Marguerite Kaye - Behind the Courtesan's Mask

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London, 1818

Troy Templeton, the Earl of Ettrick, has been tasked with the strangest job of his diplomatic career: visit London’s most notorious courtesan, La Perla, to warn off the ambassador’s besotted son. Instead, he’s irresistibly drawn to her beguiling combination of sensuality and unexpected innocence.

Little does he realize that “La Perla” is actually her twin sister, Constance. Staying in her sister’s home, Constance is aroused by its erotic ambience and dreams about the sinful delights that have taken place within its walls. And as La Perla, she can finally experience such pleasure for herself with Troy—if she can maintain the ruse….

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

About the Author

London, Summer 1818

Constance gazed admiringly at the portrait. A likeness, she noted, taken by one Thomas Lawrence in May 1817. Barely a year ago. The subject, with her famed rope of pearls providing a lustrous contrast to her olive skin, was reclining on her stomach on a red chaise longue, her luxuriant auburn hair trailing down over the curve of her back. She was all but naked, a lace peignoir draped casually over her bottom, her back, ankles and feet bare, and so much of her full breasts on display that Constance was almost certain she could see a hint of nipple. The smoldering beauty was not looking directly out of the portrait, but at some other point, some male lover perhaps, her heavy-lidded gaze seductive, her full lips pouted into a lazy smile.

It was a provocative portrait, blatantly erotic, which Constance found somewhat disturbing. Touching the pearls, now worn around her own neck, she felt as though she was looking at another version of herself. A mirror image she had not known existed. A sensuous alter ego that had been trapped, for all those years, within the constraints of the respectable life she had led.

A gauze of tears blurred her vision. Annalisa! She had never known her in the full bloom of beauty and the notoriety that had made her La Perla, the most sought-after and exclusive courtesan in London. The frail woman who had arrived so dramatically and unexpectedly on Constance’s doorstep had been a pale shadow of the lustrous beauty in the portrait, her body wasted by the consumption that was eating its debilitating way through her body.

Annalisa. La Perla. Her identical twin.

Constance wiped her eyes on a lace-edged kerchief. Annalisa’s kerchief, as was the house she was occupying, the dress she was wearing. It had felt strange at first, this urge to inhabit her sister’s life, but instinctively she felt that by doing so, even just for a few hours, she might somehow come to know and understand the exotic creature whose very existence she had been unaware of until six months ago.

Turning away from the portrait, Constance ran a hand over the satin bedcovers. Crimson. Scarlet. Vermilion. The color of sin. A frisson of excitement shivered like a puff of summer wind across her skin. Sinful. Redolent of sin. That is how Granville, her departed husband, would have described Annalisa if he had ever met her. Granville, the man of the cloth, who had performed his marital duties as he performed his Sunday confessions, with something akin to fastidious distaste. Yet the little Annalisa had disclosed about her sinful life had made it sound illicitly and shockingly pleasurable, enough to make Constance wonder, to make her wish, just once, to experience such pleasure for herself.

Above the bed, fitted into the ceiling, was a large mirror. Beside the bed, in a polished walnut chest, lay a selection of exotic items, the uses for some of which Constance could not even begin to imagine. Rope sheathed in velvet, large plumes of colored feathers. The sweetly smiling faces and elaborate dresses of what she took at first to be dolls concealed a length of carved ivory shaped to simulate, Constance realized blushingly, a man’s shaft. Not that Granville had ever been so hard or so large.

Dipping her fingers into scented oils, slipping her wrist through what looked like a swansdown manacle, Constance tried to conjure up the dark and pleasurable world that her sister had inhabited. What would it be like? How would it feel to be her? To sin with a virile man, a potent man, a desirable man? A man who found no shame in indulging his desire? She closed her eyes, caressed her cheek with the feathers of the manacle and shivered. Here in this temple of the flesh, which was Annalisa’s domain, it was almost possible to imagine the exquisite pleasure that might result. Arousal rippled through her.

Giving herself over to the decadent ambience, Constance wandered through to the dressing room, where another chest contained swaths of exotic undergarments. Sumptuous colors, gorgeous textures, clearly designed to tantalize, excite, provoke. Slowly, she put on a pair of black stockings, enjoying their silky caress as she rolled them over her legs. Another cupboard was full of slippers with jeweled heels. She selected a scarlet pair, to match the ribbons on her garters, lifting her gown to view the seductive effect in the mirror. She smiled provocatively, emulating Annalisa’s portrait, and found she no longer recognized herself. The woman who stared back at her was a familiar stranger. Confidently alluring. Voluptuous. Constance had never thought her curves voluptuous before.

In a locked box, beside her jewelry, were Annalisa’s potions, presumably the arts she used to prevent the consequences of all that sin. They were both childless, though for Annalisa it had been a choice, for Constance a tragedy. Barren, Granville had called her. His barren wife. Wincing, as the familiar pain squeezed her heart, Constance quickly locked the box again.

As she did so, the front doorbell clanged, making her jump. There were no servants in the house, Annalisa having closed it up when she left, knowing she would not be returning. Constance hesitated. Who could it be? No one knew she was here. The bell clanged again. Picking up the navy blue satin of her half robe, she made her way cautiously down to the entrance hall. The layers of lace petticoats rustled seductively. Her satin slippers with their ridiculously high heels clacked on the marble tiles. The scarlet garters that held up her stockings fluttered. The bell clanged again and again. The knocker had been removed, but a heavy fist began thumping impatiently on the door.

Constance wrestled back the locks and flung it open, almost colliding with the solid bulk of man on the other side. A strong arm steadied her. She looked up. And up. Into a face so forbiddingly handsome, she drew a quick, sharp breath. Glossy black hair, worn unfashionably long, the ends curling over the pristine white of his intricately tied neck cloth. Thick black brows over sooty-fringed eyes, which must be dark brown, but looked darker. A strong nose. Surprisingly sensual mouth. Dark skin, almost swarthy, as if he spent too much time in the sun. A shadow of black stubble on his cheeks, a dark cleft in the middle of his chin. Black as sin. As if her imaginings had been made flesh, she though fancifully.