Victorian Vigilantes 01 - Saving Grace (13 page)

Her hand moved from her thigh to her clit but this time she managed to contain her needy moans.

“The butterfly has started to flap its wings, agitating your scorching cunt.”

Her fingers probed and a gurgle—a cross between a pant and a sigh—erupted in her throat.

“Where do you feel your energy is the strongest?”

“I hardly know. My entire body is fizzing with it.”

“That is good. Now squeeze your pelvic muscles for me, sweetheart. Hold all that energy inside of you. That’s a good girl. The butterfly is right on your clit. Do you feel the touch of its wings?”

“Yes, I do.” She gasped. “I really feel it.”

“Tell me what it feels like.”

“It is as though I am on fire.” Her breathing became more rapid as the pressure of her fingers increased. “It feels as though I’m on the outside watching all this happening to someone else.”

“What does that other person look like?”

“Sexy, wanton, unafraid to go after what she wants. All the things I am not.”

“But she is you, Eva. Do you not recognise her?”

“No, I…yes…it cannot possibly be.” She shook her head, frustrated, excited, but most of all confused by what was happening to her. “I just don’t know. Help me, please!”

“Sorry, the butterfly has taken off and left you.”

“No!” She groaned long and loud. “Please, make it come back, I am begging you. I need the butterfly. I need the heat, the tingling. I need—”

“Hmm, I know you do. But not quite yet.”

She was alternately panting and begging, conscious of frustrated tears seeping from the corners of her closed eyes. Goose bumps had erupted all over her dewy skin and she was unable to prevent her limbs from trembling.

“The butterfly has squeezed beneath your bottom. Did you know that’s a highly sensitive place?”

“No.”

She squealed as fingers explored the area in question. Her fingers? How did they get there? The shivers of liquid excitement that spiralled through her as she tested and probed were almost too intense to be endured. And yet her fingers continued with their quest, sending her body into sensory overload and leaving it hovering on the brink of something extraordinary yet elusive.

“The butterfly is glad you are enjoying yourself. You are enjoying it, are you not, Eva? If you really are frigid the butterfly would be wasting his time.”

“No, don’t send him away!”

“It’s okay, darling.” His voice was a soft, throaty chuckle. “He’s back in the place you most want him to be. You do want him there, don’t you, Eva?”

“Yes! God, yes!”

“Then use your fingers and give him some help.”

Her fingers worked frantically. Her head rotated from side to side, her hair fell all over the place and dizzying sensation assailed her from all angles. This wasn’t happening to her, Eva decided, it was some weird dream. She would wake up in her own bed in Sloane Street soon and return to her suppressed life as the wife of a bully and tyrant. In the meantime, she would enjoy the dream because she knew from bitter experience that dreaming, pretending she was someone other than herself, was the only way to survive her existence.

“The butterfly is fluttering against your vulva. Do you feel that, Eva?”

“Yes.” She panted the response as her fingers increased their pressure.

“Uh huh, the butterfly has taken off again.”

Eva groaned. Why must he torment her so? “No! Don’t let it go yet.”

“No, my mistake, it has landed back on your breasts.”

“Ah!” Her hand closed around one nipple and squeezed hard.

“It has a friend who has landed on your cunt. Shoo it away, Eva. You don’t need two of them.”

“But I do! Please, let it stay.”

“Greedy little witch.” Lord Isaac’s voice taunted her but Eva was too abandoned to care. “Best see what it wants then.”

Her fingers were on her sweet spot in a millisecond. “It wants…I think it needs me to have an orgasm.”

“No, that can’t be right.” His voice resonated with doubt. “You are frigid. It wouldn’t waste its time on someone who’s frigid.”

“The butterflies have cured me.”
What am I saying?
It didn’t matter, she decided. It wasn’t her. It was the person in her dream. “Please, let them stay.”

“All right, since you insist. Both butterflies are on your cunt now. Let’s see what they can do for you.”

Her fingers went to work. Her muscles tensed, the heat burned and intensified and her stomach went weightless as all four fingers of one hand disappeared inside her and her thumb worked her clit. Eva felt on the verge of something truly astonishing. Tingling exhilaration spangled through her in heady waves as she cried out and her body went into spasm. Desperate to experience every last ounce of delicious sensation, she thrust against her fingers until her body had nothing more to reward her with.

It was a long time before she could bring herself to open her eyes and break the spell. Lord Isaac stood just where he had been when this all started, smiling at her. She expected to feel embarrassed and be swamped with regret. Instead she felt a great sense of wellbeing.

“You were right,” she said softly. “I had absolutely no idea.”

Lord Isaac’s smiled broadened. “You owe me a kiss,” he replied.

William felt ready to commit extreme acts of violence. Night had fallen and his wife still had not returned to Whitechapel. He thumped his clenched fist against the wainscoting in his study, bloodying the knuckles without feeling any pain. Never before had he confronted a problem that he wasn’t able to solve with force, blackmail, guile or whatever means necessary. That his wife thought she could defy a man of his ilk filled him with a murderous rage.

“Where the devil can she have got to?” he demanded to know. “She left all her possessions, such as they are, behind in that flea pit and has disappeared off the face of the earth.”

Stoneleigh, to whom this comment had been addressed, merely shrugged. “It’s like I already told you, one of her wealthy friends must be hiding her.”

“Well, they won’t get away with it.”

“You need to use the child. There’s no other way.”

“There’s always another way. The child stays in London, at least for now.”

“If you say so.”

“I need you to send out as many people as it takes to talk to all the servants we know in London houses. Someone must have heard something.”

“I can do that, but it might help if you talk to some of the gentry yourself. You have enough on several of them to call in favours.”

“Hmm, I’ll consider doing that if the servants don’t come up with anything.”

“Well, you know best.” Stoneleigh frowned. “What about her family? They wouldn’t have taken her back, would they?”

William curled his upper lip. “That lily-livered brother of hers doesn’t have the guts. The fool’s already indebted to me again.”

“You don’t want to go to the gents you own because you don’t want to lose the hold you have over them. You also don’t want them to know that you can’t control your own wife.” William’s aggrieved glare had no discernible effect on Stoneleigh, who merely shrugged one massive shoulder. “Depends how badly you want Lady Eva back, don’t it? All I know is, the longer she’s gone, the greater the chances of her being compromised.”

William felt the blood drain from his face. It was all very well suspecting something of that nature, but another matter altogether when he heard his suspicions openly voiced by others. “Her friends are gentlemen. They wouldn’t.”

Stoneleigh snorted. “If you ask me, gentlemen are the worst. Seem to think they can get away with anything, simply because they’re rich and powerful.”

“Eva wouldn’t go that far.”

“Really?” Stoneleigh folded his arms across his broad chest, his expression bordering on insolent. “If she’s so dedicated to you, why hasn’t she come home yet?”

William wanted to plant a fist in the man’s face for his disrespect. He didn’t because Stoneleigh was the one person who could speak his mind to William without fear of reprimand. They had been together for years. Stoneleigh knew just about all William’s secrets and was completely trustworthy, totally ruthless and untroubled by his conscience. In other words, he and William were mirror images of one another.

And he was right. Eva hadn’t come home because she was scared of William. He still didn’t understand what he had done to make her fear him so much that she would abandon her child rather than return to him. He hardly ever beat her…well, only when she had seriously displeased him, or flirted with other men, showed him up in public or done something to remind him of the difference in their social statuses. That was a favourite way of hers to torment him. What sort of a man would he be if he permitted her to get away with it?

Damn it, it was a man’s right to beat his wife to keep her in line! He thought of the rough way he handled Rose and how she welcomed such treatment with laughter in her eyes. He
never
inflicted his baser requirements on his wife, much as he would like to, and yet his consideration had merely earned her disdain. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all. Unlike Rose, his wife almost never laughed, unless she was playing with their daughter. If he entered the room when she
did
happen to be laughing, that laughter abruptly faded and was replaced with an expression that bordered on contempt.

She had no right to look down on him. He had saved her ungrateful family from becoming paupers and treated Eva like a goddess, much thanks he got for it. Well, when she finally returned home—and she would have to, sooner or later—things would be very different. No more trying to win her affection. And no more Rose either. Whatever itch of his required scratching, his wife could damned well do the scratching for him.

“We have to go to the warehouse,” Stoneleigh reminded him. “We have a meeting with the Sikhs.”

“I can’t think about that now.”

“You have to. You have another appointment with our mutual friend tomorrow and he’ll want to know how the plans are coming along. It won’t do for you to have missed an important meeting to settle the details. You will have to tell him Lady Eva’s not back, having assured him she would be, and that won’t please him. Don’t make matters worse.”

William threw his hands in the air. “I shall lie and say she is back. It’s none of his damned business anyway.”

Stoneleigh frowned. “Not sure you should do that.”

“He has no way of checking. It’s not as though he’s going to invite himself to dinner. He does everything he can to ensure he’s not seen anywhere near me.”

“I wouldn’t put anything past that one. Besides, he has more ears and eyes in London than anyone I know,
and
he mixes in the best circles. If Lady Eva’s hiding out with a socialite somewhere, he’ll get to hear about it before you do.”

William scowled, wanting to deny it even though he knew it was true. “You’re right about one thing,” he said. “The child’s the key. Have her resume her visits to the park tomorrow and keep Mary under constant watch without making it too obvious. I want to know who approaches her and the child.”

“Lady Eva won’t go to the park.”

“No, but if she’s being sheltered by someone, perhaps that someone will set her mind at rest by checking on the child.”

“Ah right, I see what you’re saying.”

“Precisely. Follow whoever approaches Mary and find out who they are.” William felt a little better now they had a firm plan of action—one which he had come up with himself.

Stoneleigh glanced at the clock. “Don’t forget we have to—”

“All right,” he said wearily, “we’ll go and meet with the blasted Indians. But we’re not going to rely just on the park outings. I want people asking questions of servants in all the right households first thing tomorrow.” He wagged a finger at Stoneleigh. “I want my wife found and I want her found immediately.”

“She will be.”

“There’s half an hour before we need to leave for the meeting. Send Rose to me.”

“She’s indisposed.”

William scowled. “What the devil’s that supposed to mean?”

“Want my opinion, she’s with child.”

William recalled how rounded her belly had appeared the last time he had been with her. There had been something she had wanted to tell him but he hadn’t had the time to listen.

“Damnation!” Could nothing go right for him? It would be a shame to lose Rose. She was a lively one all right, but hadn’t he just decided he would give her up anyway once Eva returned? Still, Eva wasn’t back yet and what was he supposed to do in the meantime? “Find out if she is. If so, pay her off and find a replacement. One child in this household is more than enough to be going on with.”

William turned his attention to the papers on his desk and forgot all about Rose’s unfortunate plight.

***

Eva had expected to feel guilty about what she had done. Was it really her who had stripped naked in front of a virtual stranger and done all those things to herself? It hardly seemed credible, and she waited for shame and regret to keep her awake.

Instead she slept like a baby and woke long after her usual hour, feeling refreshed and very different to her usual self. She could still hardly believe the raw intensity of the sensations that had filled her with a burning, incandescent desire, painful in its intensity. The shivers of liquid excitement had been almost too much for her over-stimulated heart to withstand. Brought to a pinnacle of need by Lord Isaac’s entrancing voice, she eventually found the most remarkable release for passions stirred to the point of madness, and beyond.

At last Eva understood what all the fuss was about: what caused married women to risk their all by taking lovers and reduced even the least poetically inclined to wax lyrical in the name of passion.

Her concerns about William, the gaping hole in her heart caused by her enforced separation from Grace, were as strong as always. But she would never live beneath William’s tyrannical control again. Lord Isaac had made her understand nothing was impossible and she would find a way to be the person she was always supposed to be. Sexual enlightenment had caused a sea change to occur inside her. She was no longer the obedient daughter who would do whatever was necessary to save her family from ruin. She was no longer wife to a man who thought he could own her.