Darker Than Love (30 page)

Most were men. The two or three female guests were noticeable for their velvet half-masks, and the other women were servants, both familiar and unknown. They circulated with trays of drinks, dressed as fashionable ladies save for their too-low necklines and too-painted faces.

Three shallow steps led up to the dais.

‘How envied I am,’ said Alec, reclining on the couch.
‘In you I have a wife, a whore and a lifetime’s prosperity.’

Marldon stretched out his arm and Clarissa placed her hand in his.

‘And I?’ she enquired, joining him on the fur coverings. ‘What do I gain?’

‘Satisfaction of your lust,’ he answered, drawing her to lie alongside him. ‘What more do you require? I cannot guarantee how long you will have that, Clarissa, although for the moment you delight me. You’ve sustained my interest remarkably well.’ He stroked the nape of her neck, a feather-soft touch, then teased down a tendril from her ornate coiffure. ‘I never knew courtship could be so enjoyable.’

Clarissa nuzzled closer, trying to conceal herself, and also wanting him. The guests paid them scant attention, more involved now in other things. On a heap of cushions a serving girl in canary yellow, spread-legged and smiling, was inching back her skirts, tantalising the men around her with more and more blue stocking. Her onlookers urged her on with quickening handclaps, their shouts and ribald laughter soaring above the music. Yet still Clarissa felt vulnerable.

‘Seeking to hide your charms?’ taunted Marldon. He reached between their bodies to handle her naked breasts. ‘A fit of modesty. How endearing.’

Clarissa rubbed against him and toyed with his hair. The jewels of his waistcoat pressed against her skin, cold and hard. ‘My lord, please tell me what will happen tonight,’ she said. ‘What is it you expect of me?’

‘Patience, child,’ he said. ‘Of all the things I’ve taught you there have been few virtues. But patience is one I thought you might have acquired.’

He sat, urging Clarissa to do the same, and signalled to a serving maid who stood waiting by the dais. She ascended the steps bearing a salver holding two golden goblets. Marldon passed one to Clarissa, took the second for himself and clinked the rims together.

‘To us,’ he said, taking a large draught.

Clarissa sipped delicately at the red wine. It was spicy, with a bitter undertone, and a little thicker than wine. She grimaced slightly.

‘What are you waiting for?’ said Marldon to the maid, who had not moved. ‘Serve this to my guests.’

The sandy-haired girl bobbed a curtsey and made to leave. As she did so, she stumbled heavily and fell sprawling on to the couch, her body slamming against Clarissa’s. Clarissa squealed as the goblet flew from her hand and the viscous red liquid spilt over her skirt and on to the tigerskin.

‘I’m so sorry, ma’am. I’m so sorry. Forgive me, I beg you,’ appealed the maid vociferously. She pushed herself up, flapping uselessly at the upset wine.

Lord Marldon shoved away the girl’s hand.

‘What’s your name?’ he demanded crisply.

‘Laura, milord,’ announced the maid, quickly recovering her aplomb.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said, nodding with vague recognition. ‘Well, Laura, I imagine Lady Marldon needs another drink. Make sure it isn’t you who brings it. In fact, make sure I don’t set eyes on you again tonight, you clumsy halfwit. Begone.’

The maid curtsied and scurried away.

‘I’m wet,’ said Clarissa, plucking at her sodden skirt.
‘I want to get out of these clothes.’

Marldon laughed. ‘You’ll get out of them when I say so, Lady Marldon, and not before.’

‘I am not yet Lady Marldon,’ she said stiffly.

Marldon shrugged indifferently. ‘It doesn’t hurt to practise.’

He drained his wine just as another serving girl, carrying a single goblet, stepped up to the dais. Clarissa’s heart missed a beat.

It was Kitty. It was Kitty with fashionably styled hair, a gown of green silk, and peridots dangling from her
ears. But, for all the finery, Clarissa recognised her at once. That pretty little face was unmistakable.

Kitty shot her a cautionary glance. Clarissa accepted the goblet Alec handed her, betraying no hint of consternation. She hardly dared hope that Kitty might be able to help her, but hope she did. Merely seeing the young maid was enough to make her feel less isolated, less doomed.

‘Try to drink it this time,’ said Alec.

Clarissa, resisting the urge to follow Kitty’s movements, sipped. It was not the same concoction. There was no spiciness, no bitterness, and it flowed as easily as wine. It was wine. Clarissa’s hopes surged higher still. The difference could not be accidental; Kitty was up to something. Unable to think what that might be, Clarissa drank quickly to hide the evidence, commenting on the liquor’s strange taste. Marldon smiled his satisfaction.

‘You’ll find its aftertaste even stranger,’ he said. ‘Now, shall we relax a while?’

He raised his arm and clicked his fingers, two loud snaps. The music ceased. People muttered eagerly and shifted positions, turning their gazes to a stage set against one wall, curtained with deep-red velvet.

‘A little entertainment,’ he said quietly, pulling Clarissa near.

Her stained skirt, clammy and cold, slithered against one thigh.

The music began, a mournful tune, and the red drapes parted. On stage a woman wrapped in sheer lengths of blue and green stood within a great half-shell. Crouched at her feet was a ring of slender chiffon-clad girls, immobile. One by one they began to move, earthy-coloured wisps fluttering about them, hinting at graceful nudity.

‘Ah, God, Botticelli,’ muttered Lord Alec. ‘I’ve seen this one, the fools. And I doubt it’s improved. Suck me, Clarissa.’

He placed her hand on his groin. He was fiercely erect, and the sudden, unexpected hardness of him sent a thrill through her body. She slipped a hand into the vent of his baggy silk trousers, releasing him, and clasped her fingers about his stiff, veined shaft. Its vitality throbbed quick and warm within her fist. Marldon sighed and wriggled into a position of luxurious ease, his head lolling back on to the plump cushions.

Clarissa looked warily about the room, grateful to see that all attention was fixed on the titillating show. The dancers were stripping diaphanous scarves from the woman in the shell, and piece by piece her pale contours were emerging. Clarissa watched, intrigued, as a bearded spectator stepped up on to the stage. To whoops and cheers, he clasped a slinky, olive-skinned girl about the waist and wrestled her away from the performance.

‘A delay of pleasure can be very tantalising,’ said Marldon above the noisy applause. ‘But at the moment it is most irksome. Suck me.’

He put a hand to the back of Clarissa’s neck and pulled her down to his rearing phallus. She trailed the tip of her tongue over his plum-hued glans, following the ridge of retracted skin and lapping wetly at his smooth, shining knob.

‘I want sucking, not a light dusting,’ he said urgently. ‘Make me come, and make it fast.’

Clarissa complied, closing her mouth over his great, pulsing length. With her lips circled tightly, she drew along his swollen cock, taking him in generous, farreaching gulps.

‘Ah yes,’ breathed Marldon. ‘You’ll refuse me nothing tonight.’

He pumped his hips, driving himself deep into her wet caress. Groans rumbled in his throat, then, with a rasp of pleasure, he peaked. He clutched her head to his loins, and she drank his hot pungency, licking away every last trace of flavour.

Marldon murmured contentedly, stroking Clarissa’s half-bared, silky back.

‘One of your many wifely duties,’ he said in a gentle tone. ‘And how well you perform it.’

His prick was still erect in Clarissa’s mouth. She withdrew, eyeing his powerful, upstanding organ. It showed no signs of slackening. She looked at him suspiciously and he caught the glance.

‘The drink,’ he said by way of an explanation. ‘My lust will not be assuaged tonight, Clarissa. And nor will yours.’

The drink. The spiciness. Clarissa’s mind whirled. He was still erect because of the drink. An aphrodisiac then. But she had not drunk it.

‘Don’t you feel your appetite swelling?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you feel yourself on the verge of a hunger that knows no bounds?’

Clarissa hugged up close to his body, squashing her bosom into his warm, hard chest. She kissed his neck, his face, the satin streak of his scar. She nibbled his earlobe.

‘Yes,’ she murmured over and over. ‘Yes.’ And she laid his hand to her breast, moaning breathy pleasure when he palmed her yielding flesh.

Her heart thundered with hope, a hope dulled by unease. Alec was shrewd. Was he luring Kitty into a trap just as he had lured Gabriel?

‘Soon,’ continued Marldon, ‘you will be so desperate and needful that, when I lead you on to that stage, you will writhe and plead for a man’s cock. My guests will queue up to satisfy you, Clarissa. One by one, they will give you what you beg for, and still you won’t be sated, still you will be crying for more.’

He caressed her white mounds, pinching her rouged nipples, and Clarissa turned a whimper of alarm into an inflated groan of arousal.

‘Kiss my breasts,’ she whispered. ‘Put your hands
between my thighs, my lord. Make me come. I want you so much.’

‘All alone, Brinley?’ said Kitty in her best suggestive voice.

She sashayed into the kitchen and set down a tray of dirty glasses. The curly-headed valet, sitting there slouched over the enormous oak table, raised a listless glance.

‘It hardly seems fair,’ she persisted. ‘Not when everyone else is having so much fun.’ She moved round to him, placed a daintily shod foot on to the bench and stepped up to perch herself on the table. She took his hand and rested it in her lap. ‘Why you?’ she murmured sympathetically.

Brinley eased himself to sit upright and stroked along her thigh with a firm caress. He regarded her attentively, his mouth twisting in a wily smirk.

‘Because he trusts me,’ he said. ‘You’re from Jane’s, aren’t you? Haven’t seen you before.’ His smudgy green eyes twinkled.

Brinley, she had discerned, was there to keep watch over the basement because Gabriel was somewhere nearby. Most of the other men had gone into town, drinking and whoring, and the few that remained were there to usher in guests, or guard the doors. Escape was not going to be easy, and it would be quite a task to find a way in for Lucy and Sir Julian. She’d managed the side gate for them, but so far that was it. Kitty was determined though, and Brinley at any rate would be a piece of cake.

‘New girl,’ she breathed, lying sideways along the table. ‘Still full of enthusiasm.’ She drew one leg into her body, and pulled back her skirts a touch, offering him a tempting glimpse of black embroidered stockings.

The valet grinned and his hand strayed to a slender ankle, sliding slowly upward.

‘Then why aren’t you with the party, servicing Marldon’s guests?’ he enquired.

Kitty gave a weary sigh. ‘Oh, his lordship has chosen me to serve him his drinks. It’s very frustrating, very dull. Especially since we were all asked not to wear drawers. I had hopes of doing something more exciting than waiting on.’

Brinley’s hand travelled quickly along her leg to find the warm, pouting flesh between her thighs.

‘You’re a little floozy, aren’t you?’ he said, smiling broadly.

Without preamble he pushed two fingers into her vagina, quickening moisture that already flowed. Kitty’s lust had been bubbling under for some time, sparked by the debauchery she’d witnessed upstairs. She’d seen her friends writhing on cushions, being tended to by competitive men; muscled arses, bared and pumping; bawdy stage shows and hungry, leering eyes.

It was shockingly bad, worse than she’d expected, but it was all very thrilling. She was quite glad that seducing Brinley was necessary to her plan.

She moaned an enthusiastic response to the valet’s probing fingers. He stood hurriedly, the bench scraping on the tiled floor, and slipped his other hand into her low décolletage. He caressed her small pert breasts, tweaking her puckered nipples.

Kitty trailed her fingers over his crotch, feeling the small bulge of keys nestling below the larger bulge of his prick. Perfect.

‘Hurry,’ she urged, swivelling round so her legs were either side of his body. ‘Someone might come down.’

She ruffled up her skirts, baring her glossy pink sex, and Brinley hastened to unbutton himself.

‘On the table,’ implored Kitty, edging back across the dull, knife-marked wood. ‘I’ve never done it on a table.’

Brinley scrambled to join her, his cock poking through his open flies. Kitty lay on the great oak surface, frogging her legs wide, and with a big, hungry lunge Brinley
penetrated her. Grunting away, he drove himself into her soft and juicy channel. Arousal swarmed deliciously in Kitty’s groin. She circled her legs about his hips, rising to meet him, frantic to yield to the pleasure. But she could not allow herself that luxury. At any rate, not just yet.

Her hands flailed beneath her buttocks, searching for the valet’s trouser pocket. Her fingertips skimmed over the bump where the keys lay, but she could not reach inside. Brinley thrust on, oblivious to her intentions. His pounding length drove deep and fast, urging her to a distracted passion. Kitty moaned eagerly, her orgasm gathering force, her rational senses drifting away.

But no, she had to do this for Clarissa, for Gabriel. She held on to that thought and managed, bit by bit, first to unhook the valet’s braces, next to loosen his trousers so they sagged about his knees. Finally, in a moment of great heroism, Kitty feigned her crisis. She wailed, long and loud, dropping her legs from him in an assumed excess of passion. His penis slipped from her, and she continued to howl, the sound covering the clink of metal when her fingers closed around the keys.

‘I’m ever so sorry,’ she pleaded. ‘I lost control.’

But Brinley’s prick was already nudging at her entrance, ready to take her once more.

‘I thought you were a professional,’ he muttered, slamming his cock deep.

‘Oh, but you’re so good,’ cooed Kitty. ‘I could probably spend again. Soon.’