Читать книгу Temptation & Twilight - Charlotte Featherstone - Страница 7

THERE WAS A SPECIAL PLACE in hell for men such as him. A small berth closest to the hellfires, one that reeked of smoke and brimstone and rotting souls, would be his home for eternity. His berth, he was quite certain, would read Blasphemer. Seducer. Whoremonger and Licentious Rogue, to name only a few. But to list all his failings and sins would require a tablet the size of which Moses used to recount the Ten Commandments.

As a man not given to excessive description, he found the above-mentioned failings communicated quite well the depth of his amoral, unfeeling soul. He was rather enamoured of that—it had taken years to cultivate a hardened shell with no humanity within.

He wondered if even now the Black Angel’s minions were preparing for his reception into the underworld. How he hoped so, for he would need a merry party after the conclusion of tonight’s business.

Shifting into the light cast by the gas lamp, Iain Sinclair, Marquis of Alynwick and laird to the clan Sinclair, gazed into the looking glass, only to see the devil himself staring back at him. He wondered, with a self-deprecating grin, if it wasn’t a premonition of sorts. A prelude of where his eternal soul would rest if things did not go as planned tonight.

The devil, he mused, as he stared into the mirror, was a strikingly handsome fellow with long dark hair, given to curl, that had sent many a lady into swoons. Chiselled cheeks and chin, and a set of dark eyes—their colour could only be described as obsidian. Dimples in both cheeks flashed when he grinned in mockery, as he now was. His lips—oh, such decadently full lips that promised every kind of pleasure and rapture while indulging in the most wicked of sins.

The devil, Iain thought, as he motioned for his valet to pass him his tumbler of Scotch, looked remarkably like himself—a beautiful male, a dark, soulless bastard.

He was not a vain man—self-deprecating, true, but never vainglorious. The women of the ton might think him beautiful, showering him with compliments on his handsome face and muscular body. But he knew the truth: that what everyone saw on the outside was the polar opposite of what lurked inside him—a wretched ugliness that was slowly eating away any inner beauty he might have once possessed. No, his shell might be worthy, but inside he was anything but.

A sigh from the bed behind him confirmed this observation.

“You’re as beautiful as Lucifer, and as wicked as the lord of the underworld could ever hope to be.”

His gaze flashed back to the mirror, where the image of a woman lying naked and flushed pink amongst the white, rumpled bedsheets greeted him. His body jolted at the sight, as if he had all but forgotten the visitor. The lady—a rather loose term for the female—was not the sort he was used to cavorting with. She was too thin and slender, almost fragile. He preferred buxom. Blowsy, they used to call women such as his ideal back in the day, when a plump, luscious armful was every man’s fantasy. How could he help it? He adored the female shape, with all its softness and curves. With breasts and hips, and thighs that made a man feel like a man, that cushioned and welcomed him and made him think of safe harbours and all the other melodramatic sap spouted by the poets.

Poetry be damned. The truth was Iain was a fool for a set of lovely big tits, and a nice round arse to grip in the throes of carnal pleasures. It had always been this way for him; a pair of plump breasts could keep him pleasantly occupied for hours on end, and the lady deeply satisfied. As coarse as his mouth was, it was highly skilled—and devilishly wicked, able to produce the most wondrous results while pressed against his favourite part of the female anatomy.

His gaze slipped to the lady’s breasts. Rather disappointing for a man of his proclivities and appetites, but there it was. He was doing his duty, seeing to his obligations as one of the ancient Brethren Guardians.

Sighing again, she watched him, one arm tucked beneath her head, making her back arch in the belief she appeared more buxom. It was a useless endeavour. She would never possess the sort of body he liked to worship—or the one in particular he craved with every amoral fibre of his being.

Her knee rose, her delicate foot sliding along the crisp sheets. When her leg dropped to the side, so did his gaze, following the sensual action. She was well made there, he supposed, but already he’d tired of it. Strumpets never could hold his attention.

“Won’t you come back to bed and play with me?” she said, her voice coy, yet her tone holding just a hint of cloying desperation. “I’ll let you be as naughty as you desire.”

“I doubt you could handle that. My sort of needs would make you swoon.”

“In ecstasy, I’d wager.”

“In shock.”

He shared a secret grin with Sutherland, his valet. Iain supposed he should be rather mortified that his servant was here in this room of utter debauchery, witnessing such a thing while assisting him with dressing. But it was habitual for his valet, who had been with him for decades. Sutherland had witnessed one sort of debauchery and debacle after another. Besides, the lady lounging on the bed rather fancied the whole idea. She had been the one to suggest the activity, after all. She had a fantasy, she’d admitted to him, of lounging naked in his bed, watching his valet assist him with his toilette.

Iain was all for fantasies. He had a few very special and intimate ones of his own—so deeply personal that he wouldn’t dare share them with anyone, except perhaps the lady who always featured in them. Those were for his own private pleasure, when he was alone and could indulge himself without interruption.

He didn’t really relish this particular fantasy. However, the lady seemed to be enjoying herself, and that was the objective. He needed her cooperation.

“It really is scandalous how handsome and magnificently built you are,” she murmured as she studied his body in the mirror. “The gossip spread by your past lovers certainly wasn’t embellished. I think magnificent a rather bland word to describe you, and what you possess below the waist. Monstrously marvellous is what I call it.”

“My dear, I am a Highlander. We are brawny lads built for hard work, both menial and more pleasurable tasks.”

“Then put me in a carriage to Loch Lomond and gift me with an entire clan!”

She giggled, and his brow arched as he slipped his arms into the sleeves of the shirt Sutherland held out.

“Oooh.” She sighed dramatically. “If only I hadn’t met Larabie first, I might now be Lady Alynwick, and what is it the Scots call the laird’s wife?”

What the devil made her think she would be the one, after a long—very long—list of lovers? He would never marry. Never. And certainly, he would never think to marry someone like her. He was jaded, but he wasn’t cruel. The women he cavorted with were no more interested in a lasting liaison than he was. Which made them infinitely good choices. It was a mutual, if unspoken agreement: all parties were in it for themselves. Women for pleasure and the notoriety and novelty of sharing his bed, and him for a relationship born of convenience, and to assuage his animal’s needs—of which he seemed to have more than his share. Another sin, no doubt.

“Oh, come now, my love, you give the impression that you are emotionally unavailable. But I know the truth,” she pressed.

“Do you? So you’ve realized that I am not ‘unavailable,’ but vacant. Completely, emotionally empty—which means, of course, that I am ‘available’ to no one.”

“How your disdain for the world and everyone in it arouses me.”

“We make a good pair, do we not? Everything we touch turns black.”

Her gaze raked over him from head to foot and he felt as though he were being devoured, his statement of how he saw them completely missing its mark. “Oh, you might act that way now, Sinclair, but I assure you, when I want something enough, I get it. And I want you … very much. Available, unavailable, vacant—it matters not. I want to possess you.”

He heard Sutherland’s grunt, which meant he was either smothering his amusement or enjoying himself at his master’s expense. Either way, Iain glared at his valet while buttoning his own shirt.

“You’ve already had me, luv,” he murmured silkily. “Be content with that.”

“Contentment eludes me. I peaked three times tonight, and already I want more. I have learned that I’m rather insatiable when it comes to your skill in the boudoir. You truly are a master of lovemaking.”

No, not lovemaking, but fucking. He hadn’t made love in years.

“Oh, I’ve already done myself in, haven’t I? I married Larabie when I should have waited another month till I met you. Perhaps you’ll remedy that tonight when you’re duelling my husband over my honour.”

Iain winked at her while Sutherland wrapped the pale green and sky-blue plaid of his Sinclair kilt around his lean waist. The lady nearly swooned at the sight, which made her forget all that nonsense about possessing him. No woman possessed him—ever.

“And Highland dress to fight for me, my lord? You make my head spin.”

His was spinning as well, and not in a pleasurable way. Reaching for the Scotch, he drained it in one long swallow, emptying the tumbler. He motioned for Sutherland to refill it, which the faithful retainer did while Iain saw to his kilt.

If he was going to die tonight, he wanted to meet his maker in the clothes that best suited him—Highland dress. It was a bit elaborate for an old-fashioned English duel, but it fit him. He was an outlandish character, forever scandalizing the English peers with his brutish Scottish ways. He’d never fit into this world of delicate manners and anaemic pleasures. It was not his way. He was not delicate, not polite and his sexual desires were anything but staid. When he fucked, he didn’t want to remember to be gentle and soft. He wanted to lose himself in the woman, be taken to a place where no god or devil dwelt—no demons, no memories, just unspeakable pleasure. During that rapture, he wanted to say the words in his own way, to lose all control and let the cultured English accent that his father had literally beat into him fall away, leaving his Highland brogue to whisper in the woman’s ear. He couldn’t hide his more amorous emotions behind his English accent. That accent was cool and mocking, designed to disguise what he was feeling, giving him that devil-may-care aura. When he talked thus, he sounded like his late father, a pompous prat with little concern for anyone, which strangely enough enthralled the ladies.

Hell, Iain could barely remember a time he felt that much at ease to let himself go. In the bedroom he was always calculating, every move a choreographed dance. He didn’t lose himself, and most definitely had never been transported to his imaginary plane of pleasure on the wave of a fierce climax.

“Shall I wait here for your return, my love,” she asked, “or will you come ravish and debauch me in Larabie’s bed?”

Iain smiled at that and watched her in the mirror as he belted his kilt with the little leather strap and buckle. “A wicked creature you are. Have you no shame, Georgiana, mussing up the earl’s sheets with another man’s body?”

Her smile was scheming as she sat up and came to her knees, unashamed of her nudity and the fact that there was another present in the room with them to witness it.

“Very little, I’m afraid. You’ve stripped me of any decency I might have had.”

“Indeed?” he asked before taking another drink.

Her eyes were glittering. “You’ve stripped me of many things with your immoral ways, my lord. I fear being bad with you is really rather addicting.”

“Rather like Scotch,” Sutherland grumbled as he knelt to fasten Iain’s clan pin to the kilt.

“Watch it,” he growled, “or I’ll slam my knee into your nose.”

Sutherland, immune to his moods and taciturn disposition, merely ignored the threat and squelched a grin.

“Well, my dear?” Iain inquired as he slipped his dirk into his woollen sock. “Do I pass muster?”

“Indeed you do. I see that the story one hears about a true Highlander is correct—you do wear nothing between the plaid and your flesh.”

Halfway to being good and sotted, Iain turned away from the mirror and faced his paramour. Lifting the kilt, he showed her what she wanted to see. Grasping himself, he let the lady admire it.

“That part of you is magnificently made, Sinclair, even in this state.”

Quirking his lips, he stroked himself once, giving the lady what she wanted, so that later, she would give him what he wanted—which differed vastly from what she desired. He was bedding her only to get information about a secret club she frequented—the House of Orpheus. Orpheus was an enemy of the Brethren Guardians, and had to be destroyed. Iain was playing the part of a Casanova to gain what he and the other two guardians—the Earl of Black and the Duke of Sussex—needed.

Casanova, he mused mockingly as he let his kilt fall back into place. No, he did not feel like the legendary Italian lover, but rather like a male whore—as filthy and corrupt as an East End flash boy.

When he had concocted this plan, his friend the duke had told him that nothing good would happen out of it, but he had laughed, mocking him for the prig that Sussex was. Iain believed his soul was already gone, believed himself impervious to any more pain. But the truth was, he was not. He was drowning in sin, and any time now, he believed he’d wake up one morning only to look in the mirror and find all the sins he had committed marring his face. It would be a horrific sight, but a true reflection of what resided in his soul.

“Have you time for another round? Sex always invigorates men.”

“You think me full of sap, then?” he teased, when he did not feel the least bit light and cajoling. “You are a biter, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

Sutherland did laugh then, smothering the outburst quickly.

Her eyes narrowed. “I hope that isn’t derogatory, my lord. I would hate to have to instruct my dear husband to shoot you dead.”

As if Larabie, that fat, pompous bastard, could even try. “My dear, a biter is a term used to describe the most lascivious and wanton of wenches, which I am quite certain you will agree you are.”

“Oh.” She eyed him with a glittering glance that told him she was pretending not to know the true meaning of the word. How he loathed the game of playing innocent when she was so far from it. “Tell me, how does ‘biter’ play into the description of a wanton?”

She wanted to be shocked, and he was in the right frame of mind to appease her. “A biter, sweet Georgiana, means that said wanton is so eager for sexual congress that she will offer herself, bottom up, to her lover. A man calls her thus when he knows she’s aching for a little slap and bite on her arse, hence the term.”

“Cunny, too?”

His lips curled in distaste, but he hoped she would see it for something far more appealing. “By all means, if you wish to have your cunny bitten, I shall be happy to oblige.”

Thankfully, Sutherland had departed before the conversation turned to this. Even he had some personal level of decency, and this crossed the boundary.

“How I adore it when you speak filth, Lord Alynwick.”

He gave her a mocking bow. “I aim to please you, my lady.”

“You do. Surely you know that.”

He did. Who would ever see to his own pleasure was another matter entirely.

Now alone together, Georgiana smoothed her hand down her body, her thighs spreading in invitation as her pale hand slid between them. She was as insatiable as he was. Any man looking for a mistress would find her ravishing—would likely even empty the family coffers for her. But Iain was not looking for a mistress, and her avarice made him feel empty and cold.

“Tell me your fantasies,” she whispered. “I’ve told you mine.”

“As I’ve said, I have none.”

“Please?” she purred.

“Shall I make one up to appease you, then?”

She pouted, and her sharp, glittering eyes told him she knew that he had one. “Someone to spank and punish you?”

He winced. “Good God, no. I’m not one for pain with pleasure.” He’d had enough pain inflicted on him by both sides of his family, and while away at school.

“To be tied up, to give up all your control?”

“No.”

She eyed him thoughtfully. She would never guess what the Sinful Sinclair, the Aberrant Alynwick thought of when he was alone at night in his bed, with nothing but the moon and stars to keep him company. He hardly allowed himself to think of it. Only when he was deep in his cups, and his feelings unguarded, did he allow himself to dream of his ultimate fantasy—a saint with a sinner. An angel cavorting with the devil. An innocent offering herself up to him—a sordid, sinful man who wanted to partake of her goodness, while showing her how delightful it could be to join him on the dark side of seduction. But not just any innocent. No, that would be too easy. There were numerous virgins in London. He could seduce any one of them, and live out his fantasies. No, only one innocent—in mind and soul, in deed and thought—would do for him.

And damn her, how her guileless eyes and goodness rattled him. He’d walk through the Moroccan desert for her, would bleed himself dry for one chance to taste her lips, feel her breasts in his hands, pressing against his flesh.

But good girls did not like bad boys. Good girls gave wide berth to men who indulged in the sort of behaviour that governesses warned them about and etiquette books forbade.

Ladies like her did not allow men like him to partake of their innocence, while corrupting them with sin. And the woman of his dreams was every inch a lady by birth and character, and she called to him like gin to an East End drunk.

“You are in a strange mood tonight, Sinclair,” Georgiana observed. “Almost contemplative, I would say.”

“Really? How droll. I suppose I should be thinking of how I might spend the next few hours lying in sin and regret before I am forced to confront my future. I might very well be dead come the morrow. A send-off worthy of the most proliferate rake should be in order.”

“It should. I offered and you declined.”

“Ah, yes. Well, a man needs to have his head—both of them—in the right place during these matters. Rest assured, after I have satisfied the terms of your husband’s duel I shall come and release all the pent-up frustration and contemplation that is building inside me. Will that suffice?”

She flopped back onto his bed with a pout, her legs sliding evocatively against each other. “I suppose,” she muttered. “But you’ll think of me when you are on that field, fighting for my honour?”

“Trust me, I shall be thinking of nothing else.” Christ, he needed another drink. He was getting bilious, nattering away about such tripe. All he could say was that she—and this damned duel—had better be worth it. If he didn’t discover anything about Orpheus from Lady Larabie, he might just end up putting a bullet in his own chest.

“Are you afraid to meet him?”

“Larabie?” Iain snorted. “Not in the least.”

“No, the Grim Reaper.”

“Him? Why should I? I already know the path of my destiny.”

“And have you any regrets?” she whispered, watching him with eyes that were suddenly very clear and knowing—eyes that made the hairs on his neck rise in warning.

“No, none.”

“No business left unattended? Nothing left unsaid? No apologies to be made?”

“Not a one, I’m afraid,” he growled as he fitted his sporran around his waist. “I never apologize. It means I was in the wrong—and I am never that, luv.”

“Such brass bollocks you possess, my lord. No atoning for your sins before you fall to the earth, never to speak again. No absolution for past transgressions.”

He froze, not wanting Georgiana’s words to have any sort of impact upon him, but they did, damn it. Unknowingly, the witch made an image flash in his mind, one that left him tense and uncomfortable, his mouth curling in disdain—for himself, for his foolish, hurtful past, and a damnable pride that had caused his fall.

“Ah,” she whispered, and he saw cruel delight flare in her dark brown eyes. “Perhaps the Aberrant Alynwick is not so deviant, after all?”

“You goad me, and I shall exact punishment upon you after this infernal duel is complete.”

“I do look forward to it.”

After bowing to her, he reached for his tumbler of Scotch and headed to the door. Before leaving he turned back around. “I expect I’ll find you tonight?”

“I expect you will—and most likely someone else.”

Slamming the door behind him, Iain hurried down the stairs. Tossing back the remainder of the Scotch, he passed the crystal glass to his butler, who then handed him his greatcoat. Waving off the hat and walking stick, Iain left his house and hurried down the steps to his waiting carriage. Ducking his head after barking out the direction he was going, he climbed in and settled himself against the crème-velvet squabs.

Lurching forward, the carriage began its journey, the click of the horses’ hooves echoing down the street. It was November, and Mayfair wasn’t as busy as it was during the Season. Pity that, for he could have used the noise of life outside to keep him from reflecting on life inside the carriage.

He had thought to go to his club, have a bit of supper, a hand of cards and a few more drinks before his dawn appointment at Grantham Field. But all that had changed now. He had something he needed to do—not just out of duty, but because he felt compelled, driven, utterly consumed to see someone before the unthinkable happened tonight and he landed on the damp grass, toes cocked up, blood seeping out onto the green blades, while Lucifer’s hand rose from the ground, grasped him and tugged him down to his lair below.

Yes, Iain needed to see that person and … apologize.

But how did one effectively seek mercy and forgiveness for a crime that was more than a decade old? “I’m sorry” hardly seemed enough.

By the time he reached his destination, he had practiced a dozen pretty speeches, all better than the one before. As the footman opened the carriage door, he was firmly fixed upon the one he would use, assured that, at least, the lady would give him a moment to vent his spleen and do the honourable thing.

The Sumners’ majordomo took in the sight of him from head to toe before holding out his white-gloved hand for the invitation to the insipid musicale.

“I have a standing invitation,” Iain muttered.

“Very good, my lord,” the butler murmured. “I shall announce you.”

It was rather disturbing that the old geezer knew him by sight. It was not good in this instance to be reminded that his reputation preceded him.

Clearing his throat, the retainer announced in chilling tones, “His lordship the Marquis of Alynwick and laird to the clan Sinclair.”

Emerging from the shadows, Iain entered the room, aware it had gone still with shock. He stood tall and proud, wearing his Highland dress as he scanned the room for his quarry. He found her, and any thoughts of apologizing flew out of his head when he saw her arm in arm with a man. They were whispering and smiling to each other beneath a portrait of a classic nude, completely unaware of others around them.

Apologize? No. Murder, most likely. With eternal life in hell a damned surety.

Feral and enraged, and sotted from his finest Scotch, Iain prowled the room, the guests parting before him like the long grass of the African savannah does when a hungry lion presses through.

He would go for the throat—the man’s first. Then he would carry off his prey and bring her to his den, where he would play with her, torment her, before finishing her off.