Claiming the Courtesan (13 page)

A derisive smile curled his expressive mouth. “You’ll be my creature. You’re already my creature.”

Because one craven element of her feared that was true, she drew herself up and glared at him with all the contempt she could muster. “Never.”

He arched one supercilious eyebrow, as if he knew how thin her veneer of recalcitrance was. He probably did.

She went on. “I will never lie down willingly with you. Surely the great Duke of Kylemore has too much pride to pursue a reluctance mistress.”

She meant the words to needle, but his expression remained stony. “The great Duke of Kylemore does what he wants, madam. I’ve withstood three months as the laughingstock of London. I’ve humiliated myself scouring the kingdom for news of you. I’ve brawled with a common yokel. I’ve descended to kidnap. Don’t delude yourself that pride prevents me from any action—
any action
—that achieves my ends. My pride has been in the dust since you left. You’ll find no aid there.”

Despite herself, she felt a flash of unwilling sympathy at the picture he painted. The man she knew in London had been the mirror of the perfect aristocrat—not, perhaps, generally liked but certainly admired, respected, feared, envied.

Losing her had cost him dearly.

Softly, she said, “Kylemore, I’m sorry I left without telling you. That was badly done of me. That last…” She paused. She still quailed to remember his final, furious visit to Kensington and that lunatic marriage proposal. “That last day when you came to call, I should have ex
plained, I should have said good-bye. Then we’d at least have parted amicably.”

He gave a huff of unamused laughter, and the bitter lines on his face deepened. “As if I’d have let you go. We both know I wouldn’t. You knew it then—it’s why you sneaked away.”

She’d taken a step toward him before she realized what she did. “I’ll pay back the money.”

He couldn’t possibly know the sacrifice she was making with the offer, a sacrifice on behalf of not just herself but her sister and brother as well. But she’d spent all day trying to devise some way to break free of this nightmare. If it cost her the fortune she still believed was legally hers, she’d gladly pay.

The Ashtons would manage, she told herself guiltily. She’d see they did.

She pressed on. “If you give me a few days to make arrangements, I’ll return every penny.”

Kylemore whirled on her. Because of her brainless moment of pity, she was close enough for him to clamp his fingers around her upper arms.

“Don’t be a damned fool, woman! It’s not the money. It never was the money, except as a symbol of what you stole.” His grip dug into her arms, and Verity braced herself for a good shaking. But he just held her.

Desperately, she looked up at him, seeking some sign he might relent. But while his face conveyed anguish and turmoil, there wasn’t the slightest hint of hesitation.

She took an unsteady breath. “I stole nothing.”

His fingers flexed against the sleeves of her dress. “You stole yourself. Now I have stolen you back. And I’ll never let you go.”

She gave a broken cry and wrenched free of him. “This is impossible. You must see that.”

“No. It is my will.” He moved after her as though he tracked a wild animal.

She backed away, horrified by how certain he sounded. If she stayed any longer, she might start to think he made sense.

Then she noticed he’d neglected to shut the door behind him when he’d arrived. With frantic speed, she dove for the entrance. A half second too late, he leaped after her. She felt the shift in the air as he lunged to catch her.

But she reached the door first and slammed it after her. She dashed down the staircase and across the entrance hall. She had a fleeting impression of rows of dead animal eyes watching her run past. Then she was tugging at the bolt on the massive front door.

Sobbing, she struggled with the heavy iron latch. The duke was nearly upon her. She heard the approaching thud of his boot heels on the wooden steps.

The door swung open just as he jumped and hit the floor a breath away from her. She flung herself out into the darkness with no clear idea where she went apart from her overwhelming need to escape her pursuer.

A
tangled mass of shrubbery crowded against the side of the house and offered hope of sanctuary. Verity would have made for the woods if she thought she could outrun Kylemore over the open area she needed to cross first. But even in her panic, she knew better.

Skittering on the damp grass, she scrambled into the bushes. Twigs and thorns tore at her hair and dress as she pushed her way toward the center, only stopping when the branches became an impassable barrier.

She huddled into a ball, trying to make herself invisible, although no one outside would be able to see her through the undergrowth and the darkness. She tried without success to control her sawing breath.

He was near. She couldn’t hear him or see him, but the prickling hairs on her skin told her he was watching, waiting for her to betray her position.

“Verity, come out,” he eventually said. As expected, he was very close. “There’s nowhere for you to go.”

He sounded like a reasonable man when he used that coaxing tone. Once, she might have believed that was what he was. No longer.

The gossip was right. All the Kinmurries were mad. The duke’s thirst for revenge threatened to make him the maddest of them all.

She shrank deeper into her hiding place and didn’t answer. A chilly trickle of water ran down her nape, but she didn’t dare move to wipe it away.

“The night will turn cold, and it’s going to rain again.” He hadn’t shifted. Curse him, he must have seen her tunnel her way in.

As if he read her thoughts, he said, “I know just where you are. There’s a hollow at the heart of the shrubbery. I grew up here. There are no secret places for me in this glen. It’s useless trying to escape. There isn’t a nook or cranny or bolthole for miles I haven’t already found and used.”

She supposed he’d played pranks like all children and found hiding places. Strange to imagine him as a little boy. She didn’t think she ever had before. Her momentary distraction ended abruptly when she heard an ominous rustling.

“I’ll come and get you if I have to. Or you can come out of your own volition. But you’re not staying outside.”

As her breathing calmed, the blind fear that had sent her on this pointless flight subsided. And it was a pointless flight, she saw now. Where could she go? It was the middle of the night. She wasn’t dressed for travel. She had no provisions or money. She hadn’t a clue how to get out of the valley.

Kylemore sighed. “All right. I’m coming in.”

“No,” she said tonelessly. “No, wait.” She couldn’t bear the thought of him dragging her out kicking and screaming.

Defeat replaced her earlier crazed fury and she was aware of every snag and scratch on the way out. Wet, muddy and smarting from a hundred small abrasions, she crawled into
the open, but nothing smarted as much as recognizing her stupidity in running away from him like that.

She needed more than hysteria to escape the Duke of Kylemore. Hadn’t she tried to leave him after a year of hardheaded planning? And that had only landed her squarely in her present predicament.

In spite of her chastened obedience to his bidding, she faced him without cowering. “I won’t sleep with you.”

“Yes, you will.”

He reached out and took her arm. The heat of his touch burned through the damp wool of her sleeve and made the blood throb sullenly in her cold flesh. He turned her back toward the doorway and began to walk with her.

His hold was firm without bruising. Why exert his power overtly? He knew as well as she that he’d emerged the victor tonight, however staunchly she stood up to him now.

A great wave of misery swept her as Kylemore led her, outwardly submissive, inside the house and up the stairs. She’d never escape this man. She’d never escape Soraya. For thirteen years, the thought of being free one day was all that had kept her going. She hadn’t foreseen the duke and his obstinate desire for her.

But surely desire died when it received no encouragement to live and thrive. When its object gave nothing, offered nothing, shared nothing. He was too proud to beat himself to destruction against the unbreakable rocks of her resistance.

Except he’d told her he had already abandoned his pride.

And even over the last few days, she hadn’t always been unresponsive. Corrosive shame ate at her as she remembered moments—more than moments, if she included his kiss in the carriage or this morning’s explosive climax—when her body had answered his with pleasure and not denial.

She told herself it was habit. After all, she’d been his mistress for a year.

Or it was his unquestionable skill as a lover.

Or her irredeemably sinful nature.

It certainly wasn’t because his touch had the power to circumvent everything she wished for and believed in, she insisted in desperation. If she stayed strong and strove to remain like ice in his arms, he’d tire of his mad quest.

But even if he did, what then? Would he just wave her on her way and allow her to return to the life she wanted? She doubted it.

Perhaps he meant to kill her when he finished with her. In this isolated place, he could dispose of her easily enough.

However, she couldn’t picture the duke murdering her, no matter how angry he was. He might dominate her sexually, he might force himself upon her, but her instincts told her he preferred her alive.

If only the thought provided the slightest comfort.

Verity stood shivering with cold and reaction in the center of her bedroom and watched Kylemore feed the fire. He must believe she was unlikely to make another dash for liberty, at least for the present. He hadn’t locked the door. Now he seemed content to take his time at the grate.

For one of the nation’s greatest noblemen, he showed great dexterity with kindling and bellows. Not for the first time, she reflected how she’d underestimated him in London. Then, she’d considered him just another useless aristocrat. Cleverer and perhaps more ruthless than the other men who’d vied for her favors, but basically made of the same stuff.

Since then, she’d seen him slough off the effects of hard travel. And he didn’t act as if he found this humble house beneath his dignity. While it would have seemed the height
of luxury to her in her rustic youth, it hardly matched the standards a duke was used to.

She looked at him now, on his knees building the fire, a task for the lowliest maid in any of his mansions. He was strong. He was intelligent. And he was alarmingly complicated.

Oh, how she wished he really was the effete wastrel she’d once judged him to be. But if this last week had demonstrated anything, it was that she didn’t understand the Duke of Kylemore at all. He was darker, deeper, more dangerous than she’d ever imagined, although there had been clues in London to the truth of his nature, if she’d cared to read them.

His dogged pursuit of her. Certainly, his unquenchable passion when he came to her bed.

She remembered what a revelation that potent ardor had been. Eldreth had been a man of sedate habits, and she’d had to train James out of his inept fumblings.

How Kylemore would laugh if she admitted one of the reasons she’d misjudged him so disastrously was her own inexperience. London’s most notorious courtesan as taken aback by a man’s powerful virility as any green young miss? She almost laughed herself.

Part of her had always considered Kylemore a threat. Why else resist his blandishments as long as she had?

But those vague instincts had given no hint of the evil she’d courted when she’d become his mistress. What she’d thought of as her sensible self had discounted her vague feelings of mistrust and had insisted she grab the chance for financial security.

Sensible self? She should have jumped into the Thames before she’d accepted him in her bed.

All this hard-won wisdom came too late. She’d become
entangled with the wrong man and had to pay the price. That would be soon enough, if the knowing glint in his blue eyes was any indication as he rose and prowled across the room to her.

“Why keep fighting me?” he murmured, flicking open the hussar fastenings of her bodice with a deftness that rankled even in her fear.

Her trembling intensified, but she didn’t move away. What was the point? He’d only catch her again.

“You know why,” she said stiffly.

A strange smile drifted across his face as he pulled the gown down from her shoulders. “I think I’m beginning to.”

She stood like a doll as he undressed her. Unexpectedly, he seemed in no rush to use her. She tried not to mind her nakedness, told herself she’d been naked for him so many times before. But she couldn’t stem the quivering vulnerability she felt standing nude in front of him.

When he reached for her hairbrush, a horrible thought occurred to her. “You’re not going to spank me?” she asked in dismay. For some reason, that would be the final humiliation in a night filled with humiliations.

His soft laugh grated on her nerves. “No, although you might enjoy it.”

With sure fingers, he reached up and let down what remained of the knot she’d twisted her hair into earlier. Her dash into the bushes had tangled it into an impossible mess. Slowly, thoroughly, he began to smooth the long black strands into order.

She stood motionless under his attentions. For a long time, the room was quiet as he concentrated on his task, his face calm and serious, as if brushing her hair were the most important thing in the world.

Eventually, he put aside the brush and gently pushed her
down onto the bed. She lay staring upward and listened to him tug the clothes from his body. For all her denials and refusals, she was back where he wanted her.

She fought the urge to burst into tears.

It was like last night. Tomorrow night would be the same. And the night after that.

And every night until he tired of this cruel game.

Without extinguishing the candles, he lay down next to her. She waited for him to part her legs and claim her. But tonight he seemed determined to take his time. Perhaps because after this morning, he knew pleasure was the worst punishment he could inflict. He wanted to make her pay for her abortive attempt to escape him.

Verity turned her head and watched him raise himself up on one elbow in a characteristic pose. As he made a leisurely inspection of her prone form, the ghost of a smile curled his lips. The room was silent except for the crackle of the fire and the soft susurration of her nervous breathing.

She stiffened in silent rejection of what that smile promised. After everything that had happened, she could remain unmoved if he merely rutted over her, seeking his own release and ignoring hers. She was staunchly certain she could resist a thoughtless lover.

But now he promised to be anything but a thoughtless lover. He reached out to stroke his hand across her body, learning its shape and texture. It was as though touch were the only sense available to him.

He sighed with a pleasure she couldn’t mistake as he trailed his fingers across the hollows of her collarbone and down her arms. He touched her belly and her shoulders and her legs. His hand was warm and gentle on her naked flesh.

Against her will, her pulse quickened after each seemingly casual brush of his fingers. His gaze was intent and
serious as he studied the intricate, meaningless patterns he drew on her skin, patterns which made every inch of her sing.

She closed her eyes and told herself he’d done this before. On so many long, languid afternoons in Kensington.

The first time he’d shared her bed, he’d taken the trouble to arouse her. She’d been surprised at his care. Then shocked at her reaction.

With Eldreth, she’d gradually learned to tolerate sex. She’d quickly decided that if she had to earn her living on her back, she might as well make the best of the bargain. But the Duke of Kylemore had unveiled a dazzling new world of sensuality—a world which beckoned so strongly that she’d been frantic to escape its pull by the time she’d left him.

Now she fought to stay unresponsive under Kylemore’s touch. Surely, she knew all the weapons in his arsenal of seduction. Familiarity must blunt their effectiveness against her.

But here, his touch seemed different. Just as Kylemore seemed a different man in many ways, some too subtle even to describe.

Gently, he shaped her thighs, her flanks, her arms. As if testing what a woman was. Her heart fluttered within her like a trapped bird. The light skimming hands were tender and astonishingly arousing.

Verity’s nipples tightened. The reaction was immediate and uncontrollable, and she had no hope of hiding it from him. Her uneven breathing caught, then resumed an even more erratic rhythm as she tensed, waiting for him to touch her breasts.

But he concentrated on parts of her she’d never before considered particularly erotic. Although she knew from her year as his lover that her whole body offered him the promise of delight.

Only after long minutes of silently enduring his attentions did she realize he deliberately avoided her breasts and between her legs.

Nor had he kissed her.

He meant to demonstrate his superiority. Of course he did. She’d never fooled herself that this was anything but a quest for supremacy. That insight helped her beat back the shimmering response his fingers created wherever they glanced.

You abducted me,
she chanted in her mind.
You think you own me. You want to destroy me. You’re nothing but a selfish brute.

The litany went on, eventually overcoming the spell of his caresses. Her wanton body might strain to surrender to him. The memory of the ecstasy he could call forth was imprinted on her skin. But her head and her heart were stronger, and they would prevail.

As her own arousal faded, she became more aware of Kylemore’s. He breathed unsteadily, and his touch lost its effortless mastery. Next to her, he radiated heat like a great fire. His hand wandered down her stomach, tantalizingly close to her sex.

Then there was nothing.

After a moment, she opened her eyes. He still leaned on one bent arm, watching her. His face was flushed and his eyes were dark with desire. Although she’d long ago abandoned modesty as a luxury a whore couldn’t afford, she fought the urge to cover herself with the sheet.