Strathmore felt another unfamiliar spurt of irritation. Julia’s face was unreadable when Beaumarchais’s gaze seemed to linger on her breasts hidden in the shadows of Strathmore’s evening coat. Normally, he was slow to anger, but something in the cool hauteur of Julia’s face set off a series of small explosions in his chest. He clenched his jaw, the annoyance a foreign emotion. Wadsworth droned on while Strathmore began contemplating the more concrete details of getting through the evening successfully. He reached for another drink—brandy—and studied Julia over the rim of his glass, then drained it.
He was getting soft. He’d already decided that he wouldn’t kill her and now he was hesitating fucking her.
God damn himself to hell and back. He was not an unlucky man but for some unforeseen reason, all logical thought had fled him the moment he’d laid eyes upon a dreary spinster who trailed in her wake the aroma of musty books, copper, and iodine. He was acting like some damned Lothario, strung as tight as a bow, because of a woman who conjured, of all things, feelings of protectiveness. He nearly spewed his last gulp of brandy onto the carpet. Protectiveness? He knew better than anyone women’s capacity for cruelty. They truly were the stronger sex.
He considered Julia Woolcott, meeting her eyes for a moment, like the glancing of fencers’ foils. She was untried, his gut told him. He hadn’t expected that. He hated virgins, never had one before in his life, not even when he was offered the youngest daughter of the Sultan of Perak, and he was not about to start.
He pretended to listen but didn’t hear the words tumbling from Miss Woolcott’s lips as Beaumarchais and Robertson leaned over her like two slavering dogs with a bone. He listened as Beaumarchais regaled her with details concerning Wadsworth’s cache of lewd memorabilia including erotic drinking vessels and phallic sculptures made of precious stone. Robertson invited her to join him the following day to discover the contours of Wadsworth’s secret garden wherein the shrubbery resembled the female form, with two hills topped with pink flowering shrubs and a tightly cropped triangle of forest.
Strathmore forced himself to straighten away from her chair. Nothing marred the serene innocence of her expression. No coquettish guile. No flirtatious smile. Only the concentrated, intelligent gaze that, he convinced himself, hid more than it revealed.
Fuck. What was he going to do?
Somewhere in his peripheral vision, the sinuous Felicity hanging on his arm, Wadsworth clapped his meaty palms, his pronounced jowls and heavy joviality urging his guests to be seated. The heavy double doors dividing the salon, embossed with cavorting nymphs and satyrs, began to open slowly, as if by unseen hands.
Chapter 4
The light dimmed. The aroma of burning wax scented the air. Julia shivered. Strathmore’s hand held her arm in a firm commanding grip as he eased her back into her chair. The huge double doors parted, candlelight falling upon and then playing with a set of flowing curtains.
“Follow my lead.” His breath was hot in her ear as he stood beside her. She didn’t have to turn her face toward his. His image burned behind her eyes, hitching her breath as when he’d first appeared on her threshold in his elegant evening clothes, clean shaven, stark featured, his gray eyes unfathomable.
“I am quite willing to go through with this, Strathmore,” she said stonily, her mind focused on the goal of gaining purchase into the world of Montagu Faron.
“That remains to be seen.” His voice was low, unassailable with a hint of aggression coloring his usual inexpressive tone. Suddenly, she was all too aware of the diaphanous dress clinging to her body in the most tenuous way, reminding her of why she was there. She glanced around furtively, at the intense profiles of the men and women in the room, their mouths slack with lust as they watched the scene unfolding before them.
Julia swallowed hard, counseling herself to become the observer, the eye behind the lens as she watched a group of three men and two women embracing on an oriental carpet. They were slick with some kind of unguent, offering their nakedness to each other to caress and play. Their bodies were like the Greek and Roman statues she had seen at the National Gallery in London, the men taut and rippled with muscles, the women subtly rounded with high, bouncing breasts.
She watched, her muscles tensing with each movement and each caress, unbearably aware of Strathmore’s strong hard hand at the nape of her neck, conscious of the fleeting stabs of pleasure, invading her senses. Her mouth dry, she watched the two women twisting and bending to give the men purchase to every orifice of their bodies. She tried to avoid the obvious—the hard upthrust appendages of the men, the shadowed hollows of the women.
Was it a dream? Or a nightmare? Her exposure to the opposite sex had been limited to a string of tutors, one paler and more harmless than the next and Randolph Codger, the son of the local vicar. She forced herself to focus on the memory, anything to take her mind from the abomination taking place in front of her. She and Randolph were more excited by their passion for William Gruber’s Stereopticon view camera they shared than a passion for each other. She recalled one furtive kiss, after a Christmas reverie, buoyed by mistletoe and rum punch.
She kept her eyes half closed. Her gaze was riveted on the scene before her, setting her mind reeling, the memories of Randolph Codger dissipating like dew in the heat of the salon. It was nothing like she had ever read, nothing like the books in the library at Montfort. Even the specter of marriage had never hinted at such unholy fusion of writhing bodies. The prospect of matrimony had never been on the horizon. Meredith’s disquiet dictated they rarely move in London circles, which didn’t allow much opportunity to meet possible matches. If she and Rowena had harbored such desires deep in their hearts, they would never have let their dear aunt know. Julia had lost herself in her studies and photographic pursuits and Rowena in her love of the outdoors.
She had boasted to Strathmore just hours earlier of her sophistication. How absolutely absurd. She flushed at the memory and at the two women offering their breasts to the men who began sucking them noisily while they rooted their hands in the women’s nether regions. They appeared as one twisting, sinuous beast, one body merging with the next.
Julia’s pulse pounded in a combination of burning shame and desire. Need, as unfamiliar as rain in a parched desert, flooded her chest. She yearned to regain control. Watching was unimaginable, unconscionable, impossible—as the two men grabbed one of the naked women, slick with oil, and pushed her to her knees.
Julia squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, the woman was being serviced from behind while she attended to the other man with her hand and her mouth. The remaining man and woman, beautiful and naked as Adam and Eve, walked hand-in-hand into the room toward the spectators.
Toward her. Spots danced before her vision and she felt faint, she who prided herself on her quiet, cool reason, her unflappable calm.
She bit back a moan of pleasure and shock. Worse, she was blindingly aware of Strathmore so close to her she could feel the heat from his body. She licked her dry lips. Good lord, he was watching her every reaction, from the pulse jumping in the hollow of her neck to her thighs that she squeezed tightly shut in an attempt to halt the flow of sensation raiding her body.
She dared herself to take in the scene immediately around her. Robertson had seated himself on one of the settees and pulled the naked woman onto his lap, immediately latching onto her breasts. Julia jerked her gaze from the sight only to see Wadsworth and Felicity join the nude man in one of the alcoves. Before she could look in the other direction, Julia saw Beaumarchais make his way toward her, already loosening the complicated knots of his cravat until it billowed like an unmoored sail behind him.
She made a sound of alarm at the back of her throat. Suddenly, she was pulled violently to her feet.
“Play along.” Strathmore’s breath was hot at her ear and on the soft skin of her