Page 3 of My Fake Mistress
He twisted their posture a little, and flicked his gaze to the balcony, and with immense satisfaction saw Carlson’s wide-eyed astonishment, then his retreating back. They were alone. They should stop. But instead, he licked the seam of her lips. His tongue a question, he teased at her, and when she opened her mouth, he lost all sense of reality and restriction and instead allowed himself to be consumed by her heavenly taste.
A slight gasp escaped from Blythe as they separated. She kept her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted. Julian repressed a brutish thought to grip her chin and claim her mouth again, this time harder and more passionately.
Blinking fast, she opened her eyes, as a mix of shock and fear circled in their jade depths. But also, he recognised what had confused him earlier. Want and wretched, gaping need. While it was only there for a flash, he knew it completely because he felt it writhing to life within his own body, a dormant beast that had been asleep for too long, and now lolled itself upright and realised that it wanted to eat very, very badly.
Not just eat.
Feast.
‘Have we fooled him?’ she asked, the words coming out in a slight pant.
‘If that didn’t persuade him, then nothing will.’ He released her and stepped back. His coat caught on a tree branch. Julian swivelled, trying to catch the offending twig, but then another low hanging limb glanced his face, narrowly missing his nose. ‘Blast it,’ he muttered. ‘I should return to my… to my…’
Blythe caught his arm. She walked her fingers along his chest, to the edge of his coat, then slipped them between his, working lightly at the caught folds of fabric. ‘To your guests?’
‘Yes. I am a host. I should see to them. You should…’
‘Rest. I think I would like to retire.’ As she spoke, the branch sprung free. Blythe looked up at him, then quickly away. The slightly shifting leaves cast haphazard patterns over her, and little prisms of moonlight momentarily highlighted different features. The soft hollow where her jaw and earlobe met. The small bump of her chin. The shadow cast by her lashes. Her plump bottom lip. The turmoil in her eyes.
‘Let me escort you. There are always leachers in the gardens at these things, looking to pounce on unsuspecting…’ He spun on his heel, his shoe sinking into the soil and making him wobble, before he steadied himself on a trunk and plunged through the shrubbery, toward the house. They walked in silence until they reached the side door. Julian opened it just wide enough for her to slip through. She kept her head bowed, focusing on the floor. ‘I will take a different door. To avoid suspicion,’ he said.
Just before she disappeared from view behind the wood panelling, she caught his hand. ‘Thank you, Julian.’ She looked up to him, and he was sure he saw a playful glint in her eyes. ‘For being my fake protector.’
Chapter Two
Thingswillnotbeawkward. Things will not be awkward.
Blythe placed her plate of bread and cheese selected from the breakfast buffet on the banquet table, then lowered herself into the seat beside Yvette. Each morning of the house party, a long, grazing spread was laid out for guests to attend to at their leisure, and this morning, about thirty or so early risers sat in scattered groups. She gave a brief ‘good morning’ to Julian seated at the head, then to Carlson opposite her. She grasped the teapot and poured herself a cup of tea. Well, she poured the tablecloth a cup of tea, and when she heard the glugging liquid splat against the linen, she jerked the pot upright. A little more spilled, and a few stray drops landed on Carlson’s nose. She grabbed her napkin and laid it over the spreading damp, desperately trying to sponge away her inattentiveness.
‘Blythe, you are normally so steady. Did you not sleep well?’ Yvette asked as she sacrificed her own napkin to help.
‘I slept,’ Blythe said, and in her mind, she addedterribly. I slept terribly because all night all I could think of was your father.
Julian leaned back in his chair, extended his arm, and with the slightest flick, gestured to one of the staff. Three of them materialised and with barely a word, the plates were raised, the offending cloth removed and replaced. In the time it took for Blythe to blink and place her napkin into an anonymous outstretched hand, their small segment of the banquet table had been renewed.
Just like that, her error erased. She sipped her tea and settled into the comfortable realisation that this weekend, she wouldn’t have to do everything herself. She would be a part of a different world.
The year before, Blythe had met Yvette in London when Yvette was in town for the season. Blythe had been at one of Yvette’s friends, cleaning a painting, when they had fallen into conversation. They’d talked about her work, books, dresses, art, politics and the latest mix of gossip, news and recipes fromThe Times. In all her twenty-three years, Blythe had never met a woman with as ranging a set of interests as herself, and neither had Yvette. All her clients and their daughters were so vague and insipid, and in her work, she was almost always the only skirt in the room.
Apart from her aunt as chaperone, Yvette came to London alone. ‘Father never socialises,’ she had said with a mix of faux disapproval and genuine love. ‘Says the season is just a meat market. Really, he misses my mother. I don’t remember anything about her but her smile, and that she always wore a string of pearls.’ Her gaze glazed, before she snapped back to attention. ‘Come to the theatre. We have a box.’
And in just a snippet of time, Blythe had found herself woven into the canvas of Yvette’s life, attending performances, going to poetry readings, and just walking through the parks. Yvette hadn’t cared she was an orphan who rented a room in a women’s boarding house, hadn’t cared that she had no beau, and nor did she want one, and did not care that all her money came from her work. If anything, it had seemed to increase her interest. And when Yvette had invited her to the country house for her birthday weekend, of course Blythe had said yes. The chance to be a part of the world she otherwise only glimpsed from the invisibility of her work was too tempting. And everyone knew these old houses were full of artworks from great masters. She might be able to examine a hidden masterpiece without the watchful eye of a gallery guard. It also offered a chance to shed the drudgery of her frugal life, if only for a few days.
But now, because of her rashness, would everything be ruined?
Julian flicked out his paper and took up a slice of toast, crunching into it as he scanned the headlines. Perhaps she had been alone in the torrent of confusion. Perhaps he met women in the bushes for clandestine encounters all the time. Or perhaps, it had just been what they had said—a ruse to convince Carlson.
‘Let’s hope you have steadier hands at the gallery,’ Carlson drawled. ‘Otherwise, you might have to fall back on some other employment.’
Blythe stiffened, her insides squirming. She had counted on Carlson’s adherence to some unwritten code of gentlemanly understanding to keep it secret that her and Julian were lovers.
Not lovers.Fakelovers.
‘Speaking of Blythe’s skills,’ Yvette said as she swirled her spoon in her tea. ‘I thought while she was here, she might look at the paintings.’
‘They are everywhere,’ Julian said with half a wave at the walls around the hall. ‘She can look whenever she likes.’
‘Not those on display. The ones in the attic.’
