Diana deposited the tray back on its respective position, and, plopping onto the shell-back chair, she plucked a sugar-dusted cherry tart. She polished it off in several bites and then reached for another.
All these years she’d believed diffidence to be a trait reserved for the nobility, only to find that men and women, regardless of station, were very much alike in that regard.
Dropping one elbow onto the tabletop, she nabbed a bite-size powdered pastry and popped it in her mouth.
Although Ryker had assigned Niall as her guard, Diana had been so long-starved for companionship, she’d allowed herself to foolishly imagine a friendship of sorts with Niall.
Given their exchange these past three days, the last thing Niall Marksman wanted was friendship with her.
It was fine. She’d gone most of her life without companionship or friendship. She could go another bloody nineteen years if need be.
Chapter 7
For the first time in Niall’s thirty-some-odd years of life, the unimaginable had happened.
He’d been taken to task.
And by a slip of a lady, no less.
Diana had given him a damned dressing-down, if one wished to be truly precise.
An unwanted wave of desire for the spirited, generously curved lady heated his veins. Diana Verney was not the pampered girl he’d taken her for. Niall stole a quick sideways glance at the doorway she’d stormed within mere moments ago. In this instance she was a furious woman . . . and a desirable one at that. People did not challenge Niall; men, women, lord or lady, or strangers in the street. Until this one.
Only—his gaze slid unwittingly over to the parlor doorway—it wasn’t solely her indignant fury that occupied his thoughts now.
It was guilt. An unwanted, useless sentiment he’d indulged in just once in his life—when his failure to guard Ryker’s wife had nearly gotten the lady killed. No good, however, came from that emotion. A man scratched and clawed to survive. To make apologies for that was a rejection of the very breath one drew. Along the way people were hurt, and if one built adequate walls to protect oneself, then one felt nothing. Which was the way it should be.
He gritted his teeth. Standing sentry, with Lady Diana Verney ensconced in the room, Niall reminded himself once more he wasn’t here to be the lady’s friend.
He was not here to join her for pastries. Or talk to her about the weather, or whatever mundane topics a duke’s daughter spoke of.
So why did the memory of her fading smile dance around his mind?
What do you see when you look at me?
It had taken little on his part to deduce Lady Diana Verney was unlike the image he’d crafted for one of her status.
Who was this woman who’d not only speak to Niall, merciless bastard from the streets, but also invite him to sit with her?
Enough . . . Niall dug the heels of his palms against his eyes and rubbed to force the image away, but it remained anyway. It is only because she’s Ryker’s sister. Given her relationship to Ryker and Helena, by all accounts, Niall’s siblings from the streets would consider that connection extended from Niall to the young woman.
The young woman with alabaster white skin that begged to be explored with his mouth. He forcibly tamped down those wicked musings for the lady. Nay, she wasn’t a sister . . . or any relation.
She was just a woman. One you bullied.
Mayhap he was more human than he’d credited over the years, because by God, the memory of her diminishing happiness twisted his stomach muscles in vicious knots.
Bloody hell.
Niall was many things: the son of a whore, a violent street urchin trained to kill and thieve, and now a gaming-hell owner.
But he was not a bully. Not after being kicked and spit on by the man who’d taken him in.
He’d join her while she finished her pastries and then he could leave, without guilt for being a bully like the gang leaders who’d laid claim to Niall as a child. Quietly cursing, he ducked his head inside.
His gaze immediately locked with Lady Diana’s. Round-eyed as she’d been since he’d discovered her lurking outside his alley, she stared back, a pastry halfway to her sugar-dusted mouth, and there was something so very . . . endearing about her in this instant.
She had the look of a child caught with her hand in the biscuit jar. His lips twitched at the corners. “May I?”
Lady Diana cocked her head, and she looked at the pastry in her fingers.
He motioned to the parlor.
“You may enter,” she blurted. She jumped to her feet with such alacrity, her chair toppled backward, even as the pastry slipped from her fingers. The small treat fell onto the tray. “Of course you may,” she encouraged, rushing around the fallen seat.
Niall came forward and rescued her seat, setting it upright.
Once more Lady Diana held the tray aloft. “Pastries?”
An immediate protest sprang to his lips.
She raised it higher. “I insist.”
The determined glimmer in her aquamarine eyes earned his full attention. What was she saying? The pastries. Disgusted with his musings, Niall gave his head a slight shake. “I don’t—”
“I said, I insist,” she said, wagging the tray under his nose.
This lady bore the determination of ten of the toughest street fighters he’d faced, and Niall had survived three decades of life by knowing when to concede and when to advance. This was the time to concede. “Fine,” he said brusquely.
Resetting the tray on the marble tea table alongside the pot of tea brought earlier by the maid, Ryker’s sister slid into a seat. He furrowed his brow.
In Niall’s world the fewer words spoken, the better. Such had been a necessity, more than anything. What was expected of him here?
She smiled up at him.
“Won’t you sit?”
Niall tugged at his collar. “Oi don’t—”
“I insist,” she repeated once more. He hesitated, and then with stiff, jerky movements, he claimed the chair farthest from her own floral-painted one.
The lady had been correct in one regard. As they were to share each other’s company, even with the station divide between them, they could at the very least strike a peaceful accord.
Undeterred by his glacial silence, Diana reached for a painted porcelain teapot. The soft flow of liquid filling the delicate cup thundered in the quiet. “How do you take your tea, Niall?” she asked, not taking her attention away from her task.
Niall. It had been the name given him by the street thug who’d purchased Niall from the woman who’d given him life. Two syllables he’d never given much thought about—until Lady Diana wrapped them in her husky, lyrical timbre. Desire pumped through him.
She paused midpour and glanced up. “Do you take cream and sugars?” Those perfectly cultured tones doused his lust like a bucket of muddied shop water being hurled at him. “Most say it’s un-English to do so,” she said casually, prattling on. Lady Diana lifted the lid, revealing perfectly formed cubes of sugar. “But I often prefer it.”
And then it hit him with all the weight of a fast-moving carriage. By God, he, Niall Marksman, trained killer from the Dials, was sitting down to tea—with a duke’s daughter. He choked on his swallow. One day, when he was a boy nicking purses in the streets, Diggory had ordered him to return with no fewer than five purses. Niall had stumbled upon a street performance with Punch and Judy. This exchange with Ryker’s sister felt remarkably like that farce from long ago.
It also drew forth images of those powerful peers who’d been so consumed in their frivolous pursuits that they’d not seen a scrawny child with greased hair and a too-thin belly. “Oi don’t drink tea,” he said bitingly. Most women would be deterred by the chilly frost of that harsh Cockney. It kept him strong, and sane, and content. It was just one reason why he hated the arrangement thrust upon him. In fact, he’d rather sup with Satan than suffer through pastries and tea with a lady. It had taken but two run-ins and three days in
her family’s household to determine—Lady Diana was not most women.
Lady Diana gave him a bemused look. “Surely you must. It is unpatriotic to not drink it.”
“I don’t have any allegiance to king or country.”
On a gasp, she stole a surreptitious glance around the room. “You’d be disloyal to your own country?” she pressed him, on a scandalized whisper.
Most men would feel some shame, particularly given the horror wreathing her delicate features. Niall dropped his elbows atop the gold arms of his chair. “I don’t have loyalty to a country. I have loyalty to my siblings and the people who work for me.” He nudged his chin toward her. “Close your mouth, love, or you’re going to catch flies.”
Ignoring that jeering command, Lady Diana scrambled forward onto the edge of her seat. “But that is treason.” She spoke as one attempting to puzzle through a complex riddle.
He’d not stand on ceremony or pretend to be someone other than he, in fact, was. He leaned forward, shrinking some of the space between them. It was best she knew precisely the kind of monster she’d invited into her midst. “Do you know what treason is, princess?”
She gave a faint shake of her head.
“Treason is a king living in a palace lined with gold”—he flicked his hand at the gilt frames hanging neatly about the parlor—“while boys and girls starve on the streets, begging for scraps. That is treason.”
A boy starving in the streets.
He’d tossed those words like sharp daggers that found their mark.
Is that whom he’d once been? The cynical glint in his world-weary eyes and scarred visage said yes. And not for the first time since she’d learned of Helena’s existence, Diana was filled with shame at her own self-absorption for failing to see how those outside the nobility lived.
He went on, ruthless. “Treason is hanging a boy for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his kin. So do not talk to me about king and country. Are we clear, princess?” he demanded scathingly.
Was he clear? He couldn’t have been clearer if he’d taken her charcoals and sketched a picture of it on one of the empty easels. “We are clear,” she whispered.
She’d had lessons drilled into her by governesses in conversing. Not a single one, however, prepared her for how to respond to such gut-wrenching admissions. He spoke with a brutal honesty that shamed her. I am my mother in so many ways.
What she’d intended to be a friendly, casual conversation had traveled to a dark place. Mayhap there was nothing else where Niall Marksman was concerned.
Nor did she regret his speaking with her in such harshly real terms. It was how she’d longed to speak with someone for the whole of her adult life. Unnerved just the same, she proceeded to pour two cups of tea with tremulous fingers. She added two lumps of sugar to each, and the crystal thumped loudly in the otherwise still of the room. Diana held out one of the delicate porcelain cups.
“What is that?”
She glanced about in search of what had wrought that horror-filled demand. Furrowing her brow, she followed his stare to the porcelain cup in her fingers. “Tea?”
“I told you I don’t drink tea.”
Diana wagged a single digit. “No. You said you’d never tried it. Therefore, how will you ever know if you enjoy it or not, unless you try it?”
Even a stubborn man like Niall Marksman would be hard-pressed to argue with that logic. Nonetheless, he glared daggers at the teacup like she held out poison for him to consume. Diana set it down on the table between them—part offering, part challenge.
And waited.
The champlevé enamel clock ticked away the passing minutes.
When she was a small girl, Diana had taken in a mangy pup she’d found outside her family’s town house. She’d snuck in the emaciated, snarling creature and given him sanctuary in her room, even a place in her bed. The yelping dog had fought every time she’d lifted him onto those white sheets. Until one day she’d entered her room and found him burrowed in her pillow. The moment he’d spied her, he’d jumped down from the bed. It had been as though he’d not wanted to reveal that he wanted or needed any comfort. How very much Niall Marksman reminded her of that beloved pup.
A pang of sadness struck her in the chest. For both the man opposite her and Prince. Over the years she’d not allowed herself to think of the dog her mother had found and tossed out into the streets. Until now.
With a curse, Niall grabbed the teacup, sending liquid droplets splashing over the side, onto the table. He downed the tepid brew in one quick swallow.
Welcoming the diversion from the solitary childhood her mother had imposed, Diana hid a real smile behind her glass. “It is meant to be sipped.”
Niall wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “Why?”
“Why?” she parroted.
“What’s the point of it?” he asked, abandoning his empty cup on the table beside him.
“I don’t . . .”
“To quench your thirst,” he supplied. “Then why all this”—he slashed his hand at the delicate china set—“pretense of anything else?”
Diana cocked her head. She’d not given much thought to those set rules on drinking tea. Pinkie finger out. Sips small and silent. How . . . odd, to only just now question those social norms, when until now she’d not truly questioned a single one. She eyed the cup in her fingertips and thought of it from his perspective, as a man wholly unfamiliar with the trivialities imposed on ladies of the ton. “Sipping tea is not about quenching one’s thirst,” she began slowly.
He snorted and stretched his legs out before him, looping one ankle over the other. “Because the stuff is rot.” At his faint smile, she relaxed in her chair. She preferred him this way. Teasing, rather than mocking. Grinning, rather than scowling. “One would do better with a glass of brandy.” He glanced around the room, as though searching for one of those nasty bottles.
“Like brandy, I expect tea is an acquired taste.” Now that was rotted stuff.
Niall arced a black eyebrow. “And you’ve much experience with French spirits?”
Her cheeks warmed. She knew enough about it after she’d made off with one of her father’s bottles years earlier and downed enough glasses so that the following morning she was abed simultaneously praying for death and casting up the contents of her stomach. Her parents would have been horrified had they discovered that secret. What would this man have said of it?
He winged up an eyebrow.
Diana cleared her throat. “We were speaking about tea.”
“Ah, yes. Of course, princess,” he drawled, and for the first time that hated moniker didn’t feel as though a slap upon her character. “Enlighten me.”
“What is the purpose of your club?” That scandalous place in which her sister had worked and her brother still lived. Diana had entered that establishment twice now. The first time to beg for help. The second, when this man had dragged her to Ryker’s private offices. Never, however, had she truly gone there and been permitted to look in on that wholly foreign world of sin and debauchery.
Niall said nothing.
Did he wish to shield her from the truth of what unfolded inside those establishments? She’d gone through her existence, until just a year ago, protected and shielded from all aspects of life. Not for the first time, she wished she’d gone somewhere . . . known something more in her sheltered existence. At the Season’s end, you will . . .
At his protracted silence, she went on. “Gentlemen attend your club and sit down for games of whist and faro. No doubt, they sip brandies and other spirits and converse. There is no point to those ventures, other than the companionship of friends and acquaintances.”
He folded his arms. “Is that why you believe lords visit my club?” Laughter underscored his question. “To spend time with friends?”
Diana wrinkled her nose. Yes, she rather did. “Didn’t I just say as much?”
His lips pulled again at the corners in another surprising show that added a realness
to Niall Marksman that hadn’t otherwise been there, dulling her fear of him and transforming him into someone quite human. “It was a rhetorical question, princess.”
Humph. A mocking human. “Oh.”
Niall dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll not tell you the real reason they visit.”
Her heart skittered at the tantalizing lure he dangled. “You may, you know,” she said quickly. “Tell me. That is . . . I will not—”
“We were speaking about the correct way to sip tea.” He winked.
Her pulse accelerated. Not a single man, of any station, had ever done something as simple as wink at her. And more . . . it softened him in ways she’d not believed an oft-scowling, usually laconic man like him could be. “Yes, tea,” she said, forcing herself back to the original matter of their debate. “Ladies do not visit clubs. Unless we’re wed, we’re not permitted to so much as attend the gaming tables set up inside the homes of members of the ton.” She set down her suddenly hated cup of the drink that spoke to the limitations placed on women. “With so many restrictions imposed on women, when do we talk and where?” Diana jabbed her index finger at the teacup.
Niall followed her point.
“Over tea,” she explained. If one had a friend or companion to speak to.
She braced for his condescension or mockery. Instead he pushed to his feet with a languid grace. Silently, he strolled the perimeter of the room, pausing periodically alongside the easels containing her works. Unnerved by his silent examination of those intimate drawings, she curled her hands into tight fists.
Her mother had forbidden Diana from sketching any animate subjects. Her father, Diana wagered, didn’t even know she found joy in sketching and painting. But there was this man. Even with their shared connection to Ryker and Helena, a stranger, more than anything, who now saw and knew about the subjects that she’d paid homage to on those once-blank canvases. As he stopped at the same incomplete piece he’d examined earlier that morn, she felt exposed in ways she’d never been.
The Lady's Guard (Sinful Brides Book 3) Page 9