they will keep Archie’s and my existence a secret?’

‘I do not believe that any of them will be in a hurry to whisper tales in his ear.’

‘Then in that, at least, we have been fortunate.’

‘Yes.’

Mrs Tatton’s gaze met Arabella’s. ‘What manner of man is he, this protector of yours? Old, bluff, married? I cannot help but worry for you. Some men …’ She could not go on.

‘He is none of those, Mama,’ said Arabella and rubbed her mother’s arm. ‘He is …’ But what could she tell her mother of Dominic? A hundred words sprang to mind, none of which would relieve her mother’s anxiety. ‘Generous … and not … unkind,’ she managed. But what he had done almost six years ago was very unkind. ‘Which is what is of importance in arrangements of the purse.’

Mrs Tatton sighed and looked away.

‘We will be careful with the money he gives me. We will save every penny that we can, and soon, very soon, there will be enough for you, me and Archie to leave all this behind. We will go back to the country and rent a small cottage with a garden. And no one need be any the wiser to this whole affair.’

‘We will be able to hold our heads up and be respectable once more.’ As if Arabella could ever be respectable again. For all that illusions could be presented to the world, she would always know what she had done. Nothing could ever cleanse her of that shame. She linked her arm through her mother’s and smiled as if none of this affected her in the slightest. ‘It will work out all right, you will see.’

‘I would like that, Arabella.’ Mrs Tatton nodded and something of the anxiety eased from her face. ‘Your papa and I were very happy in the country.’ She smiled with the remembrance and the two strolled on together, pretending to each other that the situation was anything but that which it really was. And oblivious to the undercurrent of tension Archie played and ran about around their skirts.

Dominic pretended it was just a day like any other, but it was Friday and there was not a moment when he was not aware that Arabella would be waiting for him at Curzon Street that night.

He spent most of the day closeted with his steward who had come up from Amersham to discuss agricultural matters, namely moving to increased mechanisation with Andrew Meikle’s threshing machine. After which Dominic went off to watch a four-in-hand race between young Northcote and Darlington, before going on to White’s club for a drink with Hunter, Northcote and Bullford. But for all that day he was distracted and out of sorts. Indeed he had not been in sorts since the night of meeting Arabella. His usual easy temperament was gone and with each passing day the unsettled feeling seemed to grow stronger. It should have been desire that he was feeling, an impatience to satisfy his lust upon her, to have her naked, warm and willing beneath him.

But it was not.

Surviving. The word whispered again through his mind and he set the wine glass down hard upon the table before him.

‘Arlesford?’ Bullford said more loudly.

Dominic glanced round to find Hunter, Bullford and Northcote looking at him expectantly. ‘Did not catch what you said.’ Dominic’s voice was lazy and his fingers moved to toy with the stem of his glass as he pretended a normality he did not feel.

‘I was just saying that young Northcote’s keen to try out some new gaming hell in the East End,’ said Bullford. ‘Apparently it is quite an experience and certainly not for the faint of heart. If anyone can wipe their tables it would be you and Hunter. Never known a couple of gamblers with as much luck. Hunter’s up for it. Will you come and make a night of it?’

‘Not tonight,’ he said carefully, ‘I have other plans.’ The echo of her voice whispered again in his head. It is my first night here. Forgive me if I am unfamiliar with the usual etiquette. He tried to ignore it.

Bullford smiled in a leery knowing way. ‘Ah, the mysterious Miss Noir. Heard you bought her from Mrs Silver. Got the luscious girl stowed away safe and good from the attentions of the rest of London’s most eager males?’

Dominic felt his teeth clench and his body go rigid at the manner in which Bullford had just spoken of Arabella. His response shocked him, for Bullford did not know that Miss Noir was Arabella. And Arabella was indeed a lightskirt. But the rationalisations did little to appease his anger and he had to force himself to slow his breathing and uncurl his tightly balled fists.

But Bullford seemed oblivious to the danger and waded in further. ‘Liked the look of her myself in Mrs Silver’s. Unfortunate for me that you got to her before I did, or the little lady could have been warming my bed tonight.’

‘Rather, I assure you that the turn of events was most fortunate for you.’ Dominic’s voice was cold and hard. He did not understand why he felt so livid. He only knew that if it had been Bullford that had gone upstairs with Arabella in the brothel … Dominic swallowed hard and felt the fragile thread of his self-control stretch thinner.

‘Bullford.’ Hunter attracted the viscount’s attention and gave a warning shake of the head.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Bullford smugly. He tapped the side of his nose and winked at Dominic. ‘Say no more, old man. Affairs of the breeches and all that. Strictly hush, hush. We will move the plans to another time and let you enjoy Miss Noir tonight.’

It was all that Dominic could do not to grab Bullford by the lapels of his tailcoat and smash a fist into his mouth, even though the man had only said aloud the very thing that Dominic planned to do. It was as if some madness had come upon him.

Hunter adroitly changed the subject.

But Dominic was already out of his seat and walking away, leaving all three men staring behind him.

Archie was fast asleep in bed in a snug little bedchamber at the top of the house in Curzon Street with his grandmama by the time the carriage rolled to a stop outside.

Arabella had been pacing the drawing room nervously, unable to settle to anything through the evening. Dominic’s imminent arrival was foremost in her mind. She knew that it was him as soon as she heard the horses. She did not need to wait to hear the footsteps upon the outside steps or the opening of the front door or the gentle murmur of voices to know that she was right. The tempo of her heart began to increase. Her hands grew clammy and she prayed that Gemmell’s assertion of the servants’ discretion could be trusted.

She grabbed a piece of needlework and sat swiftly down in a chair by the fireplace so it would look as if she was not bothered in the slightest over his visit. She heard the drawing-room door open and close again. And quite deliberately kept her attention focused on the sewing for a moment longer, even though she knew he was standing there.

She steeled her courage. Told herself that this … coupling need mean nothing to her. That she could give him her body while locking away all else. Don so much armour that he would not so much as glimpse her heart, her soul, her feelings, let alone get near enough to hurt them again.

She would not let herself think of him as Dominic. He was just a man. And Arabella was not naïve enough to think that a woman had to love a man before she could give herself to him. After all, she had slept with Henry when what she had felt for him was affection and gratitude, and nothing of love.

The moment could not be delayed for ever so she set the needlework down on the little sewing table with care and rose to her feet, skimming a hand down as if to brush out the wrinkles in her skirt.

Only then did she look at him.

Arabella was a tall woman, but Dominic stood a good head and shoulders above her. Tall with broad shoulders and a build that was well muscled. His tailoring was a deep midnight blue over the pristine white of his shirt, waistcoat and cravat. His tailcoat of superfine looked as if it had been fitted by a master tailor. Long legs clad in dark breeches showed too well the musculature of his thighs, leading down to matching top boots, the gloss of which could be seen even by the candlelight.

His face looked paler than the last time she had seen him, his features as breathtakingly handsome as the man from her nightmares. She knew every plane of that face, had kissed every inch of it. His expression was intense and unreadable. And when her eyes finally met his she knew in that instant that all of her resolve was in vain. For she could not even look at him and remain unaffected.

Her heart skipped a beat and then raced off at a canter.

‘Dominic,’ she heard herself whisper, and all of the old emotions were back, all of the love, all of the hurt, all of the hate. She felt her eyes begin to well and looked hastily away so that he would not see it, furious with herself for such weakness. She thought of Archie and that gave her the strength that she needed. She might not be able to do this for herself, but she could most definitely do it for her son.

‘Arlesford,’ she corrected herself and this time she was glad to hear that her voice was strong with just a hint of disdain.

‘Arabella.’ He made a small bow, but otherwise did not move.

He stood there so quiet and still and yet she could sense the tension that surrounded him. It emanated from every pore of his body. It was betrayed by the slight clenching in his jawline, in his lips, in the way he was looking at her. His eyes were darker than she had ever seen them, so dark as to appear almost black, and he was looking at her with such intensity as if to glean every last thought from her head.

She felt the nervousness ripple right through her body at the thought of all that she sought to hide.

‘The house is to your liking?’ he asked.

‘It is very nice, thank you, your Grace. Beautifully furnished with impeccable taste.’ She kept her face impassive and her voice cool.

They looked at each other across the small distance and the silence was awkward and tense. She glanced away, waiting for him to shrug out of his tailcoat and suggest that they go upstairs. But that was not what Dominic said.

‘I wish to talk to you, Arabella.’

‘Talk?’ Her heart gave a stutter. A shiver of warning rippled down Arabella’s spine. She did not want to talk. Instinctively Arabella glanced up as if she could see through the floors above to the small bedchamber at the top of the house.

She feared what talking might reveal.

She feared that Dominic would learn of Archie, his son.

Chapter Five

If Dominic knew the truth, then God only knew what would happen to Archie. Her son would be branded a bastard, his life ruined before it had barely begun whether Dominic acknowledged him or not. If he knew he had such a fine son, he might wish to raise Archie himself or send him away to be raised by someone of his own choosing. For what man, especially a duke, as rich and powerful and ruthless as Dominic, would leave his child with a woman he had found in a bordello, no matter the explanations she could offer? Archie would be taken away from her to be with people who did not love him, who did not understand a small boy’s tender needs. Arabella trembled from the force of the fear.

She wetted her suddenly dry lips and gave a false laugh to hide the fear. ‘But what more is there for us to talk about, your Grace? We have already settled upon all of the relevant details.’

She saw the flash of anger in those dark eyes. ‘I would have you call me by my given name. And there is the whole of the last six years that we have barely begun to discuss, Arabella.’

‘I thought you already knew.’ Attack is the best form of defence, she thought and gathered her weapons as best she could. ‘I married Henry Marlbrook. He died. I went to Mrs Silver’s. That is all you need know, Dominic.’ She turned away to gain some semblance of control over her emotions once more.

‘On the contrary, Arabella. I think I need to know a great deal more than that.’

‘What do you want me to tell you?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘How good a man Henry was?’

‘Infinitely better than me. You made that very clear.’ His eyes bored into hers.

‘He was a thousand times the man you are,’ she taunted.

‘You forget your position, Arabella.’

‘No,’ she said and tried to control the raggedness of her voice. She forced a tight smile to her mouth. ‘I understand my position exactly.’ She glared at him. ‘Do you want me in here? Perhaps on the sofa? Or on the rug before the fireplace? Shall I undress for you now?’ she demanded.

‘Arabella!’ he said harshly, but there was a flash of pain in his eyes that matched the pain in her heart.

And she realised that she was doing this all wrong, risking everything.

She closed her eyes, rallied her senses. ‘Forgive me,’ she said in her normal voice and when she opened her eyes she did not look at him.

‘Arabella,’ he said more softly.

But his kindness was worse than his contempt. It reminded her too much of the man she had loved.

‘What has happened to you?’

‘You already know the answer to that question,’ she said quietly.

‘No, Arabella, I do not.’ His eyes studied hers. ‘I wish that you would tell me.’

Her heart was knocking so hard against her ribcage that she was surprised he could not hear it.

‘All of it that happened across the years,’ he said.

She shook her head and forced a smile, trying to fool him.

His gaze did not waver.

‘In Mrs Silver’s, when you were pretending to be Miss Noir, you said that it was your first night there.’

‘A harlot’s lie. It is what men want to hear, is it not?’ She glanced away and pressed her fingers hard against her lips, hating the words she must say. But say them she would, for she did not want his pity. And she did could not risk his questions.

Dominic stood there still and silent.

‘Shall we go upstairs?’ She knew her part in all this, knew what he had come for. And once he had it, he would go and the ordeal would be over … at least for now.

He said not one word, but he followed her up the stairs to the large cream-coloured bedchamber on the first floor.

There could be no room for modesty, nor the last remaining shreds of her pride. She knew what was required, knew what she must do.

She turned away from him and forced herself to strip off her clothing, every last stitch. And when she was naked she sat down at the dressing table and took the pins from her hair, uncoiling its long length while her eyes watched his reflection in the looking glass. She watched while he slipped off his tailcoat and abandoned it over a chair. His waistcoat followed.

She sat there, waiting for the inevitable. Gathering her courage for what must come. But Dominic made no move towards her.

The nerves shivered right through her body. She swallowed. Did a mistress wait for her protector to come to her, or did he expect her to go to him? Arabella did not know the answer. But the quicker this was over, the better for herself. So she rose and walked to him. It took every ounce of Arabella’s strength not to wrap her arms around herself to cover her nakedness, to make herself stand there before him and let him look at her.

His touch, when it came, was gentle, reverent almost, and she shivered at the sudden flash of unbidden memories from a lifetime ago—of the passion and the love that had been between them.

He ran a hand over her hair, his hand sliding round to the nape of her neck. His fingers rested there light as a butterfly and the tingle beneath them seemed to run through the whole of her body. Slowly, deliberately, he trailed the tips of his fingers down the column of her throat.

Arabella deliberately masked any sign of emotion from her face as she stood there and let him touch her, angling her head to allow him access. He was her protector. This was what he was paying for. It meant nothing. But already she could feel the hard thud of her heart and everywhere his fingers touched, her skin burned, and she felt like weeping.

His hand dipped lower, so that she felt his fingers trace all the way out to the end of her collarbone and all the way back again. She tried to control the unsteadiness of her breathing, the gathering sob, but that only seemed to make it worse.

Not one word did he say. Not once did he meet her eyes, just kept his gaze fixed on the magic that his fingers were working.

He paused.

Arabella held her breath.

And then inch by tiny inch his fingers followed the path down into the valley between her breasts.

Again he halted, but whether it was to torture her, or himself, she did not know. If he continued like this, Arabella did not know if she could bear it. He placed a palm upon her left breast and beneath it she felt her heart jump and race all the harder. Beneath the cover of his hand her nipple was already taut and tender.

Arabella willed herself not to respond. He did not love her. She thought of all he had done six years ago. But when his palm slid away and his fingers teased at her nipple, plucking it, there was nothing she could do to prevent it bead all the harder. Her wantonness appalled her.

She squeezed her eyes closed to prevent the tears, knowing what would follow.

But his hand halted and dropped away, so that he was no longer even touching her.

Each tight line of his body and the bulge in his breeches revealed that he was every bit as aware as she of the tension that hummed between them. Slowly, his gaze raised to meet her own and there was something in his eyes as he stared at her. The strangest expression. Not lust as she had expected. Not victory or even arrogance. Realisation, maybe. And something else that she could not quite define. Something that looked almost haunted.

‘Dominic?’ she whispered.

But Dominic gave no sign of having heard her. He stood there frozen, staring as if he could see into the very depths of her soul.

And then he backed away, raking a hand through his hair as he did so.

‘I cannot …’ he said and his face was white. He turned away, gathered up his waistcoat and tailcoat and made for the door.

‘Dominic!’

He stopped where he was, hesitated with his hand stilled in its grip of the doorknob, but did not turn round.

And then he left, closing the door quietly behind him.

There was the tread of his boots upon the stairs, the murmur of voices in the hallway and, a short while after that, the sound of a carriage and horses outside.

Arabella watched the dark unmarked carriage drive away into the night. She shivered and pulled the shawl tight around her shoulders, not understanding what had just happened between them.

Dominic did not sleep for what remained of the night. He stood by the window of his library and looked out over the sleeping city and watched the dawn break over a charcoal sky.

He had been a fool to think that he could take Arabella as his mistress and use her as a whore, even if she was exactly that. The past was too strong between them. She might have slashed the ties that had bound them and walked away, but Dominic had only just come to see that what had bound them together could never be completely undone. She was his first and only love. And no matter what she had done, or what she had become, he could not forget that. Every time he looked at her it was flaunted before his eyes. Every time he touched her he felt it in his bones.

If he had thought it would be so easy to treat her just as he had treated all the other women who had come after her, without emotional attachment, he was wrong.

She was engrained upon his mind, engraved upon his heart. He had dreamt of nothing else for nigh on six years. He had longed for her and hated her and needed her all at once. It was Arabella whom he thought of constantly. It was Arabella he thought of even when he was bedding another woman.

He could taste her upon his tongue and smell her own scent, sweet and fresh like roses and summer rain. He could still feel the smooth softness of her pale skin, still feel the firm ripeness of her naked breasts. He wanted to possess every inch of her body with his mouth. He wanted to plunge his aching manhood into her silken flesh and take her in every way imaginable until this endless torment ceased.

But he could not.

The grey dress she wore in the bedchamber in Curzon Street was nothing of the courtesan’s guise she had donned before. It was old and shabby and respectable, Arabella’s own, rather than something of Mrs Silver’s. And when she had stripped it off and stood before him, offering what he had thought he had the right to take, he had willed himself to accept it. He had touched her and tried to coax himself, for God only knew how much his body burned to possess her. But beneath his hand he had felt the flutter of her heart and he had known that he could not do it.

Arabella’s words rang through his head. He was a thousand times the man you are! … A harlot’s lie. It is what men want to hear, is it not? And he realised there had been a part of him that had thought that she would have welcomed him, wanted him. That she would have told him that what happened in the past was all a mistake, that she had loved him all along.

He shook his head with disgust at his own absurdity. Nothing had changed. It never would. She still had the power to hurt him … and was wielding it with deliberation.

He had made this arrangement; he would not break it and see her thrown back down into the gutter. But for Dominic there could be no more visits to Curzon Street.

The decision made, Dominic stood back to watch the new day dawn over London.

In the dining room that morning Arabella was watching Archie eating his breakfast. After seeing him brought almost to the point of starvation she could not help but worry whether that last week in Flower and Dean Street had left its mark upon him. But looking at him now, wolfing down his buttered eggs and sausages and excitedly telling his story, she felt a sense of relief at the resilience of children. She smoothed down his hair and concentrated on listening to how he was going to have a whole stable of horses when he was a grown-up man. But she knew Mrs Tatton’s questions would not be deferred for long. Arabella could see from the corner of her eye the way her mother was watching her with concern written all over her face.

She tried to smile and act as if everything was just the same as it had been yesterday, but her heart was filled with humiliation and confusion and embarrassment over what had happened last night. She did not understand what she had done wrong. And she was relieved and angry and ashamed all at once.

Archie helped himself to another two sausages and then climbed down from the table and ran off to play a game of horses.

‘Archie, come back. We do not leave the table until we have finished eating,’ she called after him.

‘Oh, leave him be, Arabella. He will do no harm and has been so well behaved of late despite all of our troubles,’ said Mrs Tatton.

‘You are right, of course,’ Arabella said. ‘It has not been easy for him.’ The weight of guilt was heavy. She doubted that the memory of those awful last days when he had gone hungry would ever leave her.

‘Nor for any of us,’ answered her mother. ‘Now I know it is not my place to ask and that events of the bedchamber between a man and a woman are best kept that way, but …’ Mrs Tatton’s brow furrowed with concern. ‘I do not think that matters went so well for you last night.’

‘Those matters were fine,’ Arabella said quickly and felt her cheeks flush at the memory of Dominic’s rejection. She was his mistress. She was supposed to bed him, to let him take his pleasure. And she had been prepared to do just that, however much she resented it. What she had not been prepared for was that he would tease a response from her body and then just walk away.

‘Do not lie to me, girl. I have eyes to see and ears to hear. And I see your face is powder pale this morning and your eyes swollen and red as if you have spent the night weeping. And I heard him leaving the house before midnight.’

‘My eyes are a little irritated this morning, nothing more. And D—’ She stopped Dominic’s name on her tongue before it could escape. ‘And, yes, the gentleman had to leave early. There were others matters to which he had to attend.’

‘At midnight?’ her mother snorted. ‘He was barely here.’

‘If his visits are short, does it not suit us all the better?’

‘Some men can be inconsiderate in their haste to … to satisfy their own …’ Her mother’s cheeks blushed scarlet and she could not finish her words.

‘No,’ Arabella said hastily. ‘It was not like that.’

The sight of him. The scent of him. His fingers slowly tracing a line all the way along her collar bone, before meandering down to tease her nipples. The burn of her skin, the rush of her blood …

She winced with the shame of it.

‘Tell me the truth, Arabella.’ Mrs Tatton reached over and placed her hand on Arabella’s.

Her cheeks warmed, and she felt the gall of bitterness in her throat. ‘If you knew the truth, Mama, you would not believe it,’ she murmured.

‘Did he use you ill?’ Her mother’s face paled, the flash of fear in her eyes making Arabella feel a brute. She was supposed to be reassuring her mother, not worrying her all the more.

‘He did nothing, Mama.’ Even though she had offered herself to him like the harlot she had become. She was so angry at herself … and at him.

She was relieved that he had not taken her, so why did she feel so humiliated? It was a confusing hurtful mess.

‘Do not lie to me now, Arabella. If he has hurt you … Nothing is worth that. Better that we beg upon the streets than—’

She took her mother’s hand in her own and stroked the fragile veined skin. ‘Mama, he was gentle and demanded nothing of me. I wept only for what I am become.’

‘Oh, Arabella, we should leave this house.’ Arabella felt her mother’s hands twist within her own.

‘And return to Flower and Dean Street?’ Arabella raised her brows.

‘I could look for work. Between the two of us we could find a way.’

And the work would kill her mother. Arabella knew there was no other way. She shook her head. ‘It is too late, Mama.’

What was done, was done. She was a fallen woman. Besides, the past had caught up with Arabella. I cannot, his words seemed to whisper through the room and she thought of the haunted expression in his eyes.

‘Mama, we are staying here. I was foolish last night, that is all. Tonight will be different.’ She hoped. ‘You have nothing to worry over except to count the money and the days until we can return to the country.’

‘If you are sure about this, Arabella?’

‘I am quite certain.’

Her mother did not look happy, but she nodded and went back to eating her breakfast.

It was barely an hour later when the letter arrived. Again, written in Dominic’s familiar bold handwriting. Arabella’s heart began to trip as she broke the sealing wax and read the bold penned words within.

‘Well?’ Her mother glanced up from the chair on which she was sitting. The sunshine bathed the whole of the drawing room in its warm pale golden light.

‘He has arranged for a dressmaker to call tomorrow afternoon.’ Arabella folded the letter and slipped it into the pocket of her dress so that her mother would not see the crest embossed both upon the paper and impressed within the seal.

‘It is only to be expected,’ Mrs Tatton said and went back to pouring the tea.

‘I suppose you are right,’ Arabella murmured, and a vision of the scandalous silk black dress swam in her mind. She glanced down at her own grey gown and knew she would rather wear this every single day, old and shabby as it was, than anything Dominic would buy for her.

‘Archie and I will make ourselves scarce.’

Arabella nodded and glanced at her son, feeling a tug of guilt and worry. Hiding them away at night was not so very bad, for both her mother and son slept early. And although the room was near to the attic it was warm and cosy and nicely furnished, and better in every way than the one they had left in Flower and Dean Street. But to force them to stay quiet and hidden during the day while Dominic sat downstairs and chose a wardrobe of fast, provocative clothes in which to dress her sparked an angry resentment in Arabella.

Something of her feelings must have shown in her face for Mrs Tatton said, ‘It is only for one day, Arabella, and it will do us no harm. And as for the rest … well, the clothes are the least of it.’

There was no sign of Dominic by two o’clock the next day when the dressmaker called. Arabella smoothed her skirts for the umpteenth time and forced herself to at least pretend to be attending to her needlework, although she had the sudden thought, just as she heard the knock at the door, that perhaps mistresses did not spend their time in needlework. It was the first time that anyone would be seeing her as Dominic’s mistress and Arabella composed her face to conceal her humiliation.

When Gemmell showed the woman into the drawing room, Arabella’s heart sank to meet her shoes. Of all the dressmakers in London that Dominic could have chosen …

And she remembered those final dark days that had led her to Mrs Silver’s House of Rainbow Pleasures. It should not matter that it was Madame Boisseron waiting in the drawing room, for in her desperation Arabella had knocked on the door of every dressmaker, mantua maker and milliner, every corsetry house, tailor and seamstress, seeking work that was not to be found. Any one of London’s dressmakers coming here today would have recognised her. But somehow, the fact that it was the woman in whose shop she had met Mrs Silver just seemed to add to the humiliation for Arabella.

But if Madame Boisseron recognised Arabella the dressmaker was wise enough to make no sign of it. Arabella took a deep breath, swallowed down her embarrassment and knew that she had no choice but to deal with the situation as best she could.

Dominic had still not arrived when the little dark-eyed woman, whose accent was soft and French, brought out a book of dress designs. Arabella glanced at the clock, knowing she ought to wait for his arrival before they proceeded, but the thought that Dominic could dictate the clothes she wore, even right down to her underwear, made her feel so angry that she took the book from the modiste and began to flip through it.

Some of the designs were positively indecent, barely covering breasts, revealing nipples and leaving little to the imagination when it came to a woman’s figure. Not so very different from the black silk dress that she had been forced to wear within the brothel.

‘This one but with a higher neckline,’ she pointed to one of the sketches, ‘and a thicker material.’

Madame Boisseron glanced up at her in surprise. ‘You are sure, madam? Gentlemen, they usually prefer a little more …’ she paused ‘… daring in their ladies’ dress.’

‘I have had quite enough of daring. So if you would be so kind.’

‘Certainly, madam,’ Madame Boisseron said. ‘After all, the Duke, he said that the decision was with you.’

‘He did?’ Arabella heard the question in her own voice, and then tried to look as if she had known it all along.

‘Indeed. There are not many men that would leave their ladies to order the entirety of their new wardrobes alone. I was most surprised when the Duke, he asked me to attend to you without his presence. He will pay only if you are happy—a most unusual nobleman, non?’

‘Most unusual,’ Arabella said and glanced away. So Dominic would not be arriving this afternoon. She allowed herself to relax a little, and stopped looking at the clock.

By three o’clock, Arabella’s measurements had been taken, they had been through the fabric sample book twice and Arabella had ordered a minimal and conservative wardrobe. Madame Boisseron must have been disappointed, given that she knew Arabella had carte blanche to order exactly as she wished and as much as she desired. But rather than be tight-mouthed, the dressmaker only smiled and looked at Arabella kindly and told her the clothes would be delivered as each dress became ready.

Immediately the door closed Arabella made her way upstairs to Archie and her mother’s bedchamber and turned her mind away from Dominic Furneaux.

But she could not keep him from her thoughts for ever. Too soon the day faded into night and Arabella sat alone in the drawing room, waiting for him to arrive. She knew that he would expect her to thank him for the free rein with the dressmaker and for his generosity of purse, but the words stuck in Arabella’s throat and she knew that she would be unable to bring herself to say them.

She waited; the clock ticked loudly and its hands crawled slowly, and the embroidery within her lap remained untouched. She worried over what he might say to her. And she worried over what she might say to him. But most of all she worried over the moment when he would take her to bed.

But Dominic did not come to the house in Curzon Street. Not that night, or the next, or the night after that.

Dominic was trying to check through the accounts for the land that encompassed his estate. It was a tedious task and one that required sustained concentration, which was the very reason he was sitting with the books spread before him this afternoon. Anything to keep his mind off Arabella Tatton.

The tactic was not proving successful and so Hunter’s arrival in his study was something of a relief.

Hunter squinted at the pages lying open on the desk and then looked at Dominic with a knowing expression. ‘There’s enough crossed-out and overwritten ink on that paper to write a novel. Quite unlike your usual precision, Arlesford. Looks to me like you have got something—or someone—else on your mind.’ Hunter smiled and arched an eyebrow.

Dominic ignored the bait and bent his head to the columns of numbers on the page before him. Hunter was right, he acknowledged dismally. The page had been clear and legible before Dominic had started his checking.

‘Came by to drop you a warning.’

Dominic felt his stomach tighten. Hunter would not be here right now if it were not something concerning Dominic.

‘You are not going to like it,’ warned Hunter.

Dominic thought of Arabella.

Hunter helped himself to Dominic’s decanter of brandy and filled two glasses. ‘It’s Misbourne. Trying a new approach.’

Dominic released the breath he had been holding as he accepted the brandy from Hunter. He took a sip and watched his friend lounge in the chair on the other side of the desk.

‘He is saying that there was some kind of old agreement made between your father and him years ago. An oath to bind the two families by marriage between you and his daughter.’

The news was not anything Dominic wanted to hear, but at least it did not regard Arabella.

‘Aye, a pact sworn with the earl when the two of them were young, single and in their cups. My father never meant to hold me to a boy’s drunken foolishness. And I’ll be damned if I’m pushed to it by a louse like Misbourne.’

‘Misbourne is risking much with his tactic; he must be very determined to make a match between you and Lady Marianne Winslow.’

Dominic’s gaze met Hunter’s and with the mention of marriage the awkwardness of the past—of what Arabella had done—was in the room between them.

Hunter gave a nod. ‘Just have a care over him, Dominic. He is not a good man to have as an enemy.’

‘I know and I thank you for the warning, my friend.’

There was a silence in which Hunter sipped at his brandy. Then he smiled. ‘To change the subject to a lighter note …’

Dominic relaxed and raised the glass to his lips.

‘You are creating quite a stir with Miss Noir.’

Dominic stilled, then set the glass down on the desk without having taken a mouthful.

‘What do you mean?’ He thought of the lengths he had gone to, to keep the transition of Arabella from Mrs Silver’s to his mistress a secret. ‘You did not tell them anything of it?’

Hunter raised his brows and there was a genuine wounded look in his eyes. ‘I hope you deem me better than that.’

Dominic gave a nod. ‘Forgive me.’

‘I do not know how, but the whisper is out about you and the mysterious Miss Noir. People are intrigued by the story. And they are asking questions.’

‘Then let us hope that they find no answers.’ It should not matter if all of London knew that it was Arabella he had taken as his mistress. After what she had done, it was the very least she deserved. But knowing that and doing it were two different things. He knew what the gossips would do to her if they discovered who she was. They would have a field day with the complete and utter destruction of every last aspect of her character.

‘She must be something special that you are taking such a care to hide her,’ mused Hunter. ‘Who is she, Arlesford?’

‘None of your damn business,’ said Dominic and lifted his glass of brandy to his mouth. He wondered what Hunter would say if he knew the truth.

Hunter laughed. ‘Now I really am intrigued, if you are keeping her secret even from me.’

‘Especially from you, Hunter,’ Dominic said as if in jest, but he had never been more serious.

‘I am not such a bastard that I would steal my best friend’s woman,’ Hunter protested and finished his brandy in a gulp.

Dominic drew a wry smile. ‘Knowing your reputation, I am not about to take any chances.’ Better to blame it on that than let Hunter know it was Arabella.

Hunter laughed. ‘She must be something special.’

All levity vanished from Dominic’s face. He tapped the base of the glass against the wooden surface of his desk as he thought of Arabella.

‘She is,’ he said and glanced away.

‘Dominic?’ Hunter probed. But Dominic had no mind to discuss the matter even with Hunter, so he just shook his head.

‘Do not go further, friend,’ he said quietly.

Hunter gave a subtle nod, then smiled, refilled their glasses and raised his in a toast. ‘Miss Noir, long may the ton fail to unmask her.’

Dominic chinked his glass against Hunter’s, but he did not smile. And as he drank the brandy his mind was filled with Arabella Tatton and what it would mean to them both were she to be unmasked.

It was another reason he should not return to Curzon Street. And yet one more reason that did not relieve the compulsion that whispered to him night and day to retrace his steps straight back there.

Chapter Six

‘He did not call upon you again last night?’ Mrs Tatton enquired over the toast. ‘That is the fourth night in a row.’

Four nights during which Arabella’s initial relief at Dominic’s absence was beginning to turn into something else. A niggle of worry that would not be stilled. She nodded, trying to let nothing of her true thoughts show upon her face, and spread some honey upon another slice of toast for Archie.

‘Who did not call?’ asked Archie.

Arabella’s mother met her eyes over his head. The two women looked at one another.

‘Your mama’s friend,’ said Mrs Tatton. ‘Now eat up your toast, Birthday Boy, before it grows cold.’

Archie, mouth filled with toast, started to pretend two of the spoons were horses galloping across the tablecloth.

Arabella felt her cheeks heat from the deception she was weaving, but knew she had no choice. It would all be so much worse if the truth came out.

‘Perhaps if his first visit was not entirely to his satisfaction he has changed his mind over the arrangement.’ Embarrassment flushed Mrs Tatton’s cheeks as she voiced the fear that had been gnawing at Arabella.

‘Let us hope not, Mama.’ God help them if he had, for Arabella did not think she could go back to Mrs Silver’s. But the manner of their parting lent her little confidence.

A knock sounded at the door and Gemmell entered with a letter from Dominic upon a silver salver.

‘Delivered first thing, ma’am,’ he said and left again.

Arabella felt a stab of dread, wondering if it contained her congé.

Mrs Tatton looked on in anxious silence as Arabella opened the letter and scanned its contents.

‘He enquires as to my happiness with the dressmaker,’ Arabella said with relief.

‘Then all is well?’

‘It appears so, Mama.’ As Arabella read the rest of the bold script she could not keep the surprise from her voice. ‘He writes to say that he has given me the use of a carriage and a purse of money to spend so that I will not have to buy on credit using his name.’ She glanced up to meet her mother’s eyes. ‘So no one need know of our … situation.’

Her mother’s eyes widened. ‘He is either a most thoughtful gentleman, or …’ she raised a brow ‘… one who has much to lose if you are discovered.’

As far as Arabella could see Dominic had nothing to lose by her discovery. Indeed, she would have thought he would have been crowing it from the rooftops. A most thoughtful gentleman. Not a description that could ever be applied to Dominic Furneaux. Or so she had thought.

‘Much as I detest that he must pay for us …’ She glanced across at her mother’s shabby dress. ‘You and Archie are in dire need of some new clothes.’

‘We should be saving the money so that we may leave this situation as quickly as possible. Archie and I can manage just fine as we are, Arabella.’

‘Both of you have only the clothes upon your back, Mama, and nothing more. Your shoes have holes in the soles. And your hands have been paining you. His payment is generous.’ She pushed away the thought of what it was he was paying for. ‘I will ask Gemmell to organise new wardrobes for you. And I will visit the apothecary myself to fetch you something for your joints.’

Mrs Tatton worried at her lip. ‘You are sure he will not notice? About the money?’

Arabella glanced again at the letter. ‘He makes it clear he does not wish for an account of my spending.’

‘Well, I suppose in that case …’ Her mother nodded, but the furrow of worry between her brows lifted only a little.

Arabella pushed the thought of Dominic and her situation aside. There were other matters to be considered today, and she intended to apply herself fully to them. ‘Let us talk of more pleasant matters. It is a certain boy’s birthday.’ She raised her voice so that Archie would hear and looked over at her son. ‘And as a special treat I thought that we might take a trip to the park. Robert, the groom, has a little mare called Elsie. Would you like to sit up on Elsie’s back while Robert walks her around the park?’

‘Oh, yes, please!’ Archie’s eyes were wide with delight and he slipped down from his chair and started to gallop around in excitement. ‘Can we leave right now?’

‘We had best get ourselves ready first!’ Arabella laughed.

‘Are you sure about this, Arabella?’ Mrs Tatton asked.

‘It is still early, Mama. There should be few enough people about to notice us; even if they do, there is nothing to associate us with this house or its master.’

Archie paused as he galloped past the mantel piece to stroke a hand against the ribbons that Arabella had festooned there. She smiled at the pleasure on his face and knew that the decorations had been worth it, even if she would have to take them down and hide them away just in case Dominic arrived.

‘And remember that we are to have a special birthday lunch,’ said Mrs Tatton. ‘Cook is making a cherry cake and lemonade and some biscuits too.’

‘Hurrah!’ shouted Archie. ‘I love birthdays.’

Gemmell came in to organise the clearing of the breakfast plates. ‘And how old are you today, young master Archie?’ he asked.

‘I am a grown up boy of five years old,’ said Archie with pride.

‘That is very grown-up indeed,’ agreed Gemmell with a smile and gave the little boy the small wooden figure of a horse that he had carved.

And the maid, Alice, chucked Archie under the chin and gave him a packet of barley-sugar twists that she had made herself and knew to be his favourites.

Arabella felt her heart swell at their kindness. ‘Thank you,’ she said with meaning. ‘You are very kind to us.’ And today all the shadows of the past and the present seemed very far away. Today they were a proper family—Archie, her mother, Arabella and all of the servants.

Dominic read the card in his hand and knew there was no way he could refuse Prinny’s invitation without delivering the prince a monumental insult. How recently a night of drunken revelry and fireworks in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens would have held appeal for Dominic. Now it did not. He wondered how little time he might need stay there before he could slip away.

He thought of Arabella sitting alone at her needlework in Curzon Street. And he felt that same surge of desire for her that he had always felt. He burned for her, just as he knew he could not take her. It was an absurd situation of his own creation. An insolvable paradox that tortured him more with each passing day. His brain told him that he should go round to Curzon Street right now and ease the ache in his loins upon her, to ride her as he had done in Mrs Silver’s. But even the memory of what had happened in that place soured his stomach. And in his heart he knew that he could not do it. Even if she had been ridden by a thousand men before him.

He glanced again at the card, Vauxhall and its masked carnival, and an audacious idea popped into his head. An idea that was both daring and ridiculous. To be with her was a torture, but he craved it all the same. The carnival might be easier than being alone with her in a house he was paying for, with a bed too easily within reach. The thought of having Arabella by his side seemed to make the prospect of Vauxhall much more palatable. He slipped the card into his pocket. It would require another visit to Curzon Street.

Just to tell her of the carnival.

Nothing more.

Tonight.

He anticipated the visit with a combination of dread and impatience.

It was wonderful to escape the house in Curzon Street and it gladdened Arabella’s heart to watch her son and her mother enjoy the morning in the fresh air of the park. The trip lifted all of their spirits and so too did the little party they had for themselves and the servants that afternoon.

Normally Gemmell served dinner at four o’clock, which was early for London’s society, but it was an hour that gave Arabella and her family time enough to sit down and eat together before preparing for the evening. The preparation involved checking in each room that there was no evidence of either Archie or Mrs Tatton and ensuring that Archie was bathed, changed and tucked up in bed asleep before the master of the house’s arrival, should he choose to call. But today, because of the park and the party, and the fact that come four o’clock they were still full of birthday cake and lemonade, everything was running late. And Arabella was loathe to bring a close to the day. Not once had she allowed herself to think of Dominic or her circumstances. She had been determined to make this day as enjoyable as possible for Archie’s sake. And it had been. Arabella felt happy for the first time in weeks.

‘Have we not had the very best of days?’ she asked as they sat down to a light dinner within the dining room.

‘Indeed we have, Mama!’ His eyes were shining and his cheeks had the healthy glow of the outdoors about them.

Arabella and her mother laughed.

‘And Charlie thinks so, too.’ He stroked the little wooden horse that Gemmell had made for him.

They were in the middle of eating when Arabella thought she heard a familiar-sounding carriage outside. It cannot be, she thought to herself. It is barely quarter past six. But then a very worried-looking Gemmell appeared in the doorway.

‘Madam, it is the master!’

‘Good Lord!’ said Arabella beneath her breath.

‘Oh, Arabella!’ gasped her mother.

‘Show him into the drawing room. I will come through and stall him there while Mama and Archie make their escape.’

Gemmell gave a nod and hurried away.

‘What is wrong, Mama?’ asked Archie.

‘Nothing at all, little lamb. Grandmama wants to tell you a very exciting new story. So you must sneak upstairs to your bedchamber as quickly and quietly as you can. And once you are there you must climb straight into bed and be as quiet as a mouse and listen to Grand-mama’s new story before you go to sleep.’

‘No bathing?’ asked Archie, who was looking as if it was something too good to be true.

‘Just for tonight,’ said Arabella.

‘Hurrah!’ Archie began to shout.

Mrs Tatton put her fingers to her lips and hushed him. ‘Shush now, Archie. Fasten that little button on your lips. Quiet as a mouse, remember?’

Archie nodded and made the button-fastening movement at his lips.

Arabella heard the front door open. She heard the murmur of Dominic’s voice and the tread of his shoes on the polished wooden floorboards of the hallway.

Archie was grinning so much a tiny breathy snigger escaped him.

Arabella’s and her mother’s eyes shot to him, shaking their heads, touching their fingers to their lips in a silencing gesture.

Her heart was thudding as hard as a blacksmith’s hammer striking against an anvil. She looked at the door, afraid that Dominic would come striding through it, demanding to know what was going on.

Please God, do not let him discover them.

But his footsteps walked straight on past the dining room door and on along the passageway to the drawing room.

A minute later, and without a single noise, Gemmell appeared at the door. There was a glimmer of sweat upon his brow. The poor man looked every bit as worried as Arabella felt.

She nodded to him. ‘Help Mama and Archie. Wait until I am inside the drawing room speaking with him before you make a dash for it.’ She thought of the infirmities of both Gemmell and her mother—’dash’ was perhaps the wrong word to use.

‘Be a good boy for Grandmama.’ She kissed Archie on the forehead. And to her mother, ‘Take off his shoes that they make no noise upon the floor.’

‘I will carry him, ma’am,’ said Gemmell.

Archie was quite heavy and she worried that Gemmell could not manage him, but she did not want to insult the old butler by suggesting any such thing. So she gave him a grateful, if nervous, smile. ‘Thank you.’

And then, smoothing down her skirts, she made her way through to the drawing room and Dominic.

Arabella was looking a little flustered when she appeared in the drawing room.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘did I interrupt you?’

‘Not at all.’ She sounded slightly breathless. ‘I had almost finished eating when I heard your arrival.’

‘I did not mean to interrupt your dinner. It is nothing of importance. I merely wanted to speak with you. Let us go back to the dining room. We can speak just as well there.’

‘No. Really.’ She thought of the ribbons that still festooned the mantel, and the three settings at the table and their half-eaten meals … and her mother and son still within. ‘Besides, I find my appetite has quite deserted me.’

He stiffened at her words, but when his eyes scanned her face there was nothing of disdain or sharpness there.

She caught his expression and only then seemed to realise what she had said. ‘I did not mean … that is to say …’

Dominic looked at her in surprise. There was not one sign of her normal cool reserve, nothing of artifice. She was every inch the Arabella he had known and loved. Keeping her here as his mistress had never seemed so wrong, yet he was having trouble tearing his eyes away from her.

‘I came to ask if you would accompany me on an evening at Vauxhall Gardens. The Prince of Wales is organising a masquerade and I am obliged to attend. I thought as it was a masked affair … your identity would be quite hidden. And perhaps you would find it preferable to an evening spent with your needlework.’

She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. And something of the mask was back upon her face.

They looked at one another across the distance.

‘You may think about it, Arabella, and let me know your decision.’ He placed the card down upon a nearby table and made to leave.

‘Wait.’ She stepped towards him, her hand held out in entreaty. ‘Please.’

Dominic stopped and looked round at her.

‘I would like very much to go to Vauxhall with you.’

Some of the tension he had been feeling eased. He gave a nod of his head. ‘Thank you.’ His eyes met hers. ‘I will leave you to your dinner.’ He bowed and turned away.

‘Dominic!’ There was an urgency in her voice he had not heard before. ‘Will you not stay for a little while?’

He peered round at her, hardly believing this sudden change in her.

She gestured to the sofa. ‘Let us sit down and … talk.’

There was such earnestness in her face he could not refuse. Besides, if she wanted to talk then he wanted to listen. Maybe she would tell him the answer to the question that had weighed heavy in his mind for every single day of the last six years.

‘Tell me about your day.’ He could sense the nervousness running through her, see it in the way she wetted her lips and clutched her hands together that bit too tightly.

‘You wish to know about my day?’

‘Yes. I am interested to hear it. You have not told me anything of your life.’ She perched herself on the edge of the striped green sofa.

‘You have not asked,’ he said and sat down beside her.

‘Then I have been remiss in my duty.’ She smiled, but Dominic could not help but notice that the smile did not touch her eyes.

Her fingers were gripping the edge of the sofa. He laid his hand gently over them.

‘I do not want you to ask out of duty, Arabella,’ he said quietly.

Her gaze met his and the smile dropped away from her face.

A loud clatter sounded from the hallway and Arabella jumped.

‘What on earth …?’ He got to his feet to go out and see what was going on.

But Arabella was already on hers and standing before him. ‘Gemmell is a little clumsy. Do not be harsh with him, Dominic, I beg of you.’ Her face had paled and she looked almost frightened.

‘I have no intention of chastising anyone, Arabella. I mean only to check that there has been no mishap.’

‘Dominic …’ She stepped towards him. He saw the intensity of her expression, the uncertainty in her eyes. Slowly she reached her hand out and brushed the tips of her fingers against his face.

And everything in Dominic’s world seemed to stop.

She touched her fingers over his cheek as if she were reassuring herself that it really was him.

Dominic held his breath and did not move.

She traced down the line of his nose, omitting his mouth to move over the angles of his chin, first one way and then the other, before coming back to linger within its cleft. Her fingers were chilled as ice against his skin.

Not once did he move his gaze from her, just watched her following the path her finger was drawing.

And then slowly she inched her fingers higher …

Dominic’s body tightened.

And higher …

His breath shook.

Until at last, her fingertips touched against his lips and stilled. They were light as a feather and trembling.

Dominic ceased to think. He responded in the only way he knew how with Arabella. He kissed those sweet delicate fingers, kissed each one in turn. And when she came into his arms and her body cleaved to his it seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss her mouth.

Arabella kissed him and forgot that she was only doing this to prevent the discovery of Archie and her mother. She kissed him and everything else ceased to be. He held her as if he cared for her, kissed her as if he loved her. He was the same man she had known, the same man she had loved. And in this moment as she felt the fast beat of his heart beneath her hand and the warmth and the strength of his body, she felt everything that she had done as a girl of nineteen. He worshipped her with his lips and she believed the illusion his tenderness wove—of love and of protection. She slid her hand up around his neck and gave herself up to the kiss, revelling in it, wanting it all the more. All of these years without him. Her heart clung to his and refused to let go.

Lies, all lies, the little voice in her head whispered. And she remembered all that he had done. And her son who had no father. And the memories cooled her ardour like a bucket of iced water.

She stumbled back, clutching a hand to her mouth, appalled at what she had just done.

‘Arabella?’ Dominic’s eyes were dark and dazed. His voice sounded low and confused.

‘I …’ She backed away and shook her head, knowing that there were no words to explain how she was feeling. She did not know what to say to him. She could not even begin to pretend that she was unaffected by what had just happened between them or by anything of this situation.

‘I …’ she tried again and as her gaze lowered she saw the evidence of his arousal within his close-fitting pantaloons and realised that she had seduced him just like the courtesan she was. What she had done meant he would take her now. And she trembled at the thought of it.

Dominic looked right into her eyes, as if he could see every thought in her head, then walked away without saying a single word.

There was the thud of the front door shutting, and Arabella’s eyes closed in anguish.

Chapter Seven

The night of the Vauxhall masquerade came around too quickly.

Arabella slipped the silver-beaded and feathered mask into place and turned to face Dominic. He had barely said a word since entering the drawing room of the Curzon Street town house and there was an atmosphere in the room thick enough to be cut with a knife.

Dominic’s gaze perused her face, lingering for seconds that seemed too long, so that it was almost as if she had only just touched her fingers to his lips, only just kissed him with such wanton abandon. The sweat prickled upon her palms and the butterflies were flocking in her stomach.

It was not only the mask she was worrying over. ‘My dress …’ She had been so very determined to thumb her nose at him during its ordering; now she was aware that its very respectability might reveal more of her identity when she was by Dominic’s side. ‘It will not attract …’ Suspicion. Speculation ‘… attention,’ she finished, ‘will it?’

She watched his gaze drop to the bodice, then sweep down to the skirt and she bit her lip in worry.

It was a dress like none that Arabella had ever owned. Plain yet elegant. Pale silver silk cut to fit her body perfectly. With its small capped sleeves, bodice scattered with small crystal beads that sparkled in the light and décolletage that teased rather than revealed, the dress was beautiful but pure in a way that made it unsuitable for any courtesan. The irony of its styling was not lost on Arabella.

‘How could you think it would fail to attract attention, Arabella?’ he said in a quiet voice.

Her stomach gave a churn and her gaze shot to his, waiting for his anger.

‘It is beautiful. You are beautiful.’

She gaped in surprise, and blushed and could think of not one thing to say.

Dominic swept the long black velvet domino around her shoulders. She jumped at the brush of his fingers against her collar bone as he fastened it in place, feeling nervous both at Dominic’s proximity and the prospect of the night ahead.

Out there before all those people. At his side. As his mistress.

A wave of uncertainty swept through her. She bit again at her lip.

‘No one will know your true identity, Arabella,’ he said gently, and carefully pulled up the domino’s hood to cover the curls piled high upon her head.

And then he took her hand in his and led her out to where the carriage waited.

The night was cool, but clear and dry. Tiny stars studded the blackness of the sky as they walked down the grassy bank towards the boats and barges that would carry them across the Thames to the carnival. They crossed the river in silence. Nor did they speak when they arrived at the other bank and the pleasure gardens that were Vauxhall. Dominic was too aware of Arabella by his side, and of the tension that flowed between them.

The gardens were more crowded than usual, with guests who had come to witness the Prince of Wales at the masquerade. Dominic made his meeting with the prince and, when he saw how Prinny was looking at Arabella, steered her away again just as quickly.

She had taken hold of the arm that he offered and they strolled together through the night, in a parody of all the other couples around them. But even in the lightness of her touch he could feel the tension that hummed through her body. He took her to the section of the gardens where there were shows and jugglers and acrobats. And something of the strain between them seemed to lessen as they stood there together and watched. Her grip even tightened a little as she watched with fascination a man who could swallow the blade of a sword. And when that display was done, he moved on, wanting to show her all there was to see.

There were jesters and gypsy women selling lucky white heather and offering to read their fortunes.

Near to the supper booths a group of musicians were playing, filling the surrounding gardens with the sweetness of their music. An area close by was ringed with tables and chairs in the middle of which a wooden dance floor had been laid down upon the grassy surface.

‘Shall we dance?’ He realised that he wanted to dance with her, to hold her close in his arms, very much.

She touched a hand against her mask, in the same gesture she had used that very first night in Mrs Silver’s drawing room.

‘No one will recognise you,’ he reassured her and slid the dark voluminous hood down to reveal the glory of her hair. ‘Even like this. Trust me.’

She looked up at him and nodded, and again Dominic felt something he thought to have long been destroyed stir in his heart.

‘It is so long since I danced,’ she said and there was uncertainty in her eyes as she glanced at the dance floor where other couples were moving together in each other’s arms. ‘And I have never waltzed.’

‘Just relax and follow my lead.’ He offered his hand for hers.

She looked at him and it seemed to Dominic as if she were making some pivotal decision in that moment, not merely deciding whether she would dance with him. Then, without saying a word, she placed her hand in his and let him lead her out on to the dance floor.

Arabella gave herself into Dominic’s arms and waltzed with him. There was something soothing about the moonlight and the lilt of the music and the sway of their bodies in the dance. He was holding her scandalously close, so close that the fall of his breeches brushed against her skirts, so close that his heart beat against her breast. But this was Vauxhall and every other couple was dancing just as intimately.

He was looking at her with those dark soulful eyes just as he had looked at her all those years ago. Whether it was the music or the moonlight or just plain madness, in that moment she let herself forget, and just felt—the music, her heartbeat … and him.

When the music stopped, he led her from the floor towards the buffet of food laid out upon the tables. There were fresh bread rolls and ham sliced fine and thin, and a selection of fruit perfect for the eating.

He fetched them two glasses of punch and filled two plates with a selection of food to tempt her and found them a small table in a spot that was not so crowded. He made a little conversation, polite pleasant words, nothing that touched near anything that was sensitive for them both. Something of her fears for the evening faded.

Afterwards they watched some boats, miniature replicas of the great Lord Nelson’s, being sailed down the river, and then there were the fireworks, a burst of rainbow lights that exploded to shower the dark canvas of the sky. And she wished that Archie and her mother could see the spectacle.

Dominic was standing behind her, both of their necks craned back as they stared up at the sky. He bent his head forwards and said something to her, but the explosions all around were so loud that she could not hear. He stepped closer, easing her back against him so that he could whisper in her ear.

But she still could not make out his words, so she turned in his arms and all of a sudden she was looking into his face and he was looking into hers. And she could see the flash of the firework bursts reflected in the darkness of his eyes. But she was no longer thinking of the fireworks, and neither was he. They stared at one another. Alone in the crowd. Silent and serious in the midst of the riotous carnival.

‘Arlesford?’ The voice smashed the moment apart like a cannon. ‘Your Grace, I thought it was you.’

Dominic turned, shifting his stance to manoeuvre Arabella slightly behind him so that he was partly shielding her with his body. ‘Misbourne,’ he said in his usual emotionless voice and faced the man.

Lord Misbourne was dressed in a domino the like of Arabella’s and even wore a mask across his eyes. But there could be no doubt over the owner of the face that was beneath it, with its curled grey moustache and neatly trimmed beard. Misbourne’s arm was curled around the waist of a woman young enough to be his daughter and whose large breasts were in danger of imminent escape from her bodice. The girl cast Dominic a libidinous glance and licked her tongue suggestively around her lips before taking a sip of punch from the glass she was carrying.

Misbourne did not notice; he was too busy staring at Arabella. ‘Gentlemen must have their little distractions, Arlesford,’ he said. ‘Nothing wrong with that—as long as they are discreet, of course.’ And Dominic understood the message that Misbourne was trying to send him—that his having a mistress would be no barrier to courting Misbourne’s daughter.

The earl leered at Arabella and Dominic felt his fists bunch in response. He forced himself to stay calm. Brawling with Misbourne would only draw the wrong kind of attention to her.

‘If you will excuse us, sir. We were just leaving.’

‘But not before you have introduced me to your lady friend. Could this be the delectable Miss Noir about whom I have heard so many whispers?’ He peered around Dominic at Arabella.

Dominic felt the rage flow through his blood. He could smell it in his nose and taste it upon his tongue. Every muscle was primed and ready. Every nerve stretched taut. His loathing of Misbourne flooded him so that he would have knocked the man down had he not felt Arabella’s fingers touch his arm in the gentlest of restraints. Only then did he recollect his senses.

‘Goodnight, Misbourne,’ he said in a tone that brooked no refusal, and when he looked at the man’s beady, glittering dark eyes behind his mask he saw that Misbourne understood. The older man took an involuntary step back from the threat.

Dominic took Arabella’s arm in his and he was so grateful that she had stopped him.

She did not utter one question, nor throw so much as a glance in Misbourne’s direction. She just held her head up and waited.

They walked away together, away from Misbourne and the fireworks. Away from Vauxhall and the wonderful night.

***

The carriage wheels were rumbling along the road carrying them back to Curzon Street and still Dominic had not spoken.

Arabella could sense the tension emanating from him, the echo of the anger she had seen directed against the man, Misbourne, in Vauxhall. All illusions had vanished the moment Misbourne and the woman had appeared.

‘Does everyone know that you bought me from Mrs Silver?’ The words would not be contained for a minute longer.

The carriage rolled past a street lamp and in the brief flicker of light she saw his face through the darkness—handsome, hard edged, dangerous—before the night’s darkness hid him again.

‘How naïve of me not to have realised.’ She shook her head and looked away, feeling sick at the thought. ‘What else do they know, Dominic?’ What else have you told them? she wanted to ask.

‘Nothing, I hope. I paid Mrs Silver very well for her silence. And I trust my friends, who were with me that night, enough to make no mention of Miss Noir.’

‘You did not tell them?’

‘Of course I did not tell them, Arabella! My affairs are my own, not tittle-tattle for the amusement of others.’ His voice was hard and angry. ‘Do you think I would have gone to such lengths to hide you were it otherwise?’

‘You guard your own reputation well.’ This was all about protecting himself. How foolish to think it could ever have been about her.

‘I am guarding what is left of yours,’ he said grimly. Then his tone softened slightly. ‘I am not unaware of the … sensitivity of this issue.’

She looked across at the shadowed man through the darkness and was not sure she believed him.

‘Of what it would mean to your mother were she to learn the truth.’

‘God forbid …’ Arabella pressed a hand to her forehead, horrified at the prospect of that revelation, even if it were something rather different to that which Dominic envisaged. But even as she thought it she was wondering why Dominic should have the slightest care over her mother.

‘They may know of Miss Noir, but they do not know the identity of the woman behind her mask.’

Yet.

The word hung unspoken between them.

‘You may rest assured that I will do all in my power to keep it that way.’

She stared at him, not knowing what to make of his attitude.

‘I will make discreet enquiries over—’

‘No,’ she said too quickly. If he started asking questions, who knew what he would discover. Everything that Arabella had striven so hard to hide. ‘No,’ she said more gently. ‘Words already spoken cannot be unsaid. Asking questions will only make it worse. Besides—’ she glanced away ‘—you are a duke; there will always be an interest in your dealings. And the lure of a coin will mean there are always tongues to be loosened.’

And she could not blame them. She of all people knew what it was like to be poor and in desperate need of money.

‘Perhaps, but speed and generosity has always worked in the past to silence them,’ he said.

‘But not this time.’

‘Seemingly not.’

There was a small silence.

‘Thank you for trying.’ Her words were stilted. Gratitude sat ill with her when it came to Dominic, but for all that she felt she knew how much worse it could be, had he taken her as his mistress as carelessly as he had abandoned her as his betrothed.

The carriage wheels rolled on.

She steered the conversation to safer ground. ‘Who was he, the man in Vauxhall? Misbourne.’ The man who had stirred in Dominic such barely leashed fury.

There was a small pause before Dominic answered, ‘A delusional old fool, Arabella, but not one you need have a worry over.’

Another pause.

‘I thank you that you stayed my arm,’ he said. ‘Brawling with an earl at Vauxhall would not have been conducive to our maintaining a low profile.’

She gave a nod of acknowledgement. And she wondered as to this man who she knew to be a rake and a scoundrel. A man who had made her his whore, yet did not flaunt or humiliate her publically. A man who went to such pains to preserve her privacy and who, it seemed, had a care for her mother’s sensibilities.

The carriage came to a stop outside Curzon Street.

The hour was late. She did not know whether he would come in. Whether he would kiss her. Bed her. And she was not sure if she dreaded it or wanted it. Nervous anticipation tingled right through her.

He helped her from the carriage and into the hallway, dismissing James the young footman who was acting as the night porter.

Only two wall sconces were lit and the soft shadowed lighting lent the hallway an unusual intimacy. Or maybe it was the fact that they were standing there alone in the middle of the night facing one another.

Arabella did not know what she should say. She could feel the tension between them, feel the speed of her heart. Her mouth was dry from dread, her thighs hot from desire. She swallowed and it sounded loud in the silence.

‘You need not worry, Arabella, I am not staying,’ he said in a voice as dark and rich as chocolate. ‘I came only to see you safely inside.’ As if to reinforce his words she could hear the sound of the waiting carriage from the street outside.

In the flickering of the candlelight she thought he had never looked so dangerous or so handsome. There was a hardness to his face that had not been there all those years ago, but when she looked into his eyes, those dark velvet brown eyes, Arabella saw something of tenderness. And for all that she should have known better, for all of her common sense, she felt the stirrings of old feelings that she had thought never to feel again. There was such an allure of forbidden attraction that the atmosphere sparked with it.

Her breath was shallow and fast, her stomach a mass of fluttering butterflies. ‘This arrangement between us. I thought that you would … That it would be different between us …’ She met his gaze. ‘I do not understand.’

‘Neither do I, Arabella,’ he said.

Her heart was thudding so hard she thought she could hear it in the silence.

He peeled off his gloves and came to stand before her.

They stared at one another for one beat of her heart and then another. And then he reached out his hand and touched his fingers to her cheek, caressing her face in a mirror of her own actions from an evening not so long ago. His touch was more gentle than she remembered, soft as the stirring of warm breath upon her skin. His movement was unhurried and sensual as he traced the outline of her cheek and up across her eyebrow.

He touched only her face yet every inch of her body tingled in response. He trailed his forefinger down the slope of her nose, and her breasts felt heavy and sensitive. His thumb brushed against her lower lip and the sensation was as if he had stroked between her legs. She gasped and opened to him so that his thumb probed within the moisture of her mouth. Her lips touched to him, not because she was his mistress but because it felt instinctive and right.

‘Arabella,’ he whispered and there was something agonised and urgent in his whisper. And then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

Arabella kissed him back, their mouths moving in hungry reunion. She felt his hands upon her breasts, upon her hips. Their bodies clinging together, as if nothing of the pain had ever been.

She felt the press of his manhood against her, felt the heat of him, the need in him, and, God help her, but she wanted him too. Her thighs burned. She was moist for him. Her body recognised his and opened as if in invitation. And her heart began to open to him too, just as it had done all those years ago. And suddenly she was afraid, afraid of where this was leading, afraid of what she was feeling.

Dominic seemed to sense the sudden swirl in her emotions. He stopped, raised his head and looked into her eyes and she saw in them a desire and confusion that matched her own.

‘No,’ he whispered, but did not release her. ‘No,’ he said again and she knew that it was himself he was denying more than her. His breathing was ragged and she could feel the taut strain in every hard muscle of his body. She could sense his hunger, and yet there was a sudden wariness in his eyes, a restraint almost. She felt his grip loosen. He released her and left; there was only the sound of the front door clicking shut behind him.

Arabella stood there until the sound of his carriage faded into the distance and she touched trembling fingers to her swollen lips, not understanding how she could feel such attraction for a man whom she disliked and did not trust. He had hurt her in the past. He was humiliating her in the present. She knew all of that, yet tonight he had made her forget. He seemed too like the man she had fallen in love with. When she was with him, when he touched her, when he kissed her …

She clutched her hand harder to her mouth and closed her eyes against the memory, feeling confused and ashamed that he could still affect her so and not knowing what was wrong with her. How could she, who was so strong when it came to everything else, be so weak when it came to Dominic Furneaux?

But Arabella knew that she must not give in. Once it had only been her heart and her pride that he had taken. Now there was so much more at stake than that. She glanced upstairs towards the chamber where her mother and son slept and knew she must stay strong.

Chapter Eight

The night was not going well for Dominic in the gaming den.

He looked at the cards in his hands and, despite all his resolutions, thought again of Arabella. Two nights had passed since the night of the masquerade. Only two nights and in that time he had thought of little else.

‘Arlesford,’ Hunter prompted by his side, and he realised that everyone at the table was waiting for him. He shoved some more guineas into the pile at the centre of the table.

And, contrary to his usual play, promptly lost them. Indeed, he had not won a game since entering the seedy surroundings, much to the delight of the rather rough-and-ready patrons of the establishment. But then Dominic knew he was more than a little distracted.

It was a small tavern in the East End, most of the patrons of which looked like men you would not wish to meet on a dark night. Their clothing was coarse, their language too. The gin and beer flowed freely, in the hope of addling the wits of those that were fool enough to come here.

It was, surprisingly enough, the very latest place to be seen for Gentlemen of the ton. Although, Dominic thought wryly, those young fops that ventured in here would soon realise they had bitten off more than they could chew. Young Northcote had ignored all of Dominic’s warnings and was now grinning to hide his nervousness and both drinking and betting more deeply than was wise. The boy was ill at ease in the surroundings, even if he did not want to admit any such thing; it had, after all, been his idea to come here.

Did she wonder as to his absence? Did he gnaw in her thoughts as she gnawed in his? Did she feel this same craving that plagued him night and day? He doubted it. To women like Arabella, their arrangement was nothing more than business. To women like Arabella … He caught the phrase back, and thought bitterly that there were no other women like Arabella.

He stared across the room, seeing not the overly warm, smoky den with its scored tables and rickety chairs and the men with their blackened teeth and their stubble-roughened faces, but the woman whose image had haunted him through the years.

The cards had been dealt. Again.

He lost. Again. And saw the way young Northcote’s eyes widened with fear as the youngster realised the extent of his own loses even at this early hour.

Dominic ached for Arabella, wanted her with a compulsion that bordered on obsession, but each time he touched her it was both ecstasy and torture. When he took her in his arms he felt the wound inside him tear afresh.

She was Arabella Tatton, the woman he had loved, the woman who had so callously trampled the youthful tenderness from his heart. And he could not separate that knowledge from his body’s craving for her. There would never be anything of relief. Yet he needed to be with her more with every passing minute. Even knowing that he could not touch her, even knowing the torture would be greater with her than without, he could not fight this growing addiction.

Dominic pushed his chair back, its battered legs scraping tracks through the sawdust that covered the floor.

‘I think I will call it a night,’ he said to the others and gestured for his hat and gloves to be brought.

Several faces looked up, surprise soon turning to menace.

Even Bullford seemed caught unawares. ‘A tad early for you, Arlesford.’

‘Certainly is, your Grace,’ said a large ruffian employed by the establishment. ‘Stay, see if you can win back them golden guineas that you’ve lost.’

‘Perhaps another night, gentlemen,’ he said.

The men did not look pleased, but Dominic met their gaze directly, knowing that he could handle himself against them. They looked back but only for a moment, then deliberately moved their attention elsewhere.

Hunter stood by his side.

‘Best not leave Northcote here. They will only chew him up all the more and spit him out afterwards,’ he said quietly to Hunter.

So the two of them guided Northcote out into the street.

After the haze of cigar and pipe smoke within the den the clear chilled night air seemed to hit Northcote so hard that the boy staggered.

Dominic hailed a hackney carriage and helped Hunter manoeuvre Northcote into it.

‘You are not coming with us?’ Hunter asked.

Dominic met his friend’s eyes. An unspoken understanding passed between them.

‘You do not have your cane with you tonight,’ said Hunter.

Dominic said nothing, just looked at his friend resolutely.

Hunter gave a sigh. ‘Very well. Just have a care if you are so intent on walking to her,’ said Hunter. ‘The coves back there were not too keen to let you go. It is only a little after midnight and they had hoped to fleece you for hours yet. Watch your back, Dominic.’

‘I will.’ Dominic clapped Hunter on the shoulder and watched the carriage depart before he turned and began to walk in the opposite direction.

He had not gone far when he became aware that he was being followed. He scanned the street, seeing that one of the lamp-posts was out a little further along, just at an opening between the buildings. A nice dark spot and a conveniently positioned alleyway. He knew that was where they would attack him.

They struck just where he had expected. Two attackers, one large and burly, the other smaller with no teeth in his head. He recognised them both from the gaming den.

He dodged back into the alley to avoid the first punch.

‘Not so fast, your Grace,’ a coarse voice said so close to his ear that he could smell the foulness and feel the heat of the fetid breath. A fist swiped close to his face. Dominic ducked and retaliated with a blow hard and low in the belly and had the satisfaction of hearing the man grunt and stumble away clutching at his guts as he bent double and retched against the alley wall. As he turned the second assailant was almost upon him. Dominic twisted to avoid the blow arcing towards him, and managed to avoid the blade—almost. The sting of it sliced across his ribs.

Dominic grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted. He heard the soft crack of bone and the yelp of pain as the man fell to his knees cradling his wrist. The knife clattered to land in the wet and filth of the cobblestones below. Dominic picked it up, and then grabbed the kneeling man’s hair, jerking his head back and touching the edge of the blade against the exposed throat.

‘See that the same does not happen to my friends. Do you understand?’

The man croaked a desperate acquiescence.

Dominic pushed the man away, then walked to face the man cringing against the wall, touching the knife’s tip ever so lightly against the fat of the villain’s belly.

‘You too.’

‘They won’t be harmed, I’ll see to it personally, your Grace,’ the rogue promised.

Dominic stared at him for just a moment longer and then he slipped the knife into his pocket and walked away.

The ruffians were kicking at the door, laying siege to it with a hammer. The thuds of the splintering wood reverberated right through Arabella’s body. She protected Archie with her body, but the men pulled her aside and wrenched the golden locket from around her neck. And when she looked across the road to the other side of the street where the narrow houses with their boarded windows should have stood, she saw the park and her mother standing waiting there. It was all mixed up and wrong, of course, but Arabella did not notice that in her nightmare.

She woke suddenly, with that same panicked feeling of fear in the pit of her stomach. But the sky was still dark with night, and she remembered that this was Curzon Street and there were no robbers and thieves here. She breathed her relief and relaxed her head back down on to the luxury of a soft feather pillow, and as she did she heard a voice cry out in shock. The cry was cut off as if abruptly hushed. She heard the low murmur of voices in the hallway below, the quiet opening and closing of a door. Hurried footsteps across the marbled floor tiles of the hallway.

Archie!

Arabella scrambled from the bed and, using only the glowing remains of the fire to guide her, was out of the bedchamber door and running down the stairs.

All of the wall sconces in the hallway had been lit. A maid, clad in her nightdress and robe, was coming out of the library with a bottle of brandy in her hand.

‘Anne?’

‘Oh, ma’am!’ The girl jumped and spun round and Arabella could see that her face was wet with tears.

‘What is wrong? What are you doing?’ The fear was squirming in Arabella’s stomach.

‘I got such a fright when I saw him.’ The maid’s face crumpled and she began to sob again.

‘What has happened, Anne?’

The drawing door opened and James the footman appeared. ‘What on earth is taking you, girl? I would have been quicker fetching it myself.’ And then he saw Arabella, and gave a quick bow. ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am. I did not see you there.’

‘What on earth is going on here?’ Arabella demanded.

‘It’s the master, ma’am.’

‘Dominic is here?’ The thought had not even entered her head. Even though it was his house. And she was his mistress.

‘His Grace has had a bit of an … accident.’

‘An accident?’ Arabella’s stomach dropped to the soles of her feet. Her heart was thumping a fast frenzied tattoo of dread.

The footman lowered his voice even more. ‘Not the best of sights for a lady to see, but he won’t let me fetch a doctor, ma’am.’

A chill of foreboding shivered right through her. She pushed past James into the drawing room.

Three branches of candles had been lit, yet still their warm flickering glow did not reach to the shadows of the room, nor barely touched the tall dark figure that stood near to the cold fireplace. He had his back to her, but he appeared to be as he ever was, smartly dressed in dark tailcoat and pantaloons, with the air of authority and arrogance that he carried with him. He seemed well enough. She could smell the damp night air that emanated from his still figure. One hand hung loose by his side, the other looked to be tucked into the inner breast pocket of his tailcoat.

‘I should not have come,’ he said without looking round. ‘I had not realised that the hour was so late.’

‘James said you met with an accident.’

‘James exaggerates. I did not mean to wake you. You should go back to bed.’ Still he did not move. And the apprehension that had faded on her first sight of him was back as if it had never left.

‘What has happened, Dominic?’ she asked carefully.

He turned then, and still nothing appeared out of place, except that his right hand remained tucked beneath the left breast of his tailcoat.

‘A minor altercation. Nothing of concern. As I said, go back to bed.’

And then she caught sight of the dark ominous stains upon the white cuff that protruded beneath the dark woollen sleeve of his coat and, lifting the closest candelabrum, she walked towards him.

‘Arabella,’ he said, holding out his exposed hand as if to stay her. But she kept on closing the distance between them, for she had a horrible fear of just what those stains were.

‘This is not for your eyes.’

She felt sick to the pit of her stomach. Her body felt stiff and heavy with dread. ‘Take off your coat.’

‘Arabella …’ One last warning.

She ignored him and took hold of his lapel, pulling back the left breast of his tailcoat.

She gasped at the sight that met her eyes. His white shirt and waistcoat were sodden with blood. She froze, and in that single moment everything changed in her world.

‘Dominic!’ she whispered.

His hand took hers, his grip strong and reassuring. But she felt that it was wet and when she looked she could see the blood that stained it glisten in the candlelight.

‘Oh, my God!’

‘It is but a scratch that bleeds too much.’

But there was blood everywhere, and all of it was his.

‘Go. James will help me.’

She took a deep breath and raised her gaze to his. Their eyes held for a fraction of a second, a heartbeat in which everything she had told herself she felt about him these years past was revealed as a lie.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I will help you.’ And then she glanced round at the footman and prepared to do what she knew must be done.

Dominic watched as Arabella shifted from shock to take charge of the situation. She sent the maid for clean linen and a glass, and instructed the footman with equal calm proficiency, directing James to help divest him of his upper clothing while she half-filled the glass with brandy.

Only once he sat on the sofa wearing only his pantaloons did she pass him the glass. ‘Drink it.’ Her voice was calm, but brooked no refusal.

He did not argue, just did as she directed, downing the contents in one go.

As he drank she rolled up the sleeves of her nightgown, tore a strip off the linen and dowsed both it and her hands in brandy.

Then she sat down by his side, eased him back a little against the sofa.

Her gaze met his. ‘This is going to sting,’ she warned. And her eyes held a concern that Dominic had never thought to see there again. It touched his heart much more than he could ever have imagined.

‘Do your worst,’ he murmured.

He could not prevent himself flinching from the initial touch of the brandy to the wound and saw the pain mirrored in Arabella’s eyes. Yet she did not hesitate, or weaken from her purpose.

Her touch was gentle, her movements reassuring. She worked methodically and with a calmness that seemed to stroke away his tension despite the pain. With strip by patient strip of brandy-soaked linen she cleansed the blood away until all that remained was a thin red line against the paleness of his skin.

‘We should send for the doctor. He may wish to stitch the wound.’ She had not looked at him, not once, since she had taken control of the situation.

‘No doctor,’ he said. ‘The cut is shallow. A week of binding and the skin will knit together well enough.’

‘Dominic—’

‘No doctor,’ he said again.

‘Very well.’ She laid a pad of linen against the wound, then bound it in place. And then she got to her feet, passed the tray of bloodied rags to James.

‘Thank you, James, Anne. You may leave us now.’

She waited until the door closed behind the servants before she sat back down. Side by side they sat on the sofa. Not looking at one another. Not speaking a word. The tension was still between them. But it was different somehow, as if some barrier that had been there before had given way.

The silence seemed to stretch between them.

He slipped his hand to cover hers.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened tonight?’ she asked.

‘A small disagreement with two gentlemen from a gaming den.’

‘I did not know you frequented such places.’

‘There is a lot you do not know about me, Arabella.’

‘And too much that I do know,’ she said quietly. ‘I cannot forget …’

‘Nor can I.’

The clock’s ticking seemed too loud. It seemed to match the beat of his heart.

‘It was not supposed to be like this, Arabella.’

‘None of it was supposed to be like this,’ she said and he heard the huskiness in her voice.

‘Arabella.’ He looked at her, willing her to look round at him.

She shook her head at first, but he could hear the slight sob in her breath. He stroked his thumb against her fingers where his hand covered hers.

She turned her face to his, then met his gaze, and the emotions he saw there were as raw and aching as those that beat in his own heart.

‘Dominic,’ she whispered and the tears spilled from her eyes. He took her in his arms and he kissed each one away and then he held her.

He held her and the minutes passed.

He held her. And then as if by some silent communion they both rose. He blew out all save one branch of candles, then he took her hand in his and together they walked out of the drawing room.

Chapter Nine

Within her bedchamber they spoke not one word. Dominic stripped off his pantaloons, while Arabella unfastened the ties of her nightdress and loosened it so that it slid down her body to lie in a white pool around her feet.

The candles flickered upon the nightstand, so that she could see him standing there naked. His body as tall and strong and well muscled as she remembered. A sprinkling of dark hair covered his chest and narrowed to a line that led down to his manhood. His skin glowed a honey gold in the candles’ light, the whiteness of the linen bandage stark against the rest of him.

There was no need for words. She sensed his feelings as keenly as her own. She wanted him. And needed him. Not out of lust. Not even out of desire. The need ran at a much deeper level than that, in a place that touched both her heart and her soul. She did not analyse the feeling. Nor did she think about the past.

Arabella knew only this moment. Dominic was alive. And that, had a blade pressed a little harder this night, he would not be.

She placed her palm upon his chest over his heart and felt its strong steady beat. Beneath her fingers she could feel the roughness of his chest hair and in her nose was the scent of brandy and cigar smoke mingled with Dominic’s cologne.

He threaded a hand through her hair at the scalp, angling her head so that he could look into her eyes.

She did not look away. She did not try to hide anything. They looked at each other with an honesty that belonged only to that moment. His eyes were deep and dark and sensuous and in them was a vulnerability that she had never ever thought to see.

Slowly he lowered his mouth to hers. Their lips touched, the kiss small and gentle. And touched again, before stilling so that their lips rested together, not kissing, but sharing their breath. She slid her hands up from his chest, to dip her fingers into the hollow between his collar bones, before spreading out to slide across the tense hard muscle of his shoulders. Their faces were so close she could feel the brush of his eyelashes every time he blinked.

His free hand followed down the line of her arm to capture her hand in his, hooking both their hands against the small of her back to arch her body all the closer into his. His chest was hard as a rock, the hair that covered it rough against her nipples. Her breasts felt heavy and sensitive, and deep in her belly was a heat that had never expired. She could feel the call of his body and the answer of her own. Just as it ever was, except this time it was different. She could feel the difference. And she knew that he could feel it too.

He bit gently at her lower lip, then salved the nip with his tongue. She tasted him, opened to him, felt his tongue accept the invitation as his lips slid against her own. They kissed. A deep sensual coupling of their mouths. A sharing of such intimacy and tenderness. They kissed and his every breath, every stroke of his tongue, every touch of his lips was a caress of her soul.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, drawing her in so that she was standing straddling his thigh. He kissed her again, then trailed his mouth down over her neck, his breath hot, his tongue tasting her. His hands caressed her breasts, weighing them, stroking skin that was sensitive to his touch, teasing at peaks that were already beaded hard. His hands stilled, his thumbs resting lightly on her nipples, as his gaze slid up to hers. And then, keeping his eyes locked on hers, he shifted one thumb aside and leaned his mouth down to take her nipple into his mouth.

He did not suckle. He did not even move his lips, but his breath was hot and moist against her. He was still watching her when his tongue began to flick against the tender swollen bud. A low soft moan escaped Arabella. She arched her back, driving her breast harder against his mouth. He began to kiss her nipple, to suck it, while his thumb and fingers worked upon the other. When she felt the gentle scrape of his teeth, she clutched that dark head to her, watching his mouth work thoroughly against first one breast and then the other.

His hands found her hips and drew them lower so that she felt the tease of the hairs on his broad muscular thigh against the hot wet centre of her womanhood. Her grip shifted to his shoulders and tightened as he rubbed his thigh gently against her. Arabella moaned again and slid higher up his thigh, until she could feel the probe of his manhood against her hip.

They stilled, his mouth coming back to find hers. And when he rolled her on to the bed their bodies clung together. He lay on his uninjured side, clutching her to him. And she could feel the raggedness of his breathing and the race of his heart as they positioned their legs to minimise the strain on his wound. And when at last she welcomed him into her body it had never felt so right. There was no dominant, no submissive. Nothing of taking, only of sharing. They moved together in a partnership, both rejoicing in their union and striving to the same end.

They loved, for there could be no other word for it. And Arabella was only aware of the moment and the man. Dominic filled her senses. Dominic filled her body.

‘Dominic,’ she gasped as she exploded into a thousand shards of shimmering pleasure.

‘Arabella,’ he groaned and she felt the warmth of his seed spill within her.

They lay in each other’s arms, feeling the pulse of their bodies and the beat of their hearts.

And eventually they slept.

Dominic came every night to Curzon Street after that. And every night they made love. Arabella was no longer fool enough to believe that she could fight against the mire of complex emotions that she felt for Dominic. Since the night he had come to the house covered in blood she had known that much as she hated what he had done to her, she did not hate him. Indeed, there was a part of her that knew they would always be bound together, and not just through Archie. If Arabella had allowed herself to think too much of her situation it would have been unbearable.

She knew what she was—his mistress, a woman he had bought from a brothel.

And she knew what he was—a man who had betrayed her and ruined her life.

And she knew, too, that contrary to everything that she should feel she still cared for him.

Arabella did not want to think what that said about her. Or what it implied about Dominic.

Dominic watched Hunter as the other man pulled up the tails of his coat and stood with his back before the warm flame of the fire. There was only the slow steady tick of the clock on the mantelpiece and the soft sounds of the flames upon the coals.

‘I am sure I saw Arabella Tatton coming out of an apothecary shop in Bond Street the other day.’ Hunter’s voice was steady and he was watching Dominic.

‘Did you?’ Dominic’s heart picked up some speed but he feigned indifference.

‘She was carrying her gloves … and she was not wearing a wedding ring.’

‘Really?’ Dominic pretended to examine his nails.

‘And she asked her coachman to take her home to Curzon Street.’ Hunter shifted his stance and Dominic could smell hot wool.

Silence.

‘It all begins to make sense. Why you are so very protective of Miss Noir’s identity. Why you have been so intent on keeping her hidden from view. Not one party. Not one ball, save Prinny’s masked carnival at Vauxhall, so I hear. Hardly your normal treatment of a woman … unless there is something of her identity that you wish to conceal.’

Still Dominic said nothing, but he felt his body tense as if in preparation for a fight. He thought of the tenderness of their lovemaking. And he wanted to protect her, even from Hunter.

‘It is her, is it not?’

‘You are mistaken, Hunter,’ he said and the look in his eyes bellowed the warning that his words only whispered at.

‘Hell’s teeth, Dominic! I am not a fool. I know that Arabella is Miss Noir.’

Dominic did not remember moving, but the next he knew he was two inches in front of Hunter’s face, staring down at him as if he would like to rip him limb from limb.

Hunter shook his head and met his gaze. ‘Do you honestly think I would breathe one word of this outside of this room? Your secret is safe with me.’

Dominic knew that it was, but it did not make him feel any better.

‘I think I am in need of a drink,’ said Hunter weakly and ducked under Dominic’s arm to stroll across the library and pour them both a large brandy. He passed one glass to Dominic and took several swigs from the other himself. ‘I hope you know what you are doing.’

Dominic took a sip of brandy. ‘Everything is under control.’

‘Is it?’ asked Hunter and the look on his face said that he did not believe it. ‘Have you forgotten what she did to you?’

‘I have not forgotten.’ Nothing of the pain.

‘Then this is some kind of revenge?’

Dominic set his glass down upon the mantelpiece with a thud that threatened to fracture the crystal stem. ‘Hell, Sebastian, what kind of man do you take me for? I found her in Mrs Silver’s that night! What did you expect me to do? Walk away and leave her there?’ he shouted.

‘After breaking your betrothal to run off and marry some other man? Yes. That is exactly what I would have done.’ Hunter shook his head again. ‘I thought you were over her. I thought you had learned your lesson from her. Lord, but she made a damn fool of you!’ Hunter peered closer at Dominic’s face. ‘But you still want her,’ he said slowly as if the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place to reveal the answer.

‘Yes, I want her,’ admitted Dominic. ‘I have never stopped wanting her. Any sane man would. I do not have to like her to bed her.’

Hunter was still looking at him. ‘Were that true you would not give a damn who knew she is your mistress. The shame would be on her, Dominic, not on you. No, there is more to it than that.’ His eyes narrowed with speculation.

‘Leave it alone, Sebastian,’ Dominic warned.

But Hunter never could take a warning. ‘You still care for her,’ he said quietly.

The glass within Dominic’s hand shattered, sending the splinters of glass flying across the mantelpiece and spilling the brandy to pool with the blood, but Dominic felt nothing of the pain.

Hunter pulled a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and appeared by his side. First he checked there were no glass fragments in Dominic’s hand, then used the handkerchief as a bandage to staunch the bleeding. He eyed Dominic with concern. ‘This is worse than I thought,’ he said, and Dominic knew Hunter was not referring to the cut upon his hand. ‘You do not want me to, but I will say it anyway. You are making a mistake with her, Dominic.’

‘Be that as it may, I will not give her up,’ said Dominic; he knew he sounded stubborn and bad tempered and that he should relax and pretend that she did not matter to him in the slightest.

‘I did not think that you would,’ replied Hunter quietly. ‘You do care for her, Dominic.’

‘I care only that she warms my bed,’ said Dominic and knew that he was not fooling Hunter for a minute, yet his pride would not let him admit the truth. He did not think he even understood himself what the truth was any more.

He tensed against any more of Hunter’s questions, but his friend let the matter drop, clapping a hand of support against Dominic’s shoulder. ‘I think you are in need of another brandy.’

‘It is just an arrangement for sex,’ he insisted. Except Dominic knew that he was lying. Even Hunter knew he was lying. There were other aspects to what was between Arabella and him that he did not wish to think about. Depths he had not yet come to terms with. ‘I know what I am doing, Sebastian.’

‘I hope so, Dominic.’ But Hunter did not look convinced.

A fortnight had passed when Arabella awoke with the sunlight streaming in through a crack in the curtains. The bed was still warm from Dominic’s presence although he had left before dawn, as he did every morning. Whatever else Dominic was, at least he was discreet.

From the chamber above she heard the scurry of little footsteps. Archie. She smiled as she pulled on her dressing gown and went to find her son and her mother.

‘You two slugabeds had best get yourselves up and readied, for today we are going out.’

‘Is that such a good idea?’ Mrs Tatton glanced round at her in surprise.

‘I have heard tell of a wonderful new apothecary in Oxford Street who can mix the best of liniments for the joints. Besides, we have not been out of the house since our outing to the park and such confinement is not good for Archie, or for you. The weather is fine and an outing will do us all good.’

‘What if we are seen by your gentleman while we are out?’ said Mrs Tatton.

‘We will be very careful. And he hates shopping.’ She doubted Dominic had changed in that respect. ‘I cannot think that we would meet him in the apothecary.’

‘But after that last time, when he almost caught us … My stomach has been sick with nerves.’

‘We will make sure we return here in plenty of time.’ Arabella placed a reassuring hand on her mother’s shoulder. ‘Please come, Mama. I think it would do you good. And I promise you, nothing will go wrong.’ Arabella felt a shiver of foreboding as soon as the words had left her mouth. She turned to her son, and lifted him on to her knee. ‘What say you, Archie? I thought we might visit Gunter’s for some ices before the apothecary.’

‘Oh, can we, Mama?’ His eyes shone with excitement.

She kissed Archie’s cheek and then her mother’s. ‘Chop chop, then,’ she said with a smile.

There really was very little chance of something going wrong, she told herself again and again, but that stubborn feeling of unease sat right there in her stomach and refused to shift.

She would only later learn that the feeling was called instinct and that she should have listened to it.

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