The door to the dining room opened. Bridget stepped inside and Val immediately realized his mistake.
She was dressed in her usual ugly black wool, white pinned apron, and white fichu, all quite modest, but Dyemore had already made allusion to gossip and informing servants. Did the old man know who, exactly, had nursed him through that illness?
Val smiled very slightly over his wineglass and damned himself for a bloody fool.
“Is this the lovely Mrs. Crumb?” Dyemore asked, examining Séraphine as if she were a salted herring presented for his consumption.
Briefly Val contemplated stabbing him with his dinner knife. It would be so very easy. But then the disposal of the body, et cetera, et cetera. So tedious and he really did rather want the power of the Lords.
Oh, very well.
“Mrs. Crumb is indeed my housekeeper and will be joining us for luncheon,” Val said, holding out his hand for her.
She, to her credit and quite unsurprisingly, kept her composure and strode, head held high, to his side. She eschewed his hand, but did take her seat. It occurred to Val in passing that he’d seen princesses with less aplomb.
Val let his hand fall to the table and smiled at her. “This is Leonard de Chartres, the Duke of Dyemore and a great friend of my late father.”
Her eyes widened a fraction but in no other way did she demonstrate her comprehension of that statement. “Your Grace. A pleasure to meet you.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” Dyemore replied, sounding as amused as if he sat chatting with a talking cat. He turned to Val. “A novelty for you, eh, Montgomery? I remember your father liked his outré diversions as well. Why, one entire winter—was it 1712 or 1713?—there was this little—”
Fortunately for the state of Val’s appetite, Dyemore was interrupted by the advent of luncheon. The butler preceded three footmen, bearing trays of salmon, beef, and a variety of stewed fruits and breads.
“Never much liked fish,” Dyemore said a short time later, bloody beef juice seeping from the corner of his mouth as he masticated. “Now beef’s a man’s meal.”
“Oh, quite,” Val agreed, stabbing a fork into his salmon.
“Now,” the old man continued. “We’ll have to get you properly initiated.”
Bridget banged her knife onto her plate and glared at him. Val wondered if she’d make it through the meal without going off like a Chinese firecracker.
“Really? An initiation?” Val asked, turning to Dyemore. “Tedious, that. I thought, as one of the founding families.…”
“Sacred rules,” Dyemore intoned—rather comically, considering what they were discussing. “But the sooner the better. ’M not getting any younger. Ha!”
“I would’ve thought your son…?” Val asked, purely for his own curiosity’s sake. He had no intention of letting anyone else shoulder him out the seat of power.
“Raphael?” Dyemore made a very unpleasant face. “He’s… not appropriate for the role.”
Indeed? Well, that was certainly interesting. Val vaguely remembered a boy of about his own age, and wondered if Raphael were crippled or mentally deficient. Surely he would have heard rumors if so?
“No, you’ll do much better,” Dyemore continued as he fished a bit of gristle from between his teeth. “Young. Strong of limb. Comely.”
His eyes had gone half-lidded.
Val might’ve felt himself violated had he been inclined.
He smiled. “When?”
The other man shrugged. “Spring is our usual time, you know that.”
Val shook his head. “Too far off. I’ll want to take my place sooner.”
Dyemore grinned. “Perhaps something can be arranged. We’ve been a bit more… liberal since your father’s time with our revels.”
“And where have you been holding them?”
But Dyemore shook his finger at him roguishly. “Now, now. I can’t tell you that, as you well know. Not until you’re initiated.” He sat back in his chair, eyeing Val almost lasciviously. “You’re eager to join us, I know, but you must be patient, my boy.”
Val smiled and drank his wine, content for now to let the old man think that the Lords’ rather pedestrian sexual debauchery was the reason he wanted to join them.
The meal was finished in a congenial, if not pleasant, atmosphere, Dyemore making none-too-subtle references to Father’s perversions, his mother’s hatred of Val, et cetera, et cetera. Really, it would do the world good if the old man just choked on one of his gobbled bites, but such was not to be. Val was soon escorting his guest to his doors.
Which was when it happened.
He could blame the wine, his own preoccupation with Séraphine, and the cloud of disapproval that had been growing around her all through the meal, but when it came right down to it, it was nothing more than stupidity.
Bloody stupidity.
Dyemore was at the door, his hat and cane in hand, saying his final, doddering, malicious farewells, when Bridget turned away from Val.
He caught her hand.
Merely that. Completely without thought. He didn’t want her to go stalking off to who knew where to clean any more of his goddamned castle when he just wanted to have a quiet discussion with her and perhaps, after that, a nice round of midafternoon lovemaking.
Such a little thing, and yet so telling. Because he could explain away a housekeeper at his luncheon table as some strange sexual perversion. A sudden desire to roll about in the muck of the lower classes. But holding a woman’s hand meant something completely different, even to a jaded, pox-ridden, soulless old roué such as Dyemore.
It meant affection.
And that meant weakness.
He saw Dyemore’s bloodshot gaze dart to the hand that held Bridget’s plump little fingers. The old man’s liver-colored lips twitched in a satisfied smile, and Val felt something odd in his frozen hollow chest. Something that took his breath away.
It felt almost like…
Well. Fear.
And Val thought, You have to kill the thing you love or they’ll use it against you.
Wasn’t it good, then, that he didn’t love Bridget?
“WHY?” BRIDGET WHIRLED on Val the moment he closed the door to his room. She was shaking, she was so upset. “What would possess you to dine with the Duke of Dyemore and ask to be initiated into the Lords of Chaos? Are you that perverse? Do you like sex with all sorts of women that much?”
“Actually,” he drawled, “it’s often boys—very young ones—and little girls.”
For a moment she simply stared at him, unable to believe her ears.
Then she said, very precisely and flatly, “You want to rape little boys and—”
“No.” He actually had the gall to look hurt. “I already told you how I feel about rape and rapists. Of course I wouldn’t do such a thing to a child.”
She looked at him. Took a deep breath. And then another. Pushed aside the images, and the words, the terrible old man, and having to remain quiet through that ghastly luncheon—all the things that had made her so very angry. Put them all to the side for now, and just looked at Valentine the man.
He stood several paces from her, his golden hair clubbed back, wearing a marine-blue suit with red embroidery and a terra-cotta waistcoat. Rather subdued for him, really. He was watching her as if she were a woman from a strange, foreign country. One he’d never encountered before.
He often looked at her that way, she thought a little sadly.
“Why do you want to join the Lords of Chaos?” she asked.
“Because they all have a common vice,” he said promptly. “And they’re all men of rank and privilege.”
She nodded. “You want to blackmail them.”
“Yes.” He smiled as if she were a bright pupil and he a schoolmaster. “Think of the opportunities! Not just among the Lords, but their families as well.” He spread his hands wide as if imagining a network of spider webs, interconnecting, entangling entire communities. “And then, they have a traditio
n, you know, of helping one another secretly, in business, marriage, Parliament, the church, the army, the navy, well, anywhere, really. They’re everywhere, the Lords.”
He smiled cherubically while she tried not to show the horror on her face.
“How can they know who the other Lords are if they wear masks?”
“The tattoos. If one Lord shows another the dolphin the second is supposed to do anything the first asks of him.”
She frowned. “But your tattoo is on your…”
He shrugged. “I never meant to use it. I wasn’t going to be indebted to one of them.”
And there, finally, was the clear loathing of the Lords she’d heard the other day.
“But you’ll join them,” she said carefully. “You’ll sit next to men who… hurt young boys and girls.”
He looked at her, all trace of humor gone from his face. “I sat next to a man like that just now at luncheon.”
She swallowed down the acid rising in her throat. “Yes. Yes, you did.”
“You can’t escape them, Séraphine, those sorts of men. They’re all around everywhere.”
“But you don’t have to join them,” she said, her voice hard. “Val. Valentine. You don’t have to be one of them.”
“I’m not,” he said, clearly confused. “I just told you—”
“Joining them is as good as being one of them,” she said. “In the end, it is the same.”
He stared at her, his straight, beautiful brows knit. “It is?”
“Yes.” She crossed to him and placed her hands on his face, holding his azure gaze, trying to impart… well, humanity. It’d been blown out of him as a child, but she could try, couldn’t she? “Don’t join the Lords of Chaos. Please.”
“But the opportunities for blackmail… the power.”
“You have enough power as it is,” she assured him gently. “You’re the Duke of Montgomery.”
“No, Séraphine,” he said, sadly, wearily, and without smiling. “There’s never enough power, not even for the Duke of Montgomery.”
“Why?” she whispered. “Why would you need more power?”
He squeezed his beautiful azure eyes shut and raised a shaking fist to his temple. “You don’t understand!”
“Then make me!”
He opened his eyes wide and seized her arms, spinning her in a circle, his gaze boring into hers. “Don’t you comprehend? Can’t you see them? They’re all around us—wolves and birds of prey and jackals, baying at the moon, jaws agape. So close, Bridget, so close you can smell the fetid stink of their breath, and if you don’t have power they’ll drag you or Eve or me from beneath the bed and tear the meat from your bones, and leave you a weeping skeleton.” He inhaled, stopping their dizzying whirl so suddenly that she gasped and staggered against him and he wrapped his arms around her, clutching her tight. He whispered in her ear, “I’m not mad. I know they don’t wear the masks anymore, but that doesn’t mean, my burning Séraphine, that they aren’t still out there, in banal old-man form. So you see, I must have more power. It’s the only way to survive them.”
He was shaking and she didn’t completely understand him, but she cared for him, even though she knew she shouldn’t.
So she kissed him, this flamboyant man who refused to name cats and entrusted her with a beautiful, stinking box that contained a sin so great it could hang him. And as she did so she told herself that no matter what else happened she mustn’t fall in love with him.
Even if it might be far, far too late.
She pulled the tie from his hair, threading her fingers through the curling golden strands, luxuriating in their silkiness.
He groaned, the sound vibrating against her lips, and bent her over the crook of his arm, as he reached up with his left hand and pulled the pins from her hair.
She felt them come out, one by one, and the mass of her hair fell over his arm. His hand moved to her face, holding her as he angled his mouth over hers, biting her lower lip and then thrusting his tongue into her.
He tasted of red wine when she suckled him.
He picked her up and the room whirled for a moment before she found herself on the bed.
She looked up at him and said, “I want you naked this time.”
He nodded very seriously, and said, “Of course.”
But a smile twitched at his lips when he pulled the lace neckcloth free from his throat.
She sat up, watching as he shrugged off his marine-blue coat and flung it onto a chair, then toed off his shoes. He flicked open the buttons of his waistcoat deliberately, staring at her from beneath golden eyelashes. The waistcoat soon joined the coat.
Then he bent and stripped the stockings from his legs. He straightened and unbuttoned the tiny shell buttons at his wrists, and then the ones down the front of his shirt. He paused, looked at her, reached both hands behind his back, and with one fluid movement stripped his shirt over his head.
The muscles of his shoulders gleamed in the sunlight streaming in the window. He might’ve been a god come to frolic with her for the afternoon.
He watched her, eyes gone heavy-lidded, as he flicked open the falls of his breeches, letting them simply drop to the floor when they were loose enough.
He stood now in his smallclothes—silk smallclothes, she noted with no small amusement—and waited while she looked her fill.
Finally he dropped those as well.
She’d seen him thus before, of course. He made a veritable habit of nudity, it seemed, the vain, vain man, but he’d not been her lover then.
She’d not… cared for him then.
He was beautiful. Naturally. Perfect of limb, smooth of complexion, his cock pointed, full and heavy and ready for her.
How often had he been admired thus by lovers? How often had he posed in his perfect beauty?
The thing was, she would’ve been enticed even had he not been beautiful. At least she thought so. For instance, that little white line on his right knee. Was it a scar? Who knew? But the fact that it was just a bit off, that it was imperfect, and thus made him human?
That was erotic to her.
That was the real intimacy, wasn’t it? Of seeing another person nude. At heart it was the intimacy of the imperfect and human. And all those other lovers? Well, she wondered if they’d ever seen her Val as anything other than a perfect, beautiful thing. Had they ever seen the man beneath the beauty?
Would they like him as well when that taut belly began to sag? When the guinea-gold hair faded, when lines drew themselves around the azure eyes?
Because, on the whole, she thought she might like him more.
Not that she’d ever have the chance to see him age.
She bit her lip, blinking away tears at the thought. Oh, how she’d like to age with this man.
“Séraphine?” he asked. “Where have you gone?”
“Nowhere,” she said. “Help me undress, please.”
And he did, pulling her to her feet and efficiently divesting her of all her clothing in much less time than it would have taken her.
She didn’t think about how much practice he must’ve had.
When she stood nude before him, she took his hands and led him to the bed, lying down on her left side so that he might lie facing her but with his left hand uppermost.
He tucked his arm beneath his head and watched her. “You’re in a strange mood.”
“Am I?” she asked. “Do you know all my moods?”
His lips curved then. “Only those you deign to show me.”
She didn’t answer, but reached out a finger to trace those lips, fine and shaped in a classic cupid’s bow. “If you had all the power in the world, Valentine, what would you do?”
“I told you,” he replied, each word a kiss to her finger, “one can never have enough power.”
“Humor me,” she commanded, she who had grown up the foster daughter of a sheep farmer. “What would you do?”
His dark eyelashes dipped slowly. “I would travel the world, I
suppose, and learn to speak all the languages, the better to work intrigues at royal courts.”
She laughed under her breath at his answer because it was so essentially him.
“What would you do?” he asked. “Were you not a housekeeper? If you could do anything, be anyone, in the wide, wonderful world?”
She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. I like being a housekeeper.”
“Humor me,” he said, echoing her words.
She smiled at him, a little whimsically. “Perhaps I’d be a sailor and sail to China and India and uncharted Africa.”
“Would you?” he asked, sounding delighted.
“Hmm,” she whispered, bringing her mouth to his. “Perhaps I’d sail to Istanbul and see these Ottoman gentlemen in their flowing robes smoke their water pipes myself.”
She kissed him softly, the press of her lips unhurried in the afternoon sunlight, the tips of her breasts brushing his chest. She wanted to remember this moment, this idle time so unlike any other in her life.
This golden man in the golden light.
He drew her hair over her breast, brushing the strands against the tip of her nipple, using it to paint a point of pleasure as their kiss deepened.
She groaned a little, moving closer, letting her arm drape over his, feeling the smooth expanse of his back, the glide of his muscles beneath his skin as he tugged her uppermost thigh over his legs.
She felt the blunt head of his cock nudge against her folds and she tilted her hips.
It was a strange position, and yet a blissfully relaxed one.
He pulled her more firmly against him, his hand spread frankly over her bottom, and entered her on a gentle thrust.
She opened her eyes and found him watching her as they kissed.
He drew back, his mouth open and wet, his eyes half-closed, still watching her.
His hand flexed on her bottom and he tilted his hips into her. “Hard. Soft. Male…”
“Female,” she whispered, scratching her fingernails down his long flawless back.
His lips twitched a smile. “Dark. Light. Evil…”
“Good.” She bit the side of his neck delicately.
He gasped and his penis jerked within her. “Ahh. Cold. Hot. Despair…”