One Illicit Night - Sophia James

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seeing, languid abandon reforming itself into a tight kind of anger that he recognised. The corruption of innocence made him swear.

      Who the hell was she? Who the hell had done this? To him? To her? The look in her eyes, as he had demanded a name and the incoherent reply—asking for help?

      Lord above. He had been in the game of intelligence for years now and he had missed that? Real regret surfaced and guilt that held consent sacred in any relationship. He had never been a man to use force with a woman and virginity was something to be protected and given with full knowledge. He swore again, hating Beraud anew for sending him a brandy-filled whore-virgin completely new to the game.

      More questions surfaced as her medallion suddenly glinted against the pillow, the long gold necklace no longer hidden by her blonde curls. Removing it from her throat, he took it into the light and knew that the past had found him.

      Tricked. Duped. Another link in the chain that bound him here, lost to the pathways of proper society and for ever shamed.

      Eleanor felt a rush of imbalance engulf her. Her palms fanned wider against the whiteness beneath and she struggled to find reality.

      Naked. She was naked, though such a consideration was nothing against the sudden and dreadful knowledge of what had happened. Keeping her eyes shut tightly, she wished she were dead.

      ‘I know you to be awake.’ In French.

      She turned her head, even as she knew she meant not to.

      ‘Why do you wear this? ‘

      He sat in a chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him and her grandfather’s medallion dangling from his fingers, the lines drawn in gold catching the candlelight and sending rainbows spinning across the ceiling. His breeches were loose and his shirt was unbuttoned at the front, the breadth and definition of his chest so remarkably foreign that she could not look away.

      Parts of the last hour were coming back. A great rush of redness covered her cheeks, though when his eyes passed across the juncture at her thighs she understood that what motivated him now was only anger.

      ‘Who the hell are you?’

      When he reached out to press the heel of his hand hard against her stomach she was mortified by the tight need that echoed from the gesture.

      A whore. He had made her such! The play of his fingers against her skin made her stretch towards him, every sinew wanting …

      His palm broke contact.

      ‘For a woman without experience you are surprisingly wanton.’

      Eleanor turned her head. Below the shouts of people became louder, glass falling against a harder surface and shattering from the clumsiness of inebriation.

      A brothel.

      She was in a brothel on the bed of a man whose very den of iniquity it was. Deflowered.

      She smiled at such a term and then felt a single tear trace its way down her cheek to be soaked up by the burgundy velvet in the pillow behind. His string of French curses told her that he had seen it too.

      Lady Eleanor Bracewell-Lowen? England and the rarefied world of the ton seemed a long, long way from here.

       Chapter Two

      Cristo held the medallion in his fingers and hated the fear in her face.

      ‘Who are you?’ he repeated, his voice not quite steady. He wished he might have left her there, just walked out into the night and waited until she had gone, but life was no longer that simple for him. Beraud had brought her to him and if the woman should know anything of his past, what then? For years he had held the secrets safe. He shook his head, hard. With her maidenhead lost he felt he owed her at least something.

      One moment ran into two and then five more. But still she did not speak and the heat of fury leaked out of his vengeance.

      Sitting back, he weighed up the options.

      She would not talk and he no longer felt the desire to make her. She was shivering, too, for the fire had long since died out, as the cold of an early Parisian November crept into the space of his chamber, raising the fine hairs on her arms.

      He caught at an eiderdown of goose feathers folded on a chest at the foot of the bed and placed it across her and when one foot was still exposed he was careful to tuck it into warmness.

      The first stirring of dawn was lighting the room and the bells of Sacré Coeur rang in those souls who still believed in the goodness of Our Lady. Striking a light, he breathed in the mellow taste of a cheroot, the smoke winding its way up through the lonely morning dark, another small reminder of all that he had become.

       ‘Mon Dieu, et quel bordel tout ceci.’

      My God, and what a hell of a mess all this is.

      He saw small toes wiggle free from the thick down covering as she tried to sit up.

      ‘Could I please have a drink?’

      Six words that nearly undid him, for the quiet dignity in her request was undeniable. When he filled a glass and handed it to her she made a point of saying thank you, though the realisation that he still could not place her French accent kept him edgy.

      ‘How came you here?’

      She remained quiet, but as the flints of blame in pale eyes continued to prick at his conscience he made an attempt at explanation.

      ‘I didn’t know that you had not lain with a man before. This is a place that never shelters innocents and by the time I found out that you were one, it was too late.’

      An apology of sorts. It was all he could manage.

      ‘Then you will let me go now, monsieur?’

      Turning his face towards the window, Cristo wished that he could have taken her from this room right then and there before the need his body shook with was too much to deny. But he could not, for the party below was far from over and men made careless from too much drink were always dangerous.

      A temptress. A siren. The full line of her lips and the rise of her ample breasts against the softness of the cover. The sheer need of her made his voice sharper than he intended.

      ‘Where are your clothes?’

      ‘Downstairs. I took a drink … more than one.’

      ‘You came in with the other women, les prostituées?’

      She nodded.

      ‘And the chain?’

      ‘My aunt was once given it by an English client she serviced. A bauble that was not to her taste! I liked the shape and she said that if I came with her tonight I might have it, should the evening prove a success …’

      ‘Your aunt is one of those below?’

      When she nodded his hand closed around the engraved coat of arms and he felt the edge of the rondel dig into his palm. Was such a coincidence even possible? With a lifetime of deception behind him he knew that it was seldom the case. Could he make her talk now that she was more sober? His world reformed into only suspicion and his heart began to thump as he wondered how much Beraud might have gleaned about the meaning behind the crest.

      Keep talking, Eleanor thought to herself, the fog of the drink she had been forced into taking receding into the sharper play for survival. Already the velvet darkness in his eyes looked harder, more removed. Just a whore plying her trade in a market driven by a commodity that could be given many times, the first of as little importance as the hundredth. She had to make him trust exactly that if she had any chance at all of escaping with her name intact.

      ‘I do not believe anything you have told me. Do you work for Beraud?’

      ‘Beraud?’

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