A Counterfeit Courtesan Read online

  A Counterfeit Courtesan

  The Shelley Sisters Book 3

  Jess Michaels

  Copyright © 2020 by Jess Michaels

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This entire series has been dedicated to Shelly Das and Jenn LeBlanc.

  * * *

  Jenn, your amazing creativity always boosts my own. I could not imagine doing a book anymore without playing in your playground first. And that doesn't even begin to explain how deeply I value our friendship. Thank you for mentioning sushi at that conference all those years ago because I don't know how I'd get along without you. XOXO

  * * *

  And Shelly, this series started as a joke about how we could get you on all my covers forever. It's turned into one of my favorite and most successful series. Thank you for being you, an amazing model, a talented production assistant and most of all, a great friend.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Coming Soon

  Excerpt of The Love of a Libertine

  Also by Jess Michaels

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Late Summer 1812

  Ellis “Handsome” Maitland leaned back against the long bar, drink balanced in his hand as he scanned the wide, open room before him. It was a room he knew well, for he had hunted here at the Donville Masquerade for years. The notorious underground sex club was the perfect place for a man like Ellis to find lovers, find marks, find trouble.

  Trouble had found him here, too. Not the harmless, fun kind. The real kind. The kind that had destroyed too many lives. The kind he had to end now in the only way that made sense anymore. There would be consequences, but there always were. This time he wouldn’t be able to avoid paying them…and he had accepted that.

  He slugged back his drink with a wince. A fissure of pain shot from his shoulder at the movement. He’d been injured there a few weeks before. The wound was healing but still ached. Only it wasn’t just physical sensation that made him flinch, as much as he’d like to pretend it was. Fear ripped through his chest. Perhaps he hadn’t fully accepted the consequences that would come. But he was working on it.

  Across the room, the big double doors carved with rutting lovers opened and a woman stepped through. Not all that shocking. After all, ladies made up nearly half the occupants of the room, seeking their pleasure with as much gusto as the men here did. Sometimes with more gusto, truth be told. It was a safe place to do so. Most everyone here wore masks, which gave all the attendees freedom to explore and surrender and play to their heart’s content. He wore one too and lifted his hand to touch the leather edge as he adjusted it.

  What made the newcomer stand out was how little effort she put in to doing so. The ladies who came here were mostly experienced. Married women seeking what their husbands could not or would not provide, widows who refused to climb into a grave with their lost lovers, courtesans who sought the safety this club and its owner, Marcus Rivers, provided while they sold their wares for pleasure and enormous profit.

  Everyone here had their role and their place, and as Ellis looked at the woman who had just entered the room, he realized she did not. It wasn’t that she didn’t try. She wore a mask, but unlike the other ladies who made a show with feathers and satin and jewels, the disguise was plain. Her gown was daring enough. The neckline dipped down, revealing the upper swell of a truly lovely pair of breasts, but it looked like she had merely altered an existing gown, perhaps removing some tulle or lace that had once offered more modesty when it was worn in a ballroom or a parlor. The gown was certainly not designed to attract in this den of sin. It had butterflies on the fabric, for God’s sake.

  And then there was her demeanor. The lady stood stock-still just past the entryway and stared into the room, mouth open in just the slightest manner as she stared around her in what appeared to be shock.

  Ellis had ceased to be shocked by anything in this world when he was eight. Jaded, his cousin always used to call him. Before Rook stopped speaking to Ellis weeks ago.

  He shook his head and pushed that troubling thought away. Protecting those he cared about was why he was here. Not pretty ladies who were looking around the big room at couples pawing each other, suggestively dancing, rutting against the wall as others leered.

  The woman across the room shifted, looking back toward the door behind her. But she didn’t run. She fisted her hands at her sides, and he watched her draw a long breath that lifted her breasts. Apparently gathered, she came farther into the room. So, there was steel in her. Courage. He respected that.

  It had been a long time since Ellis had played the libertine. Once upon a time, it had been his greatest pleasure, his way to make a living. Love games were his expertise. He’d carefully chose a mark, one who needed what he provided and little more, or one whose bad behavior made his ultimate abandonment fit their prior crimes.

  Then he seduced. He convinced. Ultimately, he fucked. Everyone left satisfied, at least physically, he with a heavier purse. But in the last year or so…he’d had no interest in such things. His only attempt at a seduction scheme had started and ended badly…with his cousin’s now-wife, Anne Shelley. Anne Maitland, he supposed, and winced at the thought.

  The only flare of real desire he’d felt in that time had risen at the most inopportune moment, with a woman who surely despised him. The new wife’s sister, actually. Juliana. Her very name was a benediction. A prayer Ellis sometimes woke saying in the night, hard as a rock as he remembered a brief moment when he’d held her in the midst of hell on earth.

  But as he shook those thoughts away and stared at the woman at the door, he realized he wanted her. Just wanted her. Not for any ulterior motive, but because she had drawn his eye.

  “Why not?” he muttered as he scanned the room another time and found it still devoid of the man he was hunting. “There won’t be many chances left for pleasure, after all.”

  Those maudlin words hung in the air around him as he downed the remainder of his drink, set it behind him and shoved off the edge of the bar to stalk toward her.

  She didn’t look like she fit here, but certainly she must. Women didn’t come to the Donville Masquerade unless they wanted the kind of pleasure innocents couldn’t fully understand. Her darting gaze and shifting body could very well be part of a game. Something a smart courtesan might do. Play the innocent. Bring in the bees through a different kind of sweetness than that of the experienced women who were moaning and pleading in the crowd around them. Hesitance had its beauty, after all. It made a man want to chase.

  If this fetching woman wanted to play games, Ellis Maitland was the perfect man for her.

  He edged closer, and she turned at his approach, lifting her gaze to his. He came to a sudden stop as he stared at those eyes. Eyes that he knew. Eyes that had haunted him for nearly a month, dancing into his dreams, digging
him further into a hole he would never escape.

  He knew those eyes. Knew their owner even though he’d only touched her once, held her once as she trembled in fear that was all his fault. The two of them had bled together. He, after being shot trying to protect her. She, after being sliced with a knife because he had failed. Even now, he saw the edge of a scar on her cheek peeking out from under the mask. He flinched at the sight of it and the proof it provided to his mystery woman’s identity.

  Juliana Shelley.

  But what was she doing here? What the hell was she doing standing in the middle of the Donville Masquerade, looking up at him with an expression of interest and fear, but not recognition?

  Well, he was damned well going to figure that out. So he shrugged on a new mask, the one of “Handsome” Ellis Maitland. A persona he had come to hate as much as the physical mask that pinched the bridge of his nose as he smiled at her in false greeting.

  Juliana Shelley couldn’t breathe. She knew how to breathe, of course. She must know how, she’d been doing it all her life. But she couldn’t seem to drag in air as the very tall, extremely well-favored man she’d noticed at the bar the moment she entered this place crossed the room toward her.

  He couldn’t be coming for her, of course. Not when all around her far more experienced women offered things she’d been taught all her life to withhold. She was shocked by what she saw, in truth. Men and women grinding together in a titillating display of activities she had only ever read about in a naughty book she’d found in her father’s study months ago.

  Being here was far more powerful than looking at those things, dreaming of them while she touched herself.

  She swallowed hard because the man coming her way had stopped. He was just an arm’s length from her now, and he stared at her, seeking…something. She didn’t know what exactly, but she shifted under his regard.

  He had a black leather mask covering the top half of his face, but she could see the almost navy blue of his eyes, the fullness of his lips, the harsh line of his jaw. His dark hair was a little too long and slashed across his forehead in a wild wave she somehow wanted to smooth.

  Her heart rate increased as he gave her a half smile. Something cocksure and a little smug. She should have been turned away from such an expression, surely she had refused many a man of her class in the past because of his smirk. But that wasn’t what she wanted to do now.

  “Good evening,” he said, his voice low and rough in the din around them.

  There went breath again. She could only hope she would remember how to form coherent sentences a bit more easily.

  “Good evening,” she returned, and hated that her voice cracked a little.

  He arched a brow. She saw the movement beneath the leather, and for a moment, she felt a sense of familiarity. But that wasn’t possible. She didn’t know this man. She couldn’t.

  “I couldn’t help but notice your entry into the hall,” he purred as he grasped two glasses of wine from a passing footman’s tray. He held out one and she took it with shaking hands. When she did so, his fingers brushed against hers. By design, she thought, but that didn’t reduce the effect of him touching her.

  It was like fire under her skin. She sipped the drink to soothe her dry throat and try to regroup. “Thank you?”

  He chuckled at the question in her tone. “But I can’t help but wonder if you know what you came for.”

  She jerked her face toward him. He had a touch of mockery to his voice now. Her spine straightened in response. She had never been the one in her family to fight—that was her sister Anne—but right now Juliana felt like channeling that strength to defend herself.

  “I came here for what everyone comes here for,” she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze. “Perhaps it is you who is confused if you must ask me what that is.”

  She sounded far braver than she felt, and for that she was pleased. He, on the other hand, looked less than happy. His full lips pursed a fraction—was it in annoyance? She couldn’t tell without a full view of his expression. And in that moment, she realized just what a dangerous position she’d put herself in. She didn’t know this man or his intentions or motives. He could be of a cruel bent. He could be the kind of man who didn’t accept no as an answer. Or who reacted with violence when challenged as she had just challenged him.

  She swallowed hard, waiting for him to say something, do something. Then he cocked his head.

  “I beg your pardon, my lady. I think I have offended you. I didn’t intend it.”

  “You didn’t offend,” she said softly, carefully. She glanced around them, the spell broken for a fraction of a moment. There was a couple at a table just to her left who were passionately kissing. The woman was perched in the man’s lap, grinding down on him as their tongues tangled.

  She darted her gaze away as a gasp left her lips and her body jolted with awareness. Gods, what had she done by coming to this place?

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” he said.

  She turned her attention back to him, wishing she didn’t feel so hot and achy when he was standing so near. She nodded. “What is it?”

  “Why are you here?” He motioned his head toward the kissing couple. “Your shocked expression when you see them touch each other, it says to me that you aren’t a bawd as you might wish to be seen.”

  She lifted her hand and touched her mask. It covered the scar that sliced her cheek. She couldn’t feel it beneath the fabric, but she knew it was there.

  Memories returned to her in a wave. Of a man who’d taken her because he thought she was her sister. As one of a set of triplets, that was a common mistake, but this time it had nearly proved deadly. The man had attacked when he wasn’t given what he wanted.

  And she was left…damaged. She saw it in the mirror every day. She knew what it would do to her future, especially when combined with the shocking actions of her sisters as they’d found their true loves in the past weeks.

  “I’m here because I don’t want to…”

  She bent her head. This man was a stranger; she owed him no explanation. And yet with the masks, telling him some version of the truth felt easier.

  “Want to?” he encouraged, almost gently.

  She worried her lip with her teeth. “I want to feel something good,” she said. “I want to feel something just for me.”

  He was silent for a long moment, holding his gaze on hers. It felt like an eternity passed by, like they were suspended in their own bubble amidst the shocking debauchery of the room around them. Then to her surprise, he held out a hand.

  “Come with me to the back room.” His voice was even rougher now. It seemed to dance up her spine, and she shivered against her will. “And I can make you feel something. That thing you want to feel.”

  She stared at his outstretched hand. Ungloved, strong, lean fingers, a scar across the top of the second and third knuckles, a fresher one on his palm. She let her stare slide up the man’s forearm, hidden under black wool, to the bicep that strained against the same, to broad shoulders that spoke of strength caged beneath propriety.

  And finally she let her gaze settle on his lips. This was what she’d come for, wasn’t it? This moment where a man would choose her, would guide her to some quiet room and take her. Take the thing she had been guarding her whole life, and for what?

  She didn’t want her innocence anymore. She wanted to feel alive.

  Still, those old habits died hard. Politeness, propriety, protection. If she took that hand, everything would change. There was a strong part of her that wanted to pivot and run from this room and its heady air of sex and passion. Run from a man who would crook his fingers and know she’d follow.

  “Miss?” he said, his tone gruff.

  She let out the breath she’d been holding and took his hand. “Yes.”

  There was a flicker of something in his eyes as she touched him. Desire, she thought. That particular emotion had never been pointed at her, but she’d seen such a look in
both her sisters’ husbands’ expressions when the couples thought no one was looking. But there was something else in this man’s gaze, too. Respect? Regret? Some combination of the two?

  She didn’t understand it, but it didn’t matter what kind of past or pain brought this man here. It only mattered that he drew her forward, through the milling crowd, back to the entrance to a long hallway. He spoke briefly to a man standing there and then guided her farther from the relative safety of the hall. Into dimness and darkness.

  From behind the doors she heard soft sighs, louder moans. People were…doing things in those rooms. Wicked things she couldn’t help but imagine. Every sound put her further on edge. Made her question her decision, solidified the same decision as excitement grew in her chest. She was going to bed this man. Or let him bed her. She wasn’t certain she knew how to bed anyone, but certainly not this man who glanced over his shoulder as he opened the last door in the hall.

  Their gazes met.

  “Still want this, angel?” he asked.

  She tensed. Angel. Another man had called her angel once, not that long ago.

  She pushed the thought away. She wouldn’t think of him. She refused to acknowledge she’d thought of him at all over the weeks since she last saw him. Since an afternoon of blood and pain and confusion that had changed her life forever.

  “Yes,” she said, a bit too loudly as she tried to make the thoughts go away. “Yes.”

  He pursed his lips again and stepped inside the room. She entered behind him, passed him, looking around. It was a small room with a big bed in front of a roaring fire. It seemed clean, elegant even, with its sophisticated artwork and silky coverlet. Odd, for she had not pictured a club of ill repute being so fine.