Claiming the Courtesan (17 page)

“It wasn’t what I wanted,” she retorted, clearly stung, although he hadn’t implied she’d sold herself gladly. “He said he’d support Maria and Ben. He told me I could use my advantages. Or else allow myself to become their victim.”

Kylemore turned away from the view to light a candle, and only then did he look at her. She braced herself high against the pillows, and her eyes were cloudy with turmoil.

“He told you men would always want you.” He heard the cynicism in his voice.

“That’s a crude approximation,” she snapped. “He offered me shelter and security. Luxury. A world I’d never known. A chance to learn and experience and develop.”

“In return for which he took your innocence.”

Verity bestowed a worldly smile upon him that was a
brief reminder that she’d once had all London at her feet. “Kylemore, you more than anyone know men don’t take care of women without asking something in return.”

He wished he could deny it. He wished he could claim he was different, but they would both recognize the lie. It was too late for him to become Verity’s white knight even if a vile miscreant like him could play that role with any conviction.

With piercing sadness, he mourned all the lost innocence, his own as much as hers. Unlucky circumstances and human evil had forced them both into adulthood long before they’d been ready.

When he didn’t speak, she shrugged and went on. The gesture was so much the notorious Soraya’s that the breath caught in his throat. “At least Eldreth kept his side of the arrangement faithfully. With exceptional generosity, in fact. He took me to Paris, he hired tutors, he created the famous courtesan. Believe me, a grand personage such as the Duke of Kylemore wouldn’t have spared the Yorkshire farm lass a moment’s notice.”

Except he would have noticed her.

Yes, she now had the gloss of sophistication. But what drew him, what had always drawn him, was some indefinable essence that was purely her. What she told him might answer his abiding curiosity, but nothing tempered his fascination. He was coming to accept nothing ever would.

He didn’t tell her this. Instead, he asked something that had always intrigued him. “Where did the name Soraya come from?”

Then he was sorry he’d voiced the question. A fond smile crossed her face, and his doubt hardened into certainty. She’d loved Morse.

It made him yearn to smash something. Violence might ease the tempest in his soul, a tempest he had no right to feel.

“You must know about Eldreth’s collection of naughty
books. It was famous.”

“Yes.”

During his investigations into Soraya’s background, he’d ended up learning as much about her rich protector as he had about her. More, in fact. The celebrated collection of obscure erotica had befitted a man with a beautiful young mistress, a great fortune and no troublesome responsibilities to home and hearth.

“Soraya was the heroine of one of his favorite stories. He used to read it to me—she was a young captive in the seraglio who restored an aging sultan’s vitality. Eldreth started calling me Soraya as a joke shortly after we arrived in Paris, and the name persisted.”

This recollection of laughing intimacy provoked another surge of churning envy. It hinted at a relationship richer than anything Kylemore had ever achieved with her.

What did he and Verity really share? Sex, which he now had to exact from her. Suspicion. Dislike.

He stared sightlessly out the window and tried to stifle his turbulent emotions. He had so many reasons to thank her dead protector. Morse had saved her from assault and poverty. He’d recognized her qualities and fostered them. Few men would have done so much.

A vivid memory arose in his mind of the moment he’d first met Soraya.

When Sir Eldreth Morse had presented his mistress to that crowded room, Kylemore had read only gloating ownership in the baronet’s face. Now he looked back with the eyes of experience, of six years desiring that same woman. And he saw something else.

Pride. Morse had been openly proud of the perfect jewel he’d produced to dazzle society.

Without the old man’s intervention, this incomparable woman would never have moved into Kylemore’s orbit. Any
sensible man would curse Morse to hell for that fact alone.

Without Morse, he would never have endured years of frustration and misery. Soraya was the only thing that had ever come close to destroying him. She was his torment and his peril.

She was his only hope of salvation.

The predawn light let him make out the bruised fullness of her lips and the wary expression in her beautiful gray eyes. Surely, she couldn’t fear he’d condemn her for what she’d done. Her dilemma had been impossible, with other people’s survival hinging on her actions. She’d had the courage to use the beauty and wit God had given her to forge a future. A brilliant future, at that.

“Where’s John Norton now?” He focused on her story’s least ambiguous element.

“Kylemore, it’s too late to call him out for what he did to a servant girl over ten years ago,” she said quietly, her gray eyes not wavering from his face.

He knew she was clever and perceptive. But even so, it surprised him she saw so much. He’d tried to hide the full extent of his reaction to what she’d told him.

“It’s never too late,” he said grimly.

He broke the wordless connection between them and turned back to the window. Without pleasure, he watched the pale light gleam on the loch. The bars had been on the window so long that he hardly noticed them.

He heard the rustle of bedclothes as she rose, then the soft pad of her feet as she came toward him. She stopped behind him and her scent drifted around him, urging him, as always, to sin.

But for once, he found the will to resist temptation.

“It’s too late for John,” she said, still in that soft voice. “He was killed in a tavern brawl in York. He fought over a wench. He hadn’t changed.”

So the bastard burned in hell and was eternally out of his reach. Kylemore tamped down his rage. Then unbelievably, he felt two slender arms encircle his waist and a sweet pressure as she leaned into his back.

Soraya had never touched him in affection, until that last betraying kiss. And Verity never wanted to touch him at all. Yet here she embraced him without coercion. He felt lost, as though he’d been snatched into some alternative world while he’d slept. How had they moved from the bruising, turbulent passions of their last coupling to this strange truce?

“You can’t defend my honor,” she murmured into his left shoulder. Her breath brushed warm upon his skin, a sensual contrast to the cool air of the new day. “Anyway, we both know I’ve had no honor to defend since I was fifteen.”

Perhaps because he meant what he said so intensely, he didn’t look at her. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the shining surface of the loch. “Verity, you have more honor than anyone I know.”

She made a stifled, unhappy sound and tried to pull away, but he caught her hands and drew her around so she faced him. “You gave up everything you believed in for the sake of the people you love. Then you were brave enough to seize the opportunities your new life offered.”

The eyes she lifted to his were bleak with self-hatred. “You haven’t always thought so highly of me.”

“Hell, Verity, I wanted you and you ran away. I was angry. I always admired you. Now I realize your true quality.”

She flinched and tried to withdraw. “Stop it.”

He kept hold of her. “I never despised you—although I tried my damnedest when you left me. You sacrificed yourself to keep your family safe, yet you can’t forgive yourself for what you did.”

This time when she pulled free, he let her go.

P
anting as if she’d just climbed a mountain rather than walked down one floor to the kitchen, Verity leaned both hands on the scarred old table and bent her head. For a long moment, she stood there, hunched and shaking. Her body still ached from the vigorous sex hours before, and she was light-headed with fear, fatigue and too much emotion.

Reliving her past had hurt, but it was Kylemore himself who had cut through her every defense and harrowed her heart.

She muffled a sob. She had to get away from here. She had to get away even if it killed her.

If she didn’t, she was lost.

The handsome nobleman who dispensed rubies as though they were apples was no threat. The seductive rake who drew shuddering pleasure from her body touched her senses but not her heart.

But she couldn’t fight the man who cried out in the night and clung to her as if she was his only hope.

Nor could she fight the revelation that she and the duke weren’t so very different after all. A sneaking empathy for him had always undermined the emotional distance she struggled to maintain. Now to her wrenching sorrow, she knew why.

When faced with an impossible choice, she’d created Soraya. In a similar fashion and for similar reasons, the terrors of the duke’s childhood had forced him to become Cold Kylemore. The hairs rose on the back of her neck when she recalled how his long-dead father revisited his dreams.

Soraya and Cold Kylemore. Both necessary masquerades. Both requiring deception and lies. Both requiring a desperate, silent courage to keep the curious, spiteful world at bay.

His soul was dark and twisted and tormented.

His soul was full of evil and pain and regret.

His soul was twin to hers.

No, she wouldn’t let it be so. She was a common strumpet. He counted among the kingdom’s most powerful men. Nothing linked them other than a past liaison and his endless thirst for revenge.

The light brightened as day advanced. She lifted her head and wildly looked around the empty room. This cursed place made her doubt herself. If ever—please, God, let it be so!—she made it back to Ben, she’d forget this insanity. The isolation made her question what she’d always known was true.

The Duke of Kylemore was a self-centered autocrat. Shallow, cruel, thoughtless.

She was a whore who raised her skirts for any man who paid her. Her heart was ice.

Her hand bunched into a fist and she pounded the table, beating those harsh facts into her brain. Pain throbbed up her arm and dragged her back to the present.

She sucked in a deep breath and looked up. Summer dawn
filtered through the high windows to reveal the astonishing truth that she was completely alone.

No Hamish Macleish. No giants. Not even the little giggling maids, Morag and Kirsty, who, she’d worked out, were Hamish’s nieces. The duke was in bed upstairs, almost certainly sleeping after his long, disturbed night.

This empty kitchen presented a chance to escape. If she ran away, no one would seek her for hours. Her heart started to gallop with nervous excitement and fear.

She didn’t have long. The servants started work early. With full day, the walls of her captivity would close around her.

Meanwhile, she stood in the nightdress she’d borrowed from Morag. She was desperate, but she wasn’t a fool—she needed clothing and supplies if she hoped to survive the mountains.

A quick search of the kitchen unearthed a basket of clean laundry and her half boots, polished and ready. Swiftly, she flung off her nightrail and tugged on one of Kate Macleish’s kirtles. It was worn and far too large, but it was warm.

Thick stockings. And a coat—Hamish’s, she suspected—hanging from a hook by the door. She plaited her heavy hair into a long braid and tied it with a scrap of rag.

A check of the pantry turned up a loaf of bread, some cheese and a few late apricots, a fruit for which the duke had a particular fondness. She filled a flask with water and tied her bounty in a cloth.

If heaven had been kind, a couple of coins would have been scattered on the bench, but thrifty Highland servants didn’t leave money lying about.

Oh, what she’d give for just one of the gorgeous baubles Soraya had amassed in her long and scandalous career. But she’d sold her jewelry when she’d left Kensington and used the money to fund her futile dreams of freedom.

Perhaps not so futile after all, she thought on a rising tide of optimism.

Her plan was shaky. She recognized this even as she let herself out of the house. The weather could turn, she could get lost, aid mightn’t materialize.

But anything was better than waiting here for her inevitable destruction.

If she succumbed to what lurked unspoken in her heart, Kylemore would leave her devastated and alone when everything between them was over. As it must inevitably one day be over. She faced less danger from the looming ranges than she did from one tall tormented man.

If she succeeded in getting away, she’d never see the duke again. This time when she left him, she’d make sure not even the recording angel could trace her.

She blinked away a rush of tears as she dashed across the grass to the shelter of the trees.

Three days ago, she’d have scoffed if anyone had suggested she’d regret leaving Kylemore. Her defenses had taken a woefully short time to crumble.

How had she come to this? She fought to awaken the anger and loathing that had sustained her from the beginning of her ordeal.

But all she found within herself was her cowering, lonely heart, a heart crammed with pain and longing.

Such weak emotions when she had to be strong. She took a deep breath, hitched up her bundle and began to walk fast down the valley in the direction of the coast.

When Kylemore awoke, the sun blazed from a clear sky. He was alone in the wreck of the bed.

Idly, he wondered where Verity was. After she’d left him last night, the new peace between them had sent him into a catatonic sleep.

The raw emotion they’d shared should have left him feeling vulnerable.

But instead he felt…
safe.

He’d been too distraught to hide his shameful nighttime terrors; she’d trusted him with her sad history. The bond that united them was now indestructible.

Her habits of self-concealment were familiar. He shared them. He knew what it had cost her to reveal so much. And to someone she considered an enemy.

Someone she no longer considered an enemy.

Surely she couldn’t offer such sweet comfort to a man she hated. Surely she wouldn’t divulge her tragic past to someone she despised.

Now he wanted to know everything about her. Last night’s difficult confession had only whetted his curiosity to find out more.

And he wanted to make love to her.

Of course, he always wanted to make love to her. But this time, perhaps, she’d offer him the privilege of her consent.

The shadows that dogged his life had retreated. Verity had banished them.

He sat up, determined to find her. She must like him a little, trust him a little, to act as she had.

What a pathetic reflection on the great Duke of Kylemore that he placed such importance on this small concession.

Hope had been excised from his life since earliest childhood. But as he dressed in that quiet room, hope was the only cause he could find for the sudden lightness in his soul.

Kylemore entered the small chamber he’d chosen as his own, but she wasn’t there, nor had the narrow bed been used.

Perhaps reliving her unhappy story meant sleep had eluded her and she’d sat out the dawn downstairs. He was desperate to see her, to test if their strange intimacy survived the daylight.
He was desperate to see her because away from her, he felt incomplete.

But the gloomy parlor was empty as well. Foreboding began to beat a doom-laden chant in his heart.

Where was she? She couldn’t have left him. Not after last night. Devil take it, she’d trusted him, cared for him, confided in him.

But before that, he’d forced her into his bed.

Of course, she’d eventually succumbed to desire, as she always did. A desire of the body, not the mind. Her mind had resisted him right to the end.

Then she’d held him through his terrors. Which meant they had at last moved beyond compulsion and misery, hadn’t they?

His answer to that question grew more hesitant as he searched the grounds. Heartsick and uneasy, he returned to the house. In the kitchen, Morag and Kirsty harangued Hamish in shrill Gaelic. Apparently, food and clothing were missing.

In an instant, Kylemore’s fragile hopes crumbled to ash.

“Has anyone seen
madame
this morning?” He cut through the argument, although he already knew what response he’d receive.

With a frown, Hamish looked past his voluble nieces. “The lassie isnae with Your Grace? She hasnae been down yet.”

Kylemore’s fears coalesced into bleak certainty.

She’d gone. She’d lulled him into relaxing his vigilance, then seized her opportunity to escape. Bloody fool he was, he’d forgotten that she was never less than clever, whether she was Verity or Soraya.

“Get Angus and Andy,” he said sharply, cursing her, cursing himself. “We’ll organize a search.”

If she’d gone as soon as she’d left him—and he had no reason to assume otherwise—she had several hours start. He
had to find her before she left the glen. The dangers this harsh environment presented were hellishly real.

A quick trip to the stables assured him she hadn’t taken a horse. Given her fear of the animals, that was no surprise.

For the first time since he’d realized she’d abandoned him again, he felt faint optimism. If she was on foot, riders would have less difficulty overtaking her.

“Angus and Andy, you take the road over the range.” He didn’t modify the harshness of his tone. “Hamish and I will follow the loch.”

Only two routes led out of the glen—the mountain road and the path along the lochside to the coast. Verity already knew how difficult travel was over land. The loch presented an easier prospect until she reached the narrow passage between the mountains, where she’d need a boat. With any luck, he’d trap her there.

“Kate, Morag and Kirsty, check if she’s anywhere near the house. Perhaps she’s merely taking the air.” He already knew she’d run away. It was what he’d have done.

Curse him for a blockhead. Ever since he’d kidnapped her, he’d made sure she was watched. But last night had made him stupid. Now she could pay with her life for his stupidity.

Christ, he couldn’t bear to think she might die. Better he’d left her in Whitby than that. His gut clenched with guilt and despair.

He and Hamish rode westward. The day was fine and still, but such warmth often portended storms later.

For God’s sake, had she dismissed his warnings? Even men born here lost their lives in these mountains when the weather turned sour—as it did with alarming regularity.

Hamish caught up to him as he reined in near a stand of rowans. Kylemore saw his own fears reflected in the older man’s eyes.

“If the lassie came this way, she’ll be safe until she reaches the cliffs, laddie,” Hamish said reassuringly.

“Unless she slips into the water,” Kylemore said, narrowing his eyes against the dazzling sunlight as he checked along the steep bank.

In spite of the loch’s apparent placidity, it was deep and full of treacherous currents. A ghillie had drowned in its waters when he was six. Kylemore remembered the men carrying the pale, sodden body back to the house and the women wailing in grief. There had been more servants then, of course, to care for his father.

“Och, she’s a canny lassie. I doubt she’ll go so close tae the water. She’ll use the trees instead.”

Something in Hamish’s tone caught Kylemore’s attention. “You don’t sound surprised she’s run off.”

The older man shrugged. “She asked me tae help her, but I couldnae break loyalty with ye. I warned her of the dangers. But she’s a willful wee thing.”

The patent admiration in Hamish’s voice when he spoke of Verity nettled Kylemore. “You’ve never approved of me bringing her here,” he snapped. “But you don’t know the full story.”

He should have guessed his display of ducal temper wouldn’t cow Hamish. “No, I dinna approve. But ye know weel ye have my obedience.” His voice hardened noticeably. “But I’ve kept a close watch on her since she came tae the glen. And she’s a braw kindhearted lassie. I canna imagine what she’s done tae deserve being kept prisoner.”

Stung at the criticism, fair as it was, Kylemore retorted, “She’s no blushing virgin, man. She’s been my mistress for the past year.”

The moment the words left his mouth, he wanted to snatch them back. They made him feel small and shabby, especially after what Verity had told him last night.

Hamish’s eyes expressed equal disappointment. “Whisht, laddie. No need tae blacken her name. If she wants tae bring herself back tae virtue’s path, she’s tae be commended. If Your Grace’s lust stops her, ye bear the shame, no her.” The old Highlander kicked his pony into a trot and rode ahead as if he could no longer tolerate his employer’s presence.

Kylemore hardly blamed him. He could hardly tolerate his own company either.

He slumped in the saddle. If any shred of goodness clung to Kylemore’s black soul, it was thanks to the man who had just left him. The man who plainly now believed he’d wasted his regard on Kylemore.

Hamish had every reason to be disgusted at his protégé’s behavior. More than he knew.

But it was too late for second thoughts. Or second chances.

Verity sighed in frustration as she surveyed the smooth cliff face before her. She wiped palms clammy with nerves on Kate’s worn brown kirtle.

She’d walked for hours to reach the end of the valley. Now she was tired and sticky and stinging, courtesy of a nettle patch she’d unwittingly stumbled into. She took a deep breath of the humid air and tried to whip up her courage, but it had shrunk into a cold, hard kernel inside her.

With every step, she’d feared the duke would catch her. The morning was well advanced, and he must know by now she’d gone. Nausea rose in her throat as she imagined his anger at what he’d consider yet another betrayal.