The Taste of Temptation

by Julia Kelly

  “It does most days. There are calls to make, invitations to answer, dinners or dances or the theater nearly every night,” she said.

  “And meetings with Mrs. Sullivan, no doubt.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I’m surprised she hasn’t gotten you married off already. She must be losing her touch. Who has she put in front of you?”

  She shifted to lean on one elbow so she could gaze down at him. “Do you really want to know which men are paying me calls right now? While we’re still both naked on a sofa?”

  His arms slid around her waist as he hugged her back down to him. “No. I’m not such a glutton for punishment as to want that.”

  “Besides, if you wanted to know you could simply read about it in the Tattler.”

  “Does it bother you that you still appear in the papers from time to time?” he asked.

  “Would it make a difference?”

  “No.” He paused. “But I would feel bad about it.”

  She laughed. “That at least is something.”

  She splayed a hand out over his chest, watching her pale fingers against his heated skin as she tried to think of how to explain. Slowly, she said, “I don’t mind the everyday items. ‘Miss B— attended this dinner and wore a dress of teal crepe de chine and was seen speaking with Mr. F—.’ That sort of item is harmless.”

  “But anything more than that . . .”

  She blew out a breath. “If I am never the subject of another headline in my life, I’ll be a happy woman. All I want is to be left alone. To live a life that’s not scrutinized by thousands of people.”

  Moray glided a hand down her back as though making an unspoken vow that she’d never have to see her name at the top of one of his newspapers’ pages again. Yet she knew he couldn’t make that promise. In London she’d thought reporters had been nothing more than nosy people with nothing better to do with their lives than root around in the unhappiness of others. Now she was starting to see there was more to the men and women who lived their lives by the printed page. Moray had, despite her skepticism, won her over to his side just a little bit.

  “I think Catriona and Eva would agree with you on living an unscrutinized life,” he said.

  “I’m sure they would.”

  “You hardly reacted when you realized who Catriona is to Eva,” he said.

  She tilted her head to the side and thought about it. “It wasn’t that it didn’t surprise me, but if they love each other, they’re luckier than most. And it isn’t as though I can pass judgment upon anyone. I chose the wrong man for the wrong reasons. I’m not a virgin, as we’ve so thoroughly established. I’m trying to marry whomever will take me.”

  This. You want a man like this.

  “They were testing you,” Moray said, pulling her back from the brink of dangerous thoughts.

  “Catriona and Eva? That’s to be expected.”

  He grunted. “Is it?”

  She laughed. “Catriona was right about you and Eva being like siblings. She’s protective of you. She’s bound to examine whichever woman enters your life with a critical eye.”

  “And are you in my life?” His soft words were accompanied by the stroking of his thumb over the curve of her waist.

  If ever there was a moment to back out of this arrangement, it was now. She could just say the words and melt away as though Moray had never climbed through her bedroom window or even taken her seat at the theater. It would be the wise thing to do, protecting them both from the secrets they were bound to share if this went on any longer, but she didn’t want to do that.

  Closing her eyes, she leaned her forehead against his. “For the time being.”

  “If that’s what I can have, I’ll take it.”

  She sighed her relief, relaxing against him, yet he didn’t do the same. His arms were still rigid, and when she snuck a glance at his face his expression was solemn.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, uncertainty nipping at her.

  “You don’t know what you’ve done to me,” he said, tilting her chin up with a crooked finger. “For years my attention has been focused on one thing: my business. It’s all I’ve ever had, and for a long time it was enough. I’ve a degree of comfort I never dreamed of when I was a child, and even though I’ll never be able to overcome the circumstances of my birth, I’ve earned a little respect.”

  “More than a little respect,” she protested. “Everyone in this city knows of you. Everyone reads your papers.”

  He shook his head. “Most of that’s fear and the knowledge that I’m a good man to know. The politicians come courting once or twice a year when it’s convenient. I’m invited to places in town mostly in hopes that this hostess or that will be favorably mentioned in the Tattler.

  “For a long time I thought that was enough, but then I met you, and you made me long to be a better man than I ever could be.”

  Another brick from the wall around her heart crumbled. The low intimacy of his voice and the earnestness of his expression were dismantling her while she lay there, vulnerable in his arms.

  “You’re a good man, Jonathan. Persistently, infuriatingly, frustratingly cocky sometimes, but a good man who cares for his friends and holds to his convictions.”

  He shook his head slowly. “But not a gentleman.”

  She shot him a quizzical look. “If you think that’s because you’re in trade—”

  “I have no shame about what I’ve built, but I know there’s more to the measure of a gentleman than a wardrobe of tailored jackets and the ability to pay his debts on time. There’s birth.”

  “But—”

  “Caroline, I’m a bastard, and that’s not a fact I can overcome.”

  She pulled back. “But you knew your father. You told me that your family had a shop when you were growing up.”

  His stare was distant, and when he didn’t replace the hand on the slope of her back, she felt the first fissures of distance opening up between the two of them.

  “I thought he was my father until I was eleven. I came back from an errand only to find my mother and the man who’d raised me fighting. I thought he was accusing her of an affair and I came barreling into the room thinking to defend her. My father was a hard, quiet man, and he’d started to drink heavily in those last few years. He’d taken to slapping my mother or me—whomever was closer—in his fits of drunkenness. I threw myself in front of my mother, but it was the verbal lashing that I should’ve feared more.’’

  “He told you that you weren’t his natural son in the heat of anger?” she whispered.

  He nodded and the cruelty of it chilled her through. To wound a child for something he had no control over was truly cowardly.

  “For a long time he didn’t know who my father was. Then my mother must’ve finally slipped and, in his rage, he took it upon himself to tell me. He told me my real father was the laird of the manor house he and my mother had been employed in. That man wooed my mother, bedded her, and then cast her out when she told him she was with child. My father had always loved her and married her to save her.”

  “But if he loved her—”

  “She didn’t return his affection, and it ate away at him. Service isn’t a comfortable life, but he was a valet, and so long as he did his work he could be assured of his wages. Owning a store wasn’t so secure, and he didn’t have the mind for the business. He blamed my mother for costing him a position where he would’ve been pensioned out, just as he blamed her for not loving him. I was a constant reminder of how his life had fallen apart.

  “One morning, I woke up and found he was gone. My mother and I tried to run the shop for a little while, but it was so saddled with debt there was no saving it. I was apprenticed to a Glaswegian printmaker and sent to live with him when I was twelve. He was a stern man but kind in his own way. I used to eat meals with him and his wife in exchange for learning the trade. I slept in a box bed in the kitchen. I used to have to brush ash off my clothes in the mornings when the wi
nd had blown hard enough to race down the flue.”

  “And your mother?” she asked.

  “I’m told that some cousin found her a position in service.”

  “You’re told?”

  “I never saw her again. I suspect she wanted to start over, and that I was a reminder of her old life and how everything had gone wrong.”

  He blew out a long breath. “That’s a story I’ve never told anyway. You have to understand what it would do to my reputation and my business if anyone were to find out.”

  “Your reputation?” she asked.

  “My power is dependent upon a sterling reputation—even if it is a little clouded with rumor. It’s what my business is built on, and without it I’m just some guttersnipe bastard who deals in gossip.”

  “But the Lothian and the Tattler are so successful. Surely your wealth—”

  “Is not enough,” he said with a shake of his head. “There’s power in being feared and revered in equal measure. If they know I’m a bastard, I become less of a threat. I become vulnerable just like everyone else.”

  “You’re so much more than your birth, Jonathan. You’ve done what few men would have the fortitude to do and built yourself a life that most people couldn’t imagine.”

  “A life built on a business that trades in tragedy and heartbreak,” he said.

  “But also reform and education,” she reminded him. “Your Calton Jail articles and all of the other things that have come along.”

  He gave her a little half smile. “Those are good stories, but they don’t sell papers the way scandal does.”

  “If my story would help the Lothian, I’ll give it to you.” She said it almost without thinking, and as soon as the words were out of her mouth her heart skipped a beat. She wouldn’t take them back—that would feel too much like cowardice—but neither did she want him to accept that offer.

  The muscles in his jaw worked, and she could tell he was fighting the instinct to survive in a brutal business that had carried him so far already.

  “No,” he finally said. “After everything you’ve told me, I could never ask that of you.”

  Another bit of the barrier around Caroline’s heart broke free, and emotion flooded her like water breaching a dam. It was becoming too hard to separate emotion from rationality with this man. He’d shown her through little actions and confessions that he was good and honorable in his own way, and now she didn’t want to let him go even if she knew she had to.

  She needed to think, but right now all she wanted was to wind her arms around him and kiss him again. So that was what she did.

  “We have a little more time,” she whispered against his lips. And then she twisted in his lap to make good use of the hour.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A KNOCK ROUSED Moray from sleep. He rolled over and rubbed his eyes, trying to push the unfamiliar sensation of a good night’s sleep away.

  He grunted and looked around. That was right. He was home. He’d been there increasingly in the past few days. It had all started after his afternoon with Caroline. He’d gone back to the newspaper, only he hadn’t stayed. Seeing her had put him in such a good mood that Gavin had commented on it. He’d clapped his hand on his friend’s back and suggested that they dine together that evening. Several bottles of wine later, Moray had known that if he went back to the office, he’d only cock it all up. Instead, he’d put himself to bed and dreamed of the soft, yearning sounds Caroline made when he plunged into her.

  And so he’d retired to his bed earlier and earlier every subsequent night, going a little easier on the Lothian’s staff, and one night he’d even conceded that Gavin and the section editors could take a crack at putting the next morning’s issue to bed. All so he could have more time to finally give his body the rest it craved and dream of Caroline. If he couldn’t have her every moment of every day, dreaming would have to tide him over until he could see her again.

  “Come in,” he grunted.

  Jesper, his valet, opened the door.

  “What is it, Jesper?” he asked.

  “Good morning, sir,” said his valet with his usual hint of disapproval.

  There was no pleasing the man, really. If he stayed out until all hours at the office, Jesper huffed about the house muttering under his breath about how he was going to run himself into the ground. If he slept late, Jesper would rouse him with a head-splitting knock on the door, speak with a distinct tone of censure, and suggest he don a pair of mustard-yellow socks that Moray abhorred but that managed to make it back into his wardrobe every time he thought he’d thrown them out. Therefore, the pair of them lived in the middle of a sort of quiet war of attrition fought through judgmental looks and knitwear.

  In truth, Moray hadn’t wanted to hire a valet at all. There was something uncomfortable about the whole notion, from his father’s background to the idea of having someone else live with him specifically to mind his clothes and dress him and, on the rare occasion that he entertained, step into the role of butler. After sleeping in the kitchen of his apprenticeship, it had seemed the ultimate luxury to have an entire home to himself. But by the time he bought the house on Cluny Gardens, he’d been in the world long enough to know that a gentleman of wealth was meant to have a valet, so Jesper had joined his household.

  Moray yawned as Jesper brought around the breakfast tray that Moray ate off of when he had enough time for a long sleep. One side was stocked with a pot of coffee, three rashers of bacon, two soft-boiled eggs in cups, and a stack of buttered toast. The other side was for the papers. The Lothian and the Tattler, if it was its print day, would be on top, followed by the Edinburgh Record and his other competitors.

  “Thank you, Jesper,” he said absentmindedly, reaching for a piece of toast.

  There was a cough from the foot of his bed. He looked up and found Jesper standing with his hands folded in front of him.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “If I may be so bold, sir. You may find it instructive to peruse the Edinburgh Social Standard first.”

  Moray looked down sharply. He often had the sense that Jesper didn’t fully approve of the idea of scandal sheets—or newspapers in general—so for him to suggest . . .

  He shook the paper out, but he needn’t have bothered. His nightmare was screaming out at him from the pages of that arsehole Ross’s paper:

  SECRET SHAME: PROMINENT BUSINESSMAN’S SORDID PAST REVEALED IN EXPLOSIVE EXPOSÉ

  For too long this city has been held in thrall by a man of great power, and yet his origins, parentage, and very background have remained a mystery. Today they are a mystery no longer.

  The Edinburgh Social Standard has learned that one of Edinburgh’s most prominent businessmen is, in fact, none of the things he presents himself to be. Instead he is the illegitimate son of a housemaid and her master, the man he long believed to be his father, a valet, trapped into a marriage by his desperate mother.

  Although he claims to hail from Aviemore, our gentleman was born out of wedlock in a small Highland village, making him no gentleman at all . . .

  “Bloody fucking hell.” The words were hardly more than a murmur as he cast the paper aside, leaving the rest of the article unread. “Bloody fucking Ross and his goddamn rag of a newspaper! I need to dress now.”

  “But your bath and shave, sir,” Jesper began to protest, as though horrified at the thought of Moray leaving the house without both. As though Moray’s entire life hadn’t just been laid out for the whole world to see.

  “No shave! No bath!” Then he realized he was roaring with the same brutish anger that his father had unleashed on his mother in the worst years just before he left. Moray clenched his jaw and grasped for whatever strength he could find to bring his temper to heel. “My apologies, Jesper, but this is an emergency.”

  He thought the valet might sniff or say something snide. Instead the man nodded once and moved to the armoire.

  Moray glanced down at the paper again, keeping his eyes safely on
the headline and refusing to read any further. It didn’t matter. He knew in the pit of his stomach what had happened. What she’d done. Caroline was the only person other than Brian and Sarah Moray who knew the circumstances of his birth and the truth about his rise to power. Not even Gavin had heard the story of him sleeping so near the kitchen fire that he’d wake up covered in wood ash. He’d left his life an obscured mystery so that people could project whatever it was they wished on it. Prodigal son of a Highland laird. Enterprising young printer. Man about town who’d stumbled into a bit of luck and some money. He could be any of those things except for who he was: born of betrayal and raised on anger, the collateral damage of a failed affair and a failed marriage.

  Bile rose in his throat at the thought that Caroline had told Ross everything—had gone behind his back and made it plain that Moray’s house of cards could be brought down with nothing more than a few carefully set words and a roll of newsprint. But wasn’t every life built on a web of lies teetering on the brink? Now he was paying the price for it.

  She’d betrayed his confidence, and that twisted his stomach into knots and stole his breath, but it was his heart that keened. Everything he’d told her, everything he’d done, all of it had been because he’d been foolish enough to think that she might be different from every other person in his life. Now all of those illusions were in pieces on the floor.

  He pulled on his clothes roughly, unable to think straight for the pulsing furious red that throbbed around the edges of his vision. Wisely, Jesper did not test him by producing the mustard socks. Instead, the valet moved quietly and efficiently, as if he knew it was best to be well clear of Moray lest the man explode.

  Armed with the loathsome Standard, Moray flagged down a hansom cab, giving the Cumberland Street address in clipped tones. He’d had higher hopes than this for the next time he was inside the Burkett house. He’d given all of his thoughts that were not occupied with the running of his business over to Caroline and how he might see her again. She’d told him she would find a way that they could meet at her brother’s home alone with no relatives or servants in the house. They’d have hours to themselves. To luxuriate in the pleasure of exploring each other’s bodies. Of learning about each other. Of falling further into this entanglement that they’d found themselves in.