CHAPTER 1
Julia Comerford had always known people whispered about her. As one of the infamous Comerford Courtesans, three sisters who had taken the same path of seduction and sin, she’d grown accustomed to it. What she wasn’t accustomed to was the fact that since her older sisters, Arabella and Evelina, had both married in the last year, that the topic of the whispers about Julia had changed.
The Last Comerford Courtesan.
Poor girl.
She must be desperate.
They even spoke, in whispers loud enough that Julia couldn’t pretend not to hear, that certainly she wouldneverhave the luck of love that her sisters had found. And she smiled and pretended and put on the show her sisters and their good friend, fellow courtesan Simone Stanford, had taught her.
Inside, though? There was no denying Julia feared the gossips might be right. The worst part was that all her life she had been only one of the sisters who had believed in love. She’d dreamed of princes and castles and the happily ever afters written about in fairytales. She fantasized about the stories of courtesans who had been swept away by besotted protectorswho gave them a ring, a name, a home and children. Society be damned!
One would have thought that once she saw her sisters each live out that joyful story, she would have had even more faith that it might exist for her. But she didn’t. Whatever she read in books, whatever she fantasized about from operas or romantic plays, she had never felt even a flutter of the abiding passion and adoration she saw shared between Arabella and her husband Silas or Evelina and her husband Vaughn.
No man had ever looked at her like she was everything. And she’d never ached for someone so deeply that being parted from him felt like being denied air. The truth of romance and love seemed to cut deep. And so she was becoming, just as the whispers said,desperate.
“I say, Julia!”
She blinked as the reality of the room and the company she shared came back into focus. Her current protector, Viscount Laurence Castleton, had brought her to a Cyprian Ball that night and the room spun around them with brightness and laughter and sensual tension.
He held out a drink for her, an expression of annoyance on his otherwise handsome face.
“My apologies, Laurence,” she said, pushing away troubled thoughts and taking the offered madeira. “I somehow went miles away in my mind.”
He harrumphed and took a place beside her as he sipped his drink. “I’d say so. I was forced to say your name three times before you acknowledged me.”
She pursed her lips. Castleton was a good protector. He had provided a small home, a generous purse and he wasn’t the worst lover she’d ever gone to bed with. He was even interesting, at least sometimes. And no one could deny how handsome hewas with dark blue eyes, thick hair, broad shoulders and a jaw that could cut glass. He seemed like something from a book.
Two-dimensional, her wicked mind whispered, and she forced the thought away. She took his arm and leaned so that her breast pressed against him.
“I admit Iwasdistracted and that is unconscionable. Would it make you feel better to discover I was thinking of you?” A lie, of course. But women had been telling pretty lies to men to stay out of trouble for millennia. What did one more matter?
There was a slight softening to his expression. “Perhaps. Some wicked little thought, was it?”
She forced a slight smile, hoped it seemed playfully shy. “Always, dearest.”
He laughed and she relaxed a fraction. At least he wouldn’t be angry and sulk all night. Laurence was king of the silent treatment and when it went on for too long, Julia felt like she was going mad.
She drew in a breath to talk to him about anything that would pull his attention from her distraction when someone said, “Laurence!”
There were few enough people aside from herself who called the viscount by his first name. She drew a short breath before she turned with her protector to find the one who did it most often. It was his cousin, Alexander Castleton, a tall man, equally handsome to his cousin, though Alexander had a wiry strength and brown eyes. The two men always called each other by their first names since they shared the last.
“Ah, Alexander, I didn’t know you’d be here.” Laurence pulled away from her to shake his cousin’s hand with great gusto. “You remember Miss Comerford.”
As Laurence indicated her vaguely, Julia inclined her head. “Mr. Castleton. A pleasure.”
Castleton’s gaze flitted over her, a brief perusal that was always followed by a quick dismissal. “Miss Comerford.”
She drew in a little breath. Laurence’s cousin had never liked her, she didn’t think. Actually, she didn’t knowwhathe felt about her. He watched her sometimes from across rooms or when he was speaking to his cousin. It wasn’t a leer like some men did, it wasn’t a disgusted dismissal as some others showed. It was simply…unreadable.
Why he might have negative feelings toward her, she wasn’t certain. After all, men had mistresses, it was the way of the world. She tried very hard not to act a fool or ever embarrass those she shared time with. She had the reputation of her name, but of the three sisters she had worked hard to be the most respectable.
And yet Alexander Castleton was chilly as a winter’s day when he was near her. Even now he looked away and refocused on his cousin. Laurence was still talking, it seemed.
“Managed to pull yourself away from all those dreary family duties, did you?” Laurence asked.
There was a slight tightening to the other man’s jaw, a barest hint of annoyance at the question or the circumstances. She wasn’t certain.
