around the room.
The other women were smiling and conversing in coquettish teasing tones, each paired with a single gentleman. From the corner of the room Mrs Silver was looking at Arabella with a look of exasperation. The older woman gestured with her eyes from Dominic to the two glasses of champagne, that Arabella was still gripping for dear life, and back again.
There was no way out, no room for retreat. Arabella held her head high and forced her gaze back to Dominic. ‘Would you care for some champagne?’
He ignored her question and studied her with those dark brown eyes that were so disturbingly familiar. The seconds seemed to stretch to minutes as they stared at one another, the champagne seemingly forgotten. But then his eyes darkened and he accepted the glass from her hand.
‘I should …’ She glanced round for another gentleman to whom she might pass the second glass but all of the men were already drinking and their attentions most definitely engaged in so obvious a manner that made Arabella feel as embarrassed as if she had been an innocent.
‘It is for you, I believe,’ Dominic said. He paused and the dark gaze held hers once more before adding, ‘Perhaps we can drink our champagne together … upstairs?’
Arabella’s heart stumbled and missed a beat before galloping off at full tilt. The breath caught in her throat. The whole world seemed to turn upside down.
She knew what his suggestion meant.
Dominic had chosen her.
Her whole body trembled at the knowledge and she did not know whether it was the worst thing that could have happened or the best. Nearly six years, and yet it was as if her lips still burned from his kisses, her body still tingled from his love-making. To give herself to him again, and for money, flayed her pride more than anything.
Her hand itched to dash the contents of her glass in his face, to shout at him, to refuse him in the cruellest of terms. A vision of him standing there, his face and hair soaked from her champagne, his pride slurred before his friends swam in her mind, and that imagining was the one glimmer of light in the grim darkness of what was happening. But Arabella did not indulge her fantasy; she could not afford to. Even through the force of all that raged within her, she did not forget the stark truth of why she was here at Mrs Silver’s House of Rainbow Pleasures. She had her responsibilities.
And she was honest and practical enough to admit to herself that, if she must couple with a gentleman this night it was better that it was Dominic rather than some stranger.
She glanced again at the other men in the room, at their faces glistening with sweat and flushed from drink and the greedy lust and excitement in their eyes. No matter how much she was loathe to admit it, the knowledge that it would be Dominic, and not one of them, was something of a relief, albeit a bitter one.
And if she kept the mask in place he would never know the identity of the woman for whom he was paying. And that at least would make it tolerable.
Arabella swallowed her pride. Her eyes met his. She nodded and turned to lead the way to the room Mrs Silver had shown her.
Within the black-clad bedchamber Dominic could not take his gaze from Miss Noir. He knew that he was staring and still he could not stop. His intention of watching over Northcote had been forgotten the moment he had set eyes on her downstairs in Mrs Silver’s drawing room. God help him, but he could no more have turned away from her than stop breathing. It was as if the years had not passed and it was another woman standing before him.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.
Hell’s teeth, he thought, but she even sounded like her.
Miss Noir’s fingers fluttered nervously around the edges of her mask.
‘Forgive my manners, but your appearance stirs memories from my past. You have the very likeness of someone I once knew.’ It was the reason he was standing here with her now in the bordello’s bedchamber and the very same reason why he should have turned his back and walked away. The pain had returned, and the bitterness, but when he looked at this woman he wanted her with what could only be described as desperation.
He wanted her because she looked like Arabella Tatton.
She did not smile or simper or offer playful seductive words. She did not unlace her bodice or stand before the fire to reveal the outline of her legs or lie upon the daybed with her skirts arranged to show her stockings. Rather her expression was serious, and her manner, for all she tried to hide it, was one of unease. She just stood there and watched him, all calm stillness, yet the white-knuckled clasp of her hands gripping together betrayed that she was not as calm as she was pretending. And beside her on the small occasional table, amidst the coil of dark silken ropes and the feathers and fans, the bubbles sparkled and fizzed within her untouched glass of champagne.
He drained the contents of his own glass in an effort to dampen the strength of emotion the woman’s startling resemblance stirred.
‘You seem a little nervous this evening, Miss Noir.’
‘It is my first night here. Forgive me if I am unfamiliar with the usual etiquette. I …’ She hesitated and seemed to have to force the remainder of the sentence, ‘I wish only to please you.’ Her head was held high and the glint in her eyes belied the subservience of the words. She raised her chin a notch and everything of her stance was as defiant and tense as if she were facing a combatant rather than a man whom she was trying to seduce. ‘Do you wish me to undress now?’
He rose, setting his empty glass down next to her full one.
She looked so like Arabella that he felt like he had been kicked in the gut. His blood was rushing too hot, too fiercely. And no matter how hard he tried to suppress them, the memories were as strong and vivid as if all that had happened between them had been only yesterday.
The depth of his desire shocked him for he would have thought his anger at her to have long since tempered that. Yet his body was already hard and throbbing with impatience … as if it really were Arabella standing there. And because she looked so like Arabella, Dominic knew that he would not reject what she offered. He gave not another thought to Northcote and stripped off his tailcoat.
‘There is more pleasure for us both if I undress you,’ he said, never taking his eyes from hers. Her lashes swept low, not in a teasing manner, but as if she sought to hide something of herself from his scrutiny. He resolved to stop staring. But he could not.
‘As you wish.’ She walked to stand before him, and the dress she was wearing seemed to accentuate rather than hide the curves of her figure. In this, at least, she differed from Arabella, for although Arabella had been quite as tall as this woman, she had been more slimly built.
Arabella. Her very name seemed to whisper through the silence of the room. And the images were flashing through his mind, of Arabella lying beneath him, of her laughter and her smile; of him burying his face in the golden silk of her hair spread across his pillow, and his mouth whispering words of love upon hers while his hands stroked a caress over the naked satin of her skin.
And for all the anger in his heart, Dominic’s body grew harder. With an effort he reined himself back under some measure of control. Arabella Tatton. He despised her. He should walk away from this woman, she, whose resemblance to Arabella had unleashed all that he had hidden away in the dark recesses of his mind. The logical part of his mind knew that with absolute certainty. Yet Dominic did not leave.
Instead,
