Читать книгу To Undo A Lady - Christine Merrill, Christine Merrill - Страница 7

Chapter One

While Shakespeare claimed that April was the cruelest month, Danyl Fitzhugh would have argued for December. He flipped the top collar of his Garrick up to protect his face from the chill and knotted the muffler to hold it in place. Even at this late hour, the streets of London were cold, muddy and crowded with people rushing from one place to another to no apparent purpose. They wasted their money on excesses of food and drink and gifts to celebrate the season. To Danyl’s mind, far too few of them were going to the theater.

There would be even fewer at the Pageant Playhouse, now that he’d lost another actress to the Theatre Royal. He had trained that wench, Maria, from her first step upon the boards, shared his knowledge of the craft, and then used all his skills as a director to set her like a jewel in the crown of his productions. In return, she had stabbed him in the back. And right before Christmas.

If he’d been in the habit of celebrating that particular holiday, it might have been worse. But she had used his mixed-blood heritage as an excuse to defect to Grimaldi for his seasonal pantomime. It stung the pride to be treated as some sort of godless infidel by a woman who had been only too happy to share his bed when she wanted a better role.

As she left, he had shouted that he could turn any whore in Drury Lane into her equal, nay, her superior, if he so chose. And now, it appeared he might have to do just that, if he did not want to cancel the next night’s performance. He’d searched London from one end to the other and could not find an actress that suited him.

But Covent Garden was busy with people seeking entertainment of one sort or another—drink, gambling, the theater, or diversions of a carnal nature. In a place like this, whores were thick on the ground, loitering in the alcoves and blocking doorways when the weather turned cold. It sometimes seemed that if a girl meant to fall from grace, she could find no better place to do it then right outside the door of his theater.

If he intended to carry out his threat to Maria, he could not afford to be too particular. A courtesan would never stoop to becoming an actress. The women in brothels were too busy to discuss a change in career. Nor did he wish to pull one from bed, only to have her recognized and jeered by some buck who had lain with her just a night before.

He could tempt a streetwalker with his offer. But he needed someone new, fresh, and without the tarnished and shabby glamour that affected women after time on the street.

He needed her.

The poor creature huddled by the wall was small, as Maria had been. She would fit the costumes without alteration. But where Maria had been a match for his own dark coloring, this girl would be a foil. Fair of skin and hair with wide, innocent, cornflower-blue eyes in a heart-shaped face. When he played Othello, he would tower over her. In response, the audience’s heart would break for poor Desdemona.

But he would have to feed her first, and thaw her out. Her dress and shawl were fine, but too light for the weather. Her lips were almost blue from cold. The garments were beginning to hang loose, and her lovely face was gaining the pinched look of one who had missed more than one meal. Everything about her cried that she was out of options and might be agreeable to anything that might ease her suffering.

As he approached, she looked straight at him and then away. Was it the color of his skin that put her off? He’d had women, both English and Indian, refuse him because of it, not wanting to be bedded by some half-caste bastard. But tonight he did not have the time to be angry.

Then she looked up again. It had not been a personal affront. She was simply terrified of the task before her. “Please, sir…” She stopped as though she hoped he would understand the rest.

Wordlessly, he reached into a pocket and gave the coins in his purse a jingle.

She wet her lips again and forced herself to speak. “Fancy a tumble?” She was trying to make her voice sultry but coarse, to give him the impression that she had done this many times. But she was obviously educated, and green as spring grass to the ways of the street.

“How much?” It was unfair of him to toy with her, but he could not resist seeing how strong her nerve might be, and how long she would carry out such an obvious farce.

By the look she gave him, it was clear that she had never done this before. Even an inexperienced whore would have some idea of her worth. “A pound?”

He laughed. “I would not pay a pound for the ladies in the Kama Sutra. But for the nerve to suggest it, I would give you a shilling.”

“Done.” Before he could make his offer, she had grabbed him by the scarf and hauled him into the shadow of a nearby pillar. She had to stand on the tops of his feet to reach his mouth, but she did so, and planted her lips on his, pushing back with her body to pin him to the bricks as she kissed.

Far be it from him to correct her form. But she would not let him catch a breath to tell her that streetwalkers were never so eager as this. If they kissed at all, it was not with such desperate enthusiasm. It seemed that, if this was her first step on the road to ruin, she meant to run the rest of the way down it before losing her nerve. Her mouth was open, and his tongue played along the straight, clean teeth, and bit the lips that were ice-cold but barely chapped by the weather.

Oh Mother, but this was sweet. He squeezed her breasts through a gown that was fine enough for a drawing room, and felt her shiver. But it was more from the cold than anticipation. His own body was answering, ready. Perhaps, if he had been a gentleman, he’d have refused her. It should be beneath him to take this unfortunate against a wall.

If things went as he expected, she’d be his leading lady soon enough, and that inevitably lead to a situation much like this one. If they got the first intimacy out of the way before he negotiated her salary, there would be no questions later about what he might wish from her.

He took control, and pulled aside his scarf so that he might open his greatcoat to wrap it around them both. Then he turned their bodies so that she was the one braced against the bricks, and lifted her skirt.

Her shivering ceased and he could feel her fumbling with the buttons of his breeches. But either she was still frightened, or her fingers were numb with the cold. He lifted one hand to his lips and kissed it, breathing the life back into it. With his other hand, he touched her yahni, trying to tease some warmth to it as well.

She might be inexperienced, but clearly she was no virgin. She did not seem surprised by his touch. Her breathing quickened and then stopped in fear as voices passed within a few feet of them on the other side of the pillar.

He used her fear against her, pressing into her and increasing his teasing, pulling on the lips of her body, tracing the place between them, and thrusting a finger into the wet center of her, in and out as the strangers on the other side of the pillar discussed whether it would be better to go to Ma Brown’s for a girl or to a hell to play faro.

She clenched her body against his hand, fighting the excitement. He added a second finger and increased his speed. And then he guided her warm hand back to his buttons, helping her undo the flap, guiding himself to the body that was wet and ready to receive him, and filling her.

If this act was any indication of how they would fare on stage, he had chosen well. She was responsive to him, sensing his desires almost before he knew them, twisting her hips, pushing back in rhythm with his thrusts, sucking his tongue into her mouth and raking it with her teeth as he took her.

The strangers had moved on, but he did not know or care. He could think of nothing now but the climax, bracing her hips with his hands and hammering into her, losing his control in a tide that seemed to pulse in time to her cries of pleasure and the spasms of her body.

Dear God, he was almost too weak to stand. If it hadn’t been for the wall, he’d have dragged them both down to the ground in a heap. As it was, it would take a few moments to recover sufficiently to get her back to his apartments above the theater, and to explain the real reason he had accosted her.

But for now, he fumbled in his purse and pushed a crumpled pound note into the tiny hand that rested against his side.