Playing her fingertip along the crystal rim of her glass, Yvonne said, “When the footman told me you were downstairs, despite it being against all possibility, I somehow felt sure it was you. I had always wondered, you see. The timeliness of your death after your own mother’s demise . . . always struck me as overly coincidental. Your mother had mentioned a few things about your father’s behavior. Before the end.”
Perhaps Yvonne would believe her if she told her the truth. But she bit back the words so ready to flow from her lips. She couldn’t trust anyone. It wasn’t safe. Not if Yvonne truly was going to give her refuge.
“We should go and see your grave. We could place flowers on it.” Bitterness laced Yvonne’s words. “I have these last three years. It is suitably by your mother’s.”
“My father is a monster.” It seemed the only thing to say short of starting a discourse of anger that might never end.
“God, I am so glad you came to me.”
“You were the only person my mother truly trusted.”
Yvonne smiled sadly. “She was kind to me. Even when your father demanded she give up seeing me, she’d come in secret.”
Mary fidgeted. It was hard to speak of her mother after what had happened, but Esme Darrel had spoken quietly of Yvonne, of her goodness. As if somehow her mother had known something was going to befall her and knew that Mary could go to the madam if she ever needed help.
Yvonne leaned forward, her face determined. “What happened, Mary?”
Mary swallowed down the desire to confess it all. But there was so much she couldn’t speak of. Never could and never would. “I—I can’t say.”
Yvonne let out an exasperated breath. “Then at least tell me in what part of the country you have been?”
“North,” she croaked. She took a long, fast swallow of wine, unwilling to let herself taste the rich liquid lest she cough it up again.
“I see.” Yvonne leaned back, clearly not satisfied with this brief answer. “Does your father know you live?”
She wished her father did think her dead. At least then he would have no reason to seek her out and condemn her again to unrelenting misery. Mary glanced down, her chest tightening at the very thought of him, before she forced herself to meet Yvonne’s eyes and finally admit, “He was the one who sent me there.”
“Where, Mary?” Yvonne’s fingers tightened around her glass, whitening at the knuckles. “Where did he send you?”
Mary shook her head and tore her gaze away. It was as if she was being sucked back into memory and she couldn’t bear it. Her eyes glazed over till the room was but a blur.
“I’m not going to harm you. No one will, not ever again.”
Mary stared into the fire, not truly seeing the blazing light. Her eyes burned with the terrifying recollections of that place. Of her mother, of her broken body at the bottom of the stairs; of her father, remorseless and cold. “He sent me where I would be forgotten,” she said simply, the words unleashing a jagged slash of pain, twisting her face as if she might cry. But no tears came. “A madhouse, Yvonne. He sent me to a madhouse.”
E
dward slowly lifted his gaze to the plasterwork ceiling, wishing he could sink into the cushioned Chippendale chair. He was just as empty and desperate for any sort of meaning in his life as when he’d begun the night’s revelries. He shouldn’t have come to Madame Yvonne’s.
He’d finally learned that there was no real peace against the past. Not even the usual choices a man might make to launch himself into mindlessness were taking their effect.
A scream tore through his head and stole his breath away. Holding his body still, he willed that girlish cry of terror ricocheting through his mind to dim. Would she never cease? Would she never let him forget?
Edward reached for the brandy on the mahogany table beside him and allowed himself to distance his thoughts from memory. He focused on the drawing room and its striped ivory silk walls. A young blond woman eyed him from her perch on the settee at the far side of the chamber. She shifted slightly, plumping her full breasts against her low-cut saffron silk gown.
She had yet to find a companion tonight and he was not going to be it.
He sighed. Once, such a sight would have distracted him. Now, the idea of another empty night just left him . . . well, empty.
There was no escape from his pervasive certainty that he was a hollow and disappointed man. A man who would never make peace with his failures. Still, the feeling wasn’t quite strong enough to make him regress to a hermit’s existence. He grunted to himself at the thought of being his sole companion.
His mother’s own attempt at an opium-induced death was proof that solitude was not the answer to trouble such as his. At least he’d had the good fortune to learn from one parent’s mistakes.
The blond sauntered toward him, her skirts swishing, curls bouncing about her lightly rouged cheeks. “Would you care for company, Your Grace?”
It was strange that all the girls knew him, as if his reputation passed always before him like a damnable shadow. But his past generosity to the women of this establishment had made them eager for his company.
She stopped before him, her full skirts lightly brushing his knees. Before she could utter one more word, another light-o’-love slipped up beside her compatriot. This one was a brunette, her russet hair curled softly about her face. She gave him a slow smile and said huskily, “Perhaps Your Grace would care for a good deal of company?”
At one time he would have said yes. That now seemed like an age ago. “I don’t . . .”
“Or would you care for a private room to smoke one of these in?” The blond reached across the table to an opium pipe, which the young woman lit with an excitement that surprised even him.
He loathed opium in all its forms, but even so, he understood its power and siren call. It had never once passed his lips.
The brunette leaned toward her friend, lifted the carved ivory opium pipe from the blond’s hand, and drew a delicate puff.
Smoke wafted around them, dancing like demons in the gaslight.
Edward stood, suddenly unable to bear another minute of it. Why the devil had he thought this place might ease him? It was all so brittle, so false, so utterly without meaning.
Both girls smiled, assuming he was about to join them. Instead, he shook his head. It
had
been a mistake coming here. As kindly as he could, he tilted the blond’s chin, angling away from the opium smoke. First he pressed a kiss to her powdered cheek; then he turned, took the brunette’s slender hand in his, and offered a gentle kiss to her palm. The acrid taste of destruction was on her fingertips, but she took the sweet offering as it was meant. A comfort in the cold, hard world.
“Your Grace,” one of them called coquettishly. “You cannot possibly be finished for the night.”
“Not a man like you,” the other purred.
Their uninventive speech only made the evening’s unsatisfactory end worse.
Heavier tendrils of opium smoke spilled about the air, caressing him with its sickly sweet scent. The noxious stuff reminded him of his mother’s lingering descent and he needed to escape from it.
Pretending he was perfectly at ease was too tiring. He was exhausted by pretense.
Yet most of his life was just one great show, a show of defiance against every person who stared at him and thought of his father.
Himself included.
“Ladies—” He didn’t smile. It wasn’t something they required, nor likely had been led to expect from him. “You are both lovely, but alas I am tired. However, I shall sing your praises.”
And he would. He wished them well and hoped that one day they’d find protectors to pull them from this position that drove women into early graves. He doubted they would. Still, he hoped all the same.
“Until we meet again,” the blond said with what she no doubt thought was temptation itself.
Edward inclined his head, a courtly gesture he’d give to any lady, then turned on his booted heel and headed into the quiet hall. Striding down the wide way lined with mirrors, he was very careful not to look at his own reflection. He walked quickly, purposefully. Attempting to outpace his perpetual feeling of defeat.
Once again, London had become an endless, ongoing parade of empty pleasures. Each more debauched than the last, even as his hostesses attempted to freshen his experienced palate. What if nothing could? Is that what had happened to his father? It would certainly explain the old man’s turn to twisted play.
Perhaps he simply needed a sympathetic ear to ease the growing pressure of his demons, and only Yvonne could give him that. The woman truly was a genius of the boudoir, and if she had let him, he would have taken up residency in her room years before. Such a female would have held his interest for some time. But she no longer entertained men, as far as he understood.
It was just as well. Madame Yvonne was one of the few people he actually liked. Woman of the night though she was, he admired her pragmatism, her shrewdness, and her unwillingness to be bought. In
almost
any capacity.
He didn’t knock on the double doors; he was too important a client to give way to ceremony. The lights flickering about the room were seductive and warm. The big bed, laden with red and white silk pillows, was empty.
The surprising lap of water drew his attention. He turned toward the fire with its amber glow. And there—Holy god. There was hell in the firelight, beckoning even the best of men.
A creature of pure beauty.
Her short black hair, terribly unusual, fluffed about her elegant aristocratic face. A face that was far too thin, yet luminescent for that delicacy. Her neck seemed impossibly slender and quite too fragile to hold up her head. The slim lines of her throat tapered to a collarbone so beautiful it was all he could do not to reach out to trace the fine-looking bones.
Her breasts, small yet rounded perfectly, the nipples pink and hard from the bath, were visible. The shallow water barely covered her hips. If he took a step forward, he would be able to see her mons.
He didn’t. His interest was far from lust. Her very presence held him with a force that knocked the air out of his lungs.
Her knees poked up from the water, oddly girlish, like a filly’s. And the longer he looked at her, the more he realized it was not her undernourished body that pulled him into the calm eye of a storm, but the spirit that fairly shone from her.
“Hello, my dear,” he ventured gently.
Her piercing eyes took him in with wild alarm. She shrank for a moment before grabbing the sides of the tub. “I am not your dear.”
Edward blinked, abashed by her standoffishness. He’d expected the practiced and sultry voice of a whore or a whore in training. Her very presence in Madame Yvonne’s bedchamber declared she’d been selected from a likely hellish life to be trained for pleasure.
But unlike the other women who were just brought to fill the rooms and halls of Eden’s Palace, this woman’s voice was sharp, abrasive . . . and most certainly afraid.
It was also cultured.
Edward held her gaze. Would she stare him down? He was not certain. There was no promise of pleasure in those shockingly beautiful orbs.
Fear.
Fear widened her violet eyes. Perhaps she had come from a place too damned for most mortals. Her perfect elocution eliminated the possibilities of St. Giles or Whitechapel.
For the first time in as long as he could recall, he was at a loss for words. One did not usually find frightened, naked young women in Madame Yvonne’s room. Especially not frightened, half-starved young women who glared with defiance etched upon every feature.
“Go.” Her pale lips parted, exposing white teeth.
“If that is what you wish.” Yet he found his boots unable to move and do her bidding. It was as if she were a snake charmer upon the dusty street, playing her tune to keep him mesmerized. A strange stirring he hadn’t felt in an age kindled inside him. Not desire, but . . . interest.
“Go,” she snapped again, breaking the thrall of her gaze.
In one shaking sweep of motion, her hands tightened on the copper tub and she pulled herself from the water. She didn’t even try to cover herself but stood fiercely, her defined, lean muscles tense. She was most definitely accustomed to being naked before men. But from the anger and apprehension crackling from her, he could tell she despised every moment of it.
He should have left. Immediately. He was not one to force his company on women, especially vulnerable ones.
But nothing could make him leave, not even if the building was burning to ash around him—not when he had to know who she was and why she was here. And he did
need
to know. The very demand echoed in his bones.
Water sluiced her small frame and he winced at the austerity of her body. Damnation, she hadn’t been eating enough. Delicate was one thing . . . this was emaciation. And then there were the telltale chartreuse signs of healing bruises on her forearms and ribs.
The sight filled him with anger so intense he had to close his eyes briefly and force the fury to still so that he wouldn’t frighten her.
She vaulted out of the tub and darted toward the fire.
It took him only a moment to realize she was going for the poker. But before she could reach it, her wet bare feet slipped on the marble before the grate and she plummeted forward, arms flailing as she desperately tried to catch herself.
Edward sprang across the room. His arms circled her just as her head narrowly missed the iron grating that would no doubt have left her severely unconscious if not dead.
The warm water soaking her body dampened his shirt and he could barely get a hold on her sleek skin. He held her carefully, his hands pressing into her back and taking all her weight, though her toes still skimmed the ground. She kept her hands folded protectively over her chest, not daring to touch him.
Her violet eyes widened, wounded and old for a woman of her years. “Are you going to hurt me?”
Her pulse thudded wildly, tangible beneath his fingertips. Her face had the aspect of a doe right before the hunters moved in for the final kill.