Mistaken for a Cyprian (Runaway Regency Brides Book 3) Read online

  “Why is that man wearing Greek attire?” Prudence demanded when she had recovered herself.

  “The Earl is hosting a party,” Benton told her succinctly.

  “What sort of party?”

  “A philosophers’ party,” he replied as one of the doors in the corridor opened to admit a gentleman dressed in a toga and a woman at his side. She was dressed in what seemed to be the feminine version of his fashion, with her hair loose and tumbling from her headpiece and her bosom rather more exposed than was customary in English frocks.

  “Aspasia!” the young man called out. “My darling Aspasia! Surrender to me your storied charms—dash it, the laurel wreath is slipping. However did they manage it?”

  “Hurry, we shall be late! Apollo is about to play!”

  Another door opened to reveal a trio, also clad in Greek attire.

  “You’ll miss Apollo!” chided the man who was ringed by two young women.

  “It’s this deuced laurel wreath,” complained the other gentleman who had cried out for Aspasia. “It simply will not stay in place. How do you manage, Benton?”

  “I manage as I must, my lord,” the butler replied.

  The man with the rebellious laurel wreath came closer.

  “What manner of nymph are you?” he asked the twins.

  “We are not nymphs at all,” Prudence told him in a forbidding manner. “We are Lord Henton’s wards, arrived from France.”

  “Cyprians,” the man said hopefully. “All that black is rather off-putting if you don’t mind me saying so. No one else is wearing black, you should know.”

  “You are barely wearing anything at all!” Prudence said. She turned to the butler. “Will you direct us to our rooms? It is plain that we are not expected at this hour and we do not wish to intrude upon this orgy any longer than we are obliged to do so.”

  “I shall take you myself,” said Benton. “Pray, follow me.”

  “Yes, we shall. Phoebe, let’s go to our rooms before something—Phoebe!”

  Her sister was staring in a fascinated stupor at the men and women who were appearing through one of the doors down the corridor. One woman was holding a lyre against her breasts, but the hands that were playing it did not belong to her, but instead, to the man who was standing inappropriately close behind her.

  “Phoebe!” Prudence called.

  “Oh, yes, yes, of course,” Phoebe said, forcing herself to look away from the tableau. “Really, Prudence, do you remember when we performed as the vestal virgins at school? I do not think that these actors are quite as authentic as Miss Larking required us to be.”

  “Phoebe!” Prudence hissed in a fierce whisper. “These are not actors. They are debauched revellers who are all consigned to serve Satan himself!”

  TWO

  Apollo, it must be said, played abysmally and Christopher Ambrose, the Earl of Henton, who was rather a purist where music was concerned, found that he could not endure the dreadful slaughtering sounds that the application of Apollo’s fingers upon the lyre generated.

  “You’re leaving, Henton?” protested one of the guests, who was able to ignore the abysmal tune being played because his ears were covered by the rich mane of his mistress’ red hair.

  “I’m seeking the Oracle at Delphi,” the Earl replied cryptically. “I shall return when she has interpreted a riddle for me.”

  The man looked momentarily confused.

  “Oh. Very good, then. I’ll have a go at her later. I quite like riddles.”

  “What do you mean you’ll have a go at her?” screeched his mistress, whose colour of hair matched her temper.

  “To solve a riddle, of course,” her lover replied. “She’s the Oracle, after all.”

  Christopher Ambrose left them.

  There was a time when the uninhibitedness of such a night would have tantalised all of his senses until he sought to outdo the most debauched behaviour.

  Not so tonight. He was on his way to becoming complete imbibed and he wondered why he had invited these people to his home.

  The women were exquisite, their perfect forms invitingly offered in flimsy garbs which left their shoulders and arms-and no small portion of their legs, Christopher notice—exposed to view in a fashion which did not, he mused, authentically reflect the habits of the ancient Greeks.

  “Darling Zeus,” intoned one woman approaching him, “King of the Gods. Allow me to serve you as Leda served the master of Olympus,” the woman said as she knelt before him, the bodice of her garment open and her breasts concealed only by her long, unbound hair.

  “Not just now, Leda,” Christopher replied. “Hera is about here somewhere and there would be a dreadful row if she saw us cavorting.” He nimbly slid out of her embrace and continued on his way.

  Really, were these people his friends? He recognised the faces of some of the men from the more gentlemanly setting of White’s, but he could not recall what had inspired him to invite them all to his home.

  The Greek parties that he had enjoyed with such abandon in his younger days were, it seemed, a pursuit, which belonged to his past.

  It had been a fitting setting for the man he had been before he took over the earldom upon the death of his father. Those unbridled days when his name had been a byword for all manner of lascivious excess seemed to him to belong to someone else. And yet those days had been his and he supposed he must have enjoyed them, else why had he acquired such a reputation for outdoing the most celebrated rogues of the ton with his antics.

  The chariot race with human steeds remained a legend, even now, five years after it had taken place. They’d have gotten in far more trouble than they had if not for the fact that Prinny himself had been driving one of the chariots . . .

  Such a waste of effort and money. Youth was a habit, Christopher decided as he opened doors along the way to make sure that none of his guests was indulging in the sort of behaviour which would excite not only scandal, but legal action.

  It was a habit which was best broken as soon as possible.

  He was now seven-and-twenty and felt that he had not achieved his maturity until last year.

  His mother had died, then his father, and all of a sudden, the vast stage upon which he had played his devilish part had suddenly been cast into darkness.

  He was responsible for the earldom, the lands, the rents, the tenants, the harvest, the commerce of the village, the social activity of the county, the hunt, the enforcement of the laws and the choosing of the magistrates, one of which was himself, and without warning, his youth had ended.

  It had not ended so quickly in London, to be sure, where one could forget that an entire community depended upon one’s dedication to duty. Yes in the capital is was too easy to resume one’s bawdy entertainments.

  In the county, he was obliged to be the lord of the region. But here, in London, dear, depraved, London, where sin smiled upon the initiated from the dawn of the sun until the night undressed itself, he could still indulge in those pursuits which would have scandalised the vicar who dined at Henton House on Sundays after services when Christopher was in the countryside.

  In the county, he was the sober Earl.

  In London, he was Henton the satyr.

  He was not quite sure why tonight’s event, which allowed him to indulge to the fullest of his capacity for decadence, seemed to be losing its savour.

  Perhaps he wasn’t drunk enough, he though… The only solution was to drink more until he was sufficiently sodden. Benton would handle the rest of the evening.

  Wasn’t that what butlers were for?

  He opened the next door along the corridor. This one was occupied, not by a voluptuous goddess or a tunic-clad Spartan, or a coupling of the two, but by a petite woman all in black fabric that matched the colour of her tresses. Only her creamy skin broke the dark tapestry of her appearance.

  She had heard the door open and she fixed her gaze upon him. The candles in the room revealed that she had green eyes rimmed in thick black lashes
. The effect was intoxicating and he felt a stirring in his body that neither Leda nor Aspasia nor any other of the Greeks bearing gifts had caused thus far.

  “Lord Henton, I presume,” the vision greeted him.

  “Delphi speaks,” he said lightly, marvelling that his friends, knowing him and aware that a man as jaded as he had become with the granting of every wicked whim must need something new and titillating to stir his senses. “Shall we solve a riddle together?”

  She began to speak but could not; his lips imprisoned her words before she could release them.

  The Oracle of Delphi did not need to be understood; she was too cryptic, too mysterious, for her prophecies to be readily comprehended by mortal man. No, he would drink the words like nectar from her lips.

  Christopher pulled the woman closer, her body taut and firm beneath the calyx of her garment.

  How clever his friends were, to procure a Cyprian for his amorous entertainment and to leave her here in this room until he should go and search for her. How astonishingly crafty.

  He felt her lips part beneath his probing mouth and he chuckled. A temptress for his pleasure and an Oracle to be sure, for did not the Oracle of Delphi use her tongue to utter the wisdom that man could not understand.

  Christopher held her close, indecently, ardently, and improperly close as all his unleashed needs began to rise within him, like lava in a volcano about to erupt.

  He heard the eruption, a crash of glass which was not at all, he was about to say, how he envisioned a volcano unleash its molten fury. But it seemed that the volcano was operating upon its own will, and as he fell to the floor, he wondered dazedly where the Oracle had vanished to and why he was suddenly, without warning, on the floor. Then his senses clashed in a bewildering collision of sound and sight and hearing and he was aware of nothing at all.

  Prudence, stunned by the turn of events, bent down to check her uninvited guest’s pulse. The bottle of brandy that she had grasped in her desperate effort to defend herself had shattered and was in pieces around the recumbent earl who reeked of the contents.

  Stepping carefully to avoid cutting herself, she pressed her fingers against his neck. The throb of his pulse told her that, contrary to her apprehensions, the rogue, while he was plainly unconscious, was not dead.

  He was alive, at any rate. Reassured on this point, she was free to indulge in the emotion of anger, which suited her nature far better than fear. How dare the man treat her so, as if she were one of his trollops! To kiss her in such a fashion, as if, as if—he was no gentleman! Was it surprising that Papa had chosen a libertine to be his daughters’ guardian, she thought to herself as she ran up the flights of stairs to the third floor where she and her sister had been shown their rooms.

  There was no light coming from beneath Phoebe’s door. She must have gone to bed and fallen asleep as soon as she arrived. It had been Prudence’s idea to confront the Earl on what, precisely, he intended to do as their guardian.

  Phoebe had shrunk from such a deed, but Prudence wanted answers and she didn’t care how many imitative Greeks she had to encounter before she received her answers. It had been the butler who, in response to her query, had led her to the room she had occupied when Henton entered. He had told her that the Earl would be going through all of the rooms before turning in for the night. She would be able to speak with him then.

  Except that speech had not been what he had in mind, the vile blackguard. He had—he had attempted to steal her virtue, that was what he had done. Her suspicions were proven to be correct. He had no intention of being their guardian. It was diabolical, what he intended to do. His stolen kiss had demonstrated that.

  Prudence, after quietly testing Phoebe’s door and finding it locked, to her relief, walked to her own room next to Phoebe’s and went inside. Immediately she bolted the door shut. The Earl would not find his way into her bedroom or into Phoebe’s.

  Not tonight, anyway.

  But what of the nights to come?

  She touched her lips.

  So searing was his kiss that she could still feel his lips upon hers. If his power over her was so absolute with one encounter, how could she prevent seduction?

  The wiles of the serpent were known to be cunning, and it was very plain to Prudence that the Earl of Henton, though he had the golden hair and blue eyes of a saint, was no angel. He was practised in the arts of corruption and now, in his power, were two young, innocent, untried women with no refuge to run to and no family or friends in London who could offer protection.

  Trembling, Prudence undressed and got into the bed. But her heightened awareness, awakened by the unprovoked kiss, cast her into a maelstrom of emotions. This was what the poets wrote of, and the bards sang, this was what the evocation of passion released. There was no shield that could defend a woman against the unpredictable response of her own body.

  Prudence touched her lips again. They were warm, on fire, burning from his trespass. He was wanton and vile to take from her what she had never given to another.

  Vile for having taken what was not his and, by doing so, introducing her in no uncertain terms to the ways of men and women. This was not a lesson that was taught at the girls’ boarding school where she and Phoebe had spent the last fourteen years of their lives. The girls had often speculated at night, in their dormitory, what it would be like to kiss a man, but the teaching staff was mostly female and the few males who were instructors were not likely to inspire speculation. There was M’sieur Callet, the dance instructor, who, although admittedly light on his feet, was rotund and bald and red-faced. Not at all the sort of man one dreamed of kissing or being kissed by.

  The gruff man-of-all-work who chopped the wood for the fireplaces, looked after the horses in the stables so that the young ladies learned to ride, and tended to the cattle and hens which provided the students and staff with milk and eggs was middle-aged, married and had a beard which reminded Prudence of a briar-patch, so rough and unkempt was it in appearance.

  The girls sneaked novels and read of love matches and daydreamed, but their lips remained untouched. Until now, Prudence had been as ignorant as they of the way a man’s lips felt against a woman’s mouth, or how the texture of his shaven chin was pleasantly rough against her smooth flesh.

  She had no way of knowing, before, that there were emotions and feelings that seemed to surge within her body as if she had been sleeping all her life and had only just been awakened.

  Was this lust? The Rector—who was, in common with Gaston the handyman and M’sieur Callet the dance instructor, not a man to stir the fantasies of the young girls whose souls were entrusted to his care by his sermons or by the lessons in the Bible that were part of his school duties—spoke with maddening inferences to those women whose wiles had so overpowered the men of the Testaments that they had behaved in quite an irrational manner.

  But he had never explained precisely why Samson, who seemed to Prudence to be a great ninny, had failed to understand that Delilah was seeking the secret of his strength. Was it Delilah’s fault that Samson had strength but not wit?

  Herodias and her daughter Salome had schemed to get King Herod to have John the Baptist decapitated, but should not a king have had more sense than to deliver an outrageous promise to a girl merely because he liked the way she danced?

  And then there was the matter of King David, prying on Bathsheba in her bath. It seemed to Prudence, though of course she dared not say so, that the fault lay not in Bathsheba’s womanly inclination to sin, but in King David’s abuse of his royal power.

  Clearly, however, the Rector was correct in his assessment that desire between men and women was the gateway to perdition. She had learned that for herself tonight when she was at the mercy of the Earl of Henton.

  Had she not been able to clasp the bottle of brandy and use it to defend herself, very likely she would, by this time, find herself ruined, for it was very apparent that a man of Henton’s knavish sensibilities would have had his way with her and
discarded her once she was deprived of her innocence. She would have been consigned to the streets, to ply the trade of the fallen females who had surrendered their maidenhood or, she realised with new insights, had it taken from them.

  Prudence sat upright in bed. No! That would not happen. What he had tried to do tonight, he would not do on the morrow with Phoebe, who was too innocent and too guileless to recognise vice in its human form.

  Phoebe would never have thought to defend herself with a bottle of brandy; she would have pleaded with the ardent Earl to release her and that sort of vulnerability would only have excited his lust further, Prudence knew.

  Madame Alencon was as vigilant against the prevailing power of desire as the Rector, but in her lectures to the young ladies at the school on how they ought to conduct themselves in the presence of gentlemen, she had not been so convinced that all impropriety was initiated by the weaker sex. Men were, she told her students, inclined to conquer and they would take what they wanted, whether or not it was theirs for the taking. A woman must, in the presence of men, remember always that she was as a mouse to a predatory cat, and she needed to prevent herself from getting into circumstances, which would allow the cat to pounce.

  Phoebe was the mouse to Henton’s cat, Prudence sadly acknowledged. If he pressed his attentions upon her, she would not know how to protect herself.

  Therefore, Prudence resolved, they must find a religious order where they would be safe from the importunate advances of libertines.

  When she had been researching locations for a school, she had discovered that there was, in the area, a convent which would be exactly the refuge that she and Phoebe would require in order to plan for a future which did not have them soliciting the attentions of strangers in the streets in order to earn money for food and lodgings. The nuns would understand their plight, even though they were Church of England in their upbringing, they would, she was quite sure, offer them shelter.

  Of course, first she would have to design a way in which she and her sister would be able to liberate themselves from this vile den of iniquity. That would take some planning as they had been delivered into the Earl’s guardianship according to the terms of Papa’s will.