Portrait of a Lady: The Gentleman Courtesans Book 1 Page 5

  Hugh went still, his snifter held up to his lips. “I thought money was entirely the point.”

  “For us, perhaps. But for them...women are different than we are, Hugh. A man with a mistress wants someone to fuck him, laugh at his jokes, and otherwise avoid annoying and nagging him the way his wife does. But a woman, she wants from her courtesan all the things the men of her world will not give her. Affection, a listening ear, romance, and of course, someone to fuck her.”

  They laughed together at that, Hugh calming after a moment to take another sip of his drink.

  “Nick and David are very, very good at the fucking part of things. Aubrey is a good listener. I myself have...certain talents that I know how to use to my advantage. But you’ve got it all going for you. I do believe in their own way each of your keepers has been head over heels in love with you.”

  Hugh’s heart sank at that, even though his mind told him he ought to be proud that Benedict had meant it as a compliment. However, as he thought over his arrangements as a courtesan the past two years, he couldn’t help but realize one unavoidable truth.

  He had never loved any of them.

  He’d certainly liked them well enough; one couldn’t be in this line of work without at least learning to like his lover and coax her better attributes to the surface. He’d danced attention and affection on them, made them feel beautiful, and fucked them—all except the last one, who had insisted he keep her maidenhead intact for her eventual husband. He’d adhered to her rules without wavering, thinking up ways to pleasure her, keeping her happy until she’d broken off their arrangement in order to wed a baron. David or Nick might have seduced her out of her virginity while making her think it was all her own idea. Perhaps this was what Benedict meant—he was the best because of his care and consideration for his keepers.

  Still, that comment about love lodged itself someplace inside him, making him dashed uncomfortable.

  “I’ve never wanted to lead anyone on,” he murmured, staring across the room and into the fire.

  “Of course not,” Benedict replied. “Who said you did?”

  “You! What else could you mean by that?”

  “Only that making your keeper feel loved is the way it’s done,” Benedict offered, his tone softening. “And you’ve done it without losing yourself in the process unlike that idiot Norton.”

  Hugh bit back a bark of laughter, knowing it would only annoy Benedict. Not long after founding the Gentlemen Courtesans, Benedict had gotten the idea of bringing other men into the fold. The demand for the sort of service they provided had been far greater than they’d anticipated. Among those who had been inducted into their agency was Edward Norton, who had been with them all of a month before falling in love with his keeper. Much to Benedict’s dismay, the man had broken ranks and married the chit before whisking her away to Devon to live in wedded bliss.

  While Benedict had found another man to replace him, he never ceased making it known that such a thing was unacceptable. They were an agency of courtesans, not a matchmaking service, and for each arrangement he secured Benedict received a small percentage. The loss of a courtesan affected his bottom line, and nothing mattered to their leader more than that.

  Fortunately, the loss of a courtesan to love and marriage had been a singular event, and the other men did their jobs without entangling themselves.

  “My focus is my work and the upcoming Exhibition,” Hugh assured him. “Now, tell me about my new keeper.”

  “Her name is Miss Evelyn Coburn and she immediately struck me as being perfectly suited for you. Young, but not too young—five-and-twenty, I believe she said. She’s a shy thing, but you should have no trouble coaxing her out of her shell.”

  No, he wouldn’t. His ability to gently charm his way through a woman’s defenses was one of the reasons Benedict almost always assigned the virgins to him. Having gone his entire life striving for excellence in his art, Hugh would never have thought to develop a talent for seducing chaste, virtuous women.

  “Here,” Benedict said, retrieving a slip of paper from his coat pocket. “This is her address. The contract has been signed, and she is expecting to meet you soon.”

  Hugh accepted the paper and opened it to find an address a short walk from his own residence. That would certainly prove convenient.

  “Very good. Thank you, Ben.”

  His friend shrugged and waved a dismissive hand. “All in the line of duty. Now, if you’ll excuse me. Celeste is expecting me in an hour, so I’d better go make myself presentable for dinner.”

  Hugh finished off his drink and stood, tucking Evelyn’s address into his own breast pocket. He would ruminate over how best to begin with her, then meet with Crosby. He could focus on nothing else while feeling so anxious over what his mentor might think of his progressing piece for the Exhibition.

  “Best of luck with your new amour,” Benedict said just before Hugh passed through the drawing room door and out into the main entrance of the townhouse.

  A footman opened the front door for him, and Hugh set off for home. He only had a few hours before Crosby was due to visit, and he wanted to accomplish a bit more work on his painting before the man arrived.

  * * *

  Regina ran across the wetlands, her white fingers clenching the sides of her cloak together as her bare feet sank into the mire with every swift step across the foggy moors. She was chilled to the bone, wearing nothing beneath her cloak except a thin chemise—but there had been no time for clothing, no time to give thought to anything but escape. This might be her only chance to break free of Faremoor Castle, that dark, frigid tomb in which she’d been held prisoner for over a fortnight. Her heart leaped against her breast, her throat constricting as she recalled the cold, dark eyes of Baron Redgrave. The man and his decrepit ancestral castle had been cursed, but Regina was determined that they would not prove the death of her. She must not allow him to claim her...she must escape.

  With a sharp cry, she pitched forward, her foot having become entangled in a wild growth of underbrush. Her frozen hands did little to help break her fall, and she landed on the muddy ground, her cloak and chemise now soaked through. He was coming. She could hear him, his footsteps heavy upon the earth, his panting and snorting stoking her imagination with thoughts of some wild beast covered in coarse hair and sprouting fangs and claws. But, it was only the baron, that madman who seemed determined to possess her giving chase.

  She came to her hands and knees, crawling and sobbing like a babe, her hands sinking into the mire, hot tears trailing in her wake. Just then, a hand closed around her ankle, wrenching a cry of despair from between her lips. Regina clawed the ground, her sharp wails rising up to become lost in the fog. No one could hear, and so no one would save her as the baron began to drag her toward him, back to Faremoor, into the darkness and toward certain death…

  “Sorry to interrupt, Miss.”

  Evelyn smothered an oath as her quill went still on the sheet of paper before leaving a rapidly growing splotch of ink. Glancing up from her writing desk, she spotted Joseph the footman lingering in the doorway. In her morning room facing the small courtyard off the back of the house, Evelyn spent many hours each day indulging in her favorite pastime—penning Gothic novels. She’d been so immersed in her work on The Mad Baron that she hadn’t heard Joseph enter. The footman might have called out to her half a dozen times before she’d finally heard him, so engrossed she had been with her task. She wanted to be annoyed with the man for interrupting her just as Regina attempted her third escape from the villain Redgrave, but merely gave the servant a placid smile and motioned for him to enter. Her small household staff knew only to interrupt her while she was writing if the matter was urgent.

  “What is it, Joseph?”

  “This missive arrived for you a moment ago. When I had it sent to your chambers, Patience insisted I bring it to you at once. She said you would want to read it right away.”

  Furrowing her brow, Evelyn accepted the envelop
e, wondering who it could be from. She had few friends in London and had yet to respond to the letters from family sitting inside the drawer of her desk. Samantha, who had been the one to tell her about the Gentleman Courtesans, had left town to care for her ailing grandmother.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, dismissing the footman as she turned back to her desk.

  After sinking back into her chair, she tore the envelope open and found a short note written in a haphazard scrawl. Despite it being nearly illegible, Evelyn was able to make out words that made her hands shake.

  Evelyn,

  I would be honored if you would give me the pleasure of your company at the masquerade being held at Vauxhall tomorrow evening. It seems as good an event as any for us to meet discreetly and begin coming to know one another. Enter through the proprietor’s house and follow the Grand Walk to the Cascade. I will await you there at nine o’clock. Please send the particulars of your attire, so that I know which of the masked maidens is you.

  I look forward to meeting you.

  Hugh

  Her mouth fell open as she skimmed the address written beneath his signature, the paper crinkling in her grip as she fought to control her trembling hands and failed. The note had come from her newly-hired courtesan, and only a few hours after Evelyn had agreed to Benedict’s terms, but Evelyn hadn’t expected such swift action.

  She glanced up to find Patience hovering in the doorway, a mischievous smile stretching her mouth wide. Her companion seemed downright giddy, appearing far younger than her thirty years.

  “It’s from him, isn’t it?” she chirped, entering the room and closing the door behind her.

  “Yes,” Evelyn croaked, handing the note off and slumping in her chair.

  She took a few deep breaths while Patience read the note, hoping to calm her rattled nerves. What was she thinking? This man had not been hired to court her...he’d been employed to take her maidenhead and initiate her into the pleasures of the bedchamber. She would be naked with him, allow him to touch and kiss her, and…

  “Oh, this is terribly romantic!” Patience squealed, clapping her hands like an excited child and nearly destroying the note in the process.

  Evelyn sighed. “Then why do I feel as I’m going to be sick?”

  Patience laid the crumpled note onto the desk and perched on its edge, reaching out to rest a comforting hand on Evelyn’s shoulder. “You’re just a bit anxious, is all. It will pass once you’ve met him.”

  Once I meet him, and he proceeds to deflower me.

  She pressed a hand against her roiling belly. “Do you know what sort of licentious happenings go on at Vauxhall masquerades?”

  “That’s what makes this idea of his all the better,” Patience replied with an impish smirk. “Fancy dress offers the freedom of anonymity so you needn’t worry about things like social niceties.”

  That brought Evelyn no comfort, not when social niceties had been the thing saving her from embarrassment and scorn. Behind a smokescreen of respectability, she’d become an unnoticed wallflower, one who—after her first Season—hadn’t had to worry about the overtures of gentlemen or the consequences of scandal. No man courted a woman he couldn’t see, and no one had seen Evelyn in quite some time. She’d been content in her invisibility, happy to wile her days away as a spinster who wrote Gothic novels which contained her secret longing for romance and all-consuming love. She’d never been the sort of woman to inspire such devotion, so she’d contented herself with a life in which she lived vicariously through the characters inhabiting her mind.

  Now, she had a chance to at least experience passion, but the idea of it had just become very, very real and outright terrifying.

  “No one will know who you are,” Patience went on. “And I can assure you that the other revelers will be so busy indulging in their own scandalous tête-à-têtes, no one will pay you and Hugh the slightest bit of attention.”

  Evelyn had never attended a Vauxhall masquerade, but was no stranger to the stories of the kinds of things that went on there. Flowing wine and spirits, along with the masks, lowered the inhibitions of the attendees, and all manner of debauchery became permissible. Her face grew warm as she recalled tales of the illicit meetings that occurred in areas where the lighting was near nonexistent.

  She could imagine that Hugh might wish to lead her down one of those dark paths, at the end of which would lay her ruination.

  No, she wouldn’t think of it that way. ‘Ruined’ implied that she held delusions of marriage and going to a husband untouched. She’d long ago come to terms with the fact that she’d never marry, as one had to engage in courtship in order to gain a husband. And Evelyn could hardly manage conversation with a stranger without feeling ill, nor did she like the sort of attention that was danced upon the most popular debutantes.

  This wouldn’t be ruination; it would be an awakening, something decadent and exciting. The sort of thing no one would ever expect her to engage in, which was exactly why it was a good idea. She would never be truly ‘ruined’, because no one would ever know.

  “I suppose you are right, Patience. I’m merely a bit nervous, and that’s sure to pass once I’ve met him. And perhaps the mystery of a masquerade can only enhance the occasion.”

  Patience leaped to her feet. “That’s the spirit! How are things going with The Mad Baron?”

  Evelyn dove between Patience and her desk, blocking the other woman’s view of the passage she’d just been working on. “It’s going well, barring a few interruptions here and there.”

  Patience craned her neck, trying to see the pages past the barrier of Evelyn’s body. “Oh, please, just a peek.”

  Evelyn placed one hand on the page and shook her head. “Absolutely not. You know the rule, Patience. You aren’t allowed to read until it’s finished and perfect.”

  Patience backed away but gave Evelyn a pouty frown. “Well, all right. But, do hurry! I so enjoyed The Villainous Viscount.”

  That brought a little smile to Evelyn’s face. She was secretive about her work—partly out of fear that it wasn’t very good, and partly out of worry that someone would find her hobby vulgar. But, she’d written five novels thus far, and Patience had adored every one of them. But then, Patience loved most things and was ridiculously easy to please. Evelyn would be horribly embarrassed for anyone else to read her work.

  “For a woman whose name is Patience, you display a shocking lack of that quality,” she quipped.

  Patience laughed. “My mother used to say the same thing. Oh, but enough standing about. We must put together some sort of ensemble for the masquerade.”

  Evelyn drew in a sharp breath, realization washing over her in a rush. “God, I hadn’t thought of that! It’ll be impossible to have something made on such short notice, and I own absolutely nothing that would be appropriate for such an event. Oh, and the costumiers have probably been stripped of all but the worst possible selections.”

  Patience took her arm and began propelling her toward the drawing room doors. “Then we’ve no time to waste. Don’t worry, Miss, we’ll have you looking like a goddess by tomorrow evening, I’ll settle for nothing less.”

  Meanwhile, Evelyn would happily settle for not looking like a perfect idiot the first time she came face to face with Hugh.

  She allowed Patience to pull her into the entrance hall, while she waited for John to send for the carriage and fetch their wraps and hats. Despite her nervousness, a bit of the excitement emanating from Patience seemed to catch Evelyn in its grasp. For twenty-five years, she’d been prim and proper, behaving so well the people of the ton barely knew she existed. The daughter of a baron with two elder sisters, she’d already stood a bit low on the social ladder upon her coming out. Making matters worse was that it was so easy to be overshadowed by her sisters who, while not traditionally beautiful, excelled at being charming and witty enough to earn themselves successful marriages. Meanwhile, she could hardly string words together when in social settings, which seemed to
tie her tongue into knots.

  But this...she could do this. Without having to operate under the strictures of the ton, this could be done her way, on her own terms. She could meet Hugh and have a wonderful time. She could allow him to take her to bed at the end of the night and dispose of her maidenhead. She could indulge in an illicit affair and enjoy every improper moment in a way she’d never enjoyed anything in her life.

  As she and Patience set out with Joseph for an escort, Evelyn did her best to push her reservations aside. The contract was signed, and Hugh was now hers for as long as she wished. There was no going back now.

  * * *

  “Hmmm,” Crosby murmured, arms crossed over his chest, one hand lifting to tug at his silver sideburns. He studied the canvas resting on the easel before him, surrounded by the messy interior of Hugh’s studio. The noxious odor of pigments and turpentine surrounded them, a smell that only artists seemed to appreciate.

  Trepidation gripped him as he watched his mentor inspect the painting, his lips pursed. Hugh held his breath, not daring to disturb the man’s assessment. Crosby would speak when he had something to say, and not before. Forcing his gaze away from the other man, he studied the canvas and tried to see it as his mentor must see it.

  He’d named the piece Virtue and Vice, and it represented a tableau of a pleasure garden masquerade—much like the one he’d just invited Evelyn to. He had gotten the idea while attending such an event last spring, watching the debauchery taking place all around him. Costumed devils and goblins promenaded through the scene interspersed with opulently costumed lords and ladies. It was dark and decadent, portraying le bon ton in its true form, the scandal hiding just beneath a thin veil of politeness and propriety.

  “Hmmm,” Crosby hummed once more tilting his head.

  Hugh’s palms broke into a sweat, the other man’s face giving not a hint to his thoughts. He had been slaving away for weeks at the canvas, taking his time and paying heed to even the slightest details—the flounces in a lady’s skirts, the meticulously arranged curls of a lord, the shadows and light that both revealed and concealed to set the proper mood. If it turned out that Crosby hated the painting, he wasn’t certain he’d be able to take it. With less than two months left until the Exhibition, Hugh was not certain he’d be able to start over. This idea had inspired him, and he’d thought it perfectly fitting for the summer showcase.