Claiming the Courtesan (3 page)

Kylemore, frankly curious to view this creature who had set the men of the ton on their collective ear, had met her at Morse’s town house shortly afterward. He’d been unprepared for his reaction, although the level of the furor should have warned him.

Because, of course, London had seen beautiful women before.

But Soraya was…more.

One look at her across Sir Eldreth’s drawing room and Kylemore had known the same urge to possess and conquer that had raised his reaving ancestors from minor Highland lairds to dukes of the realm.

But the cool-eyed beauty’s lack of interest in him had been insultingly plain. Nothing he did or said, no material inducement he dangled before her exquisite nose could separate her from her elderly lover.

That season, every man in the beau monde seemed to scheme to steal her away. Until it finally became obvious she was, astonishingly, perfectly content to remain loyal to her keeper.

And that was when her real notoriety started.

Three young men, all bright hopes of their generation, shot themselves for love of her. There were duels, several killing matters, even though the survivors must have known their victory brought them no closer to obtaining what they so desperately desired.

Within months of her arrival, Sir Eldreth Morse’s mistress was the most hated and most idolized and most scandalous woman in England.

Kylemore observed the chaos with increasing frustration. Surely he could do something to make her his. But all his power, all his fortune, all his attractions couldn’t shift her from her damned inexplicable devotion to the portly baronet.

Secretly, he sent investigators to France to ferret out what they could about her. But she’d been both as famous, as faithful and as elusive in Paris as she was in London.

Of course, rumors abounded, but all proved infuriatingly difficult to substantiate. Some said Sir Eldreth had rescued her from a Turkish harem—or a harem in Egypt or Syria or Persia. Unlikely heroics for the notably sedentary baronet, although the evidence of the girl’s name indicated some exotic origin.

If her name really was Soraya, which Kylemore had always doubted.

Other people believed she was a laundress Morse had picked up in the alleyways around Les Halles. Or she was a former child prostitute who had seen her chance with the rich English milord and taken it.

Kylemore always treated these tales—and even more outlandish stories he heard over the years—with skepticism. His own guess about her, if she was indeed French, was she came from a respectable family that had fallen foul of the Revolution or Bonaparte. He’d lay money that breeding lurked somewhere in her background. Her effortless self-possession outdid any fine lady he knew.

Perhaps she was English. She spoke the language as well as he did.

“Watch it, yer lordship!”

The shout wrenched Kylemore back to the present. A thickset countryman clutched at his horse’s bridle, clearly trying to save himself from being knocked down.

The famous Kinmurrie glare cowed the fellow, although Kylemore knew the bumpkin was only guilty of wandering unwittingly into his path. He forced himself to concentrate on reaching Grosvenor Square without causing damage either to himself, his mount or London’s traffic.

The moment Kylemore slammed into his town house, his mother appeared at the top of the staircase. Since their argument yesterday, he had deliberately avoided her. He wondered with distant amusement just how long she’d been hovering above, waiting for him to come back. He hoped it was hours.

“Justin, I must speak with you.”

He stripped off his gloves and handed them to the attendant footman. “Not now, madam.”

She marched down the steps with elegant determination. “What plans are you making? What is this ridiculous talk of an engagement?”

“I shall inform you of developments.” He turned toward his library.

His mother forgot her self-importance to go so far as to hurry after him. “That’s not good enough! And you cannot really expect me to leave London!”

He whirled on her as he reached the door. “I have spoken, madam. And as head of this family, I expect to be obeyed. You and your ward will be gone from this house by week’s end.”

“Justin, this is cruel. This is…”

He didn’t know what she read in his face, but his expression must have been daunting enough to convince her that retreat was the wisest course. And the duchess was a woman who quailed at nothing.

“As you wish,” she said in a subdued tone he’d never heard from her before.

“Yes, as I wish,” he said savagely, knowing that nothing, in fact, was as he wished.

He strode into his library without a backward glance. Soraya didn’t know what she’d unleashed in her lover by deserting him. But she would find out. And she would be sorry.

Kylemore poured himself a brandy and downed it in a single gulp. He was usually a man of abstemious habits. His father’s pathetic example had always stood as a warning
against the dangers of self-indulgence. But now he refilled his glass and collapsed in a chair in front of the fire. He had agreed to meet his cronies at his club, but he was in no mood to act the civilized gentleman tonight.

The liquor’s warmth couldn’t melt the chill inside him. What was Soraya doing now? Had she left him for another protector? Was his humiliation already public knowledge? Did the world snigger tonight at the thought of Kylemore’s mistress fleecing some other rich blockhead?

How his rivals would gloat at his rejection. How they would fawn over the fortunate fellow who was now Soraya’s keeper.

He swore and flung the empty glass into the fire.

Had she taken another lover? Or had her favors become her brawny manservant’s exclusive prerogative? The thought aroused another burst of sick anger. Just when had Ben Ahbood become an inseparable part of Soraya’s mystique?

Kylemore couldn’t remember the first time he’d noticed the brute. He’d certainly been with Soraya after Sir Eldreth’s death three years ago, when the male half of the beau monde had predictably gone mad trying to secure her interest. Two other dukes had been in the running, as well as an Italian prince and one of the tsar’s cousins, not to mention a parcel of fellows holding lesser titles.

In the six months Soraya took to consider her next step, there were more duels between especially excitable supplicants. Although thankfully, this time, the self-destructive element among society’s sprigs controlled their inclinations to end it all.

Kylemore had been sure of himself—and of her—and had remained above the vulgar displays of masculine competitiveness that kept London buzzing that season. He’d always known at some bone-deep level she would be his. And she’d known that too. She put up a great show of indifference, but
some link, some invisible thread tugged her inexorably toward him.

So he stood apart from the fray and waited for her inevitable choice. Only to watch Soraya do the utterly unanticipated.

From her clamoring legion of admirers, she chose James Mallory. Not a whiff of a title. A mere Mr., a shy young man recently back from India. Of good but unremarkable family. And rich. At least there she’d lived up to Kylemore’s expectations.

If his inconvenient fascination for the chit had allowed, Kylemore would have given up the game then and there. She’d had her shot at greatness and instead given herself to a commonplace milksop with no social polish, however deep his pockets were.

Although to be fair, James Mallory had cut quite a dash after Soraya singled him out as her lover. He’d soon developed enough town bronze to snare one of the season’s prettiest heiresses. To whom, then, amazingly, he showed every sign of fidelity.

Which meant Soraya was back seeking a protector.

Not that she gave any indication her sudden freedom was unwelcome. And by this stage, Ben Ahbood, or whatever the bastard’s name really was, had been very much in evidence.

Of course, she had neither explained nor excused. The legendary Soraya’s factotum was a mute Arabian Samson. If the world disapproved, she shrugged her straight, slender shoulders and proceeded just as she pleased.

This time, Kylemore left nothing to chance. No gentlemanly hanging back, no self-confident hesitation in expressing his interest. The morning Mallory’s engagement to Lady Sarah Coote was announced, Kylemore presented his card at Soraya’s house. He’d waited five years. He had no intention of waiting one moment longer.

Soraya appeared neither delighted, dismayed nor disconcerted to find a duke in her parlor at an hour more suitable for breakfast than for callers. Instead, she listened calmly and, Devil take her, had said she would think about what he proposed. Her protector hadn’t been in evidence, although Kylemore would have happily faced him down if he had.

But, Kylemore remembered with a churning in his belly, Ben Ahbood had admitted him to the house, then sent him on his way. And the lout’s manner toward him had done no honor to his dignity as a duke.

Soraya’s response had come a week later, couched in a swathe of legalities. Kylemore’s original offer had been extravagant. She requested he increase it to a king’s ransom, including clear title to all property and goods he gave her.

And, he remembered now with another unpleasant twinge, after a year, if either party were dissatisfied, the arrangement ceased forthwith.

Oh, she’d been clever, his grasping, cunning mistress. Clever and faithless. And he’d been guilty of fatal complacency.

She’d been overtly true to her two previous keepers. He should know—he had cast every lure to coax her away. But perhaps she’d duped everyone and her real allegiance was to the blackguard who lived hugger-mugger with her.

Her subtle hints about Ben Ahbood’s sexual incapability had been a masterstroke. Kylemore had always admired Soraya, but her audacity now took his breath away.

His excellent brain—like his looks, inherited from his despised mother—clicked back into working order. Coldly, calmly, he vowed to track down the cozening trollop and her lover.

The blood of generations of ruthless men ran in his veins. Soraya had no idea what she’d started when she played the Duke of Kylemore for a fool. He smiled in cold anticipation
of the day she discovered the mistake she’d made in betraying Justin Kinmurrie.

A late summer storm had stirred the North Sea off Whitby Sands into fury. Verity flung the veil back from her black bonnet and stared out into the windswept world around her. The beach was almost deserted, and no one would notice the widow Symonds hold her face up to the cold gale or smile out at the restless ocean.

She’d been in Whitby for three months and still could hardly believe that the transition to her new life had been so easy.

The scandalous Soraya had left London with her manservant. Several days later, the respectable widow Mrs. Charles Symonds had taken a house in this Yorkshire fishing town with her brother, Benjamin Ashton.

I’m free, I’m free,
her heart chanted in time with the gray water lashing the shore.

I’m free. I’m independent. My life is my own at last.

I’m free, but becoming uncomfortably damp,
her more practical self pointed out as spray flew up to darken her black bombazine. She chuckled and moved back from the edge.

The townspeople, all good sturdy Yorkshire folk, had been mildly curious about her arrival with her brother but had soon accepted them. Verity Symonds was still in deep mourning for the young husband she’d lost to a fever six months ago. The young husband who had left his relict perfectly well provided for, by all appearances.

Mr. Benjamin Ashton, too, seemed a good enough chap, clearly from local stock, as he, unlike his sister, hadn’t lost his accent. In fact, it was soon bruited about that Mr. Ashton sought a suitable property where he could establish a sheep farm.

As she climbed the steps to her house at the top of the
ridge, Verity considered whether she’d stay in Whitby. She loved the sea and the old town and the brooding ruins of the ancient abbey on the hill. The place was far from the eyes of society and conveniently close to the moors, where her brother had always wanted to settle.

Ben had hated London. She found it an immense satisfaction to witness his transparent happiness at resuming his true identity. At last, he followed his own ambitions after playing her silent bodyguard for so long. Helping him fulfill his dreams was the very least she owed him.

Not for the first time, she wished she could remove her sister from the school near Winchester where she’d boarded since she was five years old. How wonderful to reunite the entire Ashton family. But the risk was too great that Soraya’s notoriety would taint Maria’s future.

Wherever Verity went, Soraya would always cast a shadow. That sobering thought accompanied her up the last of the steep rise to her lodgings.

She let herself into the house and paused in the confined hallway to remove her bonnet and gloves. Her brother’s voice was raised in anger somewhere at the back.

This was strange enough to make her hurry toward the sound. But as she neared the kitchen, it was the second voice she heard—soft but clear, and as cutting as a saber through flesh—that made her stop.

The Duke of Kylemore had found her.

H
ow long did Verity stand in that dim corridor while her foolish sense of security leached away to nothing? Later, common sense told her it must only have been seconds. Dread held her immobile. She had a prescience of doom as relentless as those pounding waves upon the beach, where she’d been so stupidly sure of herself.

When awareness returned, she was halfway back to the door. If she ran far enough and fast enough, surely Kylemore wouldn’t follow. Britain held a thousand places to hide. Or she could go abroad. He’d never trace her in America. Or New South Wales. Or wildest Borneo, if it came to that.

With shaking hands, she reached out for her bonnet, then realized just what she was doing. She couldn’t flee with merely the clothes she stood up in and the few coins in her reticule. The sound of a crash, probably a chair smashing on the flagstones in the kitchen, made up her mind for her.

The duke had no legal claim on her. She’d held her own against him as Soraya. Verity Ashton was no lesser crea
ture. She took a deep breath, turned and headed toward the kitchen.

The duke pinned Ben to one wall, his cane across her brother’s throat. The sight of her lover after so long made Verity’s breath hitch with fear as she paused in the doorway.

“Come on, you lying bastard. Hit me! You know you want to,” Kylemore taunted in a low, jeering voice. “Hit me, for Christ’s sake.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Ben, thank God, kept his fists by his sides. “But magistrates don’t encourage the lower orders to beat up the bloody nobility. I won’t hang for the sake of your sodding pretty face, Your Grace.” This last with utter contempt.

A jerk of the stick against Ben’s Adam’s apple made him gag. “If you don’t hang for that, Lord knows, you’ll hang for something else.”

“Stop it,” Verity said firmly. Her apparent calmness hid trembling terror. “For pity’s sake, there’s no need for this!”

Neither looked at her.

The duke continued, still in that same soft, teasingly threatening tone. “How does it feel to know she gave it all to me for so long? To know you begged for another man’s leavings? Did you listen at the door to hear every sweet little moan and sigh she made as I did exactly what I wanted to her?”

“I said stop it!” Verity insisted more sharply. The duke had discovered most of their secrets—how else had he found them? And he was clearly mistaken, and fuming, about her relationship with her former manservant.

Ben’s smile was scornful. “You’re nowt to her but a nice fat fortune. Every moan and sigh meant gold. Gold for her and gold for me. So, my lord, still feel so bloody high and mighty?”

Verity glanced across to where her maid-of-all-work
watched from the corner with a mixture of avidity and horror. Whatever else resulted from this afternoon, her chances of remaining in Whitby as a respectable widow had just disintegrated. But before she worried about that, she somehow had to stop her lover from murdering her brother.

Kylemore smiled back at Ben with a distinctly vulpine curve to his lips. “Perhaps it was you she gulled. While your filthy hands defiled that perfect white flesh, she lay there wishing for a real man.”

Ben’s face twisted with revulsion. “You? A real man? You’re nowt but spleen and vanity tricked out in fancy rags. When the lass wanted a real man, she knew where to turn.”

Dear heaven, if she didn’t do something quickly, there would be bloodshed. The scent of impending violence rose another notch. While Ben might outweigh the duke, Kylemore’s lean body was lithe and strong, as she was intimately aware.

“Listen, you idiots!” With unsteady hands, she grabbed a large blue-and-white platter from the dresser near the door.

“I’ll kill you.” Unbelievably, Kylemore’s voice didn’t rise, although Ben, she saw, struggled to contain his thirst to fight back. She knew if her brother made the slightest retaliation, the duke would set out with utter mercilessness to destroy him. That cane concealed a sword. He’d shown her the mechanism one afternoon in Kensington.

“Then who will hang, Your Grace?” Ben asked snidely.

This had gone more than far enough. “You’re both acting like schoolboys!” She lifted the platter and deliberately dashed it against the flagstones.

The sound of smashing crockery echoed in the suddenly silent room.

Her gesture finally captured their attention. The duke turned toward her, his blue eyes blind with anger. Ben, too, looked in her direction, although the duke’s stick kept him
trapped. She realized that through all their squabbling over her, neither had actually known she’d been in the room with them.

She drew herself up and spoke with all the authority the woman who had once been the great Soraya could muster. “Benjamin Ashton, stop baiting him. We’re in enough trouble.” She turned to the duke. “And you, Your Grace, let him go.”

Kylemore’s lip lifted in a sneer. “Pleading for your lover, madam?”

She resisted an urge to hurl more crockery. “He’s not my lover.” Then, momentarily forgetting the respect due to his exalted rank, she spat, “He’s my brother, you damned fool.”

“Your brother.” Strangely, Kylemore didn’t even consider questioning the truth of her assertion.

He stared at the woman he’d at last found, then around the stark little kitchen. He hadn’t noticed much about it when he’d stormed in to find the abhorred Ben Ahbood showing every sign of being at home. All he’d wanted then had been to kill. The incongruity of this adequate, but hardly luxurious, house as a setting for his jewel of a Soraya hadn’t registered.

But it registered now as he took in the details of his surroundings.

“Yes, my brother.” She moved forward and righted the chair he’d knocked over when he’d lunged at his rival.

Except his rival was apparently no rival at all. He’d tormented himself night and day over a chimera.

“Let him go. Your quarrel is with me,” Soraya said. In spite of all the hatred he’d expended on her since her disappearance, that husky voice fell on his tortured, lonely soul like rain on parched earth.

He lowered his stick, and Ben Ahbood—Ben Ashton, he
supposed—slumped gasping against the wall. The hostile black eyes, familiar now as they had been in the Arabian manservant, focused on him.

“Get out,” the younger man rasped.

“Oh, be quiet, Ben,” Soraya said wearily. She looked across at the maid. “Marjorie, please clean up this mess.” She turned on her heel. “If Your Grace would follow me? Ben, stay here. I wish to speak to the duke alone.”

Kylemore almost laughed. She did a damn fine job of turning a drama of Shakespearean proportions into a domestic comedy. He even found himself following that straight, black-clad back down the hallway and into a neat parlor. Discovering his exotic mistress ensconced in bourgeois—and apparently chaste—respectability was the last thing he’d pictured.

She turned to face him, her chin up. He could have told her she was wasting her time trying to blend in with her lackluster environment. No one—no man, in particular—would ever believe she was born for anything but sin.

The howling beast that had taken up residence in his heart since she’d gone quietened as she leveled her cool gray eyes on him. “I owe you an apology, Your Grace.”

That was the very least she owed him, the unscrupulous baggage. He’d prefer her on her knees, begging forgiveness. But that wasn’t Soraya’s style, as he should have known.

She went on in the same dispassionate voice. “I wanted to tell you it was over, but my brother insisted you’d make trouble and I allowed him to persuade me against my better judgment.”

Her brother had been right, Kylemore thought grimly. “Rich protectors are deuced thin on the ground in this backwater, I’d have thought.”

A spark of annoyance lit her eyes. “That is of no consequence, Your Grace. I don’t seek a rich protector. I have re
tired. My life will be one of blameless propriety and good works from now on.”

He did laugh out loud at that. He couldn’t help himself. “What a charmingly nonsensical notion, my dear Soraya.” He paused. “Except you call yourself Verity Symonds, don’t you? Am I permitted to know your real name after our long and…
close
acquaintance?”

She looked uncomfortable, although he couldn’t tell if it was at the implication of deception or his reference to their liaison. “It’s Verity Ashton. And I don’t see why my ideas are nonsensical. Although your stoush in the kitchen has destroyed any future I might have had in Whitby. I can’t imagine Marjorie keeping her mouth shut about a duke brawling with Mrs. Symonds’s brother.”

“I found you once, I can find you again,” he said evenly.

She looked unconcerned at his threat, blast her. “Why would you bother? A man like you has no trouble getting someone to warm his bed. There’s nothing special about me.”

Amazingly, she wasn’t being coy or eliciting flattery—she’d always been remarkably free of the usual female wiles. But surely she knew she was a woman beyond the common calling. She was the incomparable Soraya, whatever damned name she chose to call herself now.

With difficulty, he kept his voice neutral. “So after the deal of trouble I expended to find you, I’m to go on my way without a murmur of protest?”

“You were angry. You thought I’d deceived you. Now you realize that isn’t the case. I haven’t taken another lover and have no intention of doing so.” She moved forward to the door, clearly trying to end the interview. “So you see, there’s nothing here for Your Grace. Soraya no longer exists. Verity Ashton and her brother can be of no interest to you. You’ve
satisfied your curiosity about what became of your mistress.”

“Yes,” he said, although, of course, he lied. His curiosity, if anything, was more consuming than ever. “This new life will pall. You weren’t born for obscurity.”

“After my years of public notoriety, obscurity will be a blessing,” she said. He could see that she was sincere, deluded creature that she was. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Oh, I understand,” he said. “More than you can know.”

Hadn’t he wasted his childhood yearning to be just an ordinary boy from an ordinary family? But maturity had brought the knowledge that some burdens were never to be laid down, no matter how unwilling, how unfit, how resentful the bearer.

His spectacular mistress still needed to learn this lesson.

“I believe we have nothing more to say to each other. You were a generous and kind lover, Your Grace. Please don’t make me remember you otherwise.” The presumptuous slut even had the gall to smile at him when she opened the door, as if dismissing an inconvenient caller. “Good day.”

He bent his head in a show of acknowledgment, although in reality he did it to hide a surge of ferocious need. “At least do me the courtesy of accompanying me to my carriage.”

With predatory avidity from under his lashes, he saw her glance nervously around the room, as if seeking an excuse to refuse. She wasn’t quite as self-possessed as she wished to appear, but her compulsion to speed him on his way superseded sensible caution. “As you wish.”

With false decorum, he presented his arm. After a tiny, telling hesitation, she took it. The light, irritatingly reluctant contact burned. Her touch had the same effect on him it always had. If anything, his hunger had only become fiercer after so long without feasting on its desire.

Soon,
he soothed his rioting appetites.
Soon all you want will be yours
.

As they moved out into the mean little hall, her scent surrounded him. Fleetingly, it disoriented him. It made her Soraya and not Soraya.

His worldly mistress had always floated in a cloud of musk and ambergris. The woman at his side smelled of violet soap. Although far from unpleasant, it was vaguely unsettling, as though he’d somehow set his revenge on the wrong target. But beneath the fresh scent of flowers lingered the haunting essence of the woman he craved so endlessly.

Her brother waited outside the parlor. He clearly, and rightly, suspected Kylemore’s intentions.
A canny laddie, Benjamin Ashton,
Kylemore admitted to himself.

“His Grace is leaving,” Soraya—Verity—said.

Ashton looked unimpressed. “Just like that?”

“I’ve found out what I wanted.” Kylemore looked around the poor dwelling with unconcealed derision. Good God, Soraya belonged in a palace, not in this hovel.

“You won’t be coming back, then,” the young man said flatly. It wasn’t a question.

“No,” Kylemore said and meant it.

“I’ll just see His Grace to his conveyance.” She looked troubled. He couldn’t blame her. The atmosphere of loathing and mistrust was thicker than the impenetrable sea fogs that regularly swept in along the Kylemore coast.

“I’ll come with you,” the fellow said.

Silently, they left the house and climbed the short distance to the peak of the hill. Kylemore had left his carriage near the abbey, not wanting to risk either his fine vehicle or expensive horseflesh on the precipitous streets.

“Well, here we are,” Verity said.

He found it damned hard getting used to her new name.
But whatever she called herself, nothing changed the fact that she was his. He glanced down at her perfect face and read the relief there. She must have expected the worst when she’d found him in her kitchen. Now she’d congratulate herself on bringing events to such a favorable conclusion.

Favorable to her anyway, the manipulative jade.

Kylemore nodded to his two brawny footmen before he shifted his hold on her arm so that she couldn’t escape. “You can’t think I’ll let our association end this way, my dear. Or has changing your name chased away all your wits indeed?”

She tried to pull free. “It ends this way because I say it does, Your Grace,” she said sharply.

He smiled, admiring her nerve. Unluckily for her, nerve would do her no good where he meant to take her. “I’m afraid the wishes of a self-serving demirep are of no consequence.”

He was delighted to see her assurance evaporate as she registered his implacable tone. Frantically, she looked past him to her brother. “Ben, do something!”

Kylemore snapped out a command in Gaelic, and the stalwart Ben Ahbood found himself restrained by two even more stalwart Highlanders, brought precisely for this purpose.