Scandalous Desires

“How kind of you to volunteer to show me the home,” Lady Beckinhall said. “I vow the prospect of inspecting children’s beds fills me with wonder.”



“Does it indeed, ma’am?” Winter replied woodenly. He turned on his heel and strode to the stairs, starting up them. His worry for Silence—both her person and the harm she might do the home—was ever constant and now he must pander to this woman.



There was a pattering and a breathless voice behind him. “My! Will this be the five-minute tour?”



Winter stopped and turned.



Lady Beckinhall stood, panting a bit, three stairs below him. From his higher vantage point he had an intimate view down her bodice. Her plump breasts were mounded softly, the cleft between them shadowy, mysterious, and far too alluring.



He looked away. “Pardon, my lady. I did not mean to make you run after me.”



“No, of course you didn’t,” she replied.



He glanced at her swiftly. The lady’s blue eyes were watching him mockingly.



Winter sighed silently and mounted the stairs at a slower pace. The next floor held a short, cramped hall with three doors. He opened the first and stood back to let Lady Beckinhall enter.



She swept in and glanced around. “What is this?”



“The children’s beds you were so eager to inspect,” he said without inflection. “This is the boys’ dormitory. As you can see it is in need of repairs.”



She glanced at him over her shoulder and then around the room. The ceiling was low, stains from previous leaks in the roof prominent. Two rows of narrow cots lined each wall. “But you’ll soon be moving into a new home, won’t you?”



He nodded. “That is our hope. I believe, however, that there is still a need for funds to pay for furnishings for the new building.”



“Hmm.” Her murmur was noncommittal.



They needed her money. Winter inhaled. “Would you like to see the girls’ room?”



Lady Beckinhall raised elegant eyebrows mockingly. “Would I?”



Tamping down an urge to reply bluntly, he led her out of the room and into the next, which was nearly identical.



She paced to the far end of the room, peering at one of the cots lining the wall. “It’s very Spartan.”



“Yes.”



Lady Beckinhall delicately touched the threadbare blanket on one of the beds with her fingertips. “Well, the coverlets leave much to be desired, but at least the beds are roomy enough for the children here.”



Winter cleared his throat. “This dormitory houses some seventeen children. The children sleep two or three to a bed.”



She swiveled in an abrupt movement, her rich burgundy skirts sweeping the bare boards of the floor. “Why?”



He looked her in the eye, this aristocrat who’d never known want, and said gently, “Because it’s warmer at night.”



He could see the logical question form in her mind and then her swift glance at the tiny fireplace. The coal scuttle was nearly empty beside it.



She looked back at him, and to her credit, she didn’t try flippancy. “I see.”



“Do you, my lady?” Perhaps it was his impatience coming to a head. Perhaps it was his very real worry for Silence, but suddenly he was tired of sophisticated sparring. Of wasting his meager time on beautiful, frivolous women.



When he spoke again his voice was hard. “They crowd into the beds at night and huddle close, but the hearths aren’t big enough to keep the entire room warm, not with the thin walls. One of the maids must rouse herself in the middle of the night to stoke the fire again. The children who have been living with us awhile are well fed. They are fine, even if the night is cold.”



“And the others?” she whispered.



“If they have come new, often—usually, in fact—they’re thin and weak from starvation,” Winter said. “They haven’t the plumpness of a healthy child. The plumpness that keeps a child warm at night. Most do well after several months of being fed good, wholesome food. But for some it is too late. Those do not wake in the morning.”



She stared at him, her face pale. “I thought you were supposed to tell me how sweet the children are. To woo my money with gentle words and flattery.”



He shrugged. “You seem like a woman who has had more than enough flattery in her life.”



She nodded once and swept past him.



He stared after her, startled. “Where are you going?”



“I think I’ve seen all that I need to, Mr. Makepeace,” she said. “Good day.”



Winter shook his head, disgusted with himself. Every day Silence lived at that pirate’s home, the orphanage was in imminent peril of losing what funding it got from these aristocrats. All the more need, then, to placate women like Lady Beckinhall. The home needed money and if the only way to get it was by toadying up to wealthy widows, well then, he ought to toady and be happy.



Instead, he’d just driven away a potential patroness.



Fool.



LATER THAT NIGHT Silence nervously touched the ruching that decorated the neckline of her new dress. It really was lovely—the loveliest dress she’d ever worn. Before William’s death she had worn colors, but she had usually dressed in brown or gray. Sedate colors, practical colors for a woman who, when she needed to go somewhere, did so by her own feet. London was a grimy city.



Certainly she’d never worn bright indigo blue. She turned a bit before the full-length mirror that had been brought into her rooms. The silk seemed to shimmer and change, sometimes more purple, sometimes more blue.



“It’s simply grand, ma’am,” Fionnula sighed from where she sat on a footstool near the mirror.



The maid had helped her to dress and had pulled back her hair into a knot with a few locks carefully curled at her temples and nape.



“Do you think so?” Silence asked shyly. She touched again the ruched ribbon at her neckline. The bodice was round and deeply cut, highlighting her breasts pushed into mounds by the embroidered stays she wore under the dress.



“Oh, yes,” Fionnula said firmly. “Yer even more grand than the ladies that Himself used to have in his rooms.”



Silence stilled, and wet her lips before asking with feigned indifference. “Used to?”



Alas, she’d never be a good actress.



Fionnula gave her a speaking glance. “Haven’t ye noticed? He hasn’t had a strumpet in his rooms since the day after ye arrived.”



“Oh,” was the only reply Silence could think to make, but her heart leaped willy-nilly with joy.



Fionnula rolled her eyes. “He used to have at least one woman a night, sometimes more.”



“More?” Silence squeaked. “Than one? At a time?”



“Oh, yes,” Fionnula assured her. “Sometimes two or three at once.”



Silence simply gaped, her mind stopped on the thought of Michael entertaining two or three women in his bed at once. Had he… serviced them all? In a single night? How…?



But Fionnula had grown quite chatty. “I never understand it myself. I mean, if it was backwards, as it were, and a woman could have any number of men she wished… Well, I’d never have more than one, I think. Why, can ye imagine two men snorin’ in yer bed? Or three? And what about the covers? When Bran lets me spend the night—which don’t happen often, let me tell ye—he’s always pullin’ the covers off my shoulders in the middle of the night. I wake up, my shoulders numb with cold. No.” Fionnula shook her head. “No, ye couldn’t pay me to take more’n one man to me bed.”



Fionnula turned at the end of this speech—the longest she’d ever made in Silence’s presence—and looked at her expectantly.



Silence blinked and unfortunately an image of Michael, entirely nude, lounging in the middle of his huge bed came into her mind. In the image he was erect, his long penis lying hard and straight against his flat belly. It was ruddy and wide at the tip where—



Oh, dear.



She cleared her throat and said rather huskily. “No, one would be quite enough.”



Fionnula nodded as if her argument was confirmed. “Sometimes I don’t understand men at all.”



“Gah!” Mary Darling cried as if agreeing with Fionnula. She’d slept most of the afternoon as Silence and the maid had worked on the dress, taking in the waist a bit. The baby toddled over and held out her arms to be picked up.



Silence stooped and carefully lifted the baby. “Will you be good and obey Fionnula while I’m out?” she whispered into the dark curls.



“Down!” Mary said, wriggling, so Silence kissed her hastily and put her on the floor, just as a knock came at her door. It was the corridor door, so it mayn’t be Michael, but still she checked her reflection in the looking glass.



Fionnula opened the outer door.



Michael stood there in a fine deep blue coat over a white waistcoat embroidered in silver thread. Diamonds winked on the buckles of his shoes. His gaze went straight to her and something in his black eyes seemed to heat when he saw her.



She instinctively covered her décolletage with her hands.



“Don’t.”



He took three steps and was before her. Gently, he grasped her hands in his own and spread them wide, exposing her bosom framed by the low neckline of the dress. His gaze dropped to her breasts and heat flooded her cheeks.



“Don’t ever hide yerself from me eyes,” he murmured low so that only she could hear.



Her gaze darted to Fionnula by the door. “Please!” she whispered in embarrassment.



His smile was not quite kind. “Ye may cover yerself only when we’re not alone.”



Her breath caught at the sensual promise in his eyes. Did he mean to make their friendship more intimate? And if so, would she let him?



His eyes narrowed at the confusion in her face, but he didn’t comment. He’d thrown a cloak over a chair as he entered the room and now he picked it up and drew it about her shoulders. It was velvet, rich and warm and lined with rose silk. He pulled the edges together under her throat and tenderly tied the cloak closed.



“There,” he said when he was done. “A shield to hide yer modesty behind. And to hide yer identity…”



He held out a velvet half mask.



“Oh!” She’d been worrying all afternoon about appearing in public with him, though she wasn’t sure how to bring up the subject. It was not for her reputation that she worried—that was already ruined—but for the orphanage. Now she looked at him gratefully. “Thank you.”



He gave her an ironic glance and moved behind her. Gently he lowered the mask over her face and tied it behind her head. She could feel his male heat at her back and the whisper of his breath on her nape. Something warm and soft brushed her ear.



Her breathing went shallow.



Then he was beside her again, holding out his arm. His voice was husky when he said, “Come now or we’ll be late.”



She made her good-byes to Fionnula and Mary Darling and then he was taking her hand and pulling her into the hall.



“Late to what?” Silence asked breathlessly.



But he only glanced over his shoulder at her and grinned, white teeth flashing, and so handsome her heart seemed to leap into her throat.



He led her to the front door this time, nodding at the two guards standing there. Outside a carriage waited.



“Is this yours?” Silence asked, eyeing the polished lanterns hanging by the coachman.



“Aye,” Michael said as he handed her in. He leaped in beside her and knocked on the ceiling. “I don’t have much use for it, so I keep me carriage and horses at a stable.”



“And the coachman?”



She saw the flash of his teeth again as he grinned at her in the dim carriage. “One o’ me crew. He had a job as a stable lad in another life.”



“I see.”