Behind the Courtesan’s Mask (4 page)

“My name is Constance. Constance Millburn. Annalisa—La Perla—was my twin. She died a month ago. I swear she never mentioned this Philip. If she did promise him marriage, she had no intention of going through with it. When she came to me she was already dying.”

“La Perla is dead.” Slowly, too slowly, he was starting to make sense of what she was saying. “So you are not—not a…”

“I'm a country parson's widow. I never had any intention of taking your money. Such vast sums, for heaven's sake, how could you have thought I'd take you seriously?”

“Such vast sums are nothing compared to what you—what La Perla would have extracted from Philip Montague over a lifetime,” Troy replied cynically. “She would have bled him dry. I of all people should know that.”

“What do you mean?”

Troy shrugged. “It is of no consequence.”

“It seems to me,” Constance said sharply, “that you are taking this—this business of yours—most personally. Why?”

“When I was nineteen and green, like Philip Montague, a woman of the same persuasion as your sister led me a merry dance, since you must have it,” Troy replied bitterly. “I thought she loved me. I found she loved only the contents of my purse.”

“Oh.” The unexpected admission squeezed her heart. Constance pressed Troy's hand. “I'm so sorry, that must have been—”

“Devastating. Educational. Life changing,” Troy said dryly.

“What happened?”

He hesitated, but that strange compulsion to explain she provoked in him was upon him again. Troy's smile was twisted. “It is a common-enough tale. Stella Margate. The Incomparable Stella, as she was known. She wasn't just beautiful, she seemed to me the most sophisticated, witty, charming—as I said, I was only nineteen… She flattered my vanity, and granted me untold liberties and I thought myself in love.”

“And were you?” It mattered. She didn't want to think why.

“In thrall, more like, though I think the two are pretty much the same thing,” Troy replied. “Whatever you want to call it, I lost my heart, and my head. I didn't notice her demands upon my purse increasing. I didn't heed my friends' dire warnings until I was deep in debt, and quite unable to raise the readies to pay for Stella's latest demand for yet another diamond necklace.”

“How awful. What happened?”

“With two years to my majority, and a father hale and hearty enough to make the prospect of my inheriting the Ettrick title anytime soon highly improbable, what happened was inevitable. My incomparable mistress divested herself of me with a speed and singular lack of emotion that left me reeling. I'll never forget the way she laughed when I protested that love was worth more than gold. A mere two days it took her before she was flaunting her new protector. Two months it was before I left for the Continent to begin my fledgling diplomatic career far from London and my tormentor. It was the price my shrewd father demanded for the settling of my debts. A worthwhile price and one I have never regretted paying.”

“I see,” Constance said, her heart aching for the shattered illusions of the younger Troy. “When your ambassador asked you to save his son from my sister, it is no wonder then that you did not hesitate.”

“It was my bounden duty to prevent another sharing my fate.”

Constance shook her head. “My sister had no intention of ruining this boy. She had consumption, she knew she was dying. She must have thought to let him down gently.”

“Judging from this house, she had not always been so considerate. This place must have cost a small fortune.”

“I know,” Constance said sadly. “I do not condone it, but at the same time, Annalisa had a very hard life as a child. Our mother was unfortunate in her choice of men, and from the little Annalisa told me—” She broke off with a shudder. “When you are poor, as she was, and you look as she did, can you really blame her? I cannot. I can only thank God that I did not have to make such difficult choices.”

“She profited very well from such choices.”

“She is dead.”

“I'm sorry.” Troy pulled out his own kerchief and dried her eyes for her. “I'm sorry, I did not mean to upset you. When all is said and done, she was your sister, and twins, I believe, are especially close.”

“I never even knew I had a twin until six months ago, although I always thought there was part of me missing,” Constance said wistfully. “It was a relief when Annalisa turned up at my door.”

“How came you to be separated?”

“Our mother wished to spare us the orphanage when our father abandoned her, but she could not afford to keep us both. The couple who adopted me made it a condition that all contact be broken—they did not want me to know they were not my real parents. They never told me in order to protect me, I think. Unlike my poor mama and sister, I led a very respectable life.”

It explained so much. Her innocent kisses. The surprise she seemed to take in her own pleasure. The lack of any art or artifice in her touch. And the something else he had been so unwilling to acknowledge. The rightness when their bodies joined, which he had never felt before. It explained so much, but not all. “But why? I don't understand, why—when you realized that I—what the hell made you act as you did?”

Constance folded the kerchief neatly into smaller and smaller squares. “I don't know. It's complicated.”

Troy laughed. It was a very male sound. Low and throaty. The laugh of a man almost euphoric with relief. She was not La Perla. She was Constance Millburn, the relic of a country vicar and as confused by the whole thing as he was. The first woman in more than fifteen years to make him feel—he didn't know what, but he knew it was something profound. She was no courtesan. Thank God for that!

Though he felt a fleeting sorrow for Philip Montague, he had never actually met the lad. Time would heal his wounds. Perhaps time would also teach him that he'd had a lucky escape. “Try to explain,” he said, taking Constance's hand. “Please, I'd really like to understand.”

She dropped the kerchief onto the table. His hand was warm. So big, it covered hers completely. A shiver of recognition made the hairs on her forearm lift. “I don't know if I can,” she said, coloring, lowering her eyes.

Her hand was cold under his. Her fingers trembled. He saw with sudden clarity that it had meant something to her, as it had to him. It had nothing to do with money. Thank God. “Constance,” Troy said, savoring her name. “Please. Tell me.”

He reached out to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear. The graze of his thumb on her skin sent a spark of fire jolting through her. She felt edgy, as before, only more so. In the bare surroundings of the kitchen, clad in her own clothes, there could be no hiding behind the security of pretense, yet still she felt it. And he felt it too, she could see it in the way his pupils dilated, in the quick intake of his breath. Whatever existed between them may come to nothing, but it deserved the truth.

“As I said, I never knew my sister,” Constance said. “I was raised in the country, and have led a very sheltered life. For nineteen years I was a dutiful daughter. For five I was a dutiful wife. For the last year I have been a chaste widow.”

“You loved him, your husband?” Troy asked curtly.

Constance bowed her head. “No, but I was—I tried to be fond. It was generally thought to be a good match for me. He was almost thirty years older than me, and hoped for an heir.” She bit her lip. “We were not blessed,” she whispered.

She cleared her throat and continued, blushing painfully. “My husband was not a passionate man. I did not know that pleasure such as we—as I—I did not know. Annalisa had hinted, and I was wondering about her life, looking through her things, wearing her pearls, and I confess I found the idea alluring. And then you arrived and I felt as if I had dreamed you up. Don't laugh.”

“I don't feel at all like laughing. I'm flattered.” More than flattered. It was preposterous, but he was immensely gratified. Delighted that he had been in every sense but one her first. Exalting that she had so charmingly confessed her pleasure. And no little aroused. Though that too was preposterous, because he had no intention of doing anything about it. None.

Troy forced himself to let go of her hand, to sit back, to stop breathing in the intoxicating scent of her, to move his knee away from where it was almost touching hers. “How came your sister to track you down after all these years?”

“Our mother had told her before her own death of my existence and subsequent marriage, but I think the contrasts between us were so great Annalisa did not want to embarrass me by making contact. But then after I was widowed, Annalisa found out she was dying—I am so glad she came to me, Troy. I wish she had come earlier. I nursed her. She told me about Mama, and the little she knew of our father. She told me much less of her life here in London. She was a little ashamed, I think. Or maybe she thought I would be. When you arrived, I was trying to imagine what it would have been like. I don't know how it happened. I intended just to play along with you, to see how high a price you would put on me—on my sister—and then I found—I found—I found I could not stop.” Her voice had tailed off into a whisper, but she forced herself to go on, though she was unable to meet his eyes. “It was nothing to do with wanting to be Annalisa, though that is how it started. It was you. And me. Something between us. That is the part I cannot explain.”

“You don't have to. I felt it too. I can't explain it any more than you can, but I could not stop myself either, even though I thought you—your sister—even though I thought you were just stringing me along in order to push me higher, I could not resist you.”

“I wasn't pretending. When we—when I—it wasn't an act, Troy.”

“I knew that, really, though I told myself it was. I wasn't acting either. I was—compelled,” he confessed, surprising himself by doing so. Troy was never dishonest, but he was rarely frank. He smiled. “There is something about you that makes me do things—say things—I would not normally do or say.”

It was the first time she had seen him smile. The first time she had seen his eyes lighten. Her own smile was both generous and innocently sensual. She realized, as it tugged at the corners of her mouth, that she had used it rarely of late. A lightness, breathlessness, such as she felt when galloping over the downs, enveloped her, fueled by the simple relief of having confessed, of having the truth between them. “You're not angry?”

Troy took her hand again, clasping her thin fingers around his own, distracted for a moment by the way two became one so very easily. “No. I don't know what I am,” he said wryly, for yet again the diplomat in him had been subsumed by the man with this unaccountable need to be honest. “I cannot even pretend that I wish you had told me the truth, for then it would not have—we would not have—and I cannot wish that undone,” he admitted.

“Nor I,” Constance whispered.

Her admission thrilled him, making him wish all sorts of impossible things, but he had to leave for Italy in a few days, and he did not want complications, loose ends. This woman was different. Instinctively he knew that a brief affair would not satisfy either of them, though it was all he could offer. He pushed aside the voice that whispered to him that anything was better than nothing, that he would regret walking away. “What will you do now?” Troy asked, hoping and not hoping that she had plans that would decide the matter for him.

“I don't know,” Constance replied. “Sell the house. There are stocks, shares, jewelry, so much I can't imagine what I will do with it all. I don't need it. I don't really want it.”

“Give it to a magdalen then, if you wish to do something apt in your sister's memory.”

“No! Those places, they punish the women who seek refuge there. I cannot condone how Annalisa lived, but there are others, less fortunate, who are forced to make their living in such a way. It is not their fault. Not always.”

“Then found your own more compassionate magdalen.”

“Perhaps. I don't know. I haven't thought about the future.”

He lifted her hand to his lips. “Don't give it all away. Your sister would have wanted you to be comfortable.”

“My twin. A part of me that I still don't really know, will never know.” His lips were warm and soft. Her pulses quickened at his touch.

“Do you look alike?” he asked.

“There is a portrait of her upstairs,” Constance replied. “I can show you if you like.” She led the way up the narrow kitchen stairs. He tried not to look at the swaying movement of her hips under the simple muslin gown, tried not to gaze at the tiny waist, the curve of her back, tried not to remember the way those heavy tresses of rich auburn hair hung down to caress the slope of her bottom. Through the hallway, up the main staircase, images from before flashed through his mind. He tried not to remember, but he could not help it. Her innocence, her frank confession of desire, the knowledge that he and only he had aroused her, had given her pleasure, made it so much more difficult to resist than when he had thought her a professional.

The portrait hung on the wall above the fireplace. La Perla gazed over her shoulder provocatively. Deliberately captivating. The almond eyes were the same. The hair the same. The mouth…

“She is very beautiful, but not as beautiful as you. I mean it,” Troy added, noting her skepticism. “Your mouth is different, softer,” he said, running his thumb over Constance's bottom lip. “And when you smile, you have a dimple just here,” he said, touching her cheek.

She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but his touch was sending shivers up and down her spine, making her pulses race then slow, kindling the embers of the fire in her belly that had not quite died. “She had a fuller figure than I,” she said distractedly. “Her gowns are a little loose on me.”