Cheryl Holt (11 page)

His lover approached, and it appeared as if she knelt over him, but Sarah couldn’t be sure, and evidently, she hesitated overly long, because he decreed, “The top button, madam!” A moment passed, then another, and he ordered, “The next one, if you please.”

She was opening his trousers! To what end?

Sarah wanted to bang her forehead against the wall. How cruel to have been led down the carnal path only to have her journey obstructed at the last bend. For years, she’d ruminated and stewed about what men and women did when they were alone. Improbably, she’d stumbled upon a private, confidential method of determining the particulars, the mysteries of the world were about to unravel, but she couldn’t observe the details!

How grossly unfair! Whoever had designed the spot had poorly planned the result. What was the point of contriving a peephole that didn’t furnish a full vista? She hadn’t wanted to witness some; she wanted to witness all!

“You’re larger than I imagined,” the woman remarked, uneasy.

“Yes, but you were advised at the outset,” Mr. Stevens explained indifferently. “Take me at once. I’m ready.”

Heeding his command, the woman did something that induced him to exhale in a slow hiss. His entire body tensed.

What?
Sarah longed to shout.
What are you about?
But instead, she whirled away. Remembering her inglorious plunge the previous evening, she gingerly descended, then paced. A tangle of erotic images had her body throbbing and vibrating in places she’d never noticed before, and she strolled back and forth, scrambling to soothe her riotous breathing and thundering heart.

What were they striving so frenetically to accomplish? Unfortunately, her background and upbringing provided no mechanism for solving the riddle. She simply couldn’t conceive of where their actions were leading, or why they would persist in the manner upon which they both seemed so intent.

At a loss, she sneaked back to the stool and quietly clambered to her perch. To her consternation, whatever adventure had kept the pair involved had been rapidly concluded. It was over. The woman’s cloaked back was to Sarah, and Mr. Stevens faced her, looking apathetic. They were silent, unmoving.

Finally, the woman sputtered, “Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Yes.” He was cold, devoid of emotion.

She wavered, then petitioned, “May I meet with you again?”

“As you wish.”

The woman’s shoulders sagged as though he’d just bestowed a great benediction, but Sarah could have sworn his tone was one of bored acquiescence. If he never saw the woman a second time, he wouldn’t care.

The woman dawdled, clearly yearning to discuss what had just happened, but Mr. Stevens’s lack of interest precluded her speaking further. Eventually, with a slight shrug, she departed.

Mr. Stevens paused for a lengthy interlude, apparently listening to ensure she’d actually gone. Then, mollified, he leaned against the wall and smoothed a weary hand over
his brow. He looked more ominously handsome than she’d yet seen him. Rumpled and mussed and fatigued, he yawned and scratched across his stomach.

Unaware of her avid assessment, he turned so that he was directly situated for analysis, and his expression was one of despair and discouragement. His melancholia was so manifest that she wished there were no barriers separating them, that she could be by his side, resting her palm against his cheek, while she gently reassured him that everything would be all right.

Heaving a labored sigh, he blew out the candles and exited, shutting the door with a sharp click.

Stirred, stunned, distraught, and overwhelmed, Sarah peered into the darkened room long after his footsteps faded.

Michael stared at nothing.

The enclosed space was permeated with the odors of raucous sex, sweat, and candle smoke. The ambiance was stuffy and suffocating, and he had an urgent need for a cooling, invigorating breath of fresh air. From the strident sexual intercourse, perspiration had wetted and snarled his chest hair, and he swabbed across it, striving to wipe away the stench.

He could smell the woman on his skin and taste her on his tongue. She’d adequately tended to his ever-present lust, but he’d not been attracted to her in the slightest, and now that he was sated, her lingering essence was nauseating, and he forced down a wave of repugnance.

Disheveled and unkempt, he gazed at himself in the mirror that hung on the opposite wall. The man reflected back was in a sorry condition. His cock had been meticulously serviced, and it hung useless and limp against his leg, but he’d gained only temporary gratification. While most men would have reveled in the chance to engage in such an indecent, debauched oral ejaculation with an anonymous partner, he was not one of them. Try as he might to pretend
otherwise, he was sickened by the corrupt level to which his conduct had fallen.

Pamela had concocted the offensive amusement, readily grasping how it would appeal to his sense of the absurd, how it would fan the fires of his enmity toward the aristocracy. When she’d urged him to participate, he’d agreed, thinking himself so detached that he could fornicate freely and without restraint. In past years, he’d sporadically and gladly acceded to her bizarre offers of carnal recreation, but to his surprise, at this current party his misdeeds only increased his despondency, further ravaging his anguished mind and troubled heart.

The women with whom he consorted were so willing to debase themselves, and he abhorred them for it, but he detested himself even more. As though a stranger had inhabited his body, he was lashing out at them, with his words and careless attitude, abusing them—and thus their husbands—with his cuckolding, but despite how often he copulated, he was never going to find genuine contentment, because the animosity he fostered wasn’t for any of them specifically, or for the nobility in general.

He wasn’t fooling himself: the actual object of his anger was his father, Edward Stevens, the Earl of Spencer.

Of late, memories of his father—and what he’d brought about all those years ago—were floating on the surface, and Michael could no longer push them down. Wherever he went, he seemed bent on wreaking paths of destruction in his efforts to run from the disturbing reminiscences that constantly cropped up.

His father, the king of all bounders, the epitome of all cads, was the catalyst behind his raging. The esteemed nobleman had been a thorn throughout Michael’s life, jabbing and poking at his unstable existence at the most inopportune moments.

As a lad, Michael had loved Edward, had worshiped him with a godlike awe, but Edward was only a mortal man, comprised of human vice and bad behavior. When Michael was just three, his father had deserted their small family,
had abandoned Michael’s mother, Angela, and her two young boys in order to do his duty to his earldom by marrying a girl of the
ton
.

Angela had never recovered from his callous, contemptible act. James and Michael had suffered, as well, as they’d struggled to overcome the inexplicable loss of their father. They’d grown up to be undisciplined, impetuous boys, had matured into brutal, dispassionate men who did not trust or love, who never formed emotional connections, who never allowed anyone close.

Michael had neither forgotten nor forgiven those ancient sins that had been so casually and remorselessly committed. When his newly widowed father had dared to show himself in their peaceful, happy home—the one they’d created with no assistance from his illustrious self—and had lorded it over them by playing on Angela’s interminable affections and seducing her anew, the resulting scene had been horrid.

Michael had felt betrayed. By his beloved mother. By his incorrigible, obstinate father. By his brother, James, who had placidly watched the debacle unfold but who hadn’t done anything to stop what was occurring.

Edward had mistreated Angela for over three decades, yet she still loved the aging roué. There was no accounting for it, no understanding to be had for the affairs of the heart that propelled people to such insane attachment.

He’d fled London that day and, shortly after, Edward and Angela had eloped, tying the knot as they’d insisted they should have when they were young and foolish and less circumspect. Their marriage had completely numbed him, and he simply couldn’t locate the fortitude he needed to carry on as though nothing had changed—when, in fact, everything familiar had been destroyed.

In response, he could only manage to wander, to gamble, to fuck and denigrate the immoral women who came to him, but deep down, he recognized that he could never vent the wrath he harbored for Edward. There were not enough hours in the day to totally unleash his malice, so why keep on? Why did he persevere?

Unbidden, an image of Sarah popped into his head, and he shuddered with disgust at himself. What he wouldn’t give to laze in her virtue, to frolic in her untainted company. He felt unclean and impure, and his spirit begged for deliverance from the burdens that prodded him to comport himself so imprudently.

Earlier in the afternoon, when he’d glanced down into the yard from one of the upstairs windows, he’d been shocked to find her still in attendance. He’d been so positive that she would heed his frightening advice and go home. Then, when he’d seen that libertine George Wilson about to touch her inappropriately, outrage had compelled him to intervene. Against his will, she’d awakened his protective instincts and caused his forsaken chivalry to rear its ugly head. Like a magnet, she tugged at his resistant impulses to safeguard and cherish.

She was so original, so unsullied, and he couldn’t abide the idea of her being tarnished in any fashion. In his current state, among these vile people, she seemed to represent the only good thing still thriving in his universe, and he shook away his thoughts of her. In such a foul atmosphere, it was wrong to contemplate her.

Scratching across his stomach, he could smell himself and the woman’s cloying perfume. He reeked. The sticky residue from his seed had dried on his phallus. He was sickened by his degeneracy, and he desperately craved a bath to wash away the evidence of his degradation.

Initially, he’d told Pamela that he’d have carnal relations with two other women before the night was over. Usually, he accommodated her whims and caprices, but his desire to oblige her had waned, and he couldn’t go through with it.

He blew out the candles and walked out to the secret stairwell, destined for his bedchamber. In the shadowed hall, a vision of Sarah flashed through his mind again, and he flinched.

What would she think if she ever discovered the depth of his depravity?

Pamela Blair reclined on her sofa, her negligee loosely tied and widely parted to reveal bare cleavage and a smooth, waxed leg. Across her sitting room, Michael Stevens brooded and stewed and, as usual when he was near, he took up too much space. Such a virile, vital person, he was so different from the diverse gentlemen of her acquaintance who were watered-down versions of the male animal.

He exhibited none of the fluff or posturing, none of the pretension or swaggering, that the others practiced ad nauseum, but then, he didn’t need to preen or pose. With that invincible combination of attitude, demeanor, and temperament, rivals could only jealously envy him. And he was so bloody good-looking. An amazing body, coupled with a comely face and those mesmerizing sapphire eyes, ensured that he cut a swath wherever he went. Heads turned, women coveted, men begrudged. It almost wasn’t fair to the members of his sex that he possessed so much, while the rest of them had been graced with so little.

His dynamism came from his mother, she knew. Angela Ford, the flamboyant actress, had set society on its ear thirty years earlier through her notorious affair with the Earl of Spencer. She was now in her mid-fifties but remained a stunning, enchanting beauty, acclaimed for her keen wit, outlandish dress, and direct manner.

While his father, Edward Stevens, was a handsome, intelligent, and vibrant man, Angela’s allure was responsible for Michael’s constitution. He had inherited her fabulous traits, yet he incessantly carried himself as though he had no idea of his staggering impact.

She’d known him for over a decade, and had initially
become friends through his older brother, James, who was Michael’s duplicate in sexy dispensation and bold demeanor. They had just returned to London after living in Paris for fifteen years. Angela had raised them there, out of the hurtful glare of the Quality’s lofty snobbery. But once the boys were grown, she’d brought them to London, and Pamela chuckled whenever she recalled how introduction of the two Stevens sons had stirred the staid lives of so many.

What a commotion they had caused!

Wealthy, elegant, disreputable in their appetites, they had been rash, careless, out of control, eager to embrace any untoward behavior. Mothers had swooned at the very mention of their names. Fathers had wrung their hands over the potential disasters they might instigate. Girls had chased after them in a heedless rush.

Pamela, herself, had considered dabbling with one or both—how could a woman resist?—but as her dear husband had been alive at the time, she wouldn’t have risked jeopardizing her cordial relationship with him, not even for a tumble with a luscious partner like Michael Stevens. Although that’s not to say that she hadn’t sampled his delectable charms on numerous occasions after her spouse had passed on.

He stood before her now, showing her his back. Restless, jaded, potent, he’d matured, and thus calmed some of his excessive conduct, but he wasn’t averse to sporadically participating in periodic extravagant immoderation.

Sipping a glass of the strong Scots whisky he favored, he was ignoring her and gazing out into the yard, and as she studied him, she couldn’t help wondering what had plagued him the past few months. Ordinarily, she had no problem ferreting out lurid details, but despite all her inquiries, she hadn’t been able to uncover what had driven him from the city. And Michael assuredly wasn’t providing any clues. He could be as tight-lipped as a jar of sealed preserves when the situation called for it.

Some disturbing circumstance had sent him into a bizarre
downward spiral that was distinctly out of character. Instead of administering his duties at the famous gentlemen’s club he owned with James, he’d been attending country parties, one after the next. He couldn’t abide rubbing elbows with the exalted slackers and louts who also visited, frequently explaining that he was forced to put up with them at his establishment, but not in his private hours.