Dangerous Games. Charlotte MedeЧитать онлайн книгу.
the circumstances.
“Although as you are newly affianced, I can’t help wonder why your soon-to-be husband decided to leave you alone and defenseless in the midst of a dangerous melee.”
She wanted to shut out his words but couldn’t, trying instead to bring St. Martin into focus despite the blurring of her vision. Defending Bellamy, she said, “He was merely looking out for the both of us and thought it best to do the proper reconnaissance. And as though you would have anything to say about the matter, my lord.” The cold air in her lungs did nothing to revive her. She took another cleansing breath, refusing to lean on him, although, inexplicably, she wanted to do nothing else.
She thought she saw a shadow pass over his face, the lines tautly drawn, his onyx eyes hooded. “You assume correctly, Mrs. Hampton. I know nothing of protecting a wife.”
Suddenly, she was brought up close to his chest. He was tall. She had forgotten just how tall and how hard and unforgiving his arms could be. Charles had been elegant and fine. And Bellamy was corpulent and robust. But this man…Residual shock and overwhelming fatigue blurred her thoughts.
So when she found herself bundled into a hansom cab, its sturdy wheels and sheltering interior were a welcome respite. In the dark, she sank into the squab cushions and into another layer of lies building up rapidly around her. Beside her was a man who had threatened her yesterday and saved her life tonight.
And she was going home with him.
Chapter 7
Constance St. Martin shrugged off her wrapper with the insouciance of a concubine. Bellamy’s pale gaze burned in satisfaction as he leaned back in his chair like a pasha prince.
She was stunning, with jutting breasts barely concealed by the satin rail that had probably cost him a king’s ransom. His eyes tracked her languid walk, like liquid silk as she moved toward him across the floor, her narrow bare feet sinking into the luxuriance of the Indian rug. Hair the color of a raven’s wing, she looked like a fairy-tale princess, but he knew differently.
“Darling,” she purred, leaning over him in his chair, her musky scent finer than anything a Parisian perfumer could conjure. “You’re a very bad boy expecting me to stay here, locked away, day after day, night after night.” Her fine lips pouted her disapproval at the memory of the long days of her incarceration in her opulent palace. “And you had the temerity to go to the theater this evening without me?”
Bellamy shook his head as though dismissing a small child. His last hours at the theater still rankled. The impudence of that poseur, Duleep Singh, and the ultimately futile demonstration by his supporters on his behalf was beyond belief. A decade ago, colonialists would never have dared express their discontent with their rulers. And in London of all places.
He tightened the sash on his robe until it dug into his corpulent flesh. The pain was welcome, drowning out his frustration with that squat little queen and her even weaker consort who invited anarchy to their doorstep. The vote in Parliament loomed on his horizon, championed by Victoria herself, to take power over his empire and cede it to colonial government in India.
Unthinkable.
“You didn’t miss much,” he said, keeping most of his thoughts to himself as he had learned to do so many years ago. “The play was tedious and my companion even more so.”
“What’s she like, your companion?” Constance leaned closer, and he could smell the laudanum on her breath. She was usually not interested in other women, but her green, almond-shaped eyes narrowed further. Like the feline she was, she sniffed competition in the air.
Constance would soon learn her place, silly, demanding creature that she was, thought Bellamy. She was no different from the slatterns his mother had kept about. “Lilly Clarence is not simply my companion, she’s now my betrothed,” he said silkily, dangling the skein of wool before the cat, baiting for her reaction.
Constance raised her fine eyebrows mockingly. “You’re taking a wife. How interesting and how terribly boring. You know how tiresome I found my own marriage to dear Julian. And you actually helped me do something about it, naughty boy.”
Bellamy sat still, the mention of St. Martin a tonic to his system. That he held that man in the palm of his hand was galvanizing. And as for his wife…He could feel her breath. Warm, sultry. He reached up and squeezed her left breast, hard, like he was testing the worthiness of one of his polo ponies back in Lahore. Instead of reflecting pain, her eyes widened momentarily and caught the look in his. For a brief second it occurred to him that she was the ringmaster, not he, raising the curtain on their lust.
Impatient with his own weakness and yet fully aware of her worth to him, he pushed her away. “Instead of talking so much, why don’t you make yourself useful?” He jerked his chin in the direction of an exquisite Sheridan escritoire and the decanter of brandy. “I crave some refreshment.”
Constance swayed away from him, peevish now, the cloud of laudanum still hanging over her, supremely unaccustomed to male indifference. She looked around the lavishly appointed room disinterestedly, barely taking note of the rich, watered-silk wall covering and the Louis quinze four-poster with its elaborate canopy.
She flicked her hair over her shoulders with an exaggerated shudder. “I don’t think so, darling. I don’t fetch,” she murmured. He wondered briefly whether her reaction was part of the twisted game they both loved so much. “Why don’t I assist you by calling in one of those burly guards that you keep posted outside this chamber day and night?”
Without waiting for his reply, she sauntered to the door and opened it wide. A moment later, a tall, heavyset man, hands clasped behind his back and eyes cast down, hurried over to the escritoire.
Bellamy’s breathing quickened, the thought of a woman ordering about a man, any man, even a servant or guard, simultaneously arousing and revolting. Flynn was having difficulty focusing on his task, his large hands clumsy with the decanter, the crystal, his senses obviously overwhelmed by Constance who made sure she remained in his sight, tempting, seductive, and forbidden.
The whore.
The clatter of glass jangled his nerves. “Go now,” he barked at Flynn, who fumbled with the crystal he was holding before awkwardly setting it down and backing out the door. It closed behind him silently.
“And you”—Bellamy rose from his chair and strode toward Constance—“you will remember your place. Which implies your wearing modest garb whenever you are with a man other than myself. I won’t clarify again.”
Constance took an affronted breath. “Are you completely mad? This isn’t the benighted colonies. You’ve spent too many years with primitive savages, clearly.” Rising to the moment, she reacted as though her world was coming to an end, waving her hands imperiously. “I’ve had enough of languishing away in a backwater for all those years with Julian. And I won’t have it again.”
“You came to me, as I recall, pleading for help.”
“And you promised me that lovely major and all the diversions with Dr. Vesper that I wanted if I cooperated with your plans,” she whined.
He could have her killed. Yes, right now, her body disposed of as quickly as the maid who’d met her own ignoble end at the dexterous hands of St. Martin the other evening. It had been decades since anyone had the temerity to ask inconvenient questions of Isambard Kingdom Bellamy.
But much as he would like to squeeze the life from her deceptively fragile form, he would have to wait. Bellamy smoothed the arms of his chair with open palms, conjuring one of his most delectable fantasies. He imagined the lengths St. Martin would go to see his wife raised from the dead and returned to him. For a price of course.
His momentary anger with this whore had to be managed, leveraged, when there was so much at stake. Constance St. Martin was his guarantor—in the eventuality that her husband decided to continue drowning in his own guilt. Highly unlikely. Constance’s high whine momentarily shut out, Bellamy stretched his thin mouth into a smile,