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Explosive. Charlotte MedeЧитать онлайн книгу.

Explosive - Charlotte Mede


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very interested, darling.”

      And Susannah seemed overly informed.

      He shifted to a sitting position on the side of the canopied bed, the corded muscles in his arms flexing. “Interested enough that I recommend we return to the reception before the recital begins. And more important, I wouldn’t want to deprive your legion of admirers of your company.”

      Susannah replied by snaking one arm around his abdomen pleasured by the sensation of finely tapered muscle. “Just five more minutes,” she whispered beguilingly, smolderingly confident that her seductive pose would have the desired effect.

      Blackburn felt the sway of her pointed nipples against his back as moist lips and tongue traced a path across his broad shoulders. “Blackburn,” she growled low in her throat, “don’t ever think another woman would be any match for me.”

      “I think we’ve had enough talk,” he circumvented the possessiveness in her voice, leaning over her lazily, “of Le Comte and his mistress.”

      Yet her image wouldn’t leave him alone. The wide gray eyes as she faced him in the dark cell at Blackfriars Bridge, the generously expressive mouth, the controlled sensuality evident in every motion of her body swathed in brown wool. The sensuous whisper of rich silk.

      Unaccountably annoyed, he shunted the memory and one of the abundant pillows aside. His hands, equally familiar with intrigue and seduction, continued to caress the silken skin of the eager Lady Treadwell, skimming over her abundant curves. He felt her lips snake persuasively over his taut stomach, narrow hips, until he forgot everything except the spasms of pleasure that racked his body—all the while de Maupassant’s concert proceeded circumspectly below.

      Le Comte Henri de Maupassant barely contained his excitement behind his habitual mask of hauteur. His eyes swept the ballroom of his town house, a massive hall that had been recently regilded without thought to cost. On this night he had made sure that one thousand candles cast incandescent light over jeweled and silk-clad guests who were all holding their collective breaths between sips of the finest champagne.

      All the better for him to see the Marquess of Blackburn snap the first trigger of an elaborate, and deeply satisfying, trap.

      “It’s truly shocking and should not be countenanced,” he heard Lady Hester Bankfort intone, as she pursed thin lips and tapped her meager bosom with a fan for emphasis.

      “And that’s precisely why we’ve all decided to attend,” reminded her daughter-in-law Belinda who, along with the two hundred or so of the cream of London society, filled the ballroom of Comte Henri de Maupassant.

      “Even if she is his mistress,” allowed Lady Bankfort while giving a brief nod to Le Comte and to a knot of gentlemen already arranged in a row of exquisite Louis Quinze chairs for what was to be the London Season’s most scandalous recital. “But to parade her about shamelessly, like some kind of odalisque…”

      Le Comte heard her voice trail off in a huff of disapproval. “Public performances given by a woman! The French take simply too many liberties.”

      Le Comte knew the slight was intended for him, a host whose aristocratic lineage, far superior to Lady Bankfort’s, quite frankly rankled. He also knew that Lady Bankfort and the rest of his guests were conveniently forgetting the moral and material excesses of previous decades when enmity with the French loosened both fashions and mores.

      He circulated with an air of entitlement among his guests, his expression faintly patronizing. Relinquishing his glass of champagne to a passing footman, he went to stand within a few feet of a gleaming mahogany Broadwood pianoforte. A hush descended as the candlelight flickered around the man for whom, gossips liked to say, libertinage was a religion. With a string of mistresses, one more beautiful than the last and, conveniently, a wife and requisite heirs permanently traveling abroad, Comte Henri de Maupassant lived as if the ancien régime had never gone the way of the guillotine.

      The family history was well known, the lives lost to the Terror, and the quick escape to England with a cache of gold and jewels dating back to the Middle Ages. Le Comte had all but been raised in England save for forays to the continent to reclaim gradually the ancestral lands in France.

      “That’s where he found her,” someone in the front row of the assembled guests whispered, “at the Conservatoire in Paris.”

      Le Comte smiled faintly in acknowledgment of the remark, his face the detached mask of the polished host. He raised a white-gloved hand for silence and turned to the fashionable crowd who were having trouble dissembling their unfashionable excitement.

      Ah yes, the right combination of scandal and titillation always served as the most delectable kind of enticement.

      He was certain that Wellington, Whitehall, and the Marquess of Blackburn were all too aware of whom he was dangling right in front of their noses. What delicious irony, ensnaring England’s master spy to do his bidding at long last—and in the most banal way possible. Through the seductive allure of a woman.

      “Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,” he began. The sibilant tones carried just a charming hint of accent. “My most heartfelt thanks to all of you for granting me this opportunity to introduce a remarkable sensation.” Le Comte paused deliberately for a moment, lingering on the syllables of that last word, relishing the palpable tension in the room.

      “I know that many of you are truly devotees of music, worshippers at the shrine of Apollo, loyal disciples to the world’s greatest composers,” he continued with the barest trace of irony. His words drifted over the candelabra bracketing the footmen who were positioned around the alcoves of the ballroom. Only the fine murmur of expensive fabrics and hushed breaths punctuated the absolute stillness.

      “And to do justice to this great devotion, I have the honor of introducing to you this evening my most recent protégée, a young woman recently arrived from France whose talent at interpreting the work of one of our greatest composers is, I submit to you, unparalleled.”

      A few nervous coughs as the audience shifted in their chairs and several of the men endeavored not to lean noticeably forward, monocles raised in anticipation.

      De Maupassant turned expectantly to the back of the ballroom and began again: “Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, Mademoiselle Devon Caravelle.”

      As though perfectly choreographed, a figure emerged into the light from under one of the alcoves. As lorgnettes and monocles were raised to catch a glimpse of Le Comte’s latest paramour, she glided toward the pianoforte silently, a column in a swathe of silver tissue. Her slender neck was set off by a square bodice unadorned except for a single choker of emeralds, a deliberate sign to all society of her protector’s possessiveness. Walking gracefully, she held her head high.

      Le Comte watched as she reached the small podium which had been positioned in the center of the ballroom. For a moment, she stood facing her audience, her white expanse of shoulders posed against the rich brown of the Broadwood, her expression giving no ground. Her luminous gray eyes regarded her audience almost brazenly, radiating an intelligence and bravado that were shocking in the rarefied elegance of the room.

      He bowed slightly as Devon sat before the pianoforte, her dark red hair a halo of fire against the purity of her profile. A few men in the front rows shifted in their evening finery, Le Comte noticed with satisfaction, hardly immune to the strikingly sensuous figure Devon Caravelle presented. She paused, hands held quietly in her lap, her slender legs still. Le Comte took his seat, pleased beyond measure as the first chords of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” were struck.

      Strong, wild, and tempestuous, the notes filled every corner of the great space, feeding the growing excitement and disapproval of the assembled guests. It was astounding, scandalous, a woman playing Beethoven when everyone was expecting, at best, Bach. And the choice of music, the “Appassionata.” Everyone knew it had been inspired by the composer’s young mistress.

      A totally inappropriate selection, yet how astonishingly and ardently she played. Her supple hands coaxed from the instrument emotions both voluptuous and controlled, her beautiful


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