Pleasuring the Lady (The Pleasure Wars)

Dedication

For Michael. Thanks for supporting the “family business” and assisting me in the difficult task of maintaining sanity in an insane industry.

Chapter One

January 1814

Portia settled back on the settee and smiled as her friend Ava, who had been the Duchess of Rothcastle for nearly half a year, gushed with great enthusiasm about her life.
 

“Oh, I’ve been going on and on,” Ava said, at last pausing for breath and blushing deeply when she saw her friend’s amused expression. “I’m so sorry!”

Portia laughed softly at her friend’s utterly unnecessary apology.
 

“After so many years of comparing sad stories in the corners of ballrooms, do you think I would not wish to hear all the details of your joy? There is no one else in the world that deserves happiness as much as you do.”

“Except you,” Ava said with a smile.
 

Portia tried to leave the same expression on her face, though her friend’s playful comment brought her no pleasure. Portia no longer had great expectations about a love-filled life to gush over as her friend now did. She tried not to think about that impossible future, to long for it, anymore.

She waved her hand in the hopes she could change the subject. “Who would have thought when the Season began last year that you would end up married to…
happily
married to…your family’s greatest enemy? What a world we live in, where anything can change in a moment!”

Ava nodded, but a tortured darkness entered her gaze. “
Almost
anything can change. Some things have not. Or have changed for the worse.”

Portia flinched, for there was no doubt to what…or whom…her friend referred.

She drew a short breath before she asked what was sure to be a painful question. And not just for Ava.

“Have you heard from your brother?”

Ava struggled to keep her composure for a moment, but Portia knew her friend too well not to see the slight tremble to her lip, the swelling of tears in her eyes, the paling of her skin.
 

“No,” she finally whispered. “Not since he disappeared as soon as he knew Christian and I were departing for Gretna Green. So it has been over six months.”

Portia shook her head. “I had hoped at Christmas—”
 

Ava shoved to her feet. “Yes. So had I. But there was no word, not even a one-line wish to make merry for the holiday.” The tears her friend had been fighting began to fall now. “It seems Liam has cut me off entirely. It is the only source of pain in all my recent happiness.”

Portia stood and crossed to wrap her arms around her friend. Her heart swelled with pity for Ava, for she knew how much her friend cared for her wayward brother. And she felt for Liam too. He had hated Ava’s new husband for so long, it must have broken him to see her seduced by and ultimately wed to him.

She could only imagine his pain. How she wished she could comfort him. Not that he would allow it from
her
, a person he probably never thought about.

“I’m so sorry,” Portia whispered, shoving thoughts of Liam away. Her friend needed her, she had to concentrate.
 

“It is even worse,” Ava sobbed. “I heard not two days ago that he is in London. So close I could almost touch him. He was seen at the Donville Masquerade.”

Portia blinked as Ava pulled away and shivered. Clearly that location meant something to her friend. “I-I don’t know what that is.”

Ava sucked in a breath and looked at Portia with a flash of embarrassment. “Oh God, I sometimes forget you—”

Portia drew back when her friend cut herself off abruptly. “Forget that I what? What are you talking about? What is a Donville Masquerade?”

“You are an innocent and I think I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Portia’s eyes went wide. Words like “innocent” certainly evoked a very interesting image of what this Donville Masquerade was about.
 

“You cannot leave it at that,” Portia laughed. “Now that you have whetted my appetite with the implication that this masquerade has some kind of scandal associated with it.”

Ava bit her lip and cast her glance to the side, and Portia caught both her hands. “Six months ago, you would have told me everything. Do not say that just because you are married and have…have…knowledge of more carnal subjects that you will lock me out.”

Ava sighed. “Very well. But if what I tell you shocks you, I refuse to be blamed.”

“What is it?” Portia insisted.

“The Donville Masquerade is held down in the hells the entire winter season,” Ava began.

Portia shivered. Everyone knew about the hells, pits of ruination and despair where men…men like her father lost fortunes. Where women went to be ruined. It was dangerous and violent there, at least based upon everything she had ever heard.
 

“But why would they hold a party there? And why would your brother, a gentleman, have any part in it?” Portia asked.

Ava swallowed hard. “Again, I hesitate to share this with you. I’m certain your mother would not approve.”

Portia pursed her lips. “At present, my mother thinks very little of me. She is too lost in her own…her own world.”

Ava shook her head. “Oh darling, I’m sorry.”

Portia ignored yet another painful topic. “You will not deter me by offering sympathies on that score. Tell me what this place is.”

Ava sighed, but Portia sensed her ultimate surrender even before she said, “The Donville Masquerade is held in one of the notorious gambling houses down in the hells. According to my husband, they found that during the winter they would lose some of their clientele after a certain hour to the pleasures of a warm bed and a warmer mistress. Someone had the fine idea to bring the sin into the establishment itself. The masquerade is held several times a week and the debauchery is untamed.”

Portia’s eyebrows lifted. She was an innocent in body, of course, but she had once caught sight of a few very naughty drawings her brother had hidden away in his chamber. She had thought about them over and over at night while she touched herself.
 

“What do you mean untamed?” she whispered.

Ava shrugged. “Women displaying their bodies, men taking advantage of that, sometimes in the open between hands of cards.”

Portia stood and clasped her hands before her chest. Her mind filled with shocking images, vague pictures of hands on skin, tongues and mouths and bodies rubbing together. They were things she didn’t fully understand, but her body quivered at the thought.

“Ava!” she choked out.

“I told you I could not be responsible if you were shocked,” Ava said, rising to place a steadying hand on her arm.
 

Portia shook her head to clear it. Apparently there was a great deal she did not understand about the secret world of sin and pleasure. “Is this
common
, to have…have
relations
out in public?”

Ava blushed so deeply that Portia had to wonder what exactly Ava had been keeping to herself about her relationship with Christian. Was it possible they…

Ava interrupted her thoughts. “Of course it isn’t
common
, but there are places where men and women feel freer.”

Portia swallowed. “Like the hells.”

Ava nodded. “And because they have labeled their gathering a masquerade, the hidden and secret element makes those same places appear even safer to bare their bodies. But they are not safe at all. I have heard the hells and the masquerade can be quite dangerous, and who knows what mindset my brother is in currently?”

As Ava shuddered in fear, Portia pushed away her interest in the erotic elements of the masquerade. They were terribly inappropriate in the face of her friend’s emotions.

“Oh, Ava,” she whispered. “What can you do?”

Ava sighed. “As soon as the rumor reached us, I wanted to go there myself, but Christian is adamant. He refuses to allow it.”

Portia’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. This place must be terrible indeed, for Christian was normally indulgent to his wife. Even after their troubled past, it was evident he worshiped her, body and soul.

“He must have very good reasons to deny you,” Portia whispered, thinking of Liam and beginning to fear, perhaps as deeply as his sister now did. “But could Christian not go himself?”

Ava’s mouth tightened. “With my brother’s deep and continuing hatred of him?”

Portia swallowed. There was a long history between the two men and their families. A history that had nearly destroyed her friend. And though Christian seemed willing to let the past go thanks to his love for Ava, Liam clung to it. No matter how deeply it hurt his sister or himself.

“I can see what you mean,” Portia said. “Liam would not abide by that. But what about friends or spies?”

“Liam is too wary of everyone, but especially anyone associated with my husband. And he cut his own friends off long ago.” Ava’s voice wavered. “I am left feeling as though he is just outside my door, needing me, and yet I am unable to find the key.”

Ava sighed deeply and sank back down into the settee. Portia took a place beside her and the two old friends linked hands in a silent display of affection and support. Certainly there was nothing
she
could do to help her friend and Portia felt as helpless as Ava did about it.

“I’m so sorry,” Ava finally said after the silence had stretched for a few moments. “I have been nothing but selfish this entire afternoon between gushing and weeping. Tell me, how was
your
holiday? You and your mother traveled to your brother and his wife’s country estate, didn’t you?”

Portia flinched. If Ava had wished to find a happier topic, she had failed.
 

“Yes,” she admitted softly, but said nothing more.

Ava leaned closer. “How was it?” she asked, but from her friend’s concerned expression, Portia could see Ava had already guessed the answer.
 

“Dreadful,” she admitted with a shake of her head. Images from the past few weeks bombarded her and she blinked to clear them from her mind. She could scarcely bear them.
 

“Oh, Portia.” Ava sighed deeply. “I had hoped that your brother’s invitation signaled a softening in his tone toward you.”

“I don’t worry about myself, his coldness is nothing new,” Portia said. “But Hammond’s cruelty to our mother…” She swallowed back tears. “She is still reeling from it. It may take her weeks to return to a more normal state.”

Though she’d hardly call anything her mother did “normal”.
 

“I wish there was something I could do, some kind of respite I could offer you.”
 

Portia shook her head. “You know my brother wouldn’t allow anything we might concoct. He guards his control over my mother too jealously and I wouldn’t dare leave her alone for any length of time for fear of what he might do without my protection over her.”
 

“But you deserve a reprieve from your troubles. Some fun.” Ava winked. “Perhaps something wicked in your life.”

Portia wondered again about the Donville Masquerade, but pushed the thoughts away. “There is no room in my life for such things.”

Her friend’s face fell at the finality of Portia’s statement and tone. Ava squeezed her hand. “Anything can happen, Portia. Don’t forget that and never give up.”

Portia smiled as she extracted her hand from Ava’s and freshened her tea. Ava might have faith in the power of the future, but Portia had long ago given up on what might be. She knew what was and despite anything Ava might say,
that
would never change.

“What about Lady Jane, the daughter of the Duke of Breadworth?”

Miles, the Marquis of Weatherfield, forced a smile for his younger sister. “She only just came out, didn’t she?” he asked with a shake of his head.
 

Tennille hesitated long enough that he knew he was correct.
 

“How old is she?” he pressed.

“She is eighteen.” When he arched a brow, she shrugged. “In four months.”

“For God’s sake, Tennille, that would make her fourteen years my junior.”