Saving Grace (Fair Cyprians of London 1)

She did not miss the spasm that crossed his face. Revulsion. Yes, he ought to be repulsed. She was.

“The first time I sold my body was to get medicine for my baby,” she told him, swaying with the force of her anger.

“You had a baby?” His hand went out to her and she allowed him to pull her back onto his lap.

“It’s the reason I was dismissed from my position in a grand house.” The familiar grief clawed its way up her gullet. “But the baby died.”

“I’m sorry.”

She could feel his sympathy as his hands roamed over her body, blazing a trail of sensation across her sensitive skin and scoring her vulnerable heart.

“Sorry that it died or sorry for me that it was born?”

“Both,” he muttered. “The … father didn’t offer to marry you?”

She let out her

breath derisively. “The father was a young gentleman visiting the house who believed he was as entitled to pleasuring himself with the servants as he was to the entertainments his hostess laid on for him.”

He was shocked, clearly. Perhaps sympathetic, though her plight was common enough. He would know that.

She took a painful breath. “He forced himself upon me and when the housekeeper realised I was pregnant—before I did, myself, for I had no knowledge of these matters—she spoke to the mistress. My mistress dismissed me. Without a character.” She trembled at the injustice, still just as raw. “And a girl without a character has little alternative but to become a prostitute, in case you weren’t aware. So, take all the liberties you like, sir. There’s nothing I haven’t done and nothing that will shock me. Have you really never been with another woman since you lost the girl you loved?”

He shook his head, his expression bleak, his hands now gently cradling Grace. “I’m sorry for your misfortunes. Mine are in a different league. Yes, I’ve lost my sight but often I think I’d still look towards the future with hope if only all hope hadn’t been killed by bitter betrayal. Do you know, I kissed her for the first time the night before I left for Cambridge.” He looked so sad that Grace had to fight to keep the tears at bay. “The softness of her mouth and the way she breathed my name are the sweetest memories I will ever have.” His tone changed. “And then she gave herself to another.”

With the greatest self-restraint Grace asked carefully, “You’ve never felt desire since her … betrayal? What about Miss Lenders?”

“I barely know her, but Mama arranged the match and Miss Lenders will be well compensated for being allied to a useless creature such as myself.”

“Don’t say that!” Grace cried, fiercely. “You’re kind and handsome and you only need someone who loves you who’ll be your eyes.” She wished she could stop herself from trembling. “When Miss Lenders knows you better she’ll be that person because she’ll see you’re a man who deserves a good woman’s love.” In her agitation Grace leapt to her feet.

“Please … Miss Fortune!” David pulled her back, holding her tightly, muttering as he buried his face in her hair, “You are very kind to jump to my defence but I do not need championing. I am determined that when I marry I will forge a life independent of the one my mother has mapped out for me. She’s always forced me to bend to her will.”

Didn’t Grace know that, to her detriment? Mrs Willowbank had determined David’s future the moment he’d been born, and studying landscapes with a master in Florence did not feature. It was why David had felt it safest to entrust Grace with Signor Bettoni’s letter the night before he went up to Cambridge in his first term. He planned to visit a sympathetic cousin en route to borrow funds so that when he returned to Barton Manor he’d have all in order.

And Grace would go to Florence with him.

The letter. Oh God, if only there’d been no letter, thought Grace, none of this would have happened.

“I do not intend being an object of pity to my wife,” David went on with growing emotion. “I intend to repay Miss Lenders for taking me on. So show me how I can do that. Show me how to make her desire me.”

“Come with me,” Grace whispered, drawing him up from his chair and guiding him across the room to the four-poster bed.

He stopped uncertainly when he reached the edge. Grace angled herself close and ran her hands down the front of his trousers.

“Let me take them off for you,” she whispered, deftly working the buttons, enjoying the feel of his smooth flanks, resisting the urge to trail kisses from his ankles to his lips. She was too afraid their time would be cut short and she was determined, now, to be possessed by David in the fullest sense. The memory would serve as her protection when she succumbed to the inevitable with each future client. “Now climb onto the mattress. I’ll join you there.”

Almost desperate with need, Grace climbed onto the bed and laid her naked body over his. Instinctively his hands went to her rump, his palms cupping her bottom, sending spirals of heady desire coursing through her veins and making her sex throb with anticipation.

So many men.

She’d had so many men and now, at last …

“I think you feel sorry for me, which means you don’t regard me with the same revulsion you do your other clients,” he murmured, his breath tickling her ear. “I hope not, because …” He’d transferred his attention to her inner thighs, where he’d enjoyed her responses earlier. His touch ravaged her with urgent desire.

“Because why?” she whispered, pressing her cheek to his chest as she moved her body slowly, suggestively, over his. His erection pressed into her belly and she rubbed herself up and down upon it, sighing with the satisfaction of feeling it swell.

“There’s something about you … I can’t explain it. You remind me …”