Claiming the Courtesan Read online

  The duchess was an astute woman, although vanity and self-interest sometimes clouded her judgment. “Don’t do anything rash to spite me, Justin. Remember the Kinmurrie honor,” she said, abruptly somber.

  “Oh, the Kinmurrie honor is uppermost in my mind, dear Mother.” He saw her flinch at the savage edge he lent the endearment. “I intend to bring home a bride to do that honor proud.”

  “Justin…” She reached out to touch him, but he moved out of her reach. He was pleased to note she was seriously frightened now.

  “I don’t expect a long betrothal, Mother. My wife will wish to take up her duties as soon as possible. Given the situation, you and Letitia should make arrangements for an early removal.” He bowed briefly in her direction. “Your servant.” He stalked out of the library, his mind hard with a determination as bright as a diamond.

  Verity was in the kitchen when the maid found her. “Beg pardon, miss, but His Grace is in the drawing room asking for you.”

  “What?” She spun around too quickly and knocked the pottery candlestick she was packing to the flagstones.

  “Oh, miss!” Elsie fluttered around her, wringing her hands at the shattered mess on the floor. “Oh, miss, don’t move or you’ll cut yourself.”

  “It’s all right, Elsie.” Although, in fact, Verity had been rather fond of the sturdy brown candlestick. “Did you say the Duke of Kylemore was here?”

  “Yes, miss. I’ll get a broom and sweep up the pieces.”

  The terrified pounding of Verity’s heart blocked out the maid’s fussing. Why was Kylemore here? He called on her with almost military regularity on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. He arrived, he took his pleasure, he departed. Occasionally, he sent a carriage to bring her into Town for the theater or a party. But having left Kensington, he never, ever returned on the same day.

  Was it a coincidence this was the very evening she meant to disappear from his life? He must have found out. But how? She’d been so discreet, so careful.

  Her hands shook as she pulled off her grubby apron and stepped over Elsie, who was dealing with the remains of the candlestick. Verity hardly did the legendary Soraya justice in her plain gray muslin, but antagonizing the duke by making him wait seemed unwise. If he’d discovered her plans, she needed every shred of goodwill she could garner.

  Although she sailed into his presence with her head high, her heart raced. Her intentions weren’t strictly illegal, but strict definitions of legality became irrelevant if one’s enemy was a powerful man. And a duke was about as powerful as a man could be.

  “Your Grace? What an…unexpected pleasure.”

  Slowly, he turned from contemplating the empty spaces on the walls. The picture dealer had left in the last hour with the unremarkable artworks Kylemore had deemed suitable for his mistress’s abode.

  Verity rushed in before he could speak. “I shall order tea. Or would Your Grace prefer to…go upstairs?” The bluntness was unworthy of the great Soraya, but she was badly rattled.

  The duke’s puzzled gaze settled on her with much the same expression he had worn facing the blank walls. “You look…different.”

  Verity could imagine she did. Soraya never appeared before her protector in less than her best—unless she wore nothing at all.

  Kylemore considered the depleted room. “What is happening here?”

  Verity gave Soraya’s laugh—low, husky, endlessly suggestive. “Your Grace has caught me in a domestic moment. We are cleaning the house.” With studied elegance, she subsided onto a chaise longue and gestured for the duke to be seated.

  “We? I don’t expect my mistress to play the household drudge. If you require more staff, you need only ask.” He sat opposite her, all black-haired, hawk-nosed magnificence. His gentian-blue eyes surveyed her critically.

  She shrugged. “I like to see my standards are met, Your Grace. The house is, after all, mine.” She hoped he’d recall the reminder after she’d gone.

  “You have a smudge on your cheek.”

  Unbelievably, she colored. She, who had traded her chastity for a livelihood at the age of fifteen. Today, it seemed, was to be full of singularities.

  The kiss. The duke’s second visit. And now a blush.

  Perhaps the time had really come for the great Soraya to retire.

  “I have displeased you with my appearance,” she said evenly. “I shall go and change into a gown more appropriate to receive Your Grace.” She started to rise.

  “No, I am discourteous. I apologize.”

  Astonishment sent Verity back onto the chair.

  Unprecedented indeed! She couldn’t have just heard her proud, difficult lover say he was sorry.

  The duke’s expression was unreadable. “You could never be less than breathtaking.”

  “Thank you,” she said, although his remark hadn’t entirely sounded like a compliment.

  “You will make a most spectacular duchess.”

  If she hadn’t known better, she would have guessed he’d spent the day in his cups. Her fear had subsided enough for her to find Kylemore’s odd humor irritating.

  “It is Your Grace’s pleasure to joke, I see.”

  Kylemore’s eyes glittered with a hard light. “I am far from joking, madam.” His deep voice took on its customary tone of command. “I am here to inform you we will marry as soon as I have obtained a special license.”

  Shock forced a genuine laugh from her. “Now I know you really are mocking me.” She stood, meaning to serve him a glass of wine, but he reached out and caught her wrist, forestalling her.

  “This is a strange answer to my proposal.”

  “I haven’t heard a proposal,” she said before she could stop herself.

  “I want you to be my wife.”

  She stared down into his face, noticing the muscle that jerked in his cheek. Strong emotion gripped him, she realized. Not only that; he was, it appeared, serious about this crackbrained idea.

  “Your Grace, flattered as I am by your interest, you must see what you suggest is impossible.” When his jaw took on a stubborn line, she continued in a harder voice. “Even if the world, your name and your family countenanced such a mésalliance, I am afraid my own pride would deny you.”

  “Pride?” He spoke as if the word were inconceivable in connection with a fallen creature such as herself. “This is a preferment beyond your wildest dreams.”

  “My dreams are surprisingly humble.”

  Beneath a growing sense of unreality, Verity was angry. Only an overbearing bully could expect her to be grateful for this lunatic offer. She was canny enough to see that he was hatching some scheme, although she couldn’t fathom his purpose.

  A more conceited woman would ascribe the duke’s offer to a sudden surfeit of passion. But Verity knew better. He was plotting something to his own advantage. And she had no intention of becoming entangled in whatever he was up to.

  Her, a duchess? The idea was comical in its unreality.

  She kept her voice cool. “Pray release me. Your tender wooing is likely to leave a bracelet of bruises.” Not precisely true. His hold was firm without actually hurting her.

  “I’ll let you go when you answer me.”

  “I thought I had.” Necessity meant she’d devoted most of her life to catering to self-centered men. Now she’d reached her limit. “But as Your Grace insists, here is my reply. I have submitted to becoming your mistress, my lord. No power on earth could compel me to become your wife.”

  Perhaps if he’d phrased his ridiculous suggestion less arrogantly, she might have tempered her refusal. Or perhaps with escape so close, she couldn’t contain her natural frankness, hidden so long in the pretense of being Soraya.

  Furious color bloomed along his cheekbones. “You respond hastily, madam, and with a disdain I cannot believe I deserve. I have come to lift you from the gutter into an honorable state of matrimony.”

  “At least I am free in the gutter.”

  He surged to his feet and glared down at her. Ev
en their most extreme moments of passion had never held so much genuine emotion. “You speak very lightly of gutters. You forget I could destroy you with a word.”

  The duke loomed over her, tall, powerful, his lean muscled body radiating strength. But Verity refused to cower before him. Verity, not Soraya. Somewhere in this encounter, Soraya had vanished forever.

  “Very pretty, sir. I almost find myself charmed into accepting your suit.”

  Verity thought he might strike her, he who had never lifted a hand in anger to her before. She braced herself. She’d endured violence in the past. She could endure it again.

  But unbelievably, he mastered his rage. He unclasped her arm with an ironic gesture. “There is no purpose continuing now. You are overset and not thinking clearly.”

  Verity forbore to point out that he’d hardly been a paragon of tranquility himself. He had at last released her, he spoke of going, and after this afternoon, she never intended to see him again.

  Speaking normally was an effort. “As Your Grace wishes.” Just go, her heart cried. Just go and leave me in peace.

  Secretly she had always liked the Duke of Kylemore, sensing the lonely battle he fought to maintain his facade of perfection. But his startling, woefully unsuitable proposal of marriage and his behavior in the last few minutes made her remember the old rumors of insanity running through the Kinmurrie line.

  His high color indicated he was still far from calm. “I shall return for your answer tomorrow. In the meantime, spare some consideration for the Duchess of Kylemore’s jewels. They make today’s ruby look like a fairground trinket.”

  So you believe me to be no more than a grasping jade, Verity thought resentfully. She didn’t blunt her sarcasm. “I assure you, my mind will dwell on nothing but diamonds and emeralds.”

  That didn’t please him, she could see. “Tomorrow at four, madam. I await your consent.” No gentle kiss on the hand now. Apparently his mistress merited a courtesy his prospective bride did not.

  Kylemore ignored her bobbed curtsey and stalked toward the door. “As you should know by now, I always get what I want. And do not doubt I want this marriage.” He sent a frosty nod in her direction, the picture of aristocratic male omnipotence, and left.

  But when Kylemore rode up to the pretty little villa the next day, it was silent and empty. The notorious Soraya, his chosen weapon against his hated family, was gone.

  Chapter 2

  Kylemore entered the house and in a matter of moments ascertained it was not only uninhabited but also looted of everything of value.

  Had his marriage proposal frightened his mistress into precipitate flight? He wouldn’t have said Soraya was a woman who scared easily. Yesterday, she’d seemed outraged rather than terrified.

  Perhaps his parting threat had sent her scurrying for whatever bolthole currently sheltered her beguiling hide. But he doubted it.

  From long habit, he kept a tight rein on his temper. Pointless to vent his fury now. No, far better to conserve it for when he caught up with the deceitful trull.

  And he would catch up with her.

  He paused in the parlor. He should have realized what was afoot yesterday when so much had been missing from the house.

  Cleaning indeed! He’d wager the rapacious piece had never in her life encountered the sharp end of a scrubbing brush. Although to be fair, she’d been dressed for it. He had a sudden piercing vision of her sitting before him in that remarkably shabby frock.

  Beautiful, of course, and damned fetching as always. But tall, straight and disdainful, as though she already were the duchess he planned to make her. And subtly, not the same person as the compliant courtesan he’d farewelled in the early afternoon.

  When she’d sent him on his way with a kiss, damn her duplicitous soul to hell.

  The Judas kiss.

  He remembered her air of suppressed panic when he’d proposed. No, she’d plotted her betrayal long before he’d asked her to marry him. The house’s forlorn abandonment reeked of a carefully executed departure.

  He started to go upstairs when he heard a muffled thud from the back of the dwelling.

  So he wasn’t alone after all. With triumphant eagerness, he flung open the door from the parlor and found himself in a totally unfamiliar hallway. His heart pounded with an expectation that included a shaming dose of relief.

  He strode down the shadowy corridor, his boot heels ringing on the flags. The kitchens had been cleared like the rest of the house. But here, all was not pristine. His eyes fell on a few scattered crumbs along the sink.

  “Come out. I know you’re here.” His voice echoed in the empty room. “This is childish.”

  He began to bang open doors, coldly amused to think of the magnificent Soraya reduced to cowering in a cupboard.

  But when he hurled wide the pantry door, he discovered instead a small servant girl, nearly catatonic with dread and clutching the remains of a bun.

  “Jesus!” he cursed. “For God’s sake, what are you doing? Come out at once!”

  The girl whimpered, and to his horror, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Stop that!” he snapped. “Where is your mistress?” And mine, he thought grimly.

  She merely shook her head and pressed further away from him.

  Kylemore took a deep breath. Terrifying the girl would render her useless as a source of information.

  But beneath his impatience lingered a memory of just how it felt to be alone and defenseless and scared for your life. He bundled the unwelcome recollection back into the dark corner of his soul, where it lurked with other events he had no desire to revisit—ever.

  “Come, child. I mean you no harm.” He moved back from the door as if to prove his good intentions.

  The maid didn’t budge, but at least she spoke. “Please, sir! Please, Your Grace, don’t hurt me. Mr. Ben turned us all off last night but I didn’t have nowhere to go so I hid down here. Please don’t hurt me.”

  “I have no intention of hurting you,” he said with asperity, then immediately regretted it as she huddled into the wall once more. He deliberately gentled his tone. “You have my word. Come out where I can see you.”

  He stepped away as the girl emerged reluctantly. “I know you, don’t I?”

  Her curtsey was unsteady. “Yes, Your Grace. Elsie. I let you in yesterday. I didn’t mean no mischief by staying. Mr. Ben said we was all to go to Your Grace’s town house tomorrow for our wages. The buyers don’t take over until next week. I didn’t mean no harm, sir.”

  Kylemore spoke as kindly as he was able, given the tempest raging inside him. “I’m sure you didn’t, Elsie. This will remain our secret if you agree to answer my questions. Our secret and I’ll give you a gold sovereign for your help.”

  Elsie’s eyes rounded at the offer, although she still trembled. He assumed tête-à-têtes with the nobility were outside her ken.

  “Yes, sir. Th-thank you, sir.” She bobbed into another curtsey.

  “First of all, where is your mistress?”

  Elsie shook her head. “I don’t know, Your Grace. She and Mr. Ben went off in a hired carriage last night. I was the only one left behind, but I didn’t hear their direction. They was both dressed for traveling, though.” Elsie, when not fearing for her life or virtue, was clearly far from stupid.

  “Did they take all the household things with them?”

  “No, sir. Only a few boxes in the carriage. Everything else was sold, even Miss Soraya’s clothes. Which was odd. She still needs to dress herself, don’t she?” Elsie relaxed into her story. “There’s been blokes in and out of the house all week carting away pictures and furniture and stuff.”

  “And you believe the house has been sold as well?”

  “Oh, it has, sir. A nabob’s moving in. I caught a peek at him last week—all brown and burnt he is, sir. Quite nasty. Why, Mr. Ben, he said…”

  Suddenly Kylemore realized just what had niggled at him earlier. “Mr. Ben? You mean Ben Ahbood, the servant? He spoke?”
he asked sharply.

  Elsie’s confidence faltered and she looked at Kylemore with renewed nervousness. “Of course, sir.”

  “And he has spoken this whole time?” A horrible suspicion grew in his mind. A suspicion that the mystery of Soraya’s disappearance wasn’t such a mystery after all but the oldest story in the world.

  Elsie clearly thought his questions were insane. “Yes, sir. How else could he tell us what to be getting on with?”

  “And how did this Mr. Ben sound?” he asked in a dangerous tone.

  “How do you mean, sir?”

  He curbed his impatience before he panicked her into her cupboard again. “Did he speak as I do? As you do? Did he sound foreign?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know about foreign. He didn’t sound like me—or you either, sir.”

  Given that Kylemore spoke with the clipped accents of the upper classes and Elsie had a decided Cockney twang, he couldn’t say that narrowed the field much.

  “And he and…and Miss Soraya.” He nearly choked on the name. His mistress was lucky she wasn’t here now or he might have choked her instead. “Did they seem close, friendly?”

  “Oh, yes, sir!” Elsie said with enthusiasm.

  Then she must have perceived his hostile reaction to that information, because she went on. “Not in any untoward way, sir. Just friendly. Affectionate, like. Please don’t get the wrong idea about Miss Soraya, sir. She was always awful good to us staff, whatever else she was, begging your pardon. Why, she gave all of us a month’s wages extra and good references afore she left. Even though she said she was sure Your Grace would see us right anyway, considering we was really working for you.”

  Kylemore was in no mood to listen to praises of his absconded paramour. But Elsie had clearly been fond of Soraya, and apart from further encomiums on the jade’s character, he could discover little else from the girl. Eventually he sent her on her way with the promised sovereign and instructions to see his butler at Kylemore House about work in the kitchens there.