He ran a hand down the sleeve of her gown and caught her hand. “You don’t appear nearly as pleased to see me as I am to see you.”
“I am.” She ran a bare finger along the edge of his hand, and he felt the stroke at the base of his spine, as if she’d drawn her fingertips down his back. “I’ve missed you since we parted.”
Clasping his other hand ’round her waist, he pulled her close and finally earned the welcome he craved. She let him gather her into his embrace and lifted up on her toes for a kiss. But something was amiss. He sensed tension in her body, hesitation in her touch.
“What is it?”
“I spoke to my father about his ultimatum.” May bit her lip and cast her eyes downward.
“I see.” His belly tensed as he waited for the rest. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her again, but he would not force her hand as her father seemed determined to do.
“I think he wishes us well.”
Rex released the breath he’d been holding and smiled.
“But . . . ”
Nothing in him tensed as she hesitated. May had chosen him. Her father had given his blessing. His own father would soon be dealt with. Everything else could be managed.
“I would like to take a role at the new store. To learn from Mr. Graves about managing Sedgwick’s.” A frown pinched the skin between her eyebrows.
“Wonderful. Graves seems an able man from whom to learn.” Rex gathered May in his arms.
She pulled back, still frowning. “The store may consume a good deal of my time. Perhaps you’d prefer I helped with the hotel or played hostess at home.”
Despite her serious mien, Rex couldn’t stifle a chuckle. “Yes, I’ve always wanted a wife who would stay home and make me teacakes and arrange ridiculous parlor games.”
With a warm, diminutive palm on his chest, May pushed at him, forcing Rex to loosen his hold. Forcing him to let her go.
Every step she took away from him across the freshly polished floor echoed like a hammer strike in his mind. She was too glum. He missed her light and laughter, her animated enthusiasm about some sight or color that had taken her fancy.
Stopping in the middle of the ballroom, very near where she’d stood the first time he showed her the space, May spoke with her back to him. “Lord Devenham told me that he would do what he should, rather than what he wished to do. That he’d marry a woman he didn’t love because of expectation and duty.”
“What the hell does Devenham to do with us?” His shout trebled against the high dome of the ceiling, louder than he intended. Only yesterday he’d held her, made love to her, experienced a bit of the contentment he’d been pursuing all his life. Now she was talking about the pale, floppy-haired aristocrat who’d asked for her hand in marriage.
“If you’d married Caroline as you’d intended, you would have that doting wife who was content to stay at home.”
“First of all,” he said, forcing the darkness from his tone, “I never intended to marry Lady Caroline.” Considered it, yes, but quickly discarded the notion. Cast away thoughts of any other woman, truth be told, the moment he saw May again.
A spark lit in May’s eyes when she swung around and cast him a narrowed gaze, the perfect peaks of her upper lip slanted down in a doubtful moue. “You allowed her to grope you at Lady Stamford’s party and skated with her at the roller rink.”
“That parlor game was not my idea. And I skated with a black-haired, rose-scented beauty at the roller rink. Much less skillfully than she did, I might add. That’s the bit I remember.”
The distance between them was too much. He couldn’t give her room to voice her doubts and worries when it turned the very air between them frigid. As he crossed the half length of the ballroom, Rex held out his arms. “Teach me to waltz.”
Her soft, hesitant smile mended him, somewhere low and hidden in his chest, where unsentimental men weren’t supposed to feel a thing.
“You know how to waltz. You’ve been in London for years and probably attended dozens of balls.” Her shoulders settled back, and her lush lips eased up into a half smile. He dared to draw closer. Close enough to see the blue of her gaze turn vibrant and bright, a bit of the light in her eyes returning.
“Two dozen, at least.”
“And you never waltzed?”
“I managed but quite poorly. I paid for a few lessons.”
May made him suffer, not taking his hand, not filling his empty arms, but she started a tantalizing little dance of her own. Circling around him, as if she moved on the spoke of a wheel, and he was its axis.
“Was he a good teacher? I learned from a frightful man who swatted me with a yardstick for every misstep.”
Maybe May was capable of more patience than he’d given her credit for. He would have snapped the yardstick in two over the man’s head after the first strike.
“She was a fine teacher.”
“She?” The wheel ceased moving, and May shuddered to a stop, hands hooked above each hip. “Did you break her heart?”
“No, if you must know, I broke her toe.”
“You didn’t.”
“During the first lesson.”
Her hands slid down, and he watched them as a hunter watches his prey. He craved those hands in his.
Finally, she put him out his misery and placed one palm against his, positioning his other at her waist. She remained stiff and unyielding, but at least she was in his arms.
“Was she beautiful?”
HE LICKED HIS lips before answering. A simple, habitual gesture on most men, but Rex turned it into a seduction. She knew what he could do with those lips. How his kisses could turn her insides to warm syrup.
“She was tall.”
Elegant, long-legged temptress, no doubt.
“And blonde.” May had spent half her life wishing for cornstalk tresses, or even chestnut, perhaps auburn. Any color but the lack of one.
“She wasn’t you.” He closed the distance between them, used his hand at her waist to maneuver her close, and stole her breath in a kiss. He clutched at her like a hungry man, kissed her like they might never get the chance again.
“Ain’t that a lovely sight, boys?” The grinding, smoky voice of Rex’s father sounded from the entrance of the ballroom.
In a single burst of movement, Rex pivoted toward his father and pushed May behind him. She allowed the shelter but lifted onto the tips of her boots to see over his shoulder. His father was flanked by two titans, men half again as tall and half again the width of George Cross’s narrow shoulders.
“Your business is with me, Cross. I’ll see her into a carriage and return to speak with you.” Rex reached back to grasp her hand as he spoke and then strode up to the three men who were blocking the ballroom’s entryway. He stepped toe to toe with his father, holding May protectively behind him.
“Move. Now.” Rex gritted out the words and didn’t flinch when the two behemoths on either side of his father bristled. One lifted a gnarled bit of wood, cradling it lovingly in his arms like a musician might hold his instrument.
His father shuffled back a step, and for a breathless moment, May believed he’d relent. Rex would take them all on to protect her. Of that, she had no doubt, but the notion of the damage the three men could inflict made her feel boneless and weak. She’d never fainted in her life, but suddenly dizziness fought to overtake her.
Clutching at the back of Rex’s coat, she shook herself and managed a deep shaky breath. She refused to be that silly, frivolous girl anymore. Whatever George Cross intended, she’d face it with Rex. Though, at her size, she’d prove next to useless if the three men set on Rex to injure him.
“Really believe she’ll marry the likes of you?” George Cross nudged his chin in her direction. “Think you can satisfy an heiress?”
Despite Rex’s hand holding her in place, May couldn’t stay her tongue. “I’m quite confident he can, Mr. Cross.”
“What if she grows to hate you?” Rex’s father continued as
if she hadn’t spoken, staring into Rex’s eyes, an ugly sneer trembling at the edge of his mouth. “Judge you every day, she will, in her pompous, uppity way. As your mother would have done to me.”
When the twisted little man talked of Rex’s mother, May heard the emotion in his voice. Whatever Cross felt for Rex’s mother, he seemed determined to transfer all of his pain and resentment to Rex.
“Step aside,” Rex growled, squeezing her hand, as if to signal that the time had come to move. He reached his other arm out to push his father aside, but Cross feinted back, lifting his own hand out and executing a mock bow, as if to usher them through the doorway.
Rex tucked her under his arm, tight against the hard, heated protection of his body, and moved across the threshold. Just when she thought they’d moved far enough to be free from the grasp of Cross and his cronies, one of the bulky giants reached around her, yanking so hard she slipped from Rex’s clasped hand, nearly off her feet. Then the vise of flesh and iron around her chest was gone, and she was pushed toward George Cross. He hooked her upper arm in his and pressed the cool, sharp edge of a knife to her throat.
“This here’s what we call persuasion, boy.”
When George Cross swiveled with her to face Rex, May saw that he was restrained too. The bearded fellow with a cudgel had him pressed against the wall just inside the ballroom. The rage and frustration in his face made her want to cry out, but she bit back the urge.
Cross had left one of her arms free, and she reached up to work the clasp on her fob watch. There was a nasty needle-like pin at the back of it that she’d pricked her finger on more than once.
Rex’s eyes traced her movements, and he shook his head, as if to warn her off trying anything that might provoke Cross’s wrath.
The second Goliath was searching Rex’s pockets, removing pound notes, spilling coins like a shower of metallic raindrops on the hardwood floor, and finally lifting out a flat little red stone. The man lifted the stone to examine it in the electric light, as if to assess its value. Finding none, he tossed it against Rex’s chest, letting it clatter to the floor.
May had been with Rex when they’d found the stone on a walk through Central Park. She’d made up a fanciful story about its magical origins, and he’d teased her for having a wild imagination.
But he’d kept it. Saved it and carried the thing all these years. Years she’d spent hating him for giving up on her.
“Money, boy. Where do you keep yours?”
“In a bank,” Rex managed to say around the massive arm the man pinning him had pressed to his throat.
Cross shook his head. “Must keep some ’ere. You’ve got to pay all the workmen you usually have banging about.” He lifted a finger with an “Ah,” as if he’d just remembered an important fact. Then he lowered the knife from May’s throat and dug around in his coat pocket, emerging with a stubby, diminutive revolver, so small it almost disappeared in the grip of his hand.
When he pointed the gun at Rex, the cry she’d held back burst out. “Stop this! My father has money. I have money.”
“May.” Despite the warning in Rex’s tone, she couldn’t stop babbling.
“I can pay you, Mr. Cross, but you must let him go.”
Cross turned to her, one arm extended to keep the revolver trained on Rex, as he assessed her for the first time. He swept his gaze from her toes up to her forehead. Even through the overlong grizzle of his mustache, she saw his mouth turn down in disgust. “And where’s all this money of yours, rich girl?”
“A-at my home, of course.”
“Don’t think I’ll be welcome there, somehow.” The stench of his huffed annoyance nearly made May choke.
“I don’t imagine you’re welcome here either.”
Cross swung around, dragging May with him, and all eyes fixed on the elegantly dressed older man hovering in the stairwell outside of the ballroom. In the face of two armed men and another of mammoth dimensions, he wielded only a superior bearing and a silver-tipped cane.
When the stranger lifted a gloved hand to reach into his overcoat, George Cross pointed the revolver his way. May sagged in relief that the barrel was no longer aimed at Rex.
“Do you want your money or not, George?”
At the use of his given name, Cross shuddered. May felt the tremor run through the man’s body.
“Mr. Leighton?” Cross squinted at the man in the hallway. “Is that you, sir?”
“Lord Camford now. Inherited my father’s barony after all.” The baron walked like an aristocrat, pronounced every word with sharp precision, and he strode up to George Cross as if he were still master and Cross was nothing more than his dishonest footman. Camford seemed oblivious to the weapon Cross held in the space between them.
Cross’s arm began to shake as the tip of the revolver ebbed down. He seemed to go as boneless and weak as May had felt moments before.
May used the moment to slip from his grasp. As soon as Rex saw her free, he swung his arm, the flash of a blade catching the overhead light. The man guarding him emitted a pained grunt and withdrew, covering his arm where Rex had nicked him. Then he wound his massive fist back, preparing to strike.
“Touch him again, and you all remain poor men,” the baron intoned.
Amazingly, the man in front of Rex backed away, and May rushed into Rex’s arms.
“Are you all right?” he asked against her hair, cupping the back of her head with his hand.
As soon as she nodded, he nudged her behind him, pinned her between his body and the ballroom’s sparkling blue wall.
“Now, how much do you want?” the baron asked George Cross. “Name the amount for you to cease this madness and be gone from my grandson’s life for good.” He’d pulled a small leather wallet from his coat and ducked a hand in again to lift a fine gold-plated fountain pen into the air, pointing it at Cross, just as Rex’s father had aimed his revolver at the baron’s chest. “If I pay you, that’s the end of it, George. Threaten him again, and I’ll see you hanged for what you took from me.”
Lord Camford moved into the ballroom, drawing George Cross’s attention away from the threshold. As Rex’s father stood mutely, still gaping at his former employer as if he was seeing a ghost, he failed to see what May saw.
A Metropolitan Police constable and two other men stepped slowly, taking the stairs soundlessly, up to the ballroom level. Behind them, the coppery glint of Jack Sullivan’s head emerged as he ascended, a pistol drawn and tucked close to his body.
“Just wanted a share of me own son’s wealth, Lord Camford,” George Cross’s voice had become a high-pitched whine.
“Unfortunately, you didn’t earn it,” the constable leading the group up the stairs said coldly. “Drop the gun, Mr. Cross.”
Rather than protest as May expected, George Cross let the weapon fall from his fingers. He looked broken, haunted, his shoulders drawn down like the lines on his face. His two compatriots looked on miserably before one dashed toward the stairwell, and the constable rounded on him, clapping his enormous wrists in irons. They dealt with the one Rex had cut in the same fashion, and then moved in for George Cross.
Sullivan drew him over near Rex, as if offering the two men an opportunity to express any final sentiments to each other.
Rex’s body was as rigid as marble under May’s fingertips. His head was turned her way, and he seemed unable, or unwilling, to meet his father’s gaze.
But George Cross wasn’t looking at his son. All his attention remained focused on his former employer. “I did love her. I did love your daughter.”
Camford lifted his chin and stared down his aristocratic nose at Rex’s father. “Not enough.”
Rex drew in a deep breath and added, “Not nearly enough.”
The baron cast his grandson a pained look and then glared at George Cross. “Neither of us cherished my daughter or her son as we should have.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
TWO DAYS AFTER his father’s arrest, Rex still found it ha
rd to breathe when he remembered the fear in May’s eyes and the dirty edge of a knife blade rammed against the tender flesh of her neck. Sleep’s temporary oblivion had abandoned him. Food soured his stomach. Even his coffee tasted like soot.
And now, cutting through his twisted thoughts, Jack Sullivan’s calm, steady voice droned on about a man whose business he’d considered acquiring before all of this had commenced. Before he’d seen May again at Ashworth’s. Before his father had come crashing into his life to extort money and dredge up his past.
“Shall I return later?”
“Sorry?” Rex knew only that he’d been asked a question and flicked the stone he’d been holding onto his desk. The flat polished edge landed on the special marriage license the Duke of Ashworth had assisted him in obtaining. For a man who’d once wished May to marry into his own family, Ashworth had been gracious and generous, no doubt encouraged by his daughter. “To be honest, Jack, I haven’t truly heard a word you’ve said.”
Sullivan closed his trusty notebook and slid it into the inner pocket of his tweed jacket. “May I speak plainly, sir?”
“I hate it when you dither. Just say it.”
“Why haven’t you married the lady yet?”
That question he heard. The sentiment had been echoing in his head for forty-eight hours.
“Before I met her again last month, her greatest concern was which dress she’d wear to what party or ball.” It wasn’t true, but seeing her as a fine, frivolous lady distanced her from him, a criminal’s son.
“You underestimate her, I think.” Sullivan sniffed in disdainful disagreement.
Rex extracted himself from the chair he’d been sunken in for hours. “She could have married Devenham and been threatened with nothing more than a twisted ankle when she played croquet or danced a waltz. A damned broken nail when she bested him at parlor tennis. Which she would.”
One Dangerous Desire (Accidental Heirs) Page 23