Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Try as he might, Alexander found it impossible to hide his revulsion at the state of Miss Metcalfe’s rooms once they arrived.
“Here we are,” she said as she came to an abrupt halt outside a door with far too many locks on it. “Just wait one moment . . .”
Releasing his arm, Teresa thrust one hand down her gown as Alexander tried desperately not to look, and retrieved a large key.
“Just the one key?” He said, trying to smile. “That does not seem overly safe, and almost ridiculous, considering the number of locks.”
She shrugged, and threw him a grin. “‘Tis all a little for show anyway – anyone who knows me, knows that I often forget to lock up anyway.”
He stared at her. How could anyone live like this – live knowing that all their possessions, their belongings, their treasures were just a large yet easily opened door away from thieves and brigands?
His question was answered after they stepped – or rather he stepped, she hobbled – inside. There was a short corridor leading off to two rooms. One held a sink beside a small cupboard without a door. There was half a loaf of bread, two eggs, and an apple inside.
The other room seemed to be a medley of both parlour and bedroom.
There were two large armchairs around a grate that did not seem to have any firewood or coal in it, and a bed that had been pushed up against one side of the wall.
A tall wooden screen made of three parts stood opposite the bed, and a curtain hung over the back wall, slightly damp and woven with an old-fashioned design that would not have looked out of place at Alexander’s housekeeper’s rooms.
“Here you are,” said Teresa, limping into what was possibly the parlour, and gesturing that he should take a seat – which he did not.
“This – this is your home?”
Teresa threw him a grin as she pulled back the curtain, and slowly disappeared into a room that Alexander had not noticed before. “For now. ‘Tis not pleasant, I know, but the rent is incredibly low, and that enables me to keep much of my own earnings.”
A twinge of bitterness clenched at his stomach. So, she brought people here: and then what, make love to them on that bed? He found that his eyes were drawn to it over and over again, despite his resolution to keep his eyes away.
“It . . . it is well situated for town,” he said to the curtain.
A laugh trickled through it, and her voice said, “Incredibly convenient, do not you think?”
Alexander flushed. He was not a fool; he knew there was a world beneath his feet, beneath his station, even, in which love was shared and sold between men and women.
He just did not expect to literally pluck it from the Thames, and go home with it.
“Are you sitting down and making yourself at home?” came the voice through the curtain.
Alexander looked down at his breeches. They were no longer soaking wet, that was for sure, but they were still mighty damp.
“No,” he called through, feeling a little foolish talking to a curtain. “I would hate to get your upholstery damp.”
“There now,” she said, coming back through the curtain with a heap of clothes in her hands. Alexander jumped. “Great minds think alike. Well, I am not entirely sure of your size, but I have the knack of guessing it, and I think that these will fit.”
Thrusting the heap of clothes into his hands, she smiled at him.
“Fit?” He repeated, stupidly.
She nodded, raising an eyebrow. “My lord, you are currently dripping wet. Do you want to remain so?”
She was so very beautiful. She herself had not changed, and still remained in that clinging and damp gown that she had been wearing when she had been, by the sound of it, disposed of by a previous client, but she cocked her head slightly as she accepted his gaze.
“When you are quite finished,” Teresa said quietly, “the screen awaits you.”
Alexander grinned. It was easy to ignore the peeling wallpaper and the creep of damp on the floorboards when you had a distraction like Teresa. No wonder she trucked only with dukes and earls.
As he changed behind the screen, he could hear her bustling about in the room, and a flare of light around the screen and a crackle told him that a fire had, thankfully, been lit.
“I would ask you why you seem to have such a collection of fine gentleman’s clothes,” said Alexander drily as he emerged from the screen. “But I have a feeling that I know the answer.”
Teresa curtseyed with a grin, awkwardly with her ankle still clearly painful. “La, sir, ‘tis my fault that some of my guests leave in such a hurry, not fully dressed?”
“What, when their wives may realise that they are gone, or their pocket watch tells them that they are late for an appointment?”
He had not intended his words to be quite so dark, and he saw a flash of – what was that? Annoyance? Irritation? Perhaps even embarrassment? Something flickered across Teresa’s face, but it was gone like a swallow swooping over a field in the glory of summer, and she smiled.
“Please, my lord, seat yourself.”
There was something about the way that she looked at him; something in the crinkle around her eyes. Was she laughing at him? Alexander found that the new cravat and collar he had donned seemed a little too tight after all, and the silk shirt seemed to make him hot.
“Thank you,” he managed, folding himself in the armchair. Now that he was beside the fireplace, he noticed something that had not caught his attention before. “You have nothing on your mantlepiece.”
Teresa, moving around the screen to collect his wet things, did not look around. “And what would you have me put there, my lord?”
Alexander shrugged. “Portraits of loved ones. Letters. Invitations. Flowers. Ornaments, you know. A clock, perhaps.”
She snorted as she pulled out a chair and stood it before the fire, hanging his wet clothes on it to dry, leaning on her good ankle. “And where would I procure such things? I have no Dukedom, my earnings come from me and no one else.”
He stared at her. A curl of blonde hair had cascaded down her cheek, and he watched it move as she leaned forward to unfurl his cuffs so that they dried properly.
Here was someone without all the trappings of wealth, all the security that a fortune gave.
He had met such people, of course, but they either fell into the category of servant, dependent, or high born descendent of a financial nightmare.
No one like Teresa.
“But you must have family,” he said, with a smile.
It was not returned. “Why do you want to know about my family?”
Alexander shrugged, and watched her move back towards the curtain. What was behind there? Surely not a bedroom. There was a bed here. “Polite conversation; fear not, I would ask any young debutante the same questions.”
And receive no replies, he thought darkly. Not after they had found out that I was the dangerous Duke of Caershire, rake.
Teresa’s laugh once again echoed through the curtain, and he smiled. There was something musical about it, and the tension in her voice had disappeared.
“Though I am honoured to be classed as a debutante, I do not think that I quite cut it, as my favourite earl who plays golf tells me,” Teresa grinned as she returned once more, this time carrying a white cotton gown.
“Yes, my lord, I have family, no my lord, they do not live in London, yes my lord, I miss them very much, no my lord, we do not write.”
She curtseyed again with a mocking smile, and then disappeared behind the screen.
Alexander swallowed. Nearly five feet away from him, Teresa Metcalfe was peeling her gown and chemise off, and nothing but a flimsy wooden screen was hiding that sight from him.
The shot of desire, unbidden yet not unwelcome, exploded through his body. His gaze stared at the screen hungrily, as though willing it to – what? Fall over? Disappear?
The desire was growing in his stomach, like a hunger that only Teresa could satisfy.
An elegant wrist rose from the screen as the damp blue gown rose above it, and then dropped to the floor.
Alexander swallowed again, and shifted slightly so that the painful tension in his loins did not get trapped in his britches.
“Now I have to ask you,” came Teresa’s voice, and Alexander stiffened, “a question that may shock you.”
Nothing could shock me anymore, he thought wryly, but he said aloud, “Please do.”
He almost gasped as she turned behind the screen and leaned slightly to retrieve something. A flash of cream shoulder was there and then it was gone, as though he had imagined it. Alexander clenched his fist, desperate to remain in the moment.
“Why, after knowing what it is that I do, are you not afraid to be seen in my company?”
Alexander grimaced. He had known that this question would come from her, sooner or later. How could it not? It was a reasonable one, and she must have been wondering it as soon as she discovered his title.
And then he started, as Teresa’s mischievous grin peeked out from one side of the screen.
“Come on now, no secrets,” she said, eyes sparkling.
Alexander opened his mouth, but she had already disappeared once more behind it. A creaking sound began, and he closed his eyes, trying not to think of the corset that was currently being removed from the warm, wet flesh of Teresa.
“I lost my reputation two years ago,” he said hurriedly. “After an . . . an incident with a young lady. She was ruined, and both of us lost our reputations.”
There was a moment of silence as Teresa considered this. Alexander found himself desperately wishing for another glimpse of her, and heat rose in his chest. He was a guest in her home, and all he could think about was her naked form?
Well, it was now.
“I think I heard about this,” came Teresa’s voice, and his stomach clenched as two delicate hands rose to pull the clean white gown over her head. “She was rather beautiful, was not she?”