Chapter 6 #4
Fort indicated that he wanted to speak to the proprietress privately, and was ushered into her elegant boudoir.
Soon the handsome if hard-faced Mirabelle joined him.
Her dark hair was elegantly arranged, and her ruby-red silk gown would not have disgraced a duchess.
Nor would her jewels, though she always wore too many at a time.
The madam was clearly disappointed to discover that one of her richest patrons hadn’t come in search of pleasure, but she was willing to sell information, too. She knew the usefulness of friends in high places.
“You know I don’t deal in slaves, my lord.”
“But you know who does. Would you have heard if a new girl was being coerced?”
“I have no interest in such things.” She fingered the diamond necklace spread over her white-powdered chest. “I could find out.”
He gave her a smile that carried promise of payment. “Do so. I’ll be grateful.”
She smiled back. “I count on it.” As he turned to leave, she said, “Are you sure we can’t entice you, my lord? As you know, we have anything a person might desire.”
From the way she stressed anything, he suspected she was delicately offering a pretty boy. His recent lack of attendance must be puzzling her.
“Thank you, Mirabelle, but no.”
He made no further explanation, but as he strolled through the crowded salon toward the doors, he gave a moment’s thought to his strange celibacy.
Before his father’s death, his attitude toward women had been enthusiastic, but cheerfully uncomplicated.
As long as a wench was willing and likely to be free of disease, he’d enjoyed her, doing his best to give her pleasure in turn.
He’d always appreciated a restless body more than a passive one.
In fact his ideal was to enter a woman already wild with orgasm, to ride her writhing hips . . .
With some surprise, he realized the image was having no effect on him at all.
It was taking time to escape Mirabelle’s, for friends and acquaintances constantly hailed him.
He had paused with a group of men to watch one of the women on a dais give an excellent representation of orgasm with an invisible lover.
His companions were staring hot-eyed, slack-lipped, some even rubbing at their crotch.
Nothing.
He felt nothing.
He’d shackled his interest in women months ago, but he hadn’t realized how thorough he had been. Perhaps he would never desire a woman again.
But he’d desired Lisette.
That thought jolted him. Had he reached the state where he needed a frightened innocent to stir his jaded palate? If so, his palate could stay jaded. Trembling virgins were too much trouble.
He quietly slipped out of the group around the demonstration, and left Mirabelle’s wondering just when his interest in sex had died. He could remember a time not long ago when his interest had been strong, even excessive.
After his father’s death, he’d discovered that his sexual appeal had suddenly increased. A surprising number of society matrons found the youngest, handsomest earl an enticing curiosity. For a while, he’d obliged them.
If he preferred a whore, his purse was bottomless, and in London anything, absolutely anything, could be bought. For a while he’d thought he might find oblivion in exhausting and inventive sex, or perhaps he’d foolishly thought to find something more.
Whatever he’d sought, he’d found only hell.
When the writhings of pleasure ceased to explode his mind, he’d progressed to the writhings of pain. Lady or whore, they never complained—some even seemed to enjoy his roughness. But one day, seeing the bruises he’d left on a countess’s lush body, he’d hated the person he had become.
As his coach rolled up and he climbed in, he hoped none of his thoughts showed on his face.
The coach moved off, heading back to Walgrave House, and he suddenly remembered Portia.
Here in this coach he’d threatened to rape his childhood friend simply because it would be a blow against Bryght Malloren, her husband.
At the memory, he raised his fingers to massage his temples. It had been the ancient instinct of man to attack his enemy through his women.
But Portia.
God, Portia.
Of course he wouldn’t have done it, couldn’t have done it.
He’d forced a kiss on her, though. The sort of kiss that had nothing to do with tenderness or even lust. An assault of anger and power.
He’d stopped there, thank God. But sometimes, lying sleepless in the dark, he wasn’t sure rape had been impossible. Could he, in fact, have blocked out who she was, blocked out the fact that Portia was a person at all. Could he have hurt her, defiled her . . .
Frightened by himself, he’d taken very few women after that, and soon stopped entirely. He knew his friends worried that he was turning into a simulacrum of his prudish, pride-ridden father.
Perhaps he was, at that. His healthy interest in women seemed to have drained away, leaving only warped tastes he would not nurture.
But then, there had been Lisette . . .
Irritated, he pushed thoughts of the tiresome chit away.
Sometimes he felt that every healthy part of him had rotted away, leaving only a warped formless thing that should not survive. A thing guilty of the most heinous sin. . .
Plague take it!
He had everything. He should be able to do something with it. Something worthwhile.
But what?
He didn’t want to be a copy of his father. The Incorruptible, though admired by many, had cared not a jot for wife, sons, or daughters. He’d been driven by pride and his own grandiose plans. In the end, he had even proved to be corruptible in pursuit of pride and plans.
Fort had pride and plans of his own, noble notions of using his wealth and power for good purposes, of making reparation for the evil his father had done.
Beneath, however, lurked another plan—no, a need—to destroy the haughty Marquess of Rothgar just as the marquess had destroyed him.
He knew one plan conflicted with the other, but was fiercely determined on both.
He was aware that these obsessions could drive him as mad as his father had been at the end. They could push him over the edge as his father had been pushed—by Rothgar, who played people like the helpless figures on his damned Chinese pagoda.
Rothgar’s sister Elf popped into Fort’s mind and he remembered her lively face as she bandied words with him at Sappho’s. How typical that Rothgar let his sister run wild, verbally crossing swords with anyone she didn’t like. He’d thought once or twice of using her in some scheme of destruction.
It would mean his death, he knew that. But death in the cause might be welcome. This was hardly a life he lived. And he had a brother.
Immediately after their father’s death, Fort had sent seventeen-year-old Victor to Italy. Whatever happened, he would come through it in some shape to take on the responsibilities of the earldom. This left Fort free to pursue revenge.
Through Elf Malloren?
Fort’s eyes focused, and he saw his reflection in the glass window of the coach, saw his own wry smile. He hadn’t been able to use Portia in his war, and he doubted he could use Elf.
She was a troublesome creature, but something about her made her hard to hurt—perhaps the fact that she had a genuinely kind heart. Sometimes, when she was teasing rather than taunting, it was damnably hard not to mellow and forget she was a Malloren at all.
He muttered a curse.
Kind thoughts of Elfled Malloren.
An excessive interest in that silly Lisette.
Perhaps Mirabelle was right to be concerned about him.
Probably a night of exhausting, unusual sex with a few of her most skilled whores would be the cure to all that ailed him.
After all, would he be thinking so much about Lisette if she hadn’t been the first woman to truly stir his sexual appetite in months?
And that made her doubly, triply dangerous.
He made an instant resolution to put her out of his mind. Rather than returning home, where he’d be likely to think about the wench, he needed company.
Back to Mirabelle’s? No, that kind of sex still did not appeal.
One of his clubs? The main activity there would be gaming, and he was not in the mood.
A coffeehouse? Late-night denizens of such places were always sunk deep in philosophy or politics. The last thing he wanted was to think.
He needed distraction and regretted that the theaters would be closed by now. A romping, foolish farce would fit the bill.
Then, ahead on Piccadilly, he saw the glittering lights of Devonshire House and remembered receiving a card for the duchess’s ball.
Dancing would provide mindless distraction for an hour or two. With luck, by then the strange mood would have passed.