A moment later, after a stammered thanks, the flower girl was limping away. Vere watched until she’d rounded the southeast corner of the marketplace and disappeared from view.
Then his gaze came back to his prey—or, rather, to where he’d last seen her, for she was gone.
After a moment’s frantic survey of the marketplace, Vere spotted the gay turban bobbing among some scattered groups of idlers. The turban was heading northward.
He caught up with her near Russell Street. Planting himself in her path, he withdrew the cluster of straggling bouquets from under his arm, where he’d absently stowed them, and held them out to her. “‘Sweets to the sweet,’” he quoted from Hamlet.
With a shrug, she took the crushed flowers. “‘Farewell,’” she said, and started to move away.
“You mistake me,” he said, following. “That was the beginning.”
“So it was,” said she. “But the line ends with ‘farewell.’ Then Queen Gertrude scatters the flowers.” Suiting action to words, she strewed the posies about her.
“Ah, an actress,” he said. “This gypsy garb is to advertise a new play, I take it.”
“I’ve been an actress in better times,” she said without slowing her pace. “A fortune-teller in harder ones. Like the present.”
Once again she’d adopted someone else’s voice. This one was higher and lighter than her own, its accents coarser. If Purvis hadn’t told him she’d be here incognito, or if Vere had been as drunk as he pretended to be, she might have taken him in.
He couldn’t tell whether his act was taking her in, whether she truly believed he was too drunk to penetrate her disguise or she was simply playing along until she could find a way to escape without attracting attention.
As though her attire—what there was of it—wasn’t screaming, “Come pump me!” to every male in the vicinity.
“You passed any number of well-breeched swells who could have crossed your palm generously with silver, if not gold,” he said. “Yet you stopped for a crippled child who’d scarcely a copper to bless herself with. I very nearly mistook you for an angel.”
She shot him a glance from under her lashes. “Not likely. You acted the part so well, I could only play supernumerary.”
If she’d directed that sidelong come-hither look at another man, she’d be up against an alley wall in nine seconds with her skirts over her head. The image made his temples throb.
“It was the easiest way to get rid of the chit,” he said carelessly. “And to bring myself to your notice. You’d already brought yourself to mine, you see. Forcibly,” he added, ogling her lavish bosom. “And now I must have my fortune told. I strongly suspect that my love line has taken a turn for the better.” He pulled off his glove and waved his hand in her face. “Would you be so kind as to look?”
She swatted his hand away. “If it’s love you want, you need only look in your pockets. If you find a coin there, you might pluck any of the flowers of the night blooming here about you.”
While one of the other lechers plucked her? Not likely.
Heaving a deep sigh, he pressed to his breast the hand she’d swatted. “She touched me,” he said soulfully, “and I am transported to heavenly spheres. Gypsy, actress, angel—I know not what she is, or how I came to be worthy of her touch, but I—”
“Mad, quite mad, alas!” she cried, startling him. “Oh, good people, hearken and pity him!”
Her cry seemed so genuine that several whores and customers paused in their negotiations to stare.
“‘Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend/Which is the mightier,’” she declaimed.
Vere vaguely recalled the lines as Ophelia’s. If she thought he was going to play Hamlet—who lost the girl—she had another think coming.
“Mad for you,” he cried poignantly. A harlot nearby giggled. Nothing daunted, he announced to the onlookers, “Into the desolate darkness of my weary existence she came, all burning color, like the Aurora Borealis—”
“‘O heavenly powers, restore him!’” she wailed.
“And lit me ablaze!” he went on in stirring accents. “Behold me burning for but a smile from these ruby lips. Behold me consumed in the sweet fire of undying devotion—”
“‘O what a noble mind is here o’er thrown!’” Back of her hand to her forehead, she plunged into a cluster of laughing tarts. “Shield me, fair ladies. I fear this ecstatic fool will be driven to desperate acts.”
“Only the usual one, dearie,” said an older harlot with a laugh. “And it’s Ainswood, don’t you know, as pays handsome.”
“Fair Aurora, take pity on me,” Vere cried beseechingly. He elbowed his way through the crowd of men gathering round the knot of females. “Flee not from me, my blazing star, my sun and moon and all, my galaxy.”
“Yours? When, how, why yours?” The turban disappeared briefly in a forest of top hats, but when she emerged from the cluster of laughing men, Vere darted to her side.
“By love’s decree,” he told her. He fell to his knees. “Sweet Aurora, behold me prostrate before you—”
“That isn’t prostrate,” she said reproachfully. “Truly prostrate is out flat, face down—”
“Bung upwards, she means, Your Grace,” a tart called out.
“I should do anything for my goddess,” he said above the male segment of the audience’s raucous suggestions of various acts he might perform in his present position. He would kill them all later, he decided. “I wait only for you to bid me rise from this decaying earth. Only summon me, and I shall lift up my soul to join yours in celestial realms. Let me drink the ambrosia of your honeyed lips, and wander the sweet infinity of your heavenly body. And let me die in ecstasy, kissing your…feet.”
“‘O shame! Where is thy blush?’” Gesturing at him while her gaze swept the audience, she went on, “He feigns to worship, yet you hear him. He dares to sully my ears with talk of lips, of—of”—she shuddered—“kisses.”
Then she flounced away in a rustle of petticoats.
He was caught up in the game, but not so caught up—or drunk, as she believed—to let her escape so easily. Almost as soon as she moved, he was on his feet, hurrying after her.
Vere saw the collision coming.
Grenville changed direction and glanced over her shoulder as she darted toward the piazza’s columns—at the same moment a woman in spangled black hurried out from its shadows.
Even as he was calling, “Look out!” his “Aurora” crashed into the woman, knocking her back against a pillar.
He reached them before they’d fully recovered their balance, and drew the dragoness away.
“Why’n’t you look where you’re going, you bean pole slut!” the woman in black screeched.
It was Coralie Brees. Vere would have recognized her shrill tones from a furlong away.
“It was my fault,” he said quickly as his glance took in the pair of bully boys trailing behind her. “A lovers’ quarrel. She was so vexed with me that she couldn’t see straight. But you are better now, are you not, my sun and moon and stars?” he inquired of Aurora while he straightened her turban, which had slipped askew.
She pushed his hand away. “A thousand apologies, miss,” she told Coralie contritely. “I hope I caused you no injury.”
Vere would wager fifty quid that the bawd had not been addressed as “miss” in some decades, if ever. He would also wager that Grenville had caught sight of the two brutes as well, and wisely decided in favor of pacification.
Madam Brees was not looking remotely mollified, however, which boded ill for peace.
That should have been agreeable to Vere, for he was in the habit of looking for trouble, and the pair of bully boys would have suited him admirably. Tonight, however, he must make an exception. Having spent the afternoon heaving bricks, stones, and timbers, he preferred to reserve his remaining energies for Her Highness. Besides, she might easily wander into another fellow’s greedy hands while Vere was busy pummeling the brutes.
He pulled the jade stickpin from his neckcloth and tossed it to the procuress. Coralie caught it neatly, her expression softening during a quick examination.
“No hard feelings, m’dear, I hope,” he said.
He did not wait for her answer, but turned a drunken grin upon Grenville. “What now, my peacock?”
“It’s the male of the species that’s colorful,” she said with a toss of her head. “The female’s dull. I’ll not stay to be called your drab, Sir Bedlam.” In a swirl of petticoats she turned and started away.
But he was turning, too, laughing, to scoop her up in his arms.
She let out a gasp. “Put me down,” she said, wriggling. “I’m too big for you.”
“And too old,” Coralie said acidly. “A great lump of mutton, Your Grace—while I can give you dainty young lambs.”
But Vere was carrying his lively burden into the shadows and away from the bawd’s shrill litany of her youthful employees’ attractions.
“Too big?” he asked the alleged gypsy. “Where, my treasure? See how neatly my head fits upon your shoulder.” Nuzzling her neck, he let his gaze linger upon the luscious territories below. “It will fit as comfortably upon your breast, I’ll warrant. And I can tell,” he went on as he dexterously shifted his hand toward her derriere, “there is precisely enough here—”
“Put me down,” she said, squirming. “The game is over.”
Not by a long shot, he thought as he carried her to the door of an establishment with which he was more than passing familiar, where the first-floor rooms might be rented by the hour.
“Listen to me, Ain—”
He stopped her speech with his mouth, while he kicked the door open and carried her into a dimly lit corridor.
She squirmed harder and wrenched her mouth away, and so he had to let her down, to free his hands to hold her head still while he kissed her again, in heated earnest, as he’d wanted to do from the moment she’d begun teasing him.
He felt her stiffen while her lips compressed, rejecting him, and anxiety bubbled up inside him.
She didn’t know how to kiss, he remembered.
She’s innocent, an inner voice cried.
But it was the voice of conscience, and he’d stopped listening to it a year and a half ago.
She was acting, he told himself. She was impersonating an innocent. She was no green girl but a grown woman with a body made for sin, made for him, blackhearted sinner that he was.
Still, if she wanted to play the skittish maiden, he was willing to play along. He gentled his kiss, from lusty demand to patient persuasion. He gentled his touch as well, cradling her head as one might hold a moth captive.
He felt the shiver run through her, felt her rigidly unyielding mouth soften and tremble under his. He felt, too, a sharp ache, as though someone had stabbed him to the heart.
He called the ache lust and wrapped his arms about her. He drew her close, and she didn’t resist. Her mouth, blissfully soft in surrender, seemed to simmer under his. He was simmering, too, on fire, though for him this was the chastest of embraces.
What made him burn, he believed, was the novelty of playing at innocence. It was that and impatience to take what, usually, he didn’t need to work or even coax for.
He’d never had to work at winning women. A glance, a smile, and they came—for a coin or out of mutual desire—and always knew, all of them, what to do, because knowing women were the only kind he chose.
She wanted to pretend she didn’t know, and so he played the role of tutor. He taught her what to do, coaxing her soft mouth to part for him, then tasting her little by little while her scent swam about him and in his mind until scent and taste mingled and simmered in his blood.
He was aware of his heart pumping furiously, though this was merely a deepening kiss, no more than the titillating prelude.
The wild heartbeat was only impatience with this game of hers. And it was for the game’s sake he let his hands move slowly down from the innocuous realms of her shoulders and back, down along the supple line of her spine to the waist his big hands could easily span. Then slowly, caressingly, he continued down, to the realms no innocent would let a man touch. And it was the perverse game they played that made his hands tremble as they gently shaped to the lavish curve of her derriere. It was the perversity that made him groan against her mouth while he pressed her against him, where his swollen rod strained against confining garments.
Too far, the rusty voice of conscience cried. You go too far.
Not too far, he was sure, for she didn’t pull away. Instead, her hands moved over him, tentatively, as though it were the first time she’d ever held a man, the first time she’d ever let her hands rove over masculine shoulders and back. And still playing the game, she pretended to be shy, and went no lower than his waist.
He broke the kiss to tell her she needn’t be shy, but he couldn’t make his mouth form the words. He buried his face in her neck instead, inhaling her scent while he trailed kisses over silken skin.
He felt her shudder, heard her soft, surprised cry, as though it were all new to her.
But it couldn’t be.
She was breathing hard, as he was, and her skin was hot against his mouth. And when he slid his hand up to cup her breast, he felt the hard bud against his palm through the woefully inadequate bodice. There was little enough fabric shielding her skin, and he pushed down what there was and filled his hands with her, as he’d dreamed so many times.
“Beautiful.” His throat was tight, aching. He ached everywhere. “You’re so beautiful.”
“Oh, God, don’t.” Her body stiffened. “I can’t—” She reached up, grabbed his hands. “Damn you, Ainswood. It’s me, you drunken idiot. It’s me—Grenville.”
To Lydia’s astonished dismay, Ainswood did not recoil in horror.
On the contrary, she was having the devil’s own time prying his hands from her breasts.
“It’s me—Grenville,” she repeated five times, and he went on fondling her and kissing an exceedingly sensitive place behind her ear that until now she hadn’t known was sensitive.
Finally, “Stop it!” she said in the firm tones she usually employed with Susan.
He released her then, and instantly changed from the ardent lover telling her she was beautiful—and making her feel she was the most beautiful, desirable woman in all the world—into the obnoxious lout he usually was…with an added dose of surliness she might have found comical if she hadn’t been so disgusted with herself.
She had not put up even a reasonable facsimile of resistance.
She knew he was a rake, and the worst kind—the kind who despised women—yet she’d let him seduce her.
“Let me explain something to you, Grenville,” he growled. “If you want to play games with a man, you ought to be prepared to play them through to the conclusion. Because otherwise you put a fellow in a bad mood.”
“You were born in a bad mood,” Lydia said as she jerked up her bodice.
“I was in an excellent humor until a minute ago.”
Her glance fell to his hands, which ought to have warning signs tatooed on them. With those evilly adept hands he’d stroked and fondled and half undressed her. And she hadn’t offered a whisper of protest.
“I’m sure you’ll cheer up again soon,” she said. “You’ve only to step out the door. Covent Garden is rife with genuine harlots eager to raise your spirits.”
“If you don’t want to be treated like a tart, you shouldn’t go out dressed like one.” He scowled at her bodice. “Or should I say ‘undressed’? Obviously, you’re not wearing a corset. Or a chemise. I suppose you haven’t bothered with drawers, either.”
“I had a very good reason for dressing this way,” she said. “But I’m not going to explain myself to you. You’ve wasted enough of my time as it is.”
She started for the door.
“You might at least fix your clothes,” he said. “Your turban’s crooked, and your frock is every which wa
y.”
“All the better,” she said. “Everyone will think they know what I’ve been up to, and I should be able to get out of this filthy place without having my throat cut.”
She opened the door, then paused, looking about. She saw no signs of Coralie or her bodyguards. She glanced back at Ainswood. Her conscience pinched. Hard.
He did not look in the least lonely or lost, she told her fool conscience. He was sulking, that was all, because he’d mistaken her for a whore and gone to all the bother of pursuing her and seducing her for nothing.
And if he wasn’t so curst damned good at it, she would have stopped the proceedings before they truly got going and he could have found someone else…
And wrapped his powerful arms about that someone and kissed her as sweetly and ardently as any Prince Charming might have done, and caressed her and made her feel like the most beautiful, desirable princess in all the world.
But Lydia Grenville wasn’t a princess, she told her conscience, and he wasn’t Prince Charming.
She walked out.
Only after she’d closed the door behind her did she say, under her breath, “I’m sorry.” Then she hurried out from the piazza and turned the corner into James Street.
Vere was furious enough to let her go. As she’d so snidely reminded him, Covent Garden was rife with whores. Since he hadn’t got what he wanted from her, he might as well get it from someone else.
But an image hung in his mind’s eye of the lechers ogling her, and the vision set off a host of unpleasant inner sensations he didn’t care to identify.
Instead, he swore violently and hurried out after her.
He caught up with her at Hart Street, halfway to Long Acre.
When he reached her side, she glared at him. “I don’t have time to entertain you, Ainswood. I have important things to do. Why don’t you go to the pantomime—or a cock fight—or whatever else appeals to your stunted mind?”