Robin Schone by Gabriel's Woman (10 ebook reader TXT) 📕

looked to be in his midthirties, and did not appear at all chagrined to see a woman wearing nothing

but a towel.

She immediately recognized him as the man who had led her to Gabriel the night she had sold her

virginity. Gaston, Gabriel had called him.

Scrambled thoughts flitted through her head. He would know of the condoms that she had requested.

Would he now apprise the servants of her scrawniness?

Victoria took a fortifying breath. She had stood naked in front of Madame René without running for

cover; she could at least stand before Gaston covered in a towel without collapsing into hysterics.

“May I help you, sir?” she asked icily in the voice that had occasionally quelled rambunctious charges.

Gaston smiled, brown eyes warm. “Mais non, mademoiselle. I merely brought you these boxes.”

The white boxes he held out were stamped with red rose petals.

Victoria shrank back.

“Non, non, mademoiselle,” Gaston said quickly. “I delivered these myself from Madame René. See?”

Gaston set the boxes onto the rumpled bed.

Heat surged through Victoria; it was not sexual in nature.

A large stain blotched the corner of the sheet where she had lain, body leaking her pleasure. A metal lid

lay on the satinwood night-stand; there was no mistaking the rolled sheaths that lay inside the small tin

beside it.

Gaston did not seem to notice. Or perhaps, employed in the House of Gabriel, he no longer paid attention

to the physical realities of sexual union. He lifted the lid off of a rectangular box.

Victoria steeled herself, remembering blood, remembering Dolly’s ha—

The box contained a black satin corset.

Apprehension turned into feminine curiosity.

“Voilà.” Gaston turned to Victoria and flashed her a smile. He had perfect white teeth. “It is merely a

pretty corset, mademoiselle.”

The heat surging through Victoria’s body did not diminish at Gaston’s reassurance, a carryover from the

years spent pretending to be a paragon of virtue. It did not matter that her pleasure stained the sheets or

that an open tin of condoms sat on the nightstand. Men did not discuss—or flaunt—women’s underwear.

Gaston was impervious to the restrictions imposed by society. He proceeded to open each box,

describing the softness of silk chemises, holding up a pair of drawers adorned with blue ribbons so that she

could admire the paper-thin silk, proudly displaying garter belts, silk stockings, fine silk gloves, a bustle that

looked more like an apron than the wire cage Victoria had worn for years.

Approval glinted in Gaston’s brown eyes. “It is très fashionable— Monsieur Gabriel picked it out.”

While Victoria pondered the thought that Gabriel had personally chosen intimate apparel for her, Gaston

—like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat—held up a golden brown colored silk reception dress that

should have looked tawdry with its garniture of wine-colored velvet and lampas underskirt of cream with

green, yellow and dull red figures; it was beautiful.

She involuntarily reached out. Corded silk clung to her fingertips.

It was far softer than the cheap silk drawers she used to purchase—only not so cheap on a governess’s

salary.

“Mademoiselle will need help with her dress,” Gaston said with obvious anticipation.

Victoria snatched her hand back, abruptly, achingly aware of the towel that draped her body and the

bare flesh it did little to hide. She would not allow another man to see her naked. “I assure you, sir, I am

capable of dressing myself.”

Gaston really did have a disarming smile. She remembered the smile in Gabriel’s eyes when yesterday

she had reprimanded him over the number of boxes stacked on the couch.

And now he had picked out underwear for her.

“Non, non, mademoiselle, you misunderstand me,” Gaston said hurriedly. “I do not offer my services;

Monsieur Gabriel employs maids. I will send one of them to you.”

Victoria had dressed herself ever since leaving her father’s house.

“Thank you, but that is not necessary.”

“Mais out, it is necessary, mademoiselle,” Gaston adjured. “Monsieur Gabriel has instructed that we

care for your every need.”

There was no stopping the blistering heat that surged into Victoria’s cheeks. “I assure you, sir, my every

need has been attended to.”

“C’est très bon—it is good that you have come.” The knowing gleam inside Gaston’s brown eyes was

unmistakable. “Monsieur Gabriel, he has been alone too long.”

Gabriel had referred to an orgasm as come. Surely Gaston did not—

“He will not allow me to touch him,” Victoria said.

She bit her lips—too late, the words rang out.

Gaston’s brown eyes did not condemn her. “But he has touched you, n’est-ce pas?

There was no mistaking the evidence of his touch.

Her lips were swollen, her eyes shadowed.

“Yes.” Victoria squared her shoulders. “He has touched me.”

Gaston slowly refolded the dress. “Monsieur Gabriel has not touched a woman—or a man—in all the

time I have been with him, mademoiselle.”

Victoria’s throat tightened. “How long have you been with him?”

The brown-haired Frenchman neatly tucked the beautiful golden-brown dress back into the box. “I have

been with Monsieur Gabriel for fourteen years.”

“You are his friend?”

The rose-petal stamped lid closed over the crimson silk dress.

“We at le Maison de Gabriel—the House of Gabriel—are not his friends, mademoiselle.”

Victoria’s eyes widened in surprise.

Dress safely boxed, Gaston’s thick dark lashes slowly lifted. Victoria looked into Gabriel’s eyes, brown

instead of silver.

“We are his family,” Gaston said flatly. “In this house we are all family