When there was no response, only his soft, steady breathing, Hope stood up and went to the writing desk that was littered with a dozen drafts of a letter he’d not finished beyond, “My dearest Annabelle…” “Annabelle, my dear, I’m sorry….” “Forgive me, Annabelle, but…” “Lovely Annabelle, I’m afraid that…” Hope didn’t have to do more than glance across the surface of his desk to see these, but other crumpled letters written on his signature pale blue writing paper littered the floor.
A niggling worm of disquiet unsettled her even more. Annabelle? Of course, there was more than one woman named Annabelle whom Mr Durham would know.
Was this lovely Annabelle the cause of his demons? She wondered what Mr Durham had done that he would wish to beg Annabelle’s forgiveness. Was he desperately in love with this woman he’d wronged?
Who was Annabelle?
A freshly minted debutante or was she, in fact, Annabelle, the squire’s daughter and if not Hope’s nemesis, then certainly a determined and competitive miss who’d had no fondness for the vicar’s daughter during their years growing up. More to the point, was this Annabelle to whom these pleas for forgiveness being directed, in fact Wilfred’s sister?
A soft groan from the bed made her whip around. She mustn’t be caught snooping. There were dire consequences for the girls about whom such complaints were made by their gentlemen customers.
Nervously, she ran her hands down the figure-hugging lines of her polonaise, toying with the dozen tiny buttons and wondering if she had the courage to undress.
Of course, she’d undressed a hundred times before. Or rather, she’d mostly been undressed. It’s what the gentlemen liked, though clearly, Mr Durham was not in a position to do anything.
She worried at her lower lip as the fingers of her right hand toyed with the tiny top button of her cuirass. Right now, only Mr Millament knew she was in the house. She could leave and no one would be the wiser, including Mr Durham. This was business after all—and not a business she’d chosen. Mr Durham would have absolutely no idea if he had or hadn’t performed. Or, if she’d serviced him as required. Dear Lord, this could be Hope’s lucky day. The easiest money she’d ever made while enabling her to retain her pride.
But she couldn’t bring herself to retreat. The impulse to touch him was too great, and she put out her hand.
Then hesitated, horrified at her brazenness. Disgusted to realise that she, in fact, was the one dissipated by loose living. For didn’t she want to climb into that bed beside him and slide her naked body the length of his lean flanks as a tribute to all the ‘what might have beens’? She was past the frailty of falling in love, but that didn’t mean her body didn’t crave connection with the one human being who had made her heart beat a little faster and a little more raggedly during her brief girlhood. What a naïve innocent she’d been in those days.
Those were the days when Hope had…well, hope. She could truly believe only good things would happen as she’d closed her eyes, half swooning in the arms of the dashing, handsome man who’d held her on the dance floor with such restraint; and who was now sleeping within inches of her seeking, tentative hand.
A snatch of music drifted through the open window, a breeze stirring the papers on the escritoire beneath. Hope remembered that she had more than just the usual job she performed as one of Madame’s girls.
Wilfred’s job. He’d made it clear what was at stake if she didn’t carry out his instructions.
She tossed back her hair and grimly set to work undoing the tiny buttons that extended from just above her décolletage to her waist. If the paperwork was at Wilfred’s behest and the payment for sexual favours at Madame’s, then Hope was going to have something for herself.
While she set to work divesting herself of her clothes, she did not drag her eyes from Mr Durham’s shapely buttocks, flanks, or handsomely constructed shoulders. He was as finely put together as any man she’d seen.
When she’d wriggled out of her cuirass, unbuttoned her skirt, and slithered out of the heavily upholstered bustle cage, she stopped to consider her options.
Could she really desire this? The feel of skin against skin?
Every day of her life was a constant battle to retain what barriers she could between what she was forced to do and her inner self.
Sighing gently, she sat on the bed, half undressed, and placed her hand on the mattress within a hair’s breadth of touching him. This couldn’t be more different. This was the man who’d once represented hope in her otherwise joyless life. Without her darling sister, Charlotte, to protect, and the gentleman of the manor about whom she could daydream, there’d been precious little else to get excited about. Nothing Hope did could satisfy Mama who never stopped harping on about the sacrifices she’d made to rear and nurture a child as ungrateful as Hope.
The night of the Hunt Ball had represented a turning point. First, the Hunt itself, when she’d fallen and Mr Durham had galloped to her aid, and then the ball that followed in the evening, when the light in Mr Durham’s eyes, the pressure of his fingertips against her cheek, had seemed to promise so much.
Even now, the memory was fresh of how her skin had tingled all over, and how her nipples had hardened. She’d felt embarrassed at the time. Such bodily sensations were alien to her, but the fact that Mr Durham had whispered a final urgent request to meet him in private at the church before she went to Germany was—then and still—the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to her.
It seemed extraordinary that after that fateful carriage ride that would take her from her home forever, she’d ever see Mr Durham again. In truth, Hope never had wanted to see him again. She simply couldn’t bear to witness his disgust.
But here she was now with that very same lovely man—only he was fast asleep and in the grips of an opium dream if she was right about the water pipe by his bed, and the lingering aroma.
She trembled. Did her desire make her weak? Or was weak with want a power in itself, now that she had the choice to use it as she chose?
Here was her chance to feel what this man had silently promised through the mere pressure on her fingertips and the look in his eyes. His desire
had pierced her as he’d asked her to meet him on the way to catch her train. The intensity in his gaze had left her in no doubt as to his feelings.
Hope closed her eyes as grief welled in her breast. One lingering kiss would have been enough to have sustained her through what awaited her in a cheerless chateau in Germany, far from friends and home.
Hope had long before accepted her fate. She was not wanted at home, but nor had she wanted much. She’d lost her heart, and any indication that one desirable man felt something for her that went beyond simple regard was to be nurtured.
She’d nurtured it alright. Through that shameful year with Wilfred and all the men since, she’d nurtured that precious, pristine, innocent joy of a future that was different from the one that had been thrust upon her.