Perhaps the least she could do was to set him back to rights.
But when he gave her cousin the address in Covent Garden then climbed inside the abruptly close confines of the carriage, she felt it necessary to add, “Duncan will come to my defense if I emit the barest squeak of distress. I won’t be held responsible for what he does to you.”
The man she knew only as Raven eased back against the squabs across from her and folded his arms over his chest. “But who will protect me from you?”
Chapter 4
Jane sat stiffly on the cushioned bench as the carriage trundled along the street toward Raven’s dwelling. In all the hours she’d spent formulating a plan to enter the brothel and study the inhabitants, she’d never once fathomed the possibility of leaving with a scoundrel in tow. And certainly not one so grumpy.
It wasn’t her fault that he was pink. Well, not entirely. “Just so we’re clear, I never asked for your assistance.”
“And I never asked you to ruin my life,” he hissed back and she hated that his voice was still so dratted appealing.
“If the sum of your existence revolves around admittance to a brothel, then you have far more to worry about than the color of your skin. In fact, I recently read a medical journal on a certain . . . ailment, shall we say . . . which some men have contracted when visiting houses of ill repute.”
Within the slitted confines of her lace mask, she slid a purposeful glance down his form to the shadowed juncture she’d read about in the journal.
“I don’t have the pox,” he growled, shifting beneath her scrutiny. “I use French letters.”
Taking up her ledger once more, Jane sat forward with interest. She wished the carriage lanterns were brighter. If nothing else, she would use this unexpected opportunity to compile more research.
“I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve read about them. How do they operate, precisely? Is it a difficult contraption to manage?” She licked the tip of her pencil then gestured to the general area. “And do you have one on your person this instant?”
“No, I’m not wearing one now. That isn’t how it works.”
The scientist within her was inordinately disappointed. She slumped back and tucked the ledger away. “I suppose that ought to be a relief. After all, I shouldn’t want to share a carriage with a man who was merely waiting for the next opportunity.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. I prefer my women more worldly. Not little debutantes who go places they don’t belong.”
Jane knew she was plain. And yet . . . she’d never had it confirmed so blatantly by a stranger before. In the very least, he might have had the decency to imagine her a prostitute the way the other man had done.
“You must be exceedingly familiar with all the women who work in that establishment to know instantly that I wasn’t one of them,” she said, trying to keep the slightly bruised portion of her ego from sounding too waspish.
The amused rumble in his throat told her that she’d failed. The blackguard didn’t even bother to confirm or deny her suspicion, which left her without a further understanding of his species.
“So tell me,” he began with a sharp nod and a growling edge to his voice, “what was the other thing that gave me away, aside from my damnable button?”
It likely shouldn’t please her so much to know that her comment had irritated him.
But it did.
She felt a grin tug at the corner of her mouth. “Frankly, I’m surprised that a man your age isn’t more self-aware. I do not know how long you’ve kept to your disguise, but I saw through it the minute I clapped eyes on you.”
Ha. Let him stew on that, she thought, crossing her arms.
Without a word, he stared at her with steady intensity as if fully prepared to either wait for her to divulge the rest, or to bore through her skull, sift through the contents and glean the information for himself.
And, drat it all, she couldn’t leave it alone. It wasn’t in her nature to leave a question unanswered.
“Very well,” she said, resigned. “You possess a certain . . . feral quality that is never seen in a ballroom or at a dinner party. You prowl rather than walk as if you’ve just emerged from a den and are in search of your next meal.”
“And I’d be feasting now if it weren’t for you.”
A weary sigh faded from her lungs. “Are we to return to this topic again and again? I shudder to think what the world would be like if all men were as singularly focused on sexual congress as you are. All my research this evening on the differences between gentlemen and scoundrels would be for naught.”
“So that’s what you were up to with all your note taking.”
She gave a nod that may or may not have been rather smug. “My friends and I are writing a book to aid future generations of our sex.”
“Smart as all that, are you?” His brows flicked upward and his mouth slanted in unmistakable derision.
She didn’t answer.
“Well, professor, I hate to be the one to shatter your illusions but, stripped of all society’s trappings, men are all the same.”
Of course, he made his speech without a modicum of remorse for his attempt to shatter her illusions. Yet it was his cool smirk in the lantern light that tweaked her ire.
“All alike? No, indeed,” she said. “The majority of men aren’t quite so pink, I’m sure.”
He skewered her with a steely glower. Then, in one smooth motion, he moved to the edge of his seat, reached out and lifted her hood in place before she could even gasp at his sudden nearness.
Her lips parted all the same. The scent of him—some enthralling combination of leather and raw earth—invaded her olfactory sense. And those pale irises were impossibly close. So close, it seemed as if she were peering into the depths of a fathomless lake that had frozen into one solid block of ice.
“Word of warning, Jane. It isn’t wise to anger a hungry animal when you’re about to step into his cave.”
In that moment, she realized the carriage had stopped. She peered out the window toward the redbrick facade of a ramshackle terrace in Covent Garden.
Newton’s apple, a scoundrel’s flat! She most definitely hadn’t planned for this.
* * *
Raven crossed the threshold and closed the door, effectively shutting out the light from the streetlamps and immersing them in blackness. He noticed that the soles of Jane’s shoes shifted nervously on the hardwood floor.
Good. She deserved to feel uneasy and uncertain after all the trouble she’d caused him.
“And I thought you were merely goading me when you mentioned a cave,” she said under her breath, her sardonic tone extracting a reluctant rise of amusement within him.
He didn’t mind the darkness. At least, not anymore. He’d grown accustomed to using all of his senses to take measure of his surroundings.
Already his eyes adjusted to the pale rectangle of light bleeding in through the transom above the door. He tasted the closed-in staleness of the air that told him no one had been here to disturb the dust since he’d left.
But there was a new fragrance here now, teasing his nostrils with the allure of something warm, powdery and feminine—a scent that belonged here about as much as a debutante belonged in a brothel. And, in that instant, he knew this was a mistake.
He never should have invited Pickerington and his meddling cousin to his home. Surely, he could have figured out some way to leach the pink from his skin, even if he had to scrub himself raw with lye to do it.
So then why had he brought them here?
He wasn’t used to having visitors. Wasn’t even used to having a home of his own. In fact, other than Reed Sterling, this peculiar debutante and her cousin were his only guests in the six months he’d lived here.
So it came as a complete surprise to realize that, in some small way, he wanted them to like it. Or, more to the point, that he wanted her to see that he was more than just a brown thread.
What a clodpole he w
as.
“I’ll just light a taper or something,” he muttered, trying to put the ignorant thought out of his mind as he moved past them to the console table.
It wobbled when he slid open the drawer for the tinderbox. The short third leg was on a long list of things he’d yet to fix. But he’d get to them all in time, he thought as he lit a tallow candle and a thick curl of smoke rose from the wick.
“So, this is where Raven lives,” Duncan Pickerington said as the golden light flickered to life, gilding dust motes in the air of the narrow foyer. His block-shaped head fell back to look up at the flat ceiling, his mouth falling slack on an awed exclamation as if gazing up at the heavens instead of huge yellowed scales of torn plaster. “Where’s your landlady?”
“On holiday,” Raven lied, never one to share more information than he had to.
After lighting all six tapers in a bronze brace, he turned his head and saw the inquisitive Jane lower her hood to scrutinize her surroundings. Framed by the mask, her midnight-blue eyes reflected a circlet of flames. Her lips began moving in that soundless murmur again and he waited for her to say something—an observation, a cutting remark, anything—aloud. But she kept her thoughts frustratingly hidden from him.
“You’re lucky,” Pickerington added glumly. “When me dad and me lived in our last flat, we was always being hounded by the landlady. It was likely her who’d done put him in debtor’s prison.”
Jane lifted a hand to her cousin’s shoulder. “Your father will not always be there. Just as soon as his debts are paid, he will be free once more and reunited with the entire family.”
Mollified, Pickerington nodded and commandeered the candelabra with a careless swipe of his meaty grip, guttering two of the candles. Holding the brace aloft, he began to tromp up the stairs ahead of them, leaving his cousin behind. So it was up to Raven to ensure her steps didn’t falter in the more rickety places. He was planning to fix those, too.
In the meantime, he took Jane’s slender wrist in his grasp and tethered her to his side. Touching her bare skin, he instantly recalled the glove he’d stowed in his pocket. But he wasn’t in a hurry to return it. If she could keep her secret thoughts to herself, then he could keep his.
But when she lifted a round-eyed glance to him and he felt the tender spurring of the pulse nestled against his palm, he reflexively stroked his fingertips over the downy skin to soothe her. “The railing isn’t secure.”
“Even so, you cannot simply seize a woman whenever you wish. You offer her your arm and wait for her to accept,” she chided softly. Slipping free, she maneuvered his arm as one would a puppet in a fantoccini then curled her slender limb around him to rest her hand on his sleeve. “This is the proper way to escort a woman up a questionable set of stairs.”
Dubious, he looked down at the disheveled topknot of golden-brown hair, her head coming only to his shoulder. It seemed that his was the more proper way because, like this, he could feel the warm, small curve of her breast press against his arm through the tailored wool.
“If you say so,” he offered. “But take care on the next tread. It might be loose.”
When she pressed even closer, a grin tugged at his mouth.
Who was he to argue against propriety?
Reaching the first-floor landing, he led them down an L-shaped hallway, the walls stripped to the lath and creaking floors underfoot. These repairs to this old boardinghouse were also on his mile-long list.
His carpentry and pargeting skills were learned primarily by trial and error. Plenty of error. But he found he enjoyed the labor, the process of demolishing and clearing out the old in order to make way for the new. And beyond this door at the end of the hall, everything was new.
The agitation that had been with him downstairs dissipated on a slow exhale of expectancy as he turned the key in the lock.
The door swung open on oiled hinges that no longer screeched like a cat. Candlelight gleamed against cream-colored walls.
Stepping inside, Raven breathed in the scent of fresh paint and admired the gloss of his waxed floor. It had taken a good deal of sweat to make this space shine and there was plenty more work ahead of him as well. But all he could see when he looked around him was a life of his own making.
Puffed with pride, he glanced down at Jane’s upturned heart-shaped face.
Her feathery brows knit together above the slender strip of her mask and her lips formed a frown. “Where is your furniture?”
Clearly, they weren’t seeing the same room.
She slipped her arm from his and he was struck by an uncanny impulse to draw her back, to feel her slight form at his side while he explained the hours he’d spent toiling and cursing and despising crown molding. But instead, he shrugged against the taut bands of tension gathering along his shoulders.
“Most of it was broken and moldering. Sold the lot for a few crowns,” he said and felt the fool for expecting her to marvel at the bare floor and walls when the true show-stopper was in the next room. “Besides, everything I need is just through there.”
Taking the brace from Pickerington, he moved toward the varnished door on the far wall and knew that curiosity would oblige Jane to follow. Then, standing just beyond the threshold, he kept his grin tucked away and waited.
This room was sure to impress even the likes of a pampered debutante. It hosted two tall windows, draped in deep blue brocade. They flanked a wide canopied bed with thick walnut posts that dominated the space. On the far wall stood a round-bellied wardrobe at least twice the size of the rat-infested cupboard that he’d been stuffed into whenever he’d been caught running away from the Devil’s workhouse.
An involuntary shudder slithered through him at the errant memory. He swallowed and shook it off, reminding himself that those days were as far gone as the rubbish he’d cleared out of this room.
He followed Jane’s inquisitive gaze as it skimmed quickly past the bed and to the glossy Chippendale side table with a gold tasseled key resting in the drawer lock. She only gave a cursory glance to his spindled corner washstand, paying no attention to the pristine porcelain basin that didn’t have a single crack or chip along the rim. And he’d wager she didn’t know that the tall, leather wing-backed chair by the hearth was more comfortable than any other chair in the world, he was sure.
Every luxury a man could ever want.
In this light, he could see the thick fan of sable lashes around Jane’s wide eyes as they ventured back to the bed. He was especially proud that the mattress ticking and pillows were stuffed to bursting with downy feathers instead of straw or horsehair. It was like sleeping on a cloud.
There was a bit of smugness in him when he asked, “What do you think now?”
In the seconds that followed, Raven waited for those eyes to light up with wonder. Waited for her to exclaim that she’d never imagined such opulence. And waited for her to offer a shy apology for assuming she knew everything about him at a glance.
Brown thread, indeed.
Before she could respond, however, her cousin tromped in behind them and exclaimed, “Damn, that’s a right giant of a bed. I bet the whole house was built around it. I bet”—he nudged Raven and lowered his voice to a dull roar—“you could fit four girls in there at once.”
Jane cleared her throat. She crossed crisply to the far corner and retrieved the chamberstick from the nightstand, her movements brisk and agitated. “Cousin, there’s no point in dawdling. Light a fire in the hearth, if you please. I’ll need as much light as possible in this iniquitous cavern.”
Raven’s ego took a facer. Cavern? This debutante obviously took for granted such lavishness. Likely didn’t have a clue about how hard a man had to work for everything he wanted, especially when he’d started out with nothing.
But he wasn’t about to enlighten this overeducated bluestocking. Rule number four—keep anonymous.
Besides, her opinion didn’t matter in the least. All he needed was for her to take the pink from his skin and then good r
iddance.
And the sooner the better.
Chapter 5
It was Jane’s nature to see the merit in ominous beginnings. There was always something to be learned, after all. And what could be better for the book than studying the intricacies of a scoundrel’s mind whilst standing inside the den where his secret ponderings and aspirations sprouted to life from dreams?
The problem was, this scoundrel only appeared to be interested in sexual congress.
What a dismal end to her evening! Was she to learn nothing new about his species—like, perhaps, how women fell for their seductions in the first place?
She unfastened her cloak and dropped it on the counterpane. Her unmated glove came off next, the black garments mere slivers against a veritable sea of dark blue linens. Without her permission, her mind conjured that very scenario—which Duncan had mentioned an instant ago—of four women sprawled on every corner of this continent.
Until this evening, she would have thought such a carnal overindulgence an impossibility. But after seeing Raven so easily manage the two minstrels earlier, what were two more? Certainly nothing to a man like him.
She expelled an irritated breath.
“I don’t see what has you in such a lather,” he said crossly, his attention on one of the dark bedposts as he turned his thumbnail along the carved, decorative swirl. “You can drive the good humor out of a man like a hammer to nail.”
Watching his slow, careful movement into the slender groove—as if he were intent on ferreting out a secret from the recesses of the woodgrain—she felt a strange tingling sensation along her spine. It started at the sacral curve and traipsed lazily up to her nape, distracting her . . .
At least, until Duncan snickered behind her and she remembered why she was so piqued. Ah yes, the four women.
Jane chose to ignore both men and untied the reticule from her waist. Reaching into the ruched opening, she withdrew an assortment of little green jars, small brown flacons and phials, and a miniature wooden spoon. Then she lined them up on the ledge where he kept his shaving cup and razor. With renewed agitation, she flicked open lids and pulled stoppers, and began combining powders and liquids into a composite at the bottom of the washbasin.
My Kind of Earl Page 4