by Anne Mallory
Suddenly her hands were upon his cheeks. “Are you hurt?” She pulled the edge of a blanket across his forehead. He realized he had broken into a sweat.
He swatted the blanket away. “I’m fine. Give me space for a moment.”
Why he felt the need to tack on the last words, which were almost courteous, was immediately rejected from his mind. She moved back.
He gritted his teeth and thrust his palm against his right leg, snapping the bone and its shell back into place. Fire licked straight up his throat. She stared at him, mouth hanging open.
“Oh my God.” She moved toward him. “You need—”
“I need nothing,” he said hoarsely. He looked away from her eyes. They were far too concerned for him to hold. He extended his leg, then pressed it against the floor. It hurt like hell. Mathias would tsk for sure. Damn tinkers.
“Here, put it here.” She switched back to sitting next to him and motioned to the bench across from them. Feelings warred within him—he wasn’t sure which he preferred, her sitting far away or close enough to reassuringly touch.
“No. Leave it alone.” He let comforting pain block out the insanity of such thoughts.
The horses slowed, their huffing audible through the open door. Andreas hoped it was because the danger was well behind them and not that the animals were foaming and ready to keel over. They continued along at a slow pace. He’d make sure the horses and their owner received their due as well. A debt to be repaid.
Phoebe didn’t say anything, but her shoulder pressed to his, and she didn’t return to her seat.
The carriage pulled to a stop, and the driver hopped down, the movement shaking the vehicle. Since there was no longer a door, he appeared directly in view, looking much worse than he had previously—but all body parts seemed to be in place.
“Sir. There is a small farm ahead.”
He gave a sharp nod to the man and helped Phoebe dismount. His leg ached. He ignored it as best as he could.
Dogs were barking loudly, and a man hurried out of the house, a rifle across his arms, as they climbed the path.
It didn’t take more than one look at Phoebe Pace though for them to be admitted and fussed over. The man’s wife was a mothering type, who hurried Phoebe upstairs. The driver was tending the horses and carriage, leaving Andreas with the farmer and the story they had concocted.
“We were set upon by highwaymen. My wife and I will leave in the morning, after the horses rest and we make repairs. You will be well compensated,” he said stiffly.
The man whacked him on the shoulder. “No worries, my good man. No need to worry about a sneak attack. The dogs will alert us if anyone sets foot on the property. Gets lonely out here. The wife delights in a bit of company, and it sounds as if you have an interesting tale to tell.”
Indeed, Phoebe seemed well able to entertain everyone with stories that evening, holding the man, his wife, and the driver in rapt attention. Andreas watched her work whatever magic she effortlessly possessed. It was a good thing too, as she would touch him every so often during the conversation, as if they were a real pair. He had difficulty keeping track of anything but the warmth of her hands.
Sooner than later, though, they found themselves in a bedroom, alone. Their driver, Charlie, as Phoebe had called him during dinner, was bunking down with the horses, determined to baby the “fine beasts” until the next switch. It had started raining at some point during dinner, but the man had firmly maintained his desire to stay the night outside, saying the barn was dry and well made.
“Perhaps we might purchase those horses for Charlie,” Phoebe Pace said casually, as she reached into her case—both articles had somehow remained undamaged and had held their strapping during the fray. “I think he would like that.”
Andreas pushed back the drape, watching the drops splat upon the glass, some splotches hanging, dripping slowly bit by bit, while others joined together to streak down.
He hated the rain. Even now.
“It will be done,” he said. It was a good suggestion.
“Thank you.” Her voice was warm.
He didn’t know why he felt so . . . strange. Raw.
He watched the slippery drops. As a young child, rain had been a cleansing beast. Sneaking out into the night, feeling the drops on his face. Washing away blood and tears. Burrowing under his covers afterward, dry and cleansed. But as a growing boy, rain had come to signify something far more fearsome. Such weather never meant well when you lived on the streets. Rain meant shivering through the night in wet clothing. Rain meant sickness and death. He’d seen people drown in the gutters. Lying down to sleep, never to wake.
Rain signified something he had lost. That cleansing innocence. No, not lost. He had never really had it.
A hand touched his shoulder. “Are you well?”
He let the drape drop. “I am.”
“I think you would say that even if you were laid upon Death’s arms,” she said, lightly touching his elbow as her hand descended.
He turned, and her hand drew along his forearm. “I am fine.” He twisted his arm under so that he had hers clasped in his hand instead. “Death would welcome me.”
“And you? Would you welcome her embrace?”
It would be so easy to pull her to him, leaning as she was. Tug her, taste her, tumble her to the bed.
“Perhaps.”
He stepped forward, into her, but as always she didn’t cede ground, and his leg pressed between hers.
She winced, and that dark thread, ever present, slivered through. Narrowing his eyes, he grabbed both of her forearms and pressed her to the bed. The edges of her half-loosened hair spread out on the counterpane, the majority still bound beneath her trapped figure. Her eyes went wide, and she immediately scrambled so that her hands propped behind her to keep her half-upright on the creaking surface. He knelt swiftly between her legs. It was hard with his leg still dully throbbing, but he didn’t waste time concentrating on his own pain. He lifted the hem of her dress, then pushed the layers up.
She gave a little gasp as if disbelieving what he was doing.
He pulled the lamp nearer and found what he sought. He narrowed his eyes at her.
“It is nothing,” she said, trying to push her skirts back down. “Honestly, Mr. Merrick. You thrust your leg back together as if you did so every day. A few scrapes are nothing.”
He didn’t respond. He touched the edges of her stockings where long, angry gashes cut straight through. Slashed on something in the carriage fray obviously. “Foolish woman.”
Cornelius had just gained himself three additional broken bones. Andreas added it to the tally he would inflict before he killed the man. It was one thing to try to kill Andreas—that was the way of their world—and he usually treated such attempts with apathy. It was another thing entirely to try and kill her, someone under his direct protection.
He reached for his bag and pulled it toward him. Finding the scissors and salve.
“They are simple scrapes,” she said, trying to cover herself back up. “I had worse as a child.”
He pushed her hands away and used the scissors to cut a large square in the already slashed netting. “They can become infected.”
“Well, yes. But it is not a true worry.”
He looked up at her face finally. At cheeks lit a brilliant, bright red. The urge to shout in triumph at her embarrassment was oddly muted. He might have been more inclined if he wasn’t feeling so out of sorts himself. Under her skirts and touching her limbs. Feeling the echoes of her hands trying to comfort him.
“Infection is a powerful worry.” He put the scissors away and wiped his hands on a cloth, then uncapped the small pot and dipped a finger into the green salve.
She leaned forward, half-unbound hair brushing his shoulder, skirts spilling around his arms. All of it encasing him in . . . her. “What is that? I’ve never seen an ointment that looks or smells like that.” Her curiosity was a vibrant thing, always overcoming any weaker emotion
s.
He didn’t answer—wasn’t sure he was capable of it. He touched his finger to her leg and heard her intake of air.
“Does it hurt?” he asked without looking up. He didn’t think he could risk it.
“No-o,” she stuttered. “But you are under my skirts and touching my bare skin at the moment, Mr. Merrick. Perhaps a bit of quickened breath is called for?”
He paused the movements of his hand and narrowed his focus to the wounds on her leg instead of giving in to the urge to touch anything else.
“If you prefer, I can have the farmer’s wife finish this.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and he refused to look up. “No. I don’t want anyone else to do it.”
He finished dressing the wounds without saying anything else. He had half a mind to investigate other shadowed areas under her stockings, but that desire did not spring from making sure she was unhurt.
He finished and pulled her skirts back down, his head bent to the task. A small hand rested on his hair for a moment, then pulled around to his cheek. He froze in place.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He didn’t move for long moments, eyes on the exposed wrist connected to the hand on his cheek. The harsh pitter-patter of the rain the only sound in the otherwise still tableau.
It was awkward and terribly intimate. There was something rather soothing about being inside a room with her when the rain was pounding outside.
“May I tend to your wounds as well?”
And look at his leg?
He pulled away from her violently and threw the items back into his bag. “There is no need.”
He would not—could not—indulge in such foolish thoughts. Such ridiculous desires.
He darted a quick look to see her reaction anyway. Her lower lip was pulled between her teeth as she reached for her bag, ostensibly to change. But there was no privacy to be had in the confines of the single room. And there was no explanation for separation that would satisfy the farming couple—not without pretending to be far starchier than Phoebe Pace had been at supper. She had touched him far too frequently while speaking to the others, as if such touches were normal.
“Don’t change your clothing,” he said. “As a precaution.”
In case they needed to make a quick escape.
She nodded and looked the faintest bit relieved. He had to fight a sudden smile. He kept his lips flat—it would likely make her expire to see one on his face, and he could not delude himself into thinking he wanted her anything but alive.
She unbound her hair from the simple twist that she had created that morning and brushed it out with long strokes of her brush. Having nowhere else to go, and not feeling the urge to stare broodingly through the windowpane, he simply watched her. The whole mess of it fell halfway down her back. How had she gotten all of that into all those ringlets and curls weeks, months, ago? He supposed her maid had done it.
He far preferred the simpler styles she had worn since moving into the hell. The other more popular styles she had worn before, with all of the whirligigs and height-defying coils, just didn’t look right on her.
She separated her hair into three sections, overlapping them repeatedly until they formed one long, braided rope.
Her fingers lingered on the end of it, playing, unwilling to let the actions be at an end. They sat staring at each other for long moments.
“We can share,” she blurted out. “The bed. There is plenty of room.”
There was barely enough room for two bodies if they were pressed up next to each other.
“No. I will sleep on the floor.”
She stepped toward him. “But you are hurt. And I am tended. I should sleep on the floor.”
He gave her a look and tossed a blanket and pillow on the floor.
She bit her lip. She always left little indentations behind when she did that. “Really, we can share.”
He lowered himself to the floor stiffly. He could use his leg as a real excuse for the stiffness of his movements for once. “Good night, Miss Pace.” He turned over as she climbed into the bed.
Not two minutes later he saw her lean over the edge.
“We didn’t get a chance to speak about everything that happened.”
“Go to sleep, Miss Pace.” He tried to close his eyes, but hers held his too fiercely.
Her plait slipped over the edge, dangling in front of his nose like some sort of braided leash. As if anyone could leash her.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “For saving us.”
“The driver did most of it.”
“Thank you for dressing my leg.”
“You would have been fine.”
“Thank you for coming with me.”
“You would have been better off without me. It was because of me we were attacked.”
She put her chin on her hand, propping it up. “Now, you don’t know that. What if it was one of Lord Garrett’s minions who found out about the documents?”
Cold rage slithered through him. He pressed it down. “Perhaps. But you were well disguised. I was not when I approached you after you saw Wilcox.”
“Yes, why was that?”
Because I was too worried about you. He closed his eyes. “Go to sleep.”
He felt a hand grip his blanket, and he saw her face far too close to his as she pulled the blanket up to his chin, tucking it around one shoulder. The other side was pinned by his free arm, and she couldn’t quite move it. He watched her try. That long tail of hair hung down, brushing his free hand as she did so. He had the urge to wrap his hand around it.
“What are you doing?” he asked, voice and body tight.
She gave up trying to tuck in his uncovered arm. “Failing,” she said, exasperated.
He lifted his arm finally. Better than to give in to temptation to grip her by that long tail and pull her to him. She smiled happily and lifted the rest of the blanket, tucking it around his other shoulder.
She leaned down, a fraction closer, and for some reason unknown to man, he lifted his head the tiniest bit. Enough so she could brush his cheek with her lips. “Good night, Mr. Merrick.”
Chapter 16
He had made sure she was safely back at the hell, and in Roman’s rooms, before he barked a series of very sharp orders, packed a fresh bag, then left London again, but this time with five very specialized men at his heels.
Four days later, after neutralizing over half of Cornelius’s remaining forces in the Thames Valley, stranding the man somewhere under a rock near London, and working through most of his frustration, he stopped dead in the doorway to his office. Again. It had become a frequent habit really.
His office.
He’d left for four days. Four. Not four weeks, not four months or four years.
A head of light brown hair turned, and a smile lifted her mouth. Welcoming him back without saying a word. Her eyes examined him, as if looking for an injury, then her smile grew when she didn’t seem to find one.
A wide, warm curve of lips that made his legs feel like custard. Shakier than any time in the past ninety-six hours when he had risked life and limb. It had been four days since he had been touched by those lips, and the impact hadn’t lessened one bit.
Her smile almost made him forget the scene around her.
“What the devil have you done?” he demanded.
“Oh!” This was said brightly, as if she was happy he had noticed. “I decided I needed my own workspace, instead of constantly infringing upon yours. So I had a few of the boys move a desk in here.”
He stared at the petite, feminine, desk that was pushed against his. And wondered how the bloody hell she had managed to convince men who were terrified of him to move the desk inside his domain.
“Absolutely not.”
Two hours later, he was still scowling as she happily worked on . . . whatever the hell it was she was working on. Across from him. At her desk. How the hell . . .
He remembered saying no. He rememb
ered cursing. Threatening her unborn children. Then there was a sort of hazy period of smiles and calm words. Then she had touched the back of his hand with her naked fingers.
And now, here he was with . . . her desk . . . pressed to his—surreptitiously watching her scratch her paper, the tip of her tongue poking from the side of her mouth as she worked. Who did that? It was decidedly uncouth.
Every once in a while, the pink tip would swipe the top edge of her lower lip. Back and forth, back and forth, like a snake lazily charmed, before retreating. She tapped her chin, eyes brightening, then she scratched something else on the paper.
And he just kept watching her, unable to stop.
Suddenly, her eyes caught his. He froze, unable to pretend he had been doing anything other than staring.
She tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “What are you thinking about, Mr. Merrick?”
You. Demon-spawned you. “Nothing.”
She tried to peer over the span of their desks to see what he was doing. He pulled the papers into the space of his arms, hunching over them.
She laughed lightly. “Working on secret documents? Ones that threaten the very fabric of George’s standard?”
“No.”
She put her chin on her palm, examining him with an absurd overabundance of humor, eyes bright, an almost lazy fondness in their depths. “Are you working on secret designs for new lady’s undergarments?”
“No.”
“I’m sure they would be very thorough and well thought out.”
“What? No.”
She leaned farther over, her backside rising as she leaned forward.
“Stop that. Get back.” Go away.
God, what was wrong with him? Even in his internal thoughts he sounded like a threatened child.
She stayed leaning over, her chin still resting in her palm, closer to him than she’d been before. “Would you like to see what I’m working on?”
“No.”
“I don’t mind showing you.”
“No.”
“They aren’t anything as exciting as a lady’s undergarments.” Her eyes lit in sudden thought. “Or a gentleman’s.”