In the Flesh (2 page)

Oh no! So
that’s
why he wanted to meet me
.
He’s seen the accursed things rather than just heard about them.

“I wanted to see if the real woman lives up to the promise of this image.” His jacket still open, he ran a forefinger over the card’s sliver of gold edging, slowly and lasciviously. “To see if you really are a siren.” Appalled by the implications of what lay against him, Beatrice experienced a delicious but alarming ripple in the pit of her belly.

I’ve gone quite mad. I only met the man a few moments ago and he’s turned me into a bedlamite!

“A gentleman wouldn’t bring such an item to a social gathering.” She gave him a hard stare, even though every single bit of her felt as if it was melting like a meringue before a gaslight. “A gentleman wouldn’t even own such a thing!”

Ritchie snagged his lower lip in his white teeth for an instant, still fondling the edge of the card. There were stars in his dark blue eyes that seemed to dance in time to the waltz playing in the ballroom beyond them.

“A lady wouldn’t have posed for it in the first place.”

True, but she wasn’t going to admit that to him. A lady wouldn’t have behaved like an incautious ninny and given in to her fiancé’s importuning, champagne or otherwise.

“Touché, Mr. Ritchie.” Beatrice tried to imagine a steel bar down her spine to match the busk down the front of her corset. Rigid corseting was the only way to stand up to Ritchie without dissolving in the heat from his eyes. “But I’m afraid those photographs represent an unfortunate and misguided incident. An error of judgment on my part that I’m trying to put behind me.” She paused, readying herself for flight at a dignified pace. “And I hope that members of society will also find it in themselves to relegate my indiscretion to the past, where it belongs.”

Turning, she made to walk away, but a hand prevented her. A hand on her upper arm, right in the vulnerable space between the top of her long opera glove and the wisp of French faille that constituted the abbreviated sleeve of her gown.

Bare skin on bare skin. Some time between their first meeting and this moment, Ritchie had removed his white evening gloves and his fingertips were hot as points of fire on her naked upper arm.

“Kindly let me go, Mr. Ritchie!”

Oh, too shrill, far too shrill. But immediately he released her. Or did he? The imprint of his fingers still held her immobilized. As did the dark fire in his eyes.

“You’ll never put the photographs behind you, Beatrice. They
are
you.” His voice was quiet, yet seemed to ring through the halls of the Southerns’ vast mansion. “I suspected as much when I first saw this.” He drew out the photograph he’d been taunting her with, and it was the most shameful one of them all, the tableau where she appeared to be touching herself between her legs.

Appeared? Is it just that? Did I actually do it?
She still couldn’t quite remember, but a shudder ran through her. Ritchie’s eyes licked over her, following its progress.

“And now that I’ve met you, my dear, now that I’ve seen you in the flesh, I
know.
” His red tongue flicked out, touching the center of his lower lip. “You’re a goddess of sensuality, Miss Weatherly, truly a siren. And the sooner you admit it, the happier you’ll become.” The fans of his eyelashes beat down, all provocation and seduction. How could a man have lashes as long and thick as his and still be so uncompromisingly masculine? They were disturbingly beautiful and sensuous. “As will I.”

“I’m afraid my sensuality…or lack of it…is none of your affair, sir.” She tried to picture the steel bar again, but it was hopeless. She hated this taunting creature who was famous for getting any woman he wanted, but her traitorous body was yearning toward him as if it wanted to bend and mold itself to every contour of his. And trying to tell it not to yearn was wearing her out. She was close to breaking point. “Now, if you would kindly let me go, I’d like to return to my brother.”

“But I’m not holding you.” He laughed softly, the husky sound dancing along her nerves and teasing her most tender parts. “Except here.” He ran his thumb slowly over the cabinet card, letting it linger at her breasts and her thighs.

Aghast, Beatrice almost lifted her hand to strike him, but common sense stopped her. The man was an insulting blackguard, and lingering here was just giving him exactly what he wanted. The best thing to do was to leave, and leave immediately.

“Good evening, Mr. Ritchie.” Beatrice took a step away from him, but somehow it was like wading through molasses. How could she not be running yet?

“Wait a moment, Miss Weatherly, aren’t you at least going to allow me to mark your dance card?”

Beatrice glanced down at the little card dangling on its ribbon from her wrist. “I’m afraid not. As far as you’re concerned, it’s full already.”

And with that, to her surprise, the spell was broken, and as fast as she could without charging like a madwoman, she sped away from him.

She didn’t look back. No, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction!

Yet she could still see him stroking her photograph as she fled.

* * *

EDMUND ELLSWORTH RITCHIE DIDN’T FOLLOW
Beatrice Weatherly. He couldn’t. He could only watch her as she stalked away from him, her shoulders almost vibrating with antagonism. Every swish of her pale skirts was like a wash of flame across his body as she wended her stiff-backed path through the groups of convivially chatting guests, leaving a faint aura of lily of the valley in her wake.

Even if he could have moved, he probably wouldn’t have. His cock had hardened like a ramrod the moment he’d set eyes on her, and was now a considerable bulge in his trousers. He had a reputation to be sure, but to be seen sporting a prominent erection at a society ball was a bit too risqué, even for him.

Had Beatrice seen the way he’d come up for her? She hadn’t glanced in that direction, but then, what well-bred young woman would?

All of which confirmed his instincts. Despite the fact that he possessed photographs of her lolling naked on an animal skin with her dainty hand pressed between her thighs, he still couldn’t shake off the notion that she wasn’t quite as licentious and free thinking as such a pose suggested.

What are you, my Beatrice? A hedonistic voluptuary or an untouched Vestal? Either way, you’re everything I dreamed of…and more.

It was impossible to decide which role excited him the most, but what he did know for sure was that Beatrice Weatherly had bewitched him. His ensorcellment had begun the first instant he’d set eyes on the card now back in his pocket, but meeting her in the living, vibrant flesh had increased it a thousandfold.

The collection of photographs had been circulating sub rosa at his club for a while, a minor sensation, and bored one day, he’d asked a friend to pass him one.

The sense of shock had been like a blow to his head, heart and gut all in the same moment. He’d been stunned to silence by a young woman’s exquisite, naked beauty, and he still couldn’t entirely deduce why that was so when he’d seen many gorgeous nudes in his adult life. But shock had turned to arousal, and arousal to a worrying obsession. He’d meant to meet Beatrice Weatherly in order to free himself, but now, instead, everything he’d felt seeing the photographs was validated.

Her face, in animation, didn’t possess the classic perfection of some of the society lovelies he’d courted. Miss Weatherly wasn’t even as delicate as the photographic rendering had suggested. There was a wild, untamed quality about her, something he couldn’t quite define and which she didn’t seem to be aware of herself. Her complexion had a creamy, almost animal vigor and her hair was so savage a red that the photograph’s hand tinting had merely hinted at it. He wouldn’t go so far as to say she was coarse or uncouth, quite the reverse, but she seemed to overflow with health and energy, and perhaps appetites that more delicate hothouse paragons sadly lacked.

And her body, oh God, her scented body.

How could she possibly appear as erotic and alluring in her outdated and obviously painstakingly made-over evening gown as she did out of it? It wasn’t attributable to any amount of corsetry or sundry feminine mechanicals, even though Ritchie was well acquainted with what women wore beneath their costumes.

No, with Beatrice Weatherly, every attraction came from the woman herself. Her dark green eyes, her fierce Amazonian expression, the way her head came up and she gasped as he challenged her.

I’ll make you gasp, Miss Weatherly. You can be sure of that. And even if you’re still angry with me, you’ll be glad you let me.

A footman appeared at his elbow with a tray of champagne, and about to reach for a glass, Ritchie paused. He’d been knocked far too far off-kilter in the past few moments to be satisfied by frothy French wine.

“Bring me a glass of whiskey, if you would?” His own voice sounded strange to him, as if he really had suffered an almighty blow. But the servant seemed to notice nothing amiss and stepped away smartly on his errand.

Gazing out into the glittering throng of bejeweled women and immaculately dressed men, it seemed to Ritchie as if they were projections floating on a screen. They weren’t real, just flickering, moving images such as he’d seen at a demonstration by Monsieur Le Prince in Leeds a couple of years ago.

Only the now-hidden Beatrice Weatherly was real to him, and discreetly, so as to avoid attention, he slid her photograph out of his pocket again and savored the contrast between it and the living woman.

Both were sublime to behold.

In the image, Beatrice was unstudied, dreamy and natural, her eyes averted from the camera in a private moment, so unlike the brazen stares of most naked models.

In the flesh, she met his gaze with fire and mettle and challenge.

Both incarnations stirred his loins to an alarming degree. And much, he admitted uncomfortably, in the manner they’d once stirred for his lost, beloved Clara. His first marriage had been fully and mutually satisfying in that department, as well as happy in every other way.

As the efficient footman approached, weaving his way through the chattering, preening guests, Ritchie slipped the photograph safely back into his pocket.

The whiskey was fire and peat on his tongue, and it settled him.

Yes, he could view the photograph, and the others like it, and take pleasure in them whenever he wanted.

But they, and the ministrations of his own hand, weren’t nearly enough now. He had to touch and admire the woman herself. From that isolated moment of contact, his fingers still tingled, feeling the warmth of her skin, and its softness where he’d held her upper arm. His entire body still felt the aftershocks of that singular instant, and his stiff cock jerked anew from simply reliving it.

I’ll feast on you, divine Beatrice. I’ll draw from you every last ounce of sensuality that’s in you. Because I know it’s there, even though you might deny it now. I’ll taste and stroke every last inch of your flesh, and I’ll feel your exquisite fingertips on my cock returning that pleasure.

And I’ll do it soon, because if I don’t, I might go mad.

Mad? God no… The most unfortunate choice of word. Raising his glass to his lips again, he shuddered as if an icy specter had drifted across his grave.

No! No dark thoughts now. Beatrice Weatherly was light. Heat. Passion. Everything positive and full of glorious, abundant life.

And, thanks to her imprudent brother’s bad investments, and his foolhardy days at the racetrack and nights at the card table, The Siren of South Mulberry Street was now Ritchie’s for the taking.

CHAPTER TWO

Creatures of the Tropics

BEATRICE FELT AS
if her head was on a spring, it swiveled about so often during the dancing.

She wanted to freeze stock-still in the middle of the ballroom, turn around, and angrily demand that Edmund Ellsworth Ritchie stop staring at her!

But the trouble was, every time she was convinced he was watching her, the aggravating beast wasn’t there. Had he become invisible all of a sudden? Was he watching her by some arcane, remote means, like a medium?

And if wasn’t watching her, why not? Absurdly, his lack of scrutiny now annoyed her even more than being watched had.

With a supreme effort, she maintained a courteous interest in her partners, of which, surprisingly, there were quite a few. Obviously, her notoriety as the Siren was attracting most of the men, but it was still a pleasant relief not to be a wallflower, as a twenty-four-year-old spinster with no money and a besmirched reputation should expect to be.

She danced with Charlie, of course, who lectured her throughout, and stumbled once or twice, too. Brandy on his breath told a clear story, but Beatrice made a point of being especially patient and agreeable. It wasn’t all her fault that her brother’s life was difficult, but she certainly hadn’t helped matters by being so gullible in her dealings with Eustace Lloyd, and by leaving it so long to entertain a new suitor at all.

She shared a waltz with Monsieur Chamfleur, tall and bluff and jolly, as well as a cotillion with Lord Southern himself, and several other whirls about the floor with the charming Mr. Enderby, and one or two other husbands of the ladies in her Sewing Circle.

Ah yes, the Ladies’ Sewing Circle. Beatrice smiled wryly. Not much of a stitcher, she would never have joined such a group in the normal course of events, but when a card had arrived out of the blue, inviting her, she’d fallen upon it gladly. In the weeks since those accursed cabinet cards had begun circulating, along with a fruity exposé about them in
Marriott’s Monde,
all other social avenues had dried up to a state of desiccation. Backs had turned on her at church, the Ladies’ Charitable Guild had requested she not attend anymore, and likewise a ladies’ reading group she’d not long joined but had been enjoying immensely. In the face of this universal discouragement it was worth a few pricked thumbs and a nasty hole-ridden mat or two for the chance of feminine conversation with someone other than Polly or Enid or Cook.

And the talk over the crochet, cross-stitch and teacups had turned out to be unexpectedly racy.

Until Ritchie’s disclosure, Beatrice had believed the Circle to be the primary source of tonight’s invitation. Both Sofia Chamfleur and her friend Lady Arabella Southern had been especially amenable at the weekly meetings.

Now, however, Beatrice had been disabused of that notion.

Either one or the other of those two ladies had acted as a pander, and had expedited her appearance here to serve her up to the infuriating Ritchie. A man who apparently had the power to haunt her when he was nowhere to be seen.

What’s the matter with me? I’m having a perfectly delightful time, a much better one than I ever expected. Why do I keep wishing that every partner was that monster?

It was true. Good company as her dance partners had been, somehow they all seemed like shadows. Even Monsieur Chamfleur, who towered well over a stocky six feet tall. Only the wild, hot feelings she’d experienced in Ritchie’s presence had any verisimilitude. Her arm still prickled where he’d touched her, and when she relived that touch, her thighs trembled and a betraying liquid heat welled between them.

No! He’s a rogue and a womanizer and he’s even less respectable than I am!

Drifting away toward the periphery of the supper room, she looked for Charlie, but he too was nowhere to be seen now. One of his lecture topics on the dance floor had been a stern homily to her on the importance of
not
being seen in conversation with Edmund Ellsworth Ritchie.

“I didn’t realize it was him until he swanned up to us. The nerve of the man! If the papers are anything to go by, he’s a bad lot. Just stay away from him or he’ll compromise you even further.”

Beatrice had nodded, for once in perfect agreement with her sibling.

Yet she was disappointed. The ball was a dazzling, fairy-tale affair, and all the more so for the remarkable and revolutionary electrical lighting system that the Southerns had recently had laid on in their principal rooms. This new light illuminated the proceedings in a harder and more brittle manner somehow. It was unforgiving, yet it caused the women’s jewels to flash and sparkle and their gowns appear iridescent and vivid. But despite this modern miracle, all seemed lackluster just because she was missing a certain sharply beautiful man with navy-blue eyes, shiny, barely tamed blond hair and a mouth that could have as easily belonged to the devil as to an Adonis.

Lacking appetite, Beatrice sidled out of the supper room and across the broad, gilded reception salon. Glass doors to her right led out of the house proper into a conservatory, a vast and spacious jungle that seemed to have been shipped home from darkest Africa. Within it, the air was moist and hot, as she imagined it might be in the tropics, but it made her shudder, recalling the smaller, far less grand conservatory where Eustace had taken his photographs of her.

“To the devil with you, Eustace!” Muttering, she shook her head as if to dislodge his handsome but now hated countenance. How could she ever have believed she cared for him? Much less pose naked for him?

Loneliness, she supposed, and fear for the future. It’d been so long since she’d been courted—since the loss of Tommy, her first fiancé—and she’d been flattered by Eustace’s attentions. Practical issues had influenced her, too. Engagement to an eligible and apparently affluent bachelor had promised desperately needed security for herself and Charlie, and to her chagrin, she’d bamboozled herself into believing love could grow.

Regrettably, Eustace had been as mistaken in his assumptions as she’d been in hers, although far more deceitful. His affluence was all a facade and the moment he’d discovered the parlous state of the Weatherlys’ own finances, he’d made plans to drop her. But not before wringing a form of income from her in the most despicable way.

“You’ll get your comeuppance, one of these days, you beast. I just hope that I get the chance to witness it!”

Dismissing the weasel who’d shattered her reputation, she forged forward into the greenery. With the sound of a German polka fading in the distance, other sounds came more sharply to her ears. Trickling, tumbling water made the huge conservatory seem more than ever like a wild kingdom, and the cries of birds, and a flash of color right up in the highest edge of her vision suggested there might even be a parrot or two loose in the upper regions. Beatrice pressed on, her footsteps silent on the tiled path in her light dancing slippers.

The source of the water was a playing fountain, fed by an artificial stream. Large, colorful fish swam and wafted their fins in the central pond, and its cool freshness cut through the mulchy, vegetable aromas of the plant life.

What an incredible place. It was like having a patch of the foreign and the exotic in your own home. Unlikely a prospect as it was, Beatrice decided not to let the specter of Eustace deter her. If she ever came into a bit of money again, she’d have a conservatory of her own once more. Something modeled after the garden room at Westerlynne though, and relatively modest.

In the Southerns’ grand enclosure, however, narrow pathways wended away through the aromatic flora, and their promise called to her far more than the superficial world of dancing, chitchat, and social one-upmanship. The mystery of the place reminded her of the dark, troubling attentions of Mr. Ritchie. This wild and steaming jungle would be the perfect setting for his savage male persona.

As she explored further, holding up the hem of her gown to prevent it picking up soil and scraps of leaf matter, another sound, more familiar than tumbling water and parrot calls, caught her ear. Faint voices, both male and female, emanated from a little way ahead of her. She heard laughter and low, intimate tones.

Goodness, an assignation!

Perspiration popped and gathered beneath her corset and between her breasts, feeling sticky. It felt as if someone had suddenly adjusted the furnace that maintained the conservatory’s equatorial heat.

I should turn back…pretend I never heard them…respect their privacy.

But her days of polite, respectable and discreet behavior were over. Inching forward, Beatrice acknowledged a darker, more insatiably curious nature. Creeping like a native amongst the ferns, she followed the sounds.

And came upon a little grotto, right in the heart of Lady Arabella Southern’s metropolitan jungle, where two hungry creatures were cavorting,
in flagrante.

Sofia and Ambrose Chamfleur were sitting on a bench, both pink in the face and gasping. She, with the bodice of her dress and her corset loosened so that her milky-white breasts overspilled the top of them. He with…dear heaven…his trousers unfastened and his masculine parts…his
cock
…fully out on view.

Beatrice’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart throbbed like a drum. And low in the pit of her belly, a serpent stirred.

So this was what a gentleman looked like when he was aroused? It wasn’t quite as she’d imagined, but then, what
had
she imagined? Women weren’t supposed to dwell on this particular part of a man at all until they were married, and respectable wives not even then. But having seen certain medical illustrations, Beatrice had often speculated about it. Long ago, she’d felt Tommy’s loins harden against her thigh when they’d managed to snatch a secret embrace in the rose arbor at Westerlynne, and Eustace too had become agitated and short of breath after a stolen kiss or two.

Beatrice had no idea whether Monsieur Ambrose Chamfleur was a typical fellow, or an especially fine example, but unbidden she wondered if a certain Mr. Ritchie might be even bigger. Sofia, however, appeared to be more than delighted with the size of her husband’s appendage, because she was stroking it in a clever, rhythmic action.

“Dear me,
monsieur,
what on earth is this?” she murmured, her slender hand apparently untiring as it rode her husband’s gleaming, ruddy length. “I swear it’s quite a monster and I don’t have the first idea what to do with it.”

Ambrose Chamfleur’s broad face looked strained, but almost angelically beautiful for such a large, bluff man. His mouth worked and his hips moved and shuffled where he sat on the bench. Pulling his wife closer to him, and cupping one of her rounded breasts, he whispered something guttural in her ear.

Sofia’s eyes shot wide, but she licked her lips. “Sir, you are scandalous, and a lecherous, low-minded rogue!” The words should have been an expression of outrage, but she was chuckling and smiling. And still licking her lips.

“And if I do that for you, Monsieur Chamfleur—” the clever hand twisted, and Sofia’s thumb seemed to be doing something most dexterous underneath the tip of her husband’s cock “—what will you do for me, in return?”

Again, a husky whisper that Beatrice couldn’t catch, even though she strained her ears to hear it.

“That seems most equitable.” Sofia’s smile was slow and fond, and for a moment, she closed her husband’s hand tightly around her breast, swaying as if the pleasure of it was so acute she was about to expire. Then, in a swift, sudden move, she sprang to her feet, and sank to the ground, her beautiful emerald-green skirts, so at one with her environs, spreading around her as she settled gracefully on her knees.

As she descended, her husband opened his thighs to let her in close.

Botheration! I can’t see!

It suddenly seemed the most important thing on earth to observe the proceedings, and despite branches and fronds of various dripping plants and shrubs almost slapping her in the face, Beatrice edged stealthily around the grotto for a better perspective.

When she achieved it, she clasped her gloved fist to her lips.

Sofia Chamfleur was sucking her husband’s shaft! And thoroughly enjoying it if all her little “mmms” and slithery-liquid sounds of appreciation were to be believed.

Beatrice watched. And watched. And the first shock turned to utter fascination.

I wonder what he tastes like? Is he sweet? Or salty? And what’s his texture? He looks smooth and silky and shiny, even on the length she can’t take in… .

Beatrice’s knowledge of men’s bodies and their sexual workings came only from certain volumes she’d studied in the library at Westerlynne, after attacking the lock on the secured cabinet with hairpin. There hadn’t been time to peruse them in as much depth as she would have liked to, but even with only that rudimentary information, it was easy to deduce how much a man like Monsieur Chamfleur enjoyed this act. It must be seventh heaven for any man, pressing the most sensitive part of his anatomy into such a well of heat and moisture and being kissed and licked and sucked by his beloved.

Sofia Chamfleur seemed to be having a fine time of it, too. Despite the fact that her smooth and pretty face was deformed around her husband’s prodigious member, she was attempting a smile and her handsome eyes were sparkling.

She loves to please him.