Pen’s boots hit the floor again as he sat up. Speaking of pleasure. His capricious God had consented to smile on him for once. The most exquisite female-shaped creature he had ever beheld stood at the parlor door.
She wasn’t dressed like a lady of the night. Her petticoat was clean and white, over it a gown of buttermilk muslin trailing vines of red flowers. It was a quaint style, quite outdated, but one that followed a woman’s curves. A delicate lace crossed her bodice, tied at her back. He wanted to unwrap her, like a present.
An absurd cap of lace and silk roses covered curls of a dusty brown, the color of the paths at his favorite hunting property when they had baked in the sunlight on a summer afternoon. Her face was extraordinary. She didn’t have the pasty complexion of a woman who never went about in the sun, rather a healthy glow and the tiniest dusting of freckles along a nose that suggested a personality both strong and pert. Independently the wide thick-lashed eyes, high cheekbones, lush lips, and arrowed jaw were pleasing yet unremarkable, but put together, the effect was mesmerizing.
“Fifty pounds,” Pen blurted.
Her eyes rounded in surprise. They were some shifting, undefined color, the grey-green of the sea on a cloudy morning. Was she worth more? “A night,” he added. He’d pay anything. He wasn’t even going to pretend to negotiate.
Ross raised his thick brows. Pen ignored him, as usual.
“Anight?” Her voice rang clear and fine, trained, the voice of a singer. But her tone held dismay. The lace over her bosom fluttered as she put a hand there. Long, delicate fingers, a fine-boned wrist with an elegant turn. He stared at her hands and imagined them trailing over his skin.
His rough, scarred, contemptible skin. “Not enough? Name your price.”
“I hadn’t arrived at a number, actually. I suppose I ought to have asked Mr. Barlow.”
Who was Barlow? Her flesh broker? Her go between? Pen envied the man who had any hold over her. But she had a proud tilt to her head, that of an independent woman who answered to no one. He’d make her forget Barlow. He’d make her forget everything but her name. What was her name?
“In truth, I’m not certain what the going rate for such things is,” she said.
Pen’s head reeled with a grand, desperate notion. She wasn’t a hedge whore or a public ledger, open to all comers. But a lady of easy virtue nonetheless, perhaps a high flyer or a quality courtesan. Pen wiped his sweating palms on his breeches. He couldn’t afford her. Look at her skin; she wasn’t starving or diseased, nor beaten into submission. Her eyes were clear and steady, if her expression was somewhat baffled, and she smelled like spring. A field of bluebells filled his mind, kissed by a warm sun.
Ah, God.For the first time he understood why a man would go to the trouble of keeping a mistress. So he could have sole access whenever he wished and keep her hidden from the outside world. He swallowed. How could he manage to keep her? Most of the letters on Ross’s blasted table were bills and accounts of some sort, reminders of funds his rotter of a brother had died owing.
“I’m certain we can come to an agreement.” Pen’s voice scratched his throat. Where was the boy with the rum? The tremor was starting again, but the need this time was not for alcohol. He couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted anything that had to do with another person. Wanted closeness. Affection. Approval.
Ah, yes. He’d wanted affection from his mother, approval from his father, company and camaraderie from his brother. And the evil-minded universe had laughed in his face and stretched him out upon the rack. Pen sweated underneath his neckcloth and worked with a finger to loosen it. This woman wouldn’t be withholding, mocking, or cruel. She was warm and soft all over, inside and out.
She blew out a stream of air and Pen stared, arrested by the shape of her anemone-red lips. They would purse in exactly that fashion when he kissed her.
“I don’t suppose you would consider simplygivingit to me,” she said. “Out of charity, you know.”
Givingher—oh, he’d any number of notions of what he could give her. Starting with certain attentive parts of his body. Then the rest, all of him, for eternity.
Now, where had that bacon-brained thought come from? He was going barking mad with her standing there across the plain wooden room, and Ross watching with his infuriatingly bland expression, and all of this keeping her from where she ought to be, which was in his bed, minus her clothes. He mustn’t betoostupid; women blessed with this kind of beauty were unfailingly cunning as well.
“What surety do I have that you wouldn’t come back and demand something after?” he growled.
He stood and stalked nearer, grimacing as his sore muscles protested. He’d been sitting too long. But he couldn’t come off a complete cully, not even to a fine-looking woman. She’d lead him to the cloth market and then later present her bill in the form of a by-blow he was expected to rear. He’d seen it happen to his friends; the Prince of Wales had a dozen such claimants for his paternity, besides the kitlings a certain Mrs. Fitzherbert might be raising in her nest.
“Well.” She blinked, and Pen comprehended for the first time why love-struck young men composed sonnets to their lady’s various features. He could get tangled in her lashes, caught and left to die there, happily. “I expect we would settle on some sort of contract,” she said.
“Contract.” His breath came shallow. This was too close to marriage, commitment. Contracts always cost something. He couldn’t recall his friends ever mentioning they had a formal arrangement with their birds of paradise. They gave her a slip on the shoulder, carte blanche if they were a generous fool, jewels and silks if she performed in a satisfactory manner, and a dismissal when the performance had lost the power to interest them. Notcontracts.
She frowned. Pen sweated. Perhaps expensive courtesans did demand written agreements. She could have anything that was his, but he couldn’t have claims on his incomes or estates. For one thing, he couldn’t support them.
“Ross?” He turned to his worthless secretary. Fortunate he had not removed his annoying self. Perhaps Ross, though born to the yeoman’s class, understood these arrangements better than Pen did. “Draw us up a contract.”
“Delighted, sir.” Without expression, Ross sorted through the stack of papers on the table before him. “I do not believe we have the pleasure of knowing your name, miss?”
“Why, yes,” she said, blurring the words together. Pen strained to identify her accent. West Country, but something more than that? “Gwenllian ap Ewyas.”
Welsh. Pen’s heart lifted, thrilling to the musical sound of her voice. He could afford a Welsh mistress. Everyone knew the country was full of nothing but sheep herders and potato farmers. How a benighted land had produced such a pearl of a woman was a mystery, but he meant to take advantage of this rare stroke of good fortune. She wouldn’t know her own worth, being raised among swine, and she wouldn’t object to the coarser elements of the company he kept. He could show her off at the theater, stroll her through the pleasure gardens, and she’d likely be satisfied with paste jewels and a keeper who didn’t beat her. Hecouldafford her. For a very long time. Perhaps indefinitely.
“And I presume you are here about your interest in the property of St. Sefin’s,” Ross continued in his bland voice.
“Yes.” The word was a whisper. She cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “That’s correct.”
