her body. She averted her gaze and noticed that Mrs Silver was smiling meaningfully in her direction. Arabella saw the older woman gesture towards the glasses and suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be offering champagne to the gentlemen.
Miss Rouge had already dispensed with the first bottle and one of the men uncorked the second and began to pour. Arabella’s hands trembled so much that she feared she would be unable to disguise it, but she knew she could not just stand there staring at Dominic. Perhaps if she busied herself he would stop looking at her with that too-seeing gaze.
She crossed the room towards Mrs Silver and collected two crystal-cut glasses of champagne as she had been told. And all the while her mind was reeling from the impact of seeing Dominic after all this time. She felt panicked, agitated, unable to think straight. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to marshal her thoughts, struggling to control the shock that was roaring through her veins.
Of all the places to see him again, when she had learned to live with the weight of that which had almost crushed her. Maybe he would fix his attention on one of the other girls. Maybe. But would it be any easier to stand here and watch him take Miss Rouge or Miss Vert or any one of the other women upstairs? Could she feign a smile, pretend a flirtation and go willingly with another man, knowing that he was here? She shook her head in an infinitesimal movement of denial. This night had promised to be the most difficult and degrading of Arabella’s life. Dominic’s presence made it nigh on impossible.
A hand touched against her sleeve and she opened her eyes to find Mrs Silver looking at her with both warning and concern.
‘One hundred guineas a week,’ she mouthed almost silently. ‘Think of the money.’
Arabella gave a tiny nod at the reminder and reined in her emotions with a will of iron. A deep breath … and then she turned around.
Dominic was standing right before her.
‘Miss Noir, I presume.’ His gaze swept slowly over the transparent dress before coming back to rest upon her face. ‘Arlesford, at your service, ma’am.’
So he did not know her after all. Thank God! She breathed a silent sigh of relief at that small mercy and steeled her nerves to play the role of a woman she was not.
‘Your Grace.’ She forced the words to her lips and curtsied, but she could not bring herself to smile. Every bone in her body felt chilled to the marrow, every inch of her skin cold and bloodless. This was the meeting, albeit not under such circumstances, she had prayed so hard first for and then against. All her beliefs that she was over him, that she no longer cared, had been a delusion. She cared so much that it was as if the air had been knocked clean from her lungs.
They stared at one another and for Arabella it was as if the years had rolled back and she was looking at the man she would never manage to forget no matter how hard she tried. She averted her gaze, lest he see even a grain of her riotous emotions in her eyes, and glanced around the room.
The other women were smiling and conversing in coquettish teasing tones, each paired with a single gentleman. From the corner of the room Mrs Silver was looking at Arabella with a look of exasperation. The older woman gestured with her eyes from Dominic to the two glasses of champagne, that Arabella was still gripping for dear life, and back again.
There was no way out, no room for retreat. Arabella held her head high and forced her gaze back to Dominic. ‘Would you care for some champagne?’
He ignored her question and studied her with those dark brown eyes that were so disturbingly familiar. The seconds seemed to stretch to minutes as they stared at one another, the champagne seemingly forgotten. But then his eyes darkened and he accepted the glass from her hand.
‘I should …’ She glanced round for another gentleman to whom she might pass the second glass but all of the men were already drinking and their attentions most definitely engaged in so obvious a manner that made Arabella feel as embarrassed as if she had been an innocent.
‘It is for you, I believe,’ Dominic said. He paused and the dark gaze held hers once more before adding, ‘Perhaps we can drink our champagne together … upstairs?’
Arabella’s heart stumbled and missed a beat before galloping off at full tilt. The breath caught in her throat. The whole world seemed to turn upside down.
She knew what his suggestion meant.
Dominic had chosen her.
Her whole body trembled at the knowledge and she did not know whether it was the worst thing that could have happened or the best. Nearly six years, and yet it was as if her lips still burned from his kisses, her body still tingled from his love-making. To give herself to him again, and for money, flayed her pride more than anything.
Her hand itched to dash the contents of her glass in his face, to shout at him, to refuse him in the cruellest of terms. A vision of him standing there, his face and hair soaked from her champagne, his pride slurred before his friends swam in her mind, and that imagining was the one glimmer of light in the grim darkness of what was happening. But Arabella did not indulge her fantasy; she could not afford to. Even through the force of all that raged within her, she did not forget the stark truth of why she was here at Mrs Silver’s House of Rainbow Pleasures. She had her responsibilities.
And she was honest and practical enough to admit to herself that, if she must couple with a gentleman this night it was better that it was Dominic rather than some stranger.
She glanced again at the other men in the room, at their faces glistening with sweat and flushed from drink and the greedy lust and excitement in their eyes. No matter how much she was loathe to admit it, the knowledge that it would be Dominic, and not one of them, was something of a relief, albeit a bitter one.
And if she kept the mask in place he would never know the identity of the woman for whom he was paying. And that at least would make it tolerable.
Arabella swallowed her pride. Her eyes met his. She nodded and turned to lead the way to the room Mrs Silver had shown her.
Within the black-clad bedchamber Dominic could not take his gaze from Miss Noir. He knew that he was staring and still he could not stop. His intention of watching over Northcote had been forgotten the moment he had set eyes on her downstairs in Mrs Silver’s drawing room. God help him, but he could no more have turned away from her than stop breathing. It was as if the years had not passed and it was another woman standing before him.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.
Hell’s teeth, he thought, but she even sounded like her.
Miss Noir’s fingers fluttered nervously around the edges of her mask.
‘Forgive my manners, but your appearance stirs memories from my past. You have the very likeness of someone I once knew.’ It was the reason he was standing here with her now in the bordello’s bedchamber and the very same reason why he should have turned his back and walked away. The pain had returned, and the bitterness, but when he looked at this woman he wanted her with what could only be described as desperation.
He wanted her because she looked like Arabella Tatton.
She did not smile or simper or offer playful seductive words. She did not unlace her bodice or stand before the fire to reveal the outline of her legs or lie upon the daybed with her skirts arranged to show her stockings. Rather her expression was serious, and her manner, for all she tried to hide it, was one of unease. She just stood there and watched him, all calm stillness, yet the white-knuckled clasp of her hands gripping together betrayed that she was not as calm as she was pretending. And beside her on the small occasional table, amidst the coil of dark silken ropes and the feathers and fans, the bubbles sparkled and fizzed within her untouched glass of champagne.
He drained the contents of his own glass in an effort to dampen the strength of emotion the woman’s startling resemblance stirred.
‘You seem a little nervous this evening, Miss Noir.’
‘It is my first night here. Forgive me if I am unfamiliar with the usual