Saving Grace (Fair Cyprians of London 1)

is fair hair, revelling in the springy softness she remembered so well. “Anything except a kiss.”

He tilted his head enquiringly and Grace gave a soft, throaty laugh. “An honest whore does not tangle with a man’s heart unless she’s prepared to give him hers. A kiss is a dangerous conduit.” She touched her mouth to his jawline, as close as she dared, whispering, “Now, if you like the feel of my breasts, you can unbutton me.”

How different from the honest relationship she and David had once enjoyed—but if she were to survive this encounter she needed to block her mind to the past and maintain the charade.

He stiffened. “I’d rather start from the top,” he muttered, groping helplessly before she grasped his wrists and brought his hands to her face. The face he’d caressed so many years ago. The face he’d called an angel’s face.

A whore’s mask. Smooth and ravishing on the outside, ravaged by experience on the inside. No longer the face he knew. She had no fear of being recognised. Only the desire to be close. To take what she could in the short allotted time and hope that her heart did not shatter.

Reaching up, she removed the hatpin which secured her veiled confection and placed it on the ground beside his chair. Angling herself to give him comfortable access, she guided his fingers to the neat ringlets trained to fall over one shoulder. Very different from the wild mane which used to cascade down her back when he’d beg her to loosen her housemaid’s serviceable topknot.

At first he touched it tentatively, then he fisted both hands in it, his expression suddenly animated.

She drew back. “What is it?”

“The texture,” he muttered. “It’s the same texture.” He shook his head, unwilling to say more until she pressed him, wanting to hear it. Wanting confirmation that the long hours of companionship they’d shared hadn’t been only in her imagination.

“I loved a girl once—” His voice was barely above a whisper, “—who had hair like this.”

“What happened to that girl?” Grace asked, willing him to recognise her and acknowledge that he had ruined her life. To say he was sorry for it so that …

She could forgive him.

“She betrayed me.”

This was not what she’d expected. Gasping, she stepped back, causing him to drop his hand and say mockingly, “Yes, imagine it! I loved her yet all the while that she pretended to be my ally, urging me to stand up to my mother, promising to protect my most valuable possession, my most dangerous secrets … she was betraying me behind my back.”

No, no, no … How could you think it? Grace’s voice shook from the effort of reining in her heated denials. “How did she betray you?”

“I found a photograph—” He swallowed, his twisted mouth pushing out the words as if they were foul and bitter—“of her in circumstances no woman of any decency would allow.”

Oh God. Grace stumbled against the chair as she put her hands to her face. She knew which photograph. Laurence had forced her to sit for him. Blackmailed her. He’d spent the summer with his aunt and, to while away the dullness of country life, had indulged himself with the latest craze: photography. When he had her alone in the little room Mrs Willowbank allowed him to use as a studio he’d made her remove her clothes and drape herself over the plush chaise longue and then he’d …

David’s voice was thick was emotion. He drew his hand across his eyes as if the image were still branded on his vision. “I saw what only I had ever hoped to see but here she was parading her body before … before the world.” His voice dropped to a thread of bitter accusation. “It was the last thing I saw.”

She whispered, “What do you mean … the last thing you saw?”

David glared, seemingly oblivious to the hand she tentatively lay upon his shoulder. “My cousin invited me to his new photography studio to show me the portraits he’d taken of my mother. Of course it was his intention that I see more. More than just the face of the girl I loved. He told me how much she’d wanted to be admired through the camera’s lens … and more intimately. He told me how smooth and soft she was. How moist her lips were. Of the little mole on her breast.”

Helplessly, Grace felt his pain as he fisted his hands. “Her betrayal cut through me and I picked up the first thing that came to hand so I could hurl it at him and remove the gloating smirk from his face. A bottle. I had no idea it was acid. Laurence went for me. We fought and the bottle smashed, splashing liquid into my face.”

Oh my God. Horror made her mute.

David had been blinded in a fight over her.

“But she’d already gone by then. The woman I loved. The woman I trusted.” His voice hitched. “Without a word.”

No, that’s not true, Grace wanted to say but she was helpless in the strange new emotional landscape she inhabited, caught between the urge to tell him everything while knowing the truth would only make things worse.

She heaved in a breath. “Do you see … nothing?”

“I’m aware of light and dark. Sometimes I wish I was dead … now that she’s gone.”

Grace fought to keep her voice steady, tears stinging her lids as she whispered, “Why did she leave?”

“Mother dismissed her when I went up to Cambridge for my first term.”

Rage and hurt swept away her sympathy. Here was her chance to ask the question that had haunted her for three years—Why did you do nothing?—but his voice, harsh, bitter, cut in, giving her the brutal answer. “The girl who said she loved me had given herself to someone else. She was pregnant. Mother said her father told Mrs Medley, our housekeeper, that she’d run off to London with the blacksmith’s son. I suppose that’s why she took off her clothes for Laurence. So she could get money.”