The Corrupt Comte: The Bourbon Boys, Book 1 Read online

  “Mademoiselle Pascale,” Celeste said again, louder this time. “Come put on the blindfold, darling.”

  The Pascale girl swallowed, and Gaspard watched, attention rapt, as her throat bobbed visibly. She was scared, he could tell, but that determined glint never left her eyes, nor did her straight shoulders ever slump. Then, with a lift of her pointy little chin, her lips parted as if to speak.

  The smile curving Celeste’s lips hinted at cruelty. “What was that, dear? Speak up.”

  Ah. So the old bitch knew. Beside him, Sabien sighed tiredly. “Here it comes.”

  “Je ne p-préfere p-p-pas.” Though slowly formed, the words were pronounced with perfect inflection, her French flawless.

  “I told you,” Sabien mumbled. “I told you.”

  Gaspard’s back teeth ground together. “It’s just a stutter.”

  “You must really need that dowry.” When Gaspard didn’t answer, Sabien shot him an incredulous look. “Good God, you’re serious about this.”

  “And if I am?” Gaspard knew he sounded petulant and clenched his jaw against any more telling outbursts.

  Sabien pushed out of the chair, the neck of the decanter gripped loosely in two fingers. “I’m not drunk enough to witness your unavoidable folly, my friend. Come find me when it’s over so I know you’ve recovered from what I hope is only momentary madness.” He sauntered off to another corner of the room.

  Gaspard shook his head and returned his attention to the goings-on in the middle of the parlor. The Pascale girl’s wrist had been snared by a determined Celeste. “Come, mam’selle,” she slurred as she dragged the girl toward Max, the rose left over from her tumble in the closet having lost its bloom. “Play the game. It’s why you’re here, no?”

  The girl snatched back her arm, rubbing her fingers over the spot where Celeste had gripped her. She didn’t say a word.

  Max’s judgment must have been too clouded with drink and lust to realize how improper his next words were. “Little Miss Pascale,” he taunted, mockingly inserting the English address into his French. “This is the wrong room for husband hunting. Here, you’re the prey.”

  She paled. “La p-proie?”

  The baron laughed unpleasantly. “Hunters in the room, raise your hands!”

  Several drunken arms shot into the air.

  Gaspard took stock of the men leering at her, putting names to faces and racking his brain to remember what he knew of their various and sundry misdeeds. He was no saint, but compared to some of these cretins…

  Adrenaline spiked again. She couldn’t be in that closet with one of them. She just couldn’t.

  “You wandered into our den, mademoiselle.” There was a sinister edge to Max’s cultured voice that Gaspard hadn’t heard in years, not since— No, it didn’t bear pondering, but it bothered him, and that was new. “Come play with us.”

  The Pascale girl—Claudia, her name was Claudia—lifted her chin in response to Max’s implied threat, and she nodded, brave through her obvious uncertainty. That short, decisive bob of her head had Celeste squealing with glee, clapping her hands like the child she hadn’t been in at least four decades while Max whipped out the blindfold from his pocket and slipped it over Claudia’s wary, shadowed eyes.

  Something low in Gaspard’s gut tightened at the sight. Bindings. He knew about bindings, and so long as they weren’t knotted around his extremities, then maybe…maybe such restraints excited him. Setting aside his now-empty glass, he smoothed the lace draped over his wrists and prepared to enter the fray.

  Celeste spun the blindfolded Claudia in a dizzying circle. Then she was released, swaying and disoriented, and the countdown began.

  “Five,” chanted the eager participants. “Four. Three. Two. One.”

  The chase was on.

  Gaspard stood, the creak of abused, ancient-feeling bones giving way to the exhilarating thrum of hunter’s blood as it pounded through his veins, hot and vital. He watched as she extended her arms in front of her, silent as ever and refusing to utter so much as a gasp as the men in the room rushed her, and the women rushed past her. Her slender fingers, free of adornment, grabbed at the phantom bodies, latching on to nothing but empty air.

  They charged, then evaded. Darted, then dashed. She turned toward each one, her senses coming to her aid seconds too late. Part of the game, yes—but for someone who hadn’t wanted to play in the first place, it would quickly grow frustrating. In her mind, the reward would be the removal of the blindfold and the cessation of this nonsense. For a more willing woman, the inevitable closet antics were prize enough.

  Feeling overtly predatory as he stalked the perimeter of the room, he steered clear of the giggling men and women, preferring to wait for the ideal moment—his ideal moment—to strike.

  Ten thousand pounds, that was his lure. Not the supple-looking curves of her young body. Not the determined chin that hinted at some hidden fire.

  What would it be like to burn in her?

  He frowned, the idea unacceptable. He was hunting now, the best of the lot—the hunter none saw coming. The danger lurking inside him was a subtle thing, expertly camouflaged unless one already knew it was there.

  The blindfolded mademoiselle didn’t stand a chance.

  His heeled shoes clacked an even staccato over the paneled floor. The old-fashioned lace brushed soothingly over his scarred knuckles, and as he lowered his chin, he was made aware of the deep purple cravat knotted high across his Adam’s apple. Every last inch of resplendently foppish fabric made itself known against his tense body.

  His skin tightened with the sudden, visceral need to shed his costume. Yet another desire to ignore, though this one was familiar, constant. The older fashions were cheap and easily mendable by his own hand, their design a perfect distraction for the masses that saw only what they were told to see. His tailoring turned heads even as it kept his secrets.

  He wanted to hunt Claudia Pascale as himself, but that man didn’t exist. That man had never existed.

  A minute later, he’d closed the gap and halted directly behind her, his mouth near her ear. The warm scent of honeyed tea hit his nostrils like a slap. His lashes fluttered as his lids grew unexpectedly heavy, and, curiously, he wanted to smile as his mind blanked but for awareness of her. An awareness he now welcomed as part and parcel of his hunter’s instinct, and he acted upon it without hesitation.

  “Claudia,” he whispered, knowing what she would think. Knowing who she would think stood at her back.

  She whirled around, but he didn’t retreat. He allowed her elegant, ungloved hands to clutch at his arms, enjoyed the dig of fingernails into the taut muscles of his shoulders…all while blisteringly aware of the hushed silence that had befallen the room as his peers noted what was happening in the center of the parlor. Her fingers curled into the lapels of his jacket, and she pulled him closer.

  Fire. Burn.

  “S-Sa—”

  “Shh,” he soothed, hooking a possessive finger into the blue sash beneath her bust. Their audience need not hear the name she was trying to say—confusion over his actions tonight would do more than enough to fan the gossip flames. “Caught?”

  She nodded.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he said to the shocked room as he led her toward the door by the front of her dress. “Starting now.”

  Chapter Two

  Claudia Pascale was a woman with very normal aspirations: a husband, a house, a family. She possessed no extraordinary dreams or hidden desires, nor did she delude herself into thinking she was anything special. Her few talents were limited to the most solitary of pursuits—gardening, the occasional dabble in watercolors and using her meager weekly allowance to indulge her shoe-shopping habit.

  Her appreciation of dancing slippers defied all sense and logic, because Claudia didn’t dance. She clung to ballroom walls and drawing-room corners, and conversed only in the direst of social circumstances.

  She’d made so many exceptions for Sabien Purvis, starting with
a dreaded dance in London several months ago and ending tonight, when she’d followed him from the main party to the parlor.

  Tonight was the night he would kiss her. If she could convince him to kiss her, she knew it was only a matter of time until she could convince him to wed her.

  Claudia needed so desperately to be wed.

  She allowed him to lead her from that dratted parlor, unnerved and thrilled by the casual familiarity with which he touched her—his fingers curling just beneath the curve of her bosom. He’d never dared such close contact before, and she stifled a pleasant shiver as their footsteps echoed on the hallway’s cool marble floor.

  Her hands scrabbled for the blindfold, but he stopped her, releasing his hold on her gown with a gentle hand to her wrist. “Not yet.” His voice was different than she remembered from London. A little…rumblier.

  She liked that rumble.

  The hand at her wrist slid down to clasp her fingers, and she stumbled. His bare palm was so warm, the skin rough, abrasive with calluses.

  She hadn’t known a man’s hand could feel like this. His fingers felt heavy wrapped around hers, firm and strong, and heat wound itself like a satin glove over her wrist, up her forearm to her elbow until she realized she was leaning into his side.

  His hand on hers was the most glorious sensation she’d ever experienced.

  He halted, and she heard the quiet click of a doorknob turning, and then he drew her forward. The overwhelmingly clean smells of vanilla and lavender hit her nostrils, and she knew they had entered the linen closet. He released her hand to close the door behind them, a telling snick as the key rattled in the lock.

  Her hand fisted in the folds of her skirts at the loss of his touch, skin chilling immediately. “S-S-Sa—”

  He silenced her with one of those workman’s fingers to her lips. “Trust me?” he whispered, bending close to her ear.

  She found she didn’t mind being shushed when the reward was physical contact, and nodded. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to beg him to kiss her, after all. Perhaps he would kiss her of his own volition.

  Perhaps she was nearer to freedom than she’d imagined.

  His fingertip fell from her lips, hands coming to rest lightly on her shoulders as he positioned her to face another direction. The blindness began to nauseate her, and she reached for his arms to find gravity, a foundation to steady her in the midst of this sensory deprivation.

  “Step back.”

  Taking a deep breath, she did so. His hands left her shoulders.

  “Again.”

  Another step.

  “Again.”

  Her shoulders hit something sharp and unyielding, but as she reached behind her to feel for what had halted her progress, there was a tug on one of her wrists, and the slip and catch of cool, cheap linen against her skin. “What—?” She managed to rip free the blindfold before her other hand was snatched and subjected to similar treatment—knotting her wrist to what appeared to be a shelf’s post. The forced span of her arms stretched her until she feared her bodice would rip in two.

  She whipped her head forward to glare at Sabien…only to find a stranger looming over her, one hand lifted as though about to touch her face.

  “Je v-vous en p-p-prie…” she begged, attempting to flee and halted by the sturdy wooden shelf at her back, the bindings at her wrists. She was trapped.

  Panic suffused her.

  Escape. She needed to escape. She leapt forward, arms straining against her bonds. The linen didn’t give, instead snapping her back into the shelf with a violent rebound. Her skull cracked loudly—painfully—on the sharp edge, and she cried out as her eyes watered with stinging tears.

  Her chin dropped to her chest, panting heaving breaths. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting for calm, but there was none to be found—not with a big, terrifying man invading her space more and more with every passing moment. She could feel the warmth emanating from his body, and his scent wrapped around her.

  His scent. The daughter and granddaughter of gifted perfumers, she should have known it wasn’t Sabien by his scent. Sabien had always smelled faintly of cinnamon and cloves.

  This man was…a forge. His scent was pure heat. Sparks. Something burning and metallic that hovered in the scant air between them.

  Foreign, his scent was foreign and intimidating, and Claudia suddenly remembered the whispers she’d heard over the years. Years spent listening to everyone and speaking to no one had taught her there were outcomes far worse than a ruined reputation.

  She didn’t know the French, words failing her as always, though this time not due to her condition. Switching to English, she whispered, “Are you g-g-going t-to…rape m-me?”

  “Non.” But he traced one blunt fingertip over her cheekbone.

  A shudder wracked her—not entirely repulsion. Was she so starved for affection that she’d allow a dangerous stranger free rein over her person?

  No. No, she wouldn’t allow that. “Let m-me go.” She opened her eyes, searching out his, imploring. “P-please.”

  The faint light of the lamp sitting in the closet’s corner cast flickering shadows across the stranger’s face. Handsome, but not beautiful like Sabien. Where Sabien’s aesthetic called to mind fairytale princes, this man was starkly attractive, menacing, with an angular jaw and blunt chin, and cheekbones sharp enough to chip diamonds. His long nose had very obviously been broken and reset once upon a time, and light brown hair spilled artfully over a high forehead. His eyes were heavy-lidded and deep-set beneath slashing brows of darker brown.

  She couldn’t discern the color of his irises in the dim light, didn’t care to, and anger slowly began to mix with the fear icing her veins. No one could save her but herself—a lesson she’d learned the hard way. “Let m-me go, n-n-now.” Her chin lifted, her jaw tight.

  He dropped his hand. “Je ne préfere pas.”

  Claudia recognized the words she’d stumbled through in the parlor. “Are you m-m-mocking m-me?” Oh, that stung, even coming from this villain, who she didn’t believe for a second intended her no harm.

  Men with innocent intentions didn’t tie women up.

  “Je n—” He broke off, that low-pitched rumble halting on a burst of frustrated-sounding air. “I do not mock you.” His English carried the jerky cadence of someone unused to speaking it with any sort of regularity.

  He tugged at his coat sleeves, gaze dropping from hers to the fall of rich white lace that spilled from his cuffs. Such a feminine adornment, outdated too, but it matched the extravagance of the rest of his ensemble—the dark blue velvet jacket dressed with mother-of-pearl buttons, the plum-colored cravat set with a brilliant jeweled pin and providing a crisp contrast to his pristine white shirt and shining silver waistcoat. Snowy trousers clung to his legs like a second skin.

  An indecent second skin. “Who are you?” she asked, tearing her gaze from the worrisome lower half of his body. She wasn’t a tall woman, and the height and breadth of this man intimidated her. “Why d-did you t-tie me up?”

  “I am Gaspard Toussaint, le comte du Lorraine-Mâche.” His arms crossed over his broad chest. “I bound you, Claudia, to…to introduce myself.”

  “It’s Miss P-Pascale,” she whispered, tamping down a fresh surge of panic as she stared up at him.

  None are more dangerous than the nobility, child. They have so much to lose.

  Her grandfather’s words echoed in her ears as dread trickled down her spine. She’d thought Sabien, as a military man, was safe to pursue. He would likely have need of her dowry, but as decorated a soldier as he was, he wouldn’t be desperate for it. He would be respectful and not derogatory, less apt to think a merchant heiress beneath him.

  An aristocrat such as the one who stood before her—who had imprisoned her—was an entirely different creature. This comte would be able to see every chink in her armor, every gap in her pedigree. Worse, he could toy with her as he was now without consequence.

  No one would protect her in the afte
rmath of the closet. Her entire body went cold at the realization.

  His solid shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I prefer Claudia.” His stance widened, and she shrank away, feeling the press of shelves at her shoulder blades, the small of her back, just above her knees and again low on her calves. He frowned at her. “You should not fear me.”

  His tone was so sincere, his statement so ridiculous, that it broke through the ice shrouding her. “Of c-course not,” she bit out. “Because this is a p-perfectly normal m-means of introducing oneself.”

  She blinked. With those words, Claudia had said more to this comte than she had to all others in the past weeks in Paris combined. Perhaps she possessed hidden depths, filled to the brim with previously untapped bravery. Perhaps every past instance of cowering before a stronger hand was a mere fluke, and this burst of confidence represented the real Claudia. The Claudia who was going to leave her parents’ house once and for all and never feel tiny or diminished or scared ever again.

  Unlikely.

  He unfolded his arms with such fluid surety that she didn’t have time to react, much less breathe, as he gripped her chin between surprisingly gentle fingers. His shadowed gaze delved hers, searching. “You want Sabien.”

  She blushed. She would admit nothing.

  His fingers tightened. “When I ask a question, you answer. Avec des mots. Vous comprenez?”

  Her eyes narrowed on his stern face. “I understand.” She’d been obvious, it seemed, to the point where this stranger not only knew she wanted Sabien Purvis, but assumed she harbored a deeper affection for the man. “B-but that wasn’t a…” she concentrated on the hard consonant, “…question.”

  “Clever fille.” His thumb stroked over her chin, back and forth, a petting designed to make any female melt in his arms.

  Any female except Claudia, because Claudia refused to melt. Staying immune to his touch was a Herculean task, however. A stronger woman—one who’d spent her youth nurtured by nannies or tackled by siblings or hugged by friends or kissed by loving parents—would be able to stand quietly under the comte’s simple caress. A stronger woman would remain unaffected by this skin-to-skin contact, rarer in Claudia’s life than a sentence free of stutter.