Belle Read online

  Startled, Belle gripped her hands together, struggling for a response. Truthfully, she had no idea . . . “Perhaps,” she said slowly, “it is because when I heard we were to have ‘demonstrations,’ I knew I would be shocked. By everything. And since I knew I had agreed to learn these things, I told myself I would approach them as any other subject. I would watch and learn and not allow myself to show my discomfort. I knew, of course,” she added on a rush, that Cecy and Holly are more experienced than I, and I didn’t want to show my ignorance.”

  “Experienced enough to know what we just saw is a sin!” Holly cried.

  “Appalling,” Cecy huffed, shoulders stiff, her nose in the air. And you, Miss Goody Two Shoes,” she said, glaring at Belle, “at least ought to recognize depravity when you see it.”

  Belle fixed her gaze on the polished wood of her desktop and kept it there.

  Lady Rivenhall allowed a full half minute of silence before continuing. “Allow me to offer an example, ladies. Let us say you have attracted the attention of the Duke of Golden Guineas. Before offering you a fine house, a carriage, jewels, and the life you have always dreamed of, he will wish a sample. Perhaps more than one sample. He will need to know if, in return for those golden guineas, you are able to fulfill his desires.”

  The headmistress of The Aphrodite Academy leaned back against the large mahogany desk and regarded each girl in turn. “I am sorry to disillusion you, but I doubt he will care a jot for your desires. If you are fortunate in your gentleman’s character and expert at steering his passions in the right direction, you may experience pleasure in your union. That, of course, is what we hope. But when our Duke of Golden Guineas is making his decision to employ you, it is only his desires he will be considering.” Again, she paused, letting her words sink in.

  Belle ventured a glance at Cecy and Holly. Belligerence had drained from their faces, the Dragon Lady’s message already clear.

  “And if he should ask for what you have just seen?” Lady R asked, driving home her point.

  “But no one does,” Cecy protested. “It’s not . . . English.”

  “Right you are!” Holly echoed.

  Their mentor stood tall. Belle could almost swear her amber eyes sparked green fire before suddenly going cold. “When I was married, I was even more naive than our Belle. I knew nothing. Nothing about men’s passions, nothing about my own. To say that I was shocked by my husband’s appetites would be putting it mildly. And in the course of our marriage, I believe I can say we tried almost everything—far more than most English ladies ever hear of, let alone practice.” She paused, memories clearly intruding on her lecture. “But there were a few things I refused, things you will learn about but not see demonstrated. Therefore . . . I accept your right to refuse. But if you do, you must understand the consequences. You must decide for yourself whether or not those golden guineas might be worth what is being asked of you. And if today’s demonstration has convinced you that you would rather choose a different future, then now is the time to recognize that.” She eyed each girl in turn. “I repeat, now is the time to make your final decision. Stay or go. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, my lady.” From all three girls.

  “Well?”

  “So you was playing with us today, trying to see if y’could scare us off?” Holly demanded.

  “Opening your eyes,” Juliana agreed. “After all, what you saw today is a good way to avoid becoming enceinte.”

  “What’s that?” Holly whispered to Cecy, her words easily heard in the quiet room.

  “Baby,” Cecy snapped, while Belle offered, “Increasing.”

  “Oh.” Holly’s eyebrows went up. “Suppose you’re right, I never thought of that.”

  “You should have,” Lady Rivenhall said, “but that is a lesson for another day. And now you will return to the gallery, where you will view the opposite of what you saw this morning. Hopefully, you will view it with a more open mind, for you will be fortunate indeed if you find a man who performs it well, for I assure you it is most singularly guaranteed to provide a woman with fulfillment.”

  Belle’s fingers white-knuckled in her lap as a bolt of heat shot through her. How very odd. After spending the past year and more withdrawn into herself, shutting out every male leer, groping hand, and erections bulging through skintight pants, she had not thought herself capable of feeling anything. But after the odd sensations she had experienced while watching the morning’s demonstration, she could not help but wonder what Lady R meant by “opposite” and “fulfillment.”

  Belle moved ahead of the other girls, her heels clicking on the wooden floor. She should be appalled, her steps reluctant. Yet curiosity winged her feet. She could hardly wait.

  Chapter 6

  Belle squirmed on the richly upholstered red velvet of her chair in the gallery above the satin-sheeted bed. Her hands covered her cheeks, pinkie fingers pressed tight over her lips. Oh. My. Her only consolation—Cecy and Holly appeared almost as stunned as she.

  The opposite. She supposed they should have guessed what Lady R meant, but who could possibly imagine . . ?

  The man below—a model of male perfection, from the stylish cut of his chestnut brown hair to the striking contours of his broad shoulders, well-muscled arms, and lean–ah–buttocks—had begun his amatory quest at the female’s eyes, kissing and licking his way down her body, ever so slowly. So slowly, so deliciously, in fact, that Belle’s squirms had begun by the time he reached the woman’s lips, become agonizing by the time he devoted tender attention to each breast in turn. Embarrassing as he lingered over the woman’s belly button, and freezing in total shock as his head ducked lower, his bare bottom saluting the ceiling as he actually put his mouth there.

  Belle had just enough awareness of the world beyond the bed to find grim satisfaction in the shocked gasps from Cecy and Holly. Clearly, neither was as well-educated in the sexual arts as they had thought.

  It is most singularly guaranteed to provide a woman with fulfillment.

  Surely not.

  As her jaw dropped, Belle’s fingers itched to inch up and cover her eyes. And yet she continued to watch as the female writhed, seemingly in ecstasy. Strange sensations tugged at her, sensations too strong to be ignored. Moisture dampened her chemise. Moisture down there.

  No! This was not what she wanted. She had viewed the earlier demonstration with close attention, for clearly what the woman did to the man equaled power. Female power. But Lady R had been right. This demonstration was indeed the opposite. Here, the man held the power, the female weak and compliant, willing to be manipulated. Not Lady Arabella Pierrepont. Not Belle Ballard. In any relationships she might engage in, Belle vowed, the man would pay, but she would wield the power.

  The woman cried out, her body convulsing.

  “Well, who’d a-thought it?” Holly declared. “I heard a female could go off just like a man, but I ain’t never seen it. You ever do that, Cecy?”

  “The men I knew just wanted it all for themselves,” Cecy returned after a huff of disgust. “I guess Lady R really is trying to teach us there’s something more.”

  Below, the models stood up, the man delivered a fond swat to the woman’s bare bottom, and they sauntered across the plush red, black, and white oriental carpet and disappeared through a door into whatever warren they hid in among the fastnesses of Thornhill Manor.

  “Lady Rivenhall must bend her own rules,” Belle said, “because clearly there’s a man at Thornhill Manor.”

  “She’s a strange one all right,” Holly said. “I’d swear I saw a man in the gardens last night. Makes y’ wonder, don’t it?”

  “I wager the people she uses stay in that cottage down by the river,” Cecy offered. “Maybe doing the Dragon Lady is part of the man’s employment.”

  “Cecy!” Belle gasped. “Lady R still wears mourning.”

  “Don’t mean she ain’t got urges,” Holly declared.

  “It’s been nearly two years since Rivenhall chall
enged the wrong man,” Cecy declared. “Any other woman would have put off her blacks long since.”

  “Bamming everyone, she is,” Holly said, “so no one will know what she’s getting up to. I mean, y’ can’t know all she knows and not want a bit of a tickle now and then.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Belle huffed.

  “No need to be so high and mighty, girl. I saw your eyes bugging out, saw you squirm. Panting just as hard as the rest of us, and don’t try denying it. We saw you. So-ci-e-ty gets babies jes’ like the rest o’ us. All hot and bothered like. And don’t you never fergit it.”

  “Really, Holly,” Cecy drawled, “you’ll never rise above the tavern and a shilling a pop until you speak properly. And where else are you going to learn but here? If you can’t mimic Belle’s accent, then try for mine. As is, you’ll never get out of the gutter.”

  “Which is where you’ll end up, Miss High and Mighty—”

  “She’s right, you know,” Belle said, cutting off Holly’s tirade. “If you wish to attract a gentleman for more than one night, you really must improve your speech.”

  “And what do you know about it?” Holly challenged.

  “A great deal, I’m afraid,” Belle admitted. “I saw the women invited to entertain gentlemen at my father’s card parties.” When the daughter of the house was not the evening’s entertainment. “They spoke as you do, and I heard what the men said of them. They were good for what they called a ‘grab and tickle,’ but would never, ever, be considered for gowns, jewels, carriages, or a fine house in St. John’s Woods.”

  Holly regarded her two companions with a scowl. “You mean it, don’t you?”

  “We do,” they echoed.

  “It’s not fair,” Holly grumbled. “You two were born ladies—accent, manners, education, fine gowns. “I gots to learn it all.”

  “I have to learn,” Cecy corrected.

  “Shite!” declared the newly minted Miss Holly Hammond. With feeling.

  “Venez ici,” pronounced a cultured voice from behind them. “It is time to speak French.” Madame Dumont stood poised in the door, as if there were no incongruity in retrieving her pupils from their positions as voyeurs to what some might call sexual depravity.

  “Oui, Madame.” As Belle curtsied and followed the French instructor into the corridor, she heard Holly groan.

  Arms spread wide, fingers gripping her partner’s hands, Felice Lattimore slowly fitted herself onto the soft flesh coating the rod of steel jutting up from her partner’s groin, a liquid surge of arousal easing her way. An almost feral smile of anticipation lit her face which, though no longer young, was still strikingly beautiful. Her brown eyes glowed as she leaned forward, dangling her more than ample breasts above the lips of the gentleman beneath her. Gabriel, Viscount Ashford, blinked, suddenly, shockingly, realizing he had been going through the motions, his mind disengaged from the moment and allowing Felice to carry on alone. Hell and damnation! He’d never intended a single act of mercy to interfere with the way he lived his life, most particularly with his activities in bed.

  And yet the Pierrepont chit haunted him. Had he done the right thing? Had he rescued her from the baron only to deliver her into the clutches of someone who would assure her complete downfall? What did he know about Lady Rivenhall, after all? Only that he’d liked her in the days she and her husband were part of the ton. The rest? Rumors, conjecture. Faint hope.

  The inevitable scene with the girl’s father had ended better than he had a right to expect. Five thousand wasn’t too much to pay to keep Bow Street Runners from his door. After all, a dozen men had seen him disappear out the front door of Pierrepont House in the middle of the night with the daughter of the house in tow. The payment should have been the end of it. Except he couldn’t help but wonder about the poor little thing. Arabella? Yes, that was her name—

  “Gabriel!”

  “Ah! Apologies, my sweet. I spent the day with my man of business and I can’t seem to get his admonitions out of—”

  Felice’s breasts bounced as she sat bolt upright, her glossy brown curls framing her artfully enhanced face. She loosed his hands and crossed her arms in front of her. “Do not lie to me. It is another woman, I know it. Is it this lady they say you have stolen from her home? And where are you keeping her, pray tell? Did the little virgin disappoint you so much you must come crawling back to me?”

  “You’re mad!” What a liar he was. “The girl was in danger. I took her to relatives in the country, and there’s an end on it. I haven’t seen her since.” Which, surprisingly, was almost the truth. He offered Felice his best, oft-practiced smile—part cajolery, part come-hither, overlaid with his most charming plea for forgiveness.

  When he caught the first hint of weakening in her stance, Gabe stretched out his hand and allowed his fingers to play in the soft curls where their bodies were joined. Her lips firmed, the brown eyes glared. Slowly, ever so slowly, Gabe feathered his fingers up her belly, insinuating themselves under her crossed arms. For a full ten seconds, Felice maintained her upright posture. Then, as his questing fingers tweaked her nipples, her anger dissolved with a small murmur and a wriggle of satisfaction. She flung herself forward, kissing him on the lips, gasping his name. Unseating herself from the spear of flesh embedded inside her.

  Gabe flipped her over with ease. Determined to prove his mastery and his unwavering interest, he rammed himself inside her with one hard thrust. Teeth set, almost grimly, he plunged inside the welcoming moisture, letting the warmth, the burgeoning sensations drive all thought of the little Pierrepont away. He pulled nearly all the way out, thrust back in slowly, deliberately. He was where he wanted to be. Free to do as he pleased. And with a woman who was always eager to please. Out. In. Faster, harder. And finally the ghost of Arabella Pierrepont was gone, lost in the desperate driving demand for more. And more. Felice’s body convulsed beneath him, she cried out his name. Gabe stopped fighting, wallowing in successive waves of passion which left him sweaty, limp, and mindless.

  Yet even through the haze of sexual completion, he heard a small voice whisper, Arabella.

  Today their instructor was Lady Rivenhall. The girls sat taller in their chairs, their hands folded in their laps, feet flat on the floor. In their unadorned, dark blue gowns and simple hair styles, they might have won the approval of the most evangelical religious order. Cecy, Belle noted, matched her own look of polite attention, although Holly’s eyes reflected her customary skepticism, clearly stating that whatever they were going to learn today, she was quite certain she wasn’t going to like it. But if it would make her queen of courtesans, she might possibly consider paying attention.

  Belle ducked her head to hide a smile. She was growing accustomed to her new friends, discovering they had admirable qualities hidden beneath the armor they had developed to cope with the world they lived in. Hadn’t she done exactly the same? She might look fragile, but she had learned to protect herself the only way she could. By building a shell that shut out the world. Invisible though it might be, it had kept her father and his friends out. Never let them penetrate her inner self. That same shell would protect her from whatever man chose her for his mistress. She would absorb all the Aphrodite Academy had to teach, and then she would use it to become so much more than that poor frightened girl stripping off her clothes for the delectation of her father’s gaming partners.

  Oh, yes. She would learn how to manipulate, how to gain power, how to wheedle money to put away for a future when she could walk away. Be free. Live a life where a man had no control over her. Not a jot. A cottage by the seaside perhaps—

  “Ladies.”

  Belle heard Holly make a sound suspiciously like a snort. No one was ever going to make a lady of Holly, and no one knew that better than Holly herself. She would polish her speech, work on the airs and graces that would make her look like a top-of-the-trees courtesan, but be a lady at heart? For that Holly had only scorn. She was what she was. She’d bend a bit to have a better
future, but in her heart she would always be Elsie Ragsdale, daughter of an innkeeper in Kent. Oh yes, they’d had enough time together for Belle to understand her friends much better. Holly’s accent might falter occasionally, but her sharp wit, her sense of humor would see her through. Holly asserted that gentlemen liked to feel superior, even while having a bit of slap and tickle, and who was she to disappoint them? Not everyone had to leave the Aphrodite Academy aping the elegant woman-of-the-world attitude of their headmistress.

  Headmistress! Belle choked, quickly turning the sound into a cough. Lady Juliana Rivenhall, headmistress of the Aphrodite Academy. And wasn’t she just! Belle clapped a second hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. And realized she had missed Lady R’s introduction to the subject of the day.

  “Miss Ballard, I cannot imagine what is so amusing about today’s topic. Would you care to explain.”

  “No, ma’am. My lady.” A rush of tears misted her eyes. If Lady R tossed her out, she had nowhere to go. Shell. Back in place. For a moment she had allowed it to slip, had allowed herself to feel. Shell. Now!

  “Very well.” Lady Rivenhall fisted her hands on the desktop in front of her and regarded her three suddenly solemn students. In her stiff gown of black moiré, accented at the neckline and cuffs with white Alençon lace, her bronze hair pinned into a twist on the back of her head, she looked every inch the widowed baroness, a baroness to whom the word sex was anathema. Belle attempted to justify this perfect portrait of a widowed member of the ton with the graphic demonstrations the Dragon Lady had arranged for them . . . and failed.

  “In order to attract and keep a gentleman who will maintain you in the style we wish for the graduates of the Aphrodite Academy,” Lady R was saying, “it is necessary for you to understand the degree of pleasure you can provide. For that is what a man is looking for above all else. Pleasure. Extensive pleasure. Exquisite pleasure. The fine manners, the art of being able to converse on a wide variety of topics, the ability to understand your gentleman’s role in politics or business—all these are important to keep him interested beyond a month or two. But can you pleasure him? This is the great question.”