Читать книгу Dangerous Games - Charlotte Mede - Страница 12

Constance St. Martin shrugged off her wrapper with the insouciance of a concubine. Bellamy’s pale gaze burned in satisfaction as he leaned back in his chair like a pasha prince.

She was stunning, with jutting breasts barely concealed by the satin rail that had probably cost him a king’s ransom. His eyes tracked her languid walk, like liquid silk as she moved toward him across the floor, her narrow bare feet sinking into the luxuriance of the Indian rug. Hair the color of a raven’s wing, she looked like a fairy-tale princess, but he knew differently.

“Darling,” she purred, leaning over him in his chair, her musky scent finer than anything a Parisian perfumer could conjure. “You’re a very bad boy expecting me to stay here, locked away, day after day, night after night.” Her fine lips pouted her disapproval at the memory of the long days of her incarceration in her opulent palace. “And you had the temerity to go to the theater this evening without me?”

Bellamy shook his head as though dismissing a small child. His last hours at the theater still rankled. The impudence of that poseur, Duleep Singh, and the ultimately futile demonstration by his supporters on his behalf was beyond belief. A decade ago, colonialists would never have dared express their discontent with their rulers. And in London of all places.

He tightened the sash on his robe until it dug into his corpulent flesh. The pain was welcome, drowning out his frustration with that squat little queen and her even weaker consort who invited anarchy to their doorstep. The vote in Parliament loomed on his horizon, championed by Victoria herself, to take power over his empire and cede it to colonial government in India.

Unthinkable.

“You didn’t miss much,” he said, keeping most of his thoughts to himself as he had learned to do so many years ago. “The play was tedious and my companion even more so.”

“What’s she like, your companion?” Constance leaned closer, and he could smell the laudanum on her breath. She was usually not interested in other women, but her green, almond-shaped eyes narrowed further. Like the feline she was, she sniffed competition in the air.

Constance would soon learn her place, silly, demanding creature that she was, thought Bellamy. She was no different from the slatterns his mother had kept about. “Lilly Clarence is not simply my companion, she’s now my betrothed,” he said silkily, dangling the skein of wool before the cat, baiting for her reaction.

Constance raised her fine eyebrows mockingly. “You’re taking a wife. How interesting and how terribly boring. You know how tiresome I found my own marriage to dear Julian. And you actually helped me do something about it, naughty boy.”

Bellamy sat still, the mention of St. Martin a tonic to his system. That he held that man in the palm of his hand was galvanizing. And as for his wife…He could feel her breath. Warm, sultry. He reached up and squeezed her left breast, hard, like he was testing the worthiness of one of his polo ponies back in Lahore. Instead of reflecting pain, her eyes widened momentarily and caught the look in his. For a brief second it occurred to him that she was the ringmaster, not he, raising the curtain on their lust.

Impatient with his own weakness and yet fully aware of her worth to him, he pushed her away. “Instead of talking so much, why don’t you make yourself useful?” He jerked his chin in the direction of an exquisite Sheridan escritoire and the decanter of brandy. “I crave some refreshment.”

Constance swayed away from him, peevish now, the cloud of laudanum still hanging over her, supremely unaccustomed to male indifference. She looked around the lavishly appointed room disinterestedly, barely taking note of the rich, watered-silk wall covering and the Louis quinze four-poster with its elaborate canopy.

She flicked her hair over her shoulders with an exaggerated shudder. “I don’t think so, darling. I don’t fetch,” she murmured. He wondered briefly whether her reaction was part of the twisted game they both loved so much. “Why don’t I assist you by calling in one of those burly guards that you keep posted outside this chamber day and night?”

Without waiting for his reply, she sauntered to the door and opened it wide. A moment later, a tall, heavyset man, hands clasped behind his back and eyes cast down, hurried over to the escritoire.

Bellamy’s breathing quickened, the thought of a woman ordering about a man, any man, even a servant or guard, simultaneously arousing and revolting. Flynn was having difficulty focusing on his task, his large hands clumsy with the decanter, the crystal, his senses obviously overwhelmed by Constance who made sure she remained in his sight, tempting, seductive, and forbidden.

The whore.

The clatter of glass jangled his nerves. “Go now,” he barked at Flynn, who fumbled with the crystal he was holding before awkwardly setting it down and backing out the door. It closed behind him silently.

“And you”—Bellamy rose from his chair and strode toward Constance—“you will remember your place. Which implies your wearing modest garb whenever you are with a man other than myself. I won’t clarify again.”

Constance took an affronted breath. “Are you completely mad? This isn’t the benighted colonies. You’ve spent too many years with primitive savages, clearly.” Rising to the moment, she reacted as though her world was coming to an end, waving her hands imperiously. “I’ve had enough of languishing away in a backwater for all those years with Julian. And I won’t have it again.”

“You came to me, as I recall, pleading for help.”

“And you promised me that lovely major and all the diversions with Dr. Vesper that I wanted if I cooperated with your plans,” she whined.

He could have her killed. Yes, right now, her body disposed of as quickly as the maid who’d met her own ignoble end at the dexterous hands of St. Martin the other evening. It had been decades since anyone had the temerity to ask inconvenient questions of Isambard Kingdom Bellamy.

But much as he would like to squeeze the life from her deceptively fragile form, he would have to wait. Bellamy smoothed the arms of his chair with open palms, conjuring one of his most delectable fantasies. He imagined the lengths St. Martin would go to see his wife raised from the dead and returned to him. For a price of course.

His momentary anger with this whore had to be managed, leveraged, when there was so much at stake. Constance St. Martin was his guarantor—in the eventuality that her husband decided to continue drowning in his own guilt. Highly unlikely. Constance’s high whine momentarily shut out, Bellamy stretched his thin mouth into a smile, a smile of anticipation.

The whore’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

“There’s nothing to smile about, darling, surely. Why did you have me join you and Vesper if you were not intending to treat me well?” She stood in the center of the room, hands on hips. Her voice was petulant, a little girl who demanded constant indulgence.

Bellamy crossed his arms over his chest to contain his emotion and stroked his mustache. He should have asked Flynn to bring his cigars, his urge for tobacco doing nothing to temper his mood.

“You’ve erred,” he said slowly, allowing the storm clouds to gather, “if you believe that I have your best interests at heart. I’m not like your husband.” His gaze flicked over her like a whip. “And tell me, did he ever discover that you kept a retinue of lovers, ranging from stable boys to gardeners, while he was away on his various assignments for the Crown?”

The beginnings of anxiety tautened her lips. Constance was shrewd enough to turn things around while she could. Her nostrils flared at the slight. “You’re speaking nonsense, darling, and you well know it. Julian ignored me, if you can imagine, so what choice did I have? He deserved it,” she said, her fine features collapsing, looking like she suddenly needed a dose of laudanum to soothe frayed nerves. Her eyes darted around the room to settle on the bedside table where her tincture was customarily found. Bellamy made sure she had a ready supply. “I come from one of England’s best families,” she rattled on, moving toward the bed to begin opening drawers and rummaging through their contents.

“Such a lofty tone coming from a whore.”

“Go sod yourself.” She slammed shut a drawer triumphantly, small glass bottle in hand.

“Not while I have you about.” Bellamy rose from his chair and made his way toward her. She raised the bottle to her lips just as he grabbed her arm and flung her into a chair. Seizing the bottle from her hand, he hurled it to the floor. The bottle smashed, leaking oily liquid, a bitterness perfuming the air.

Not about to be cowed and deciding she could do better by heightening the atmosphere of violence, Constance smiled slyly. “Your accent is thickening, King, my darling, along with your bad, bad temper,” she taunted, crossing her legs as though she had all the time in the world, and making sure that one of the thin straps of her silk rail fell alluringly from her shoulder. “Are you reverting to savagery, having spent all that time with those primitives?” She shuddered delicately.

Bellamy heard the gathering thunder in his ears, and his hands itched to encircle her white neck and slowly, oh-so-slowly, strangle the life from that exquisite body. How he wanted to hurt her, to slap that delicate face, to shatter that sultry, knowing expression. He wanted a whip in his hand, to lash her until her smooth skin oozed welts, to give her over to his men to ride until even she would scream for mercy.

How unfortunate that he had to keep her intact. For St. Martin.

He jerked away from her as though she were filth. “I could call for the guards right now….”

Constance’s eyes narrowed, sensing an opportunity for advantage despite the lingering haze of laudanum. “But you won’t because you want me all to yourself, don’t you? And you adore taking something from a man like St. Martin, a man whom you could never be. Have I ever told you what my dear husband was like in bed?” She paused for a heartbeat. “No. I don’t recall that I did. Quite superlative, if you must know. And I would know…”

“You’re simply goods to him, as to me.”

“Is that so?” she asked, a sharpness to her face, leaning forward in her chair. “What am I worth then? To my husband who believes me long dead? Tell me!”

If only she knew. Bellamy exploded in guttural laughter. “You bitch. I cannot believe he was dimwitted enough to make you his wife, despite your aristocratic pretensions. Imagine, the clever, strong, brave Julian St. Martin.” He looked down as she sat languorously in the chair, her hard green eyes challenging him. “You can only hope that he is mad enough with guilt to take you back in spite of the fact that you spread your legs more easily than a mongrel in heat.”

“He will,” she purred knowingly. She rose from the chair until they faced each other, an orgy of danger surrounding them. He approached, moving closer, the arrows of fire once again piercing his belly.

“Look what I can give you,” she crooned, “and look what you’ve taken from him.”

Constance knew that he wouldn’t resist. She felt through the opening of his robe while he grabbed her other hand and put it open-palmed between his legs, pressing it until he was sure she felt what he wanted her to feel.

“You adore taking something from St. Martin. And even more,” she said throatily, intensifying her caress so he was unable to answer. “You’re addicted to the way I spread my legs for you.”

The aristocratic whore was right on both counts, Bellamy thought, looking forward to another descent into hell, moments before he surrendered, once again, to her depraved hands and mouth.