A Seduction in Scarlet Read online

  Sara Bennett

  A Seduction in Scarlet

  For Joy

  Contents

  Prologue

  Aphrodite, the famous courtesan, sat forward in her Egyptian style…

  Chapter 1

  It was far too early to go home, Marcus decided…

  Chapter 2

  Portia couldn’t sit still. After she’d told Aphrodite which man…

  Chapter 3

  “Marcus? What time did you get in?”

  Chapter 4

  Portia felt her hands trembling. She clasped them, tightly, until…

  Chapter 5

  After she was gone, Marcus rose from the bed and…

  Chapter 6

  Lucia di Lammermoor was renowned for testing the vocal cords…

  Chapter 7

  Lara scowled. “I hate her, Arnold. I try to be…

  Chapter 8

  Marcus strolled toward the house in Curzon Street. It was…

  Chapter 9

  He could see the desire in her face, and it…

  Chapter 10

  Portia hurried along the platform at Waterloo Station, while Hettie…

  Chapter 11

  The village of St. Tristan was every bit as picturesque…

  Chapter 12

  Marcus had long lost the urge to laugh. How could…

  Chapter 13

  “Marcus, she is a treasure.” Minnie removed her turban and…

  Chapter 14

  Portia had barely taken a step inside the house in…

  Chapter 15

  Since the assassination attempt on Victoria, it seemed to Portia…

  Chapter 16

  The crowd was immense, spilling over from Green Park into…

  Chapter 17

  The police station to which they brought Marcus was housed…

  Chapter 18

  Hettie stood irresolute in Curzon Street, looking up at the

  Chapter 19

  Portia, weary and heartsore, entered what she thought of as…

  Chapter 20

  Marcus had no intention of respecting Portia’s decision. But there…

  Chapter 21

  Dressing in the lavender shot silk for the grand ball…

  Chapter 22

  Portia was dreaming again. She was in a boat sailing…

  Chapter 23

  By the time Portia woke it was late afternoon. The…

  Chapter 24

  Marcus was working on a sluice gate out in the…

  Chapter 25

  Portia felt completely relaxed. She’d bathed and Hettie had helped…

  Chapter 26

  Portia was limp and replete. She hardly had the strength…

  Chapter 27

  “Portia.”

  Chapter 28

  The sluice gate had been mended. Portia, watching Marcus, was…

  Chapter 29

  Candles glowed throughout the room, valiantly battling the shadows but…

  Epilogue

  Portia shaded her eyes against the sun. The lane was…

  About the Author

  Other Romances

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Aphrodite’s Club,

  London

  Late Spring 1850

  Aphrodite, the famous courtesan, sat forward in her Egyptian style chair, her dark eyes bright with curiosity. “Lady Ellerslie. It isn’t often that a woman of your position and social standing comes to see me at my club. Please, tell me what it is you wish from me, and I will make it come true.”

  “Madame, if only it were that simple.”

  “But perhaps it is. Tell me and we will see.”

  Portia, Lady Ellerslie, hesitated, and for a moment her well-bred calm wavered, giving the courtesan a glimpse of the seething emotion she was trying so hard to hide. “I am relying upon your discretion,” she said with quiet dignity.

  “We are all most discreet here, my lady.”

  It had seemed so straightforward in the hansom cab on her way here, but now she was face-to-face with the woman…No, it wasn’t straightforward at all. But she had made up her mind to it, and once she decided on a thing, she went through with it. Besides, what was the alternative? Creep back home and do nothing? She could not bear it, not for another day, not for another moment.

  Not for another night.

  Portia drew a deep breath. “I am a widow, madame, as you know. My position is such that I must be extremely cautious, which is why I have come here today in a cab, wearing a veil and bearing a false name.”

  Aphrodite inclined her head, but her eyes said she had heard all this many times before. That gave Portia some comfort. She wasn’t alone after all; there were others like her, who were desperate to escape the strictures society had imposed upon them.

  Escape?

  No, escape was impossible, but perhaps just for a brief time she might forget what was expected of her and pretend to be someone else.

  “You would like some coffee or tea?” Aphrodite murmured when Portia did not go on. “A glass of something stronger, perhaps, to give you courage?”

  “No, please, I don’t want anything to drink,” Portia said in frustration, her gloved hands clenching her reticule. Suddenly, the words spilled out of her, like a dam that had broken: “You are being polite, and I don’t want politeness and good manners, I don’t want to be hemmed in and suffocated with good intentions, I don’t want to pretend to be happy when I am sad, and bite back my tears and my anger, to be so…so devoid of emotion because in the world I live in it is not the done thing to show how one truly feels…”

  Aphrodite smiled and her dark eyes glittered. “Go on, Lady Ellerslie.”

  Her inner feelings, once set free, could not be stemmed, nor could her sense of desperation. “Madame, just for one night, for one hour, I want to be a living woman again and not a marble memorial to my dead husband.”

  Silence hung heavy in the small, chic room. Portia wished she could look away from the courtesan, but that would be cowardly—a denial of the words she had just spoken—so she kept her gaze still and steady. As if she were not quaking in her boots.

  “I will let you in on a little secret,” Aphrodite said, her voice conspiratorial. “You are not the only English lady of quality who has come here seeking my help, and you will not be the last.”

  “I am not? What is the world coming to!” She sounded just like the queen, Victoria, as she had meant to, but her smile took away the sting.

  “The world is designed by men, my lady. I will say to you what I said to those others. There is absolutely nothing wrong in a woman wishing to satisfy her sensual needs; it is a natural thing. But in your situation you are taking a greater risk, and it might be safer, and more convenient, if you took a lover from among your own circle. A friend? A servant?”

  Portia shook her head. “No. I must be beyond reproach, madame, and if the merest whisper reached the ears of my family or the palace…I cannot soil my husband’s spotless memory. You understand that merely by being here today I put all in jeopardy?”

  Aphrodite inclined her head. “You must be seen to uphold the pure perfection of Victorian womanhood,” she mocked gently. “I understand very well, my lady, and I sympathize with your dilemma. You have been placed upon a pedestal and it is lonely up there. Especially if you are a sensual woman, and I think that you are. Forgive me, but can you not remarry? It has been two years since Lord Ellerslie died.”

  Portia wondered whether such a question was impertinent. Probably it was, but she did not care. This was the frankest conversation she’d had with a woman in many years, perhaps in the whole of her life. She hadn’t realized until now that such conversations were even permitted to take place. Perhaps they weren’t.

  The thought that she might be breaking one of those interminable “rules” made her feel deliciously wicked.

  “I do not think my remarrying would be looked upon favorably. I am the epitome of the faithful widow in mourning for her hero husband, and if I remarried, then the spell would be broken. Victoria—Her Majesty the Queen—prefers me to remain as I am. She is fond of telling me that I am a beacon that others may follow. Britannia in widow’s weeds.”

  Unfortunately it was all too true. But it was what she had wanted, after all. Her mother’s ambition and pride had brought her to this point, and her own sense of duty. Would she really want to change places with some happily married little cottage wife? If she was trapped, then it was a trap of her making and one she was content to inhabit—most of the time.

  “So, you do not wish to take a lover and you cannot remarry. Instead you have come to me. Let me guess, you want an evening of passion, but without any ties or conventions. Just a stranger in one of my pretty boudoirs, with little or no conversation, and then good-bye forever.”

  If Portia was the sort to blush, she might have done so now, but hers was the cool, fair beauty of the English rose, and she had grown very clever at hiding her true feelings behind it.

  “You have guessed right, Madame Aphrodite. That is exactly what I want.”

  “Connection with a man you do not know?” the courtesan asked, speaking forthrightly.

  Portia tilted up her chin so there would be no mistake. “Yes.”

  Aphrodite smiled. “I am not trying to shock you, my lady. I like to be frank with my clients, and then there can be no misunderstandings.”

  “I am grateful for your plain speaking. It is not something I
am used to. I find it refreshing, Madame.”

  “Then let me be plain again. You are not a virgin? I ask because your husband was a great deal older than you. He was still capable?”

  Even her mother had not asked such a thing. Her mother would probably have fainted if she had discussed her husband’s prowess in the bedroom. It delighted Portia to be able to say out loud secrets she had kept for ten years. “He was capable, but I was a virgin before I married. As a young girl I was kept so confined that there would have been no chance to be other than a virgin. But I wasn’t interested in the young men about me. I was a serious girl, not inclined to flights of fancy or dreams of love, and my future had been drummed into me so thoroughly that I believed I had no other choice than to marry well. The family fortunes were riding on me, madame, and to hear such a thing day after day…well, I did not take it lightly.”

  It was true; well, mostly. There had been one man…a boy. Someone she had, briefly, fallen in love with and longed to give herself to, in the dreamy, innocent way of the inexperienced. Not that the boy knew that. They barely spoke, but she had fantasized about him all one summer. Come autumn, she was married. She hadn’t thought of him for years, her life had changed so much, and then, one day, there he was. Inside her head. Her young and innocent love…only now her feelings were not so innocent.

  Aphrodite didn’t need to know that. Nor that he had taken a leading role in the fantasies she indulged in alone at night. Those dark wicked fantasies.

  “After I married my husband I…I found I enjoyed the physical part of my marriage, but as you say, my husband was much older than me, and before long he became too ill to take the part of a husband. He was ill for many years before he died. That is not to say I begrudge my time as his nurse, but there was no physical intimacy between us.”

  “I see, my lady. You loved him, but now he is gone and for the sake of the public, the queen, your family, you must remain a perpetual widow.”

  “Yes.”

  “He was a national hero. They wish to preserve what is left of him.”

  “I do not mean to denigrate his name, I would never do that. But I am twenty-seven years of age, and I do not want to be old just yet. I want to feel what it is to be a woman again. I think if I could spend some time with a man who is young and virile, experience what other women take for granted, then I would be satisfied. Once would be enough.”

  Aphrodite’s heavily ringed fingers tapped on the arm of her chair. “I hope you are right, but in my experience ‘once’ is sometimes the start of something rather than the finish of it.” Her voice had taken on a warning note.

  Portia smiled, confident she was in control. “I am willing to take that risk.”

  Chapter 1

  It was far too early to go home, Marcus decided as he strolled though Covent Garden. Besides, Sebastian and Francesca would be there, glowing with connubial bliss. Since his brother had married, he didn’t want to go anywhere unless Francesca was with him—in short he’d become a complete bore. Here he was, Marcus thought, freed from his stewardship of Worthorne Manor and a brief, disastrous stint in the Hussars, ready to experience all that London had to offer, and with no one to share it.

  That evening, Sebastian had come to his room. “What are you doing with your life? You’re drifting,” he’d said.

  Marcus had shrugged and grinned and told his brother he was jealous. “Not everyone has a purpose,” he said, choosing his waistcoat. “What do you think? This one, or the new one from Bond Street?”

  Sebastian sighed and shook his head and gave up, for the moment.

  Afterward, he had been to the theater and enjoyed a rowdy supper with some of his regimental friends, but they were called back to the barracks and now he was all alone. Although normally that wouldn’t have bothered Marcus, tonight he was restless. Maybe he should visit one of the bawdy houses and while away an hour or two? Or attend one of the supper rooms in the Strand where girls in flesh-colored tights and short skirts kicked their legs up high? He considered his options.

  A passing pretty woman in an expensive dress and bonnet smiled, glancing at him out of the corner of her eyes. Marcus recognized the look. She was plying her trade, looking for a wealthy gentleman for the evening. Just for a moment he considered being that gentleman, and then suddenly remembered that he did have an engagement, after all. He searched in his waistcoat pocket—ah, here it was! An invitation from the exclusive Aphrodite’s Club.

  “‘An evening of pleasure, where you can sample the delights we have available just for you,’” he read under his breath.

  Sample the delights…

  Marcus grinned. That sounded exactly what he needed. Perhaps some of Aphrodite’s delights would sooth the restlessness in his soul, and restore his usual carefree nature. His mind made up, he hailed a passing hansom cab and set off for Aphrodite’s.

  Portia felt as if everyone in the room was staring at her; not directly, but with curious darting glances. But they couldn’t see her; the veil covering her face made certain of that. She might as well have been invisible.

  The knowledge gave her power, and a sense of security. She was free to look and judge and make her choice, and no one would know. For someone who had spent much of her grown life with the eyes of others upon her, watching and judging her, it was incredibly liberating.

  She almost hadn’t come tonight.

  Victoria—Her Majesty the Queen—was feeling poorly, and Portia had been expecting a summons to the palace to sit with her. Fortunately, it hadn’t come. Portia felt equal parts of relief and guilt over that. Victoria was increasing again, and it frustrated her that she could not do all the things she wished to. She relied upon her friends and ladies-in-waiting to take her mind off her thickening body. But tonight Prince Albert had stayed at her side, and Portia was not required.

  After supper she went early to bed, pleading a headache. Her mother, whose own headaches were infamous, did not need to be convinced and let her go without a quibble. Hettie, her faithful maid and only confidante, had been waiting. Her plain, good-natured face was creased with concern.

  “Are you sure, lieben? You can change your mind.”

  “Hettie, you said you would help!”

  Hettie took her hand, squeezing it. “And so I will. As long as you are not expecting to find love.”

  “Love?” Portia raised an eyebrow. “I am seeking passion, Hettie. A warm body holding mine. I want to feel like a woman instead of a monument. Is that so wrong?”

  “No, lieben, of course it isn’t. Come and let me help you dress…”

  When Portia was ready, Hettie wrapped her closely in a dark cloak, then Portia slipped out to the waiting hired coach.

  Now here she was in Aphrodite’s sparkling salon.

  There were plenty of gentlemen present. Some were good looking but most were not. Portia did not expect a god. She was looking for that certain something, that moment of attraction, that spark that said this was the one. Behind the veil her gaze traveled from man to man. This one too short, this one too fat, this one whose voice was too loud, this one glancing at his pocket watch as if he had to be somewhere else…

  Was she seeking fault? What if she did not find him?

  Portia moved a little restlessly, and the scarlet silk rustled about her. The dress was tight and low-cut, giving her slim body a new voluptuousness and making her feel surprisingly sensual. Hettie had announced that it was a dress to wear to an assignation, as if she knew, and no man would be able to resist her. And the brilliance of the color…it had been so long since she’d worn anything other than mourning and half mourning.

  She’d dreamed about the dress last night. One of her restless, feverish dreams in which a man held and caressed her in the darkness. And then, just before the end, he turned to the window and the moonlight fell upon his face and she saw that it was him. Marcus Worthorne. Her seventeen-year-old fantasy from that summer long ago.