by Anne Mallory
“Is there something wrong with you?” he demanded.
“I find it amazing you are such a prude, Mr. Merrick. I’ve seen people outside my window do the most lascivious things since I’ve been here.” She lowered her voice, as if confiding in him. “I can’t credit that you’ve been too busy to notice the activities that go on in this part of town, and in full view of everyone. Quite educational, if I do say so.”
“You are ruining yourself,” he hissed.
She looked concerned for a moment. “Do you think I might be getting a bit tainted by it all? Would you like to keep me pure?”
“I—what? No!”
“How then am I ruining myself?” The suspicious glimmer of humor in her eyes increased.
When had he lost control? He wanted to identify the moment, then go back in time and squish it from existence. People didn’t tease him. And certainly the feelings that pushed up, the stuttering, odd feelings in his stomach whenever she said something to him, looking directly in his eyes with a smile about her lips, were certainly unwelcome.
“Stop looking out the window. Or leave here. Go somewhere else. Somewhere safer.”
Anywhere else. God, please. Or he was likely to do something horribly awful, like surrender his sanity and kiss her.
“I feel most safe right here. I trust my family’s safety here. And that is all-important to me, Mr. Merrick.” At the comment about her family, her expression lost its mischievousness and turned serious.
“I know,” he said stiffly, that feeling in his chest, guilt, tightening.
She smiled, a warm smile that held no trace of aberrant humor.
It bothered him on a level he couldn’t comprehend. He experienced an overwhelming urge to grab that smile and hide it solely for himself to gaze upon. A Da Vinci masterpiece he intended to jealously guard.
He tightened his grip on his pen, willing himself to think of other things.
“Besides, you needn’t worry about my virtue. I am unattached outside of this building.”
“Why?” He asked it stiffly. It was something he had long wondered about. She could have married and had someone take over the family concerns months ago.
Also, the phrasing of that last comment was odd.
“I trust both easily and with difficulty.”
“That makes no sense.”
“No?” She examined him. “You trust your brother Roman completely, do you not?”
“We aren’t speaking of me.”
“But you trust few others. I, on the other hand, trust most people on a basic level unless they do something to destroy that trust. And I seek to trust people on a deeper level but have had to hold myself back these last months.”
He should have spoken to her parents by now and damned the consequences. Reports said that the father still had rarely been seen—holed up in Roman’s bedroom. They were long overdue for a chat.
“Why have you lost your easy trust?”
She shrugged lightly. “What matters is that I wish to trust. I want to place my trust.” In you, was apparent, but left unsaid. He shifted. She tilted her head again. “I think that is the difference between us. I wish to trust but must exercise caution. You object to the notion of trust.”
The entire conversation was making him uncomfortable. The need to rub his chest pressing. “That doesn’t answer the question of why you have remained unattached.”
She laughed lightly, but there was something off about it, covering uncertainty. “I don’t conform to the ideal unfortunately. I’m a little too firm in some ways, a little too soft in others.”
“You have plenty of friends.” The woman was a veritable collector of wounded birds and one-legged creatures, of the animal and human variety. He only had to look in his halls to see the evidence of it.
“Friends do not necessarily make suitors.”
“I can’t credit that if you set your mind to nabbing a husband, you wouldn’t succeed.”
“That is very kind of you.” She beamed and leaned in conspiratorially. “I can tend toward the mercenary, when I choose.”
She seemed quite pleased at labeling herself by that less-than-endearing trait.
“But temptation matters.” She sounded a bit wistful again. He wondered if there had once been someone special who had slipped away. It made him feel violent. “And my friends have a tendency to find each other.”
“You meddle,” he said flatly, certain of the statement. “You sabotage your own chances.”
“Not always on purpose.” There was that look again. As if there were someone special. Of course there was someone. How would anyone not want her? She was like the sun blazing on a cool day, wiping away the chill. Sometimes he felt the need to shade his eyes around her. Reports said that she did not have men falling over themselves, but he couldn’t reconcile that with the reality of the woman in front of him.
“You could have your pick of suitors should you choose,” he said stiffly. “So I must assume you are afraid of choosing someone.”
She looked startled for a moment, then her gaze sharpened, eyes swiftly taking in every aspect of his face. A brilliant smile bloomed, lighting the entire space, and he instinctively freed his hands to defend himself.
Everything about her pulled at him. Treating her as a pawn would be far easier. And yet, these conversations always felt like a queen inching around the king.
“Perhaps all this time I have been waiting for the right person,” she said lightly.
He looked away from her gaze, which all of a sudden felt too focused. He looked at her papers. “What are you working on if not undergarments?”
“I have a ten-step plan to defeat the proposed legislation to be leveled against you. Since it is still in the initial phases and not yet signed for discussion, we have an advantage. I have been working on it since returning from Dover.”
He should be accustomed to her wild statements, but his stomach jerked at her words. “What?”
“I’ve read the papers thoroughly, and I can still hardly believe my eyes. They have blamed their own sins on you. And embroidered the truth surrounding the Collateral Exchange. It isn’t right,” she said heatedly.
Darkness rose from within him. “It is exceedingly right.”
“Absolutely not.” She jabbed a finger at the top page of her stack. “There are hints of retroactive provisions. One exploitation of those provisions, and they would be able to throw you in jail for past offenses—offenses that were not legally binding when they occurred.”
“Those in charge make the laws.” It was a true statement—he had used his power to his own advantage plenty of times in the past. That the allegations might be true didn’t mean he would allow a bill to pass. He wouldn’t allow anyone to control his fate. He had a few tricks up his sleeve in case the bill was introduced and someone truly pushed for one of those provisions.
But he wasn’t going to let her think these absurd thoughts about his being a victim of the system. Of deserving leniency. “Don’t paint a sterling picture of my character. We have done much of what we’ve been accused of there. Worse even.”
“I don’t care. Those provisions lack honor in every way.”
“I doubt they are concerned with our honor.”
“They should be,” she said somewhat viciously. He stared at her. She looked like a mother bear ready to lash out at hunters who had drawn too near to her family. “You are too honorable to deal with people like this. You are one of the most honorable people I’ve had the fortune to do business with. Which is why it makes my skin itch to read these things.”
His shirt felt too tight. Like it was restricting his breathing. The urge to reach across to grab the hand she was waving around increased to an almost painful point.
“Beyond the more hidden possibilities, the paragraphs clearly dictate that you will be required to make a number of concessions that would inhibit your ability to work at your highest capability. You do not deserve that.”
The way she was spea
king—as if his worth was a foregone conclusion . . . Dark desire swirled, along with the need to drive her far from him.
“I have done everything to deserve it. To deserve prison and even death.” He allowed the smile to grow, slashing into his cheeks. Perhaps it would scare her enough to save both of them from the horrible path they seemed to be treading. “But then, I’ve never been pleased to do as others desire me to.”
She blinked, and the passionate defense crinkling her face faded to confusion. “That is rather morbid. Perhaps we should discuss why you feel it fair? Then I can modify my steps.”
“No.”
“They require modification, though, in that case.”
“That is not what I said no to, and what’s more, you know this, Miss Pace.”
He caught the quick smile before she projected puzzlement once more. He almost sighed from the inevitability of their mutual destruction as it pulled nearer, inescapable.
“You have caught me out, Mr. Merrick. How—”
“—intelligent of me.”
“—intelligent of you . . .” She blinked again, and for once she looked disgruntled. “Well. Yes.”
He flipped his page. “What are you really working on, Miss Pace?”
“I am really working on the legislation. I have been since we returned, and you disappeared without a word.”
If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn there was a touch of censure there.
“I don’t need to share my schedule with you,” he said stiffly.
“No, but it would be nice not to worry about you lying in a ditch somewhere.”
She busied herself with her papers, and his eyes narrowed. She was using his tactic. He refused to examine what it meant for him in light of her words.
Finally, she looked back up. “Did you catch the men behind the attack on our carriage?”
“All but one.”
Head tilt. “What did you do to them?”
He gave her a pointed look without answering.
“Were you hurt?”
“No.”
“That is good. I worried.”
He didn’t know how to respond to that, so he didn’t.
She leaned over suddenly and thumped a pile of messily arranged papers on his orderly and previously pristine desk. “It is quite a weighty thing. The legislation.” As if the second part was a true qualifier, but not exactly the core of the statement. That the worrying had been a weighty thing.
“Yes, and a bit outside of your usual concerns, no?”
“Justice is one of my concerns.”
Only fools felt guilt. The twinge in his stomach must be from the lack of an afternoon meal. Something about the plate at the inn hadn’t looked right. For the last two weeks, he had only been eating things he had made himself or which had come from her hands.
Except for that meal with the farming family. She had touched him so often during the meal that he hadn’t realized he’d eaten half a chicken until after the plates had been cleared.
“Justice would be served by our sentencing,” he said, keeping the conversation where it should be. “Unfortunately, I care little about others’ perceptions of justice.”
Head tilt. “Just your own?”
He didn’t respond.
“I find you to be quite likable.”
There was that tightening in his chest again. Like steel bands constricting. He had watched a man clutch his chest once, suddenly, before falling over dead on the street. The expression on that man’s face—the fingers digging into his sternum to stop the pain—this must be how that man had felt.
“You are quite an amusing man usually. Always yelling things”—she raised her elbows up as far as her dress allowed with her fingers spread and her limbs vibrating—“like ‘Leave’ and ‘I want you gone.’ ” Her voice had taken on a theatrical, low timbre.
She put her elbow back on the table, her chin resting back on her hand. “It’s charming as long as one doesn’t take you seriously.”
“Sane people take me seriously.”
“I’m sane, and I do not.”
“You are the least sane person I’ve had the misfortune to meet.”
The corners of her eyes pinched a little, just for the barest second, then cleared. “Well, there are plenty more people for you to meet, Mr. Merrick, so do not give up hope yet.” But the tone of her voice was far too cheerful.
He watched her for a moment. Watched as her face cleared of anything remotely hurt or upset. “Do you object to being called insane or my saying that I had the misfortune of meeting you?”
“Neither, of course.”
He drummed his finger on the desk, irritated and, God, how did people live feeling guilty about things?
“You are just fine as you are,” he said gruffly.
Her expression froze for a moment, then bloomed into a smile that would slay demons.
He quickly shut down all reaction to it. She was a chess piece, and once a piece outlived its usefulness, it was discarded. That was how the game was played.
But it had always been that smile. Not her position as Henry Wilcox’s possible wife nor the possibility that he could take his enemies down by manipulating her family. Those hadn’t been the things that had driven him when it came to his feelings for her.
It had been that smile. Through the shadows of the theater that first night. When their eyes had met. She had smiled. Simply. Warmly. Looking directly at him, unaware that she should be afraid.
She was still unaware she should be afraid.
He was still affected every time she smiled.
“You are a true gentleman, Mr. Merrick.”
“I’m not a gentleman. I don’t know why you think such absurd things,” he said tightly.
“Mmmm.” She cocked her head at him. “If you insist.” She turned back to her remaining papers.
She confused the hell out of him.
She looked up and smiled at whatever she saw on his face. “You scare the boots off everyone, yet no one sees you for the guardian you are. Like a gargoyle—a stone-faced, snarling guard over those under your watch.” She covered her mouth for a moment, and he was absurdly sure she was muffling a chuckle. “A guardian of virtue.”
“What are you babbling about?” he demanded.
She regarded him, one edge of her mouth turned up, and there was something behind her eyes for a moment before they were innocent once more. “My mother’s worry for my virtue increases every day we are here. Wailing on about what might happen. Not realizing that my virtue is perfectly secure with you near. It would only take a moment around you to convince her that you are like one of those medieval . . .” She waved her hands around the area between her thighs and waist. He did his best not to follow the movements. “Those devices that keep a lady’s virtue intact.”
“A chastity belt?” he said tightly.
“Yes, exactly. What a horrible idea. I can’t imagine a draft would be pleasant combined with all of that metal.” She paused. “Not that you are horrible. I find your primness quite charming actually. It allows me untold freedom.”
The entire conversation was horrifying. “How do you even know what a chastity belt is?”
“I am well-read.”
“And in what book did you learn about them?”
She waved a hand. “I’ve read so many it is hard to remember titles.”
He would bet his entire fortune that she knew the name of the book. He knew exactly where she might have found such a book. He was going to kill Roman.
“Don’t touch those shelves,” he hissed.
“I don’t know of what you speak. Do you know of a place where I might find a good selection of libidinous texts?” She put her chin on her hand, tilting her cheek into it.
“Miss Pace?”
“Yes?”
He didn’t respond because he didn’t know what to say, really.
She reached far across their desks and patted his hand. “You are a lovely man, Mr. Merrick. No n
eed for worry. As I said, your prudishness makes it easy for me to be free.” There was something wistful to her expression again. “And it has been a long while since I was allowed the unrestrained opportunity to act as I wished. Even if I am silly.”
He turned his hand so that hers was caught in his, palm to palm, his thumb pressing the back of her hand and holding it in place. She couldn’t mask her sudden intake of breath.
“Does this feel silly, Miss Pace?”
“No.”
His thumb rubbed the back of her hand, the smooth skin there, as he leaned toward her a measure. “What about now?”
“No,” she whispered. “Not silly.”
The whisper sent a fierce, almost painful, rush down his body and straight to his groin. “Does it feel safe and secure?” he whispered back.
“How—what do you mean?”
“Your virtue?” He pulled his forefinger along her exposed wrist. “Does it feel in danger now?”
“N-no.” But it came out as more of a question.
“Do you not know the tale of the wolf, Miss Pace?”
“No.” Her voice was breathy, her fingers clinging to his, not trying to break free.
“And the lamb who poked and poked and poked?”
He drew her hand toward him, pulling so she was half-lying across the desks, only her elbows keeping her upright. “I don’t believe I have,” she answered. The brown of her eyes was slowly being swallowed by black, the center point spreading outward.
“The wolf ate the lamb.” He leaned forward so his lips were close to hers, hot. “Because the lamb forgot that she was the prey.”
She didn’t answer for a moment, cheeks flushed, glassy eyes on his lips. Then her eyes rose to his, meeting them, unafraid as always, with a look that made his hand tighten around hers—innocence mixed with desire. “Or perhaps the lamb didn’t forget at all, Mr. Merrick.”
He wanted her. More than he’d ever wanted anything else.
It would be so easy. Closing the distance. Confusing and conflicting all of the very real and necessary barriers that stood between them. That she had tried her damnedest to break down. He wasn’t a fool. And part of him—most of him—wanted to give into it. To surrender everything to her.