by Lisa Kleypas
As she continued to weep, Derek hovered over her in baffled dismay. He excelled at seducing women, charming and deceiving them, breaking down their defenses ... everything but comforting them. No one had ever required it of him. “There, now,” he muttered, as he had heard Lily Raiford say a thousand times to her crying children. “There, now.”
Suddenly she was leaning on him, her small head resting at the center of his chest. The long skeins of her hair draped everywhere, entangling him in a fine russet web. Alarmed, he lifted his hands to ease her away. Instead his arms slid around her until she was pressed against him length to length. “Miss Fielding,” he said with great effort. “Sara ...” She nestled deeper against him, muffling her gulping sobs in his shirtfront.
Derek swore and furtively pressed his lips to the top of her head. He concentrated on the chilly night air, but his loins began to throb with an all-too-familiar pain. It was impossible to stay indifferent to the feel of her body molded to his. He was a bloody charlatan ... no gentleman, no chivalrous comforter of women, only a scoundrel filled with raw desire. He smoothed his hand over her hair and urged her head into his shoulder until she was in danger of being smothered. “It’s all right,” he said gruffly. “Everything’s fine now. Don’t cry anymore.”
“I sh-should never have gone off with Mr. Jenner, but I was angry with you for ... for ...”
“Yes, I know.” Derek searched in his coat and found a handkerchief. Clumsily he plastered it against her wet face. “Here. Take this.”
She peeled the linen from her cheeks and used it to blow her nose. “Oh, th-thank you.”
“Did Jenner hurt you?”
“No, but he left me, right in the middle of that m-mess—” Her chin wobbled, heralding fresh tears, and Derek interrupted in alarm.
“Easy. Easy. You’re safe now. And I’m going to wring Ivo Jenner’s neck—after I wring yours for going with him.” His hand slipped under her cloak to her velvet-covered back, kneading the knotted muscles.
Sara gave a last hiccup. She drooped against him, shivering. “You saved me tonight. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”
“Don’t think me. We’re even now.”
“I am grateful,” she insisted.
“Don’t be. I’m responsible for some of this. I should have known it was you behind the mask.” His eyes swept over her luminous, tear-streaked face. “Perhaps I did, somehow.”
Sara was very still, soaking in the warmth that mingled beneath their cloaks. The heel of his hand rested on the side of her breast, while his other spread across the small of her back. “Where did the dress come from?” he asked, his breath a puff of white mist in the air.
“Lady Raiford.”
“Of course,” he said sardonically. “It looks like something she would wear.” He glanced into the open neck of the cloak, where the shadow of her cleavage was visible. His thumb moved high on her breast, lingering at the edge where velvet ended and soft skin began. “Except you fill it out differently.”
Sara pretended not to notice the gentle fondling, even as her blood quickened and her nipples contracted within the velvet sheath. “Lady Raiford was very kind. You mustn’t blame her. Coming to the assembly ball tonight was my idea. It was all my fault, no one else’s.”
“I suspect Worthy and Lily were damn eager to help you.” His knuckles brushed over the top of her breast and around the side, until a tremor of pleasure went through her. He spoke softly against her hair. “Are you cold?”
“No,” she whispered. Liquid fire raced through her veins. She felt as if she had drunk some heady concoction a hundred times more potent than wine.
Derek eased her head back and stared into her eyes. “I want you to forget everything that happened tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going back to your village tomorrow. You’re going to marry your Mr. Kingsfield.”
“Kingswood.”
“Wood,” he repeated impatiently.
Sara moistened her dry lips. “Will you forget, Mr. Craven?”
“Yes.” His gaze flickered to her mouth, and he let go of her.
Momentarily disoriented, Sara swayed and found her balance. She half-expected him to tell her it was time to leave, but he seemed in no particular hurry. Wandering to the wooden fence nearby, he leaned against the highest rail.
“Shouldn’t we return to the club?” Sara asked, following him.
“For what? There’s not much left of the assembly, after the raid your friend Jenner arranged. No more guests, no gambling ... and fortunately for you, no more rum punch.”
Sara blushed deeply. “That punch was quite intoxicating,” she admitted.
He laughed, inspecting her flushed cheeks and her uncertain balance. “You’re still flying high as a kite, angel.”
Relieved that he was no longer angry with her, Sara folded her arms and glanced at the quiet streets. The wind seemed to carry the faint howl of the distant mob, though that was only a trick of her imagination. She wondered if their gruesome purpose had been accomplished, if they had reveled in pulling apart the highwayman’s corpse. The thought made her shudder, and she told Craven what Jenner had said about the mob. He listened without surprise. “How can people behave in such a way?” Sara asked. “How can they watch executions for entertainment? I can’t understand it.”
“I did, when I was a boy.”
Her jaw dropped. “You went to hangings, a-and floggings, and disembowlings, and ... but you didn’t enjoy it. You couldn’t have.”
Derek met her gaze without blinking. “Now I take no pleasure in death. But at the time I had quite a fascination for it.”
Troubled by the admission, Sara reminded herself that as a child he had lived in an underworld of crime and sin, brought up in brothels, flash houses, and the streets of the rookery. But still she found it difficult to accept the image of him cheering as a man strangled at the end of a rope. “What did you think, as you watched them being hanged?” she asked.
“I considered myself lucky. At least I wasn’t up there. I was hungry, and didn’t own so much as a piss pot ... but at least there was no rope around my neck.”
“And that made you feel better about your situation?”
“I had no ‘situation’ Miss Fielding. I fought, cheated, stole for everything: the food I ate, the gin I drank ... for women, sometimes.”
Sara colored slightly. “What about honest labor? You worked sometimes. Worthy told me you did.”
“Labor, yes. Honest?” He shook his head and snorted in bitter amusement. “You’d rather not know.”
Sara was quiet for a moment. “I would,” she said suddenly. “I would like to know.”
“More material for your research?”
“No, it’s not that at all.” Impulsively she touched his arm. “Please. You must believe I would never betray a private confidence.”
Derek stared at the place on his sleeve she had touched, even after her hand was withdrawn. He crossed his long legs and kept his eyes on the ground. A heavy swath of black hair spilled over his forehead. “I was a climbing boy until I got too big. Some of the chimneys were only two or three bricks wide. I was small for a boy of six, but one day I couldn’t squeeze myself through the flue.” A reminiscent smile crossed his face. “You don’t know what hell is until you’ve been stuck in a chimney.”
“How did they get you out?” she asked, horrified.
“They lit a bundle of hay underneath me. I tore half my hide off, scrambling up that chimney.” He laughed shortly. “After that I worked on the docks, loading crates and boxes. Sometimes I skinned and gutted fish, or shoveled manure and hauled it from stableyards to the wharf. I never knew what a bath was.” Sliding a glance at her, he grinned at her expression. “Stank until even the flies wouldn’t come near me.”
“Oh, my,” she said faintly.
“Sometimes I mudlarked—stole cargo from the waterside, sold it under the table to crooked merchants. I wasn’t much differ
ent from the other lads in the rookery. All of us did what was necessary to survive. But there was one . .. Jem was his name ... a scrawny boy with a face like a monkey. One day I noticed he was doing better than the rest. He had a thick coat to wear, food to fill his belly with, even a wench on his arm now and again. I went up to him and asked where he was getting his money.” His face changed, becoming coarse and hard, all trace of handsomeness wiped away. “Jem told me. On his advice, I decided to try my hand at the resurrection business.”
“You ... joined a church?” Sara asked, bewildered.
Derek gave her a startled look and then began to choke with laughter. When she asked what was the matter, he actually doubled over, gasping for breath. “No, no ...” After dragging a sleeve over his eyes, he was finally able to control himself. “I was a bone-grubber,” he explained.
“I don’t understand—”
“A grave-robber. I dug up corpses from cemeteries and sold them to medical students.” A peculiar smile crossed his lips. “You’re surprised, aren’t you? And revolted.”
“I ...” Sara tried to sort through her scattered thoughts. “I can’t say I f-find the thought very pleasant.”
“No. It was far from a pleasant business. But I’m a very good thief, Miss Fielding. Jem used to say I could steal the twinkle from the devil’s eye. I was a good resurrection man—efficient, dependable. I averaged three a night.”
“Three what?”
“Bodies. By law, surgeons and medical students can only use the corpses of convicted felons. But there’s never enough to go around. So they paid me to go to burial grounds near hospitals and asylums and bring them the newest corpses I could find. The surgeons always called them ‘specimens’.”
“How long did this go on?” Sara asked with a horrified shiver.
“Almost two years—until I began to look like the corpses I stole. Pale, scrawny, like walking death. I slept during the day and only went out at night. I never worked when the moon was full. Too much light. There was always a danger of being shot by groundskeepers, who naturally didn’t look kindly on the business. When I couldn’t go about my work, I would sit in a corner of the local tavern and drink as much as my belly would hold, and try to forget about what I’d been doing. I was a superstitious sort. Having disturbed many an eternal rest, I began to think I was being haunted.”
He spoke in a flat voice, as if he were talking about something that had no connection with him. Sara noticed that his color was high. Embarrassment, self-disgust, anger ... She could only guess at the emotions that stirred within him. Why was he confessing such personal and unspeakable things to her?
“I think I was dead inside,” he said. “Or at least only half-human. But the money kept me going back, until I had a nightmare that put a stop to it all. I never set foot near another graveyard after that.”
“Tell me,” Sara said softly, but he shook his head.
“After my resurrection days I turned to other ways of making a profit—all of them nearly as unsavory. But not quite. Nothing’s as bad as what I did. Not even murder.”
He was quiet then. The moon was veiled by clouds, the sky painted in muted tones of gray and violet. Once it might have been the kind of night he had gone out to desecrate graveyards. As she stared at the man next to her, his hair gleaming like ebony in the lamplight, Sara realized that her heart was pounding and her palms were clammy. Cold perspiration trickled down her back and beneath her arms. He was right—she was revolted by the things he had done. And without a doubt there was more he hadn’t told her.
She struggled with many feelings at once, trying to understand him, trying most of all not to fear him. How terribly naive she had been. She would never have imagined him capable of such terrible things. The families of his victims, how they must have suffered—and it could just as well have been her family, her relatives. He was responsible for causing pain to many people. Had someone described such a man to her, she would have said that he was beyond redemption.
But... he wasn’t completely bad. He had come after her tonight, fearing for her safety. He had refused to take advantage of her at the club, when there had been nothing to stop him but the remnants of his own conscience. Just now when she had been crying, he had been kind and gentle. Sara shook her head in consternation, not knowing what to think.
Craven’s face was turned away, but challenge was clear in every line of his posture. It seemed as if he were waiting for her to condemn him. Before she was quite aware of what she was doing, she reached out to the black hair that curled slightly on the back of his neck. At the touch of her hand, he seemed to stop breathing. Muscle flexed beneath her fingertips. She sensed the smoldering beneath his stillness, and his battle to keep his emotions closed away.
After a minute he looked up at her with blazing green eyes. “You little fool. I don’t want your pity. I’m trying to tell you—”
“It’s not pity.” Hastily she snatched her hand back.
“I’m trying to tell you that all that stands between me and becoming that again is a pile of money.”
“You have a mountain of it.”
“Not enough,” he said heatedly. “Never enough. If you had the sense of a frigging sparrow, you’d understand.”
Sara’s brows knitted together. She felt the tightness in her chest expand until she burst with an anger that almost equaled his. “I do understand! You have the will to survive, Mr. Craven. How could I blame you for that? I don’t like the things you’ve done, but I’m not a hypocrite. If I’d been born in the rookery, I probably would have become a prostitute. I know enough to understand that there were few choices for you in that place. In fact... I... I admire you for lifting yourself out of such depths. Few men would have had the will and the strength to do it.”
“Oh?” He smiled darkly. “Earlier today you were asking about my committee of patronesses. I’ll tell you. Most of their husbands keep mistresses, leaving them alone in their beds night after night. I used to service those fine ladies for a price. I made a fortune. I was as good a whore as I was a thief.”
The blood drained from Sara’s cheeks.
Seeing her reaction, he jeered softly. “Still admire me?”
Numbly Sara remembered the conversations she’d had with the prostitutes she’d interviewed for Mathilda. They had the same look on their faces as Craven did now ... bleak, hopeless. “When I needed more money to finance the club,” Craven continued, “I blackmailed a few of them. No proper lord would like to find out his wife had taken flash gentry like me into her bed. But the odd thing was, the blackmail did little to dull my charms. The ‘friendships’ continued until the club was built. We have very civilized understandings, my patronesses and me.”
“Lady Raiford—” Sara said hoarsely.
“No, she wasn’t one of them. She and I never ...” He made an impatient gesture and retreated unexpectedly, beginning to pace around her as if a circle of fire separated them. “I didn’t want that from her.”
“Because you cared about her.” When the comment drew no response, Sara pressed further. “And she’s one of many people who care about you ... including Mr. Worthy, Gill, even the house wenches—”
“It comes along with paying their salaries.”
Ignoring his sneering sarcasm, she regarded him steadily. “Mr. Craven, why have you told me all of this? You won’t accept my sympathy—and I won’t give you scorn. What do you want from me?”
Stopping in the middle of another pass, he crossed the invisible barrier between them and seized her. His hands clenched her upper arms painfully. “I want you to leave. You’re not safe here. As long as you’re in London you’re not safe from me.” His gaze raked over the rippling mass of her hair, her delicate face, her bewildered eyes. With a sudden groan he pulled her against him, burying his face in her hair. Sara closed her eyes, her mind spinning. His body was solid and powerful, hunching over hers to accommodate their difference in height. She felt him tremble with the force of his need. He spo
ke just beneath her ear, his voice thick with tormented pleasure. “You have to leave, Sara ... because I want to hold you like this until your skin melts into mine. I want you in my bed, the smell of you on my sheets, your hair spread across my pillow. I want to take your innocence. God! I want to ruin you for anyone else.”
Blindly Sara flattened her hand on his cheek, against the scratch of newly grown beard. “What if I want the same?” she whispered.
“No,” he said fiercely, and turned his mouth to the tender skin of her neck. “If you were mine, I would make you into someone you didn’t recognize. I would hurt you in ways you’d never dream of. I won’t let that happen. But don’t ever think I didn’t want you.” His hands gripped her closer, and they both began to breathe harshly. The hard jut of his arousal burned against her stomach. “That’s for you,” he muttered. “Only for you.” He groped for her wrist and brought her palm to his chest. Even through the thickness of linen, broadcloth, and wool, she could feel the resounding thump of his heart. She squirmed to press harder against him, and he caught his breath. “A man should never come so dose to hell as this.” he said raggedly. “But even with the devil whispering in my ear to take you, I can’t do it.”
“Please,” she gasped, not knowing if she was asking him to let go or to keep her with him.
The word seemed to drive him to the edge of madness. He fitted his mouth over hers with a tortured groan, his tongue searching in urgent forays. Sara curled her arms around his head, tangling her fingers in his dark locks as if she could hold him to her forever. She could still feel his heartbeat pounding against her flattened breasts. His thigh was a hard intrusion amid her skirts, bearing firmly against an unspeakably intimate place. She didn’t know how long he stood there kissing her, his mouth sometimes gentle, sometimes brutal, his hands wandering freely inside her cloak. Her legs turned weak, and she knew she couldn’t have stood upright without his arms around her.