He began to thrust, taking long measured strokes, his prick inflaming both her bladder and her lust. The glass across from them showed the power of his body. Muscles rippled across his shoulder blades, and his thighs tensed in firm curves. His working buttocks hollowed to shadows as his hips tilted up to her and his cock plunged high.
Clarissa’s outspread limbs were white on black, a broken lily plastered on mud. She was helpless. She could not even push against him, so delicate was the tension which kept her from urinating. She cried out incoherently and Marldon drove on, hard and furious. His scattering hands brushed over her flesh. He crushed and twisted her nipples; he slipped his fingers between their joined bodies and frigged her clitoris. He bit into her shoulders and neck.
Every fibre of her being screamed for release. But she knew the zenith of her pleasure meant also the depths of shame. She felt she was on a tightrope: her dignity was her balancing pole and beneath was an abyss, so tempting and terrifying.
‘Lose control,’ urged Marldon. ‘Give yourself to me, Clarissa. Surrender to your needs.’
Tears of rage spilled down her cheeks. Lord Marldon slammed into her. He grasped her buttocks with ruthless delight and pulled her soft mounds apart. Clarissa
whimpered for mercy as he ran a finger between the wide gap of her cheeks and found the creased aperture of her anus. He pressed there, threatening to invade.
‘Let your body be master,’ he whispered.
For a moment, Clarissa clung on to the torturous brink of her climax. Then she gave a long, despairing wail. Her muscles could not hold. Her vagina loosened and she was slippery, easy about his powering phallus. Convulsions seized her body and relief gushed from her in a fast warm torrent. In the mirror she caught sight of her pale golden liquid. It wreathed down Marldon’s jerking legs; it streamed and splashed from their union and pattered loudly on to the floor.
The humiliation of it hardly concerned her. The double release was bliss beyond compare. Marldon gasped harshly and plunged deep into her. He snarled, baring his teeth, snapping wildly at the air. Clarissa’s belly deflated with slow-sinking ease and the clenching tremors of her sex continued, transporting her on a wave of dizzying euphoria. With a bestial roar, Marldon reached his peak. His buttocks shivered as his jets of need spurted inside her, hot and fierce.
Clarissa’s crisis fell away around his, plunging her into the heaviness of fading delight. Her stomach glowed with dispelled pain and her water trickled thinly, dying away until it was nothing but drips. She rested her head against Alec’s shoulder, gasping for breath, feeling his penis slackening within her.
For a long while, Marldon said nothing. In the silence, with their bodies still linked, Clarissa experienced a doomed sense of oneness with him. He had provoked her into abasing herself then had shared in it so utterly, without a trace of disgust or scorn, that she felt grateful to him, strangely beholden.
Lord Marldon withdrew from her. ‘I can see my style of courtship enchants you,’ he said, picking up his robe. ‘Your cries of joy are wedding bells to my ears.’
Chapter Nine
HEAVY CURTAINS SCREENED
out the street lanterns and the candles were few. On the sideboard stood a range of bottles containing vile-coloured liquids, together with numerous clay bowls heaped with lurid powders.
A purple cloth covered the round table and opposite sat Dr Irfan Paya, hunched within his hooded robes. A long greying beard poked from his shadowy face, and from his neck, strung on a thick silver chain, dangled a long twisted piece of metal.
Octavia’s palm was upturned in his slender bejewelled fingers.
‘There have been many men in your life,’ said the doctor after an interminable silence.
Octavia snorted. ‘I don’t need a soothsayer to tell me that,’ she said, her bass voice resonant. ‘It’s common bloody knowledge.’
The doctor raised a hand for silence, and resumed his contemplation of her palm.
‘Many have pleased you; many have charmed you.’ The doctor inhaled deeply, his head raised, his eyes closed. His skin was like tanned leather, dark and lined, and his eyebrows were thick and grey.
‘I see a man watching you,’ he continued. ‘And you are … Diamonds … Wearing nothing but diamonds. Laid across a long table. He is a royal man, not a king. He is waiting. One day he will be king.’ The doctor dropped his head abruptly and drew a long, shuddering breath.
Octavia paled. She had told, at most, three people of that episode in her life. Or was it four? Gallantry with the Prince of Wales was not something one discussed. A courtesan who gained a reputation for gossiping would not be welcomed again in high circles.
‘Only one man has truly satisfied you,’ murmured the strange doctor. ‘I see a scar on his face. He wanted you to submit to him.’
‘And I did not,’ said Octavia vehemently, snatching her hand away.
‘No, no. You did not. You did not.’
Octavia was beginning to think this was not the enjoyment Lucy had promised. Memories, painful ones, were best left alone. They belonged to the past, not the present. And Octavia was a different person now from the eager chit Marldon had first taken in hand.
He had taught her a great deal, much of it unwittingly. Dominating others and turning them into snivelling, pleading wrecks was something she’d learnt purely by following his example. It had proved a lucrative skill, but less satisfying than learning how to conceal hatred. Smiling indifference was something Marldon could not endure. It left him with nothing to feed off and Octavia had, where he was concerned, become superbly, charmingly cool.
She was, after all, an actress.
Such a talent served her well in society: nobody knew the real Octavia; nobody knew about her innermost desire or how she took her pleasures, unless of course they were participating. She hoped the doctor couldn’t read too deeply.
‘Are those your medicines, Dr Paya?’ she enquired
brusquely, nodding to the sideboard. ‘A most interesting selection.’
‘You do not need medicine,’ he replied. ‘Although there are some who would disagree. They see it as diseased, an unnatural act. Abhorrent.’
‘No,’ exclaimed Octavia, jumping to her feet. ‘No more.’ The chair thumped to the ground behind her. She spun on her heels and headed for the door. If this got out it could ruin her career.
‘Octavia, stop,’ came a soft, urgent voice.
She drew up short and turned slowly, disbelievingly, to the man. He pushed back his hood, unhooked the beard from his ears, and smiled apologetically.
‘Mr Ardenzi,’ she whispered. ‘You … you contemptible swine.’
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘I’m sorry. Please, Tavi, let me explain.’
Octavia returned and picked up the chair, her shocked gaze never leaving his painted face.
‘Who told you?’ she breathed. She sat down as though she were old and fragile, and gently patted her bright auburn hair into place. ‘How much do you want?’
Gabriel shook his head. ‘Some of it was gossip, some of it was guesswork.’
‘And my … my unnatural acts?’ she said, her fingers fluttering with the jewelled choker at her neck.
‘A hunch.’ He shrugged. ‘Something about the way you looked at Lucy before. But, if you recall, I didn’t really say anything, Octavia. My words could have meant any number of things to any number of people. Although your reaction did much to confirm my suspicions.’
Octavia sighed and looked into the gloom. She had a name to keep as a sophisticated, man-hungry harlot. At the age of forty-four, she could not command the fees she once did. If her burgeoning taste for women became known, it could consign her to the scrap heap.
‘We need your help,’ said Gabriel abruptly. ‘We need
better make-up, theatrical stuff. And we need some dirt on Lord Marldon. Intimate things.’
She jerked her head to him, her eyes narrowed with mistrust and anger. ‘Is this bribery?’ she snapped.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I pledge you my word, I’ll say nothing of what I know. I simply need to get into Asham House.’
‘In heaven’s name, what for?’ asked Octavia.
Gabriel called Lucy in from the adjoining drawing room and together they explained.
‘The grasping cur,’ muttered Octavia when the two of them had finished. ‘And your cousin, such a charming thing. I dread to think what he – Oh, so sorry, Gabriel. So sorry. Of course I’ll help you, though I suggest the good doctor gain himself a reputation before attempting a visit to Asham. Marldon’s curious about this sort of thing, but mainly because he likes to spot a charlatan. You’ll have to be good, my boy, damn good.’
‘It doesn’t matter if he thinks Gabriel’s a fraud,’ said Lucy. ‘As long as he doesn’t think he’s Gabriel. And there’s a second part to our plan. That is, if you’ll help us.’ She crossed to the door. ‘Miss Preedy. Do come in.’
Miss Preedy, her fair hair curled, pinned, and woven with tiny flowers, glided into the room. She wore a gown of brilliant red, and a sumptuously laced train dragged on the floor behind her. She held her head high and she smiled at the three of them.
Gabriel looked at her in astonishment and whistled. ‘Hell’s teeth, Kitty,’ he said. ‘And I thought my disguise was good.’
Kitty beamed a wider smile. ‘Dandy, isn’t it?’
Lucy coughed disapprovingly. ‘Tavi,’ she said. ‘Do you think, with your contacts, you might manage to secure Kitty a position at Madame Jane’s?’
Octavia’s critical eyes wandered over the young girl, assessing her from head to toe. ‘I can try,’ she said,
nodding thoughtfully. ‘Yes, if it means Marldon getting his just desserts, I can try my bloody hardest.’
Clarissa stood at her bedroom window, gazing beyond Piccadilly to Green Park. Its calm, rolling expanse seemed a world apart from this one. It was close, but not close enough for her to attract anyone’s attention; and in everything else it was far, far away.
The people who strolled there were everyday people, taking the air and going about their business. Their normality made Clarissa feel her imprisonment and the strangeness of her lusts all the more acutely. Those elegant swells knew nothing of her plight; they did not have desires as sick and hungry as hers. It was inconceivable.
She felt utterly, irrevocably changed. And she did not know if Marldon had created her corrupt appetites or merely discovered them. But she was quite sure they would be forever with her. Some day she would walk among those people below, but never again would she be of them. Inside she could count herself as nothing but a fairground freak.
She turned away from the view and sat on the bed, her knees bunched to her chest. The early-July sunshine cut two pale slants across the room, and a fat bluebottle buzzed intermittently against one of the windows. They don’t open, you fool, she thought bitterly. But, if they did, would she shout for help? If she could leave, would she? Clarissa dared not think about it. She preferred not having the choice.
She flicked back the cover of a book beside her and shut it without a glance at the title. She was in no mood for reading. She was in no mood for anything.
Asham House was a place of extremes, and on days such as this it defeated her. For thirty-two and three-quarter hours, she had seen nothing of the earl. He had ordered her out of his bed, just as she was falling asleep in his arms. It was a cruelty she should have expected.
But after a night when he had taken her to peak upon peak, indulging her in pleasures that were pure and untainted, his command had been all the more callous. But then, she supposed, that was the point.
His moments of tenderness were never what they seemed. Invariably, just when she feared she might be warming to him, he would undercut his apparent humanity. He would leave her wanting when he had promised delights; he would reveal onlookers when she’d thought they’d been alone; he would be understanding, caring, and then he’d laugh at her for taking his words at face value.
Clarissa preferred it when he was unremittingly, openly cruel. It made him easier to hate.
But, even though she hated him, she loved being his. One time, with Jake watching, he had coupled with her in the stables, the straw prickling her arse. Clarissa had gloried in it. She’d flaunted her lust and her soft open thighs, because the stablemaster could not touch her.
She wished Alec would come to her now. She pined for him, pined for his dangerous attentions, and her body ached constantly with desire. Yet in this room she feared tending to her needs. Many times she’d covered the spy-hole; many times it had been uncovered. And she knew not how many more there were. Only in the dead of night dared she pleasure herself, and it was always quietly, stealthily, her hand nudging beneath the bedclothes. The satisfaction she gained from it was weak and impoverished.
The bolt grated at the door. She turned, trying to urge herself to pessimism, and started as her former lady’s maid bustled into the room.
‘Pascale!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’
The Frenchwoman appeared ready for work, an apron over her gown, her dark hair drawn back into a bun, emphasising that large, strange nose of hers.
Pascale arched her brows. ‘You need someone to help with your toilette, do you not?’ she replied imperiously.
‘His lordship says the other woman cannot dress hair. Tish! I see it is very true.’ She squeamishly lifted a long black tress from where it trailed over Clarissa’s shoulder.
Clarissa gave a vexed flick of her head and slapped away the maid’s hand. ‘My hair will fall out before I accept your help,’ she hissed. ‘You’re a nasty, deceitful little piece of work, Miss Rieux. Get out of my sight.’
‘I take my orders from Lord Marldon,’ replied Pascale grandly, tossing some silks on to the bed. ‘Not from you. You are to wear that.’
‘When my stepmother hears of this –’ began Clarissa, colouring with anger.
‘
Je m’en fiche
,’ said the maid, shrugging. ‘My loyalties are with the earl. His pay is so much better. Alicia, oh she also paid well, but that is because my job was to be difficult. She wanted me to seduce you. Faugh! I prefer to work for his lordship. He does not ask such things of me.’