by Darcy Burke
“I wanted to see you.” Owen took a step closer to her, his scent of musk and leather invading her nose.
He would never smell of bergamot and cloves, but he was a good man.
“I like seeing you too.” She had said too much, given a commitment she was not entirely sure she wanted, and so she slid back into a casual teasing. “Especially when you bring me things I can turn around.”
Owen pressed a hand to his heart, pretending to be stricken. “You wound me, my fair Miss Morgan.”
“I thought you stronger than that.” She grinned.
The smile on her lips froze as a familiar flash of black and ginger met her sight—the black of Daniel’s hat and the red of his hair under the brim. With his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his greatcoat and his wide shoulders back, he looked like a god walking down the street, an arrogant, infuriating, selfish god. Perhaps the god of war, Ares—that would fit perfectly.
Her stomach tightened at the sight, unwanted heat spreading into the core of her. So much for her body listening to the voice inside her that said she shouldn’t want him.
Damnation.
“Something troubling you, Kate?” Owen asked, concern flitting across his face and darkening his eyes. He followed her gaze.
“It is nothing. Would you excuse me?” She didn’t wait for his response. She was off running back into the building, the door slamming behind her.
Owen didn’t attempt to follow her, leaning back against the wall and watching as Daniel approached. Daniel was dastardly quick—he came inside and called up to her. She reached the first landing of the staircase.
“What part of ‘I shall make you bleed’ did you not understand?” Kate kept her hands hidden behind the solid wood of the banister, preferring him to think she might be armed.
He rounded the last step, coming to a stop in front of her.
Kate retreated against the bannister, which came up to her hips. “Why are you here, Daniel? I already told you I wouldn’t help you.”
“I need to know.” Daniel took another step forward, effectively boxing her up against the bannister.
She leaned back further, unbalanced. What did he need to know? Who had killed Dalton? If she believed him? Or worse, if she still loved him?
Cold air swept in through a broken window on the first floor, ruffled the knotted ribbon of her straw hat underneath her chin. Her fingers clenched around the worn wood of the railing, gripped so tightly her knuckles became white.
She might never feel sure of her footing again.
“You let it pass for three years,” she charged. His urgency made no sense.
“I shouldn’t have. I won’t this time. Dalton deserves justice, and so do I. I’m going to investigate Dalton’s murder whether or not you help me.” Daniel brought his hand to rest on her arm, heat penetrating through her greatcoat. “But truly, I came back for you.”
He leaned his head down, so that their eyes met. His gaze pulled at her. Her body longed for his touch, craved it, as if he was the answer to every question she’d had in the past three years. He could not love a woman so wrecked.
She retreated back again. With her body bent against the bannister, the wood sagged against her weight and a threatening groan echoed. She didn’t move, knowing that if she did she’d be back in his arms within seconds.
He took one look at the bannister, then at her, and tugged her closer to him. His hold was strong, but not unrelenting. She was flush against him, so close she could feel the beating of his heart. Warmth replaced brisk wind, and his presence blotted out loneliness until she was part of something greater, something powerful beyond herself.
She feared that heady sensation. Passion didn’t stick to predetermined routes and checklists.
When he spoke, his breath tickled her skin. His voice rumbled in her ear. “I don’t want to lose you again.”
A tremble tore through her. In those few months after he left, she’d woken with those words on her lips, whispers from dreams wherein he’d fulfilled his promise to return for her. He was here, and she forgot the reasons why she should loathe him.
Everything but the smell of bergamot and cloves disappeared. An altogether familiar aroma, one intrinsically locked in her mind as his, yet different this time without the overlay of pine needles. It enveloped her, clouded her senses. She lifted her head from his chest.
She looked him in the eye. But that was a mistake, for his eyes shone with the same desire she kept trapped.
“If I didn’t know better, I might believe you.” She forced herself to step away from him. “I can’t be with you again.”
“Kiss me.”
Her eyes widened. Could he read her thoughts?
“I will do no such thing.”
“Just once. If you feel nothing, I’ll go and you won’t ever hear from me again. You have my word.” He brought his hand up to cup her cheek.
She found herself nodding. One kiss. That’s all it would be—one kiss and he’d understand he didn’t know her anymore.
He grinned, a lazy, slow grin that made her insides pool with warmth. Quickly, he undid the knot that tied her bonnet on and swept it off her head. Her breath stopped in her throat, died because she knew damn well that there was no stopping this. She would be his. She would submit. Submit as she always had, begging for euphoric release.
His mouth covered hers, perfectly fitted, pieces of a whole that had always made far more sense when they were lying together. He’d loved her when she was a bluestocking with little life outside of her father’s company. Could he love her as a fence? It shouldn’t matter.
This was all taste and desire, of mint on his lips, of sensations she had long banished from her mind entirely. She gasped, but that was in error, because the slightest move of her mouth gave him more access. His hand came up to grasp her chin, thumb and forefinger tracing delicate circles that made her shiver. He pulled her closer, angling to take the kiss deeper, to drive away from her any semblance of normalcy with his wicked, wicked mouth.
She fell hard against his shoulders, hands fisted in his greatcoat, not trusting her knees would keep her steady. His other hand trailed the small of her back, the bonnet he held crushed against her dress. His lips rediscovered the curvature of her mouth and planted hot, impatient kisses along the corners. She leaned into that hand and the bonnet slipped from his grasp. His devious fingers descended on a downward course to cup her rear, clenching the plaid cotton of her skirt in his strong grip.
His tongue probed at the seams of her lips and she opened for him, allowing him to sink into her wet heat before she thought of what it meant. He thrust into her mouth again and she forgot all those objections in favor of the pulsating need building in her core. A fire burning bright within her, coaxed by sense and touch, stoked only by him, for no one else’s attempts had this effect.
Her nipples pebbled, neglected for too long and straining against her short corset. He sensed her need, as he’d known without fail when they were together exactly what she desired, and his hand left her chin to brush against the inopportune confines of her dress. She wanted more—devil take it all, she’d fall into an inferno because this was all she remembered and it was all she’d dreamed of these past three years.
His groan penetrated the air, breaking Kate from the haze.
She tore from his hold. Cold crept up her back, the absence of him paramount. Kate rubbed at her lip frantically. It would be no use; hours later she was certain she would still feel him, taste him on her skin.
Daniel smiled smugly. “You don’t kiss like a woman who feels nothing.”
***
There were many things that Daniel O’Reilly was not skilled at, but he could read the kiss of a woman like a journal in which she would transcribe all her secrets. He knew the difference between a kiss with passion and one where the lady was simply completing a professional act, for he certainly had locked lips with enough harlots these last three years back home in Sussex.
He would
trade all those gin-fueled, desperate lays for this one kiss with Kate. He’d never wanted anything more than to be back with her, and no amount of drink or clumsy tups made him forget her. She was too deep in his soul, sunk into every part of him.
But now he had a chance with her. Because she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
He knew it as she pulled from him, swiping at her lips furiously. He knew it as she slid across the landing to lean against the solid wall, like her knees shook too much to hold her up. And most importantly, he knew it as her lightning-flash eyes and rosy cheeks wished him to hell.
“You surprised me,” she said, as if that could explain away everything.
“Were you caught unaware by your feelings for me, or by the memory of how much better I am than your current paramour?” He gestured toward the door, where she’d been in deep conversation with the other man before.
She scowled at him.
Damn it all, he couldn’t stop smirking. He picked her bonnet off the ground and handed it to her.
“Owen Neal is not my paramour, as you put it.” Kate addressed the second part of his question first. She set the bonnet back on her head, leaving the strings untied around her chin. “But even if he were, it would be none of your business.”
Owen Neal. Daniel stored that name in his mind to ask Atlas later for a full report. Not that it mattered in the end; he felt assured he would completely obliterate Owen from her memory soon.
Reaching for her, his hand brushed up against knotty wood instead of tender flesh as she scooted away from him.
“This changes nothing.” Her tone was flat. Gone was the ardent woman who had been in his arms mere minutes ago.
“It changes everything,” he argued. “You want me, Kate.”
“Even if I did, it doesn’t make a difference.” She stuffed her hands into the deep pockets of her greatcoat. “You can’t erase the last three years with one kiss, Daniel. I’m always going to know you as the man who broke my heart. So you can follow me, and you can knock on my door until two in the morning, but I’m not going to answer.”
“Wait, Kate, please don’t go.” He was too quick this time for her, catching hold of her blue plaid sleeve. She kept moving and he was towed along with her, unwilling to let her go again.
“I need you.” His chest shook with the effort of those three words. How could he make her believe him?
“And I needed you three years ago.” She came to a stop in the hall, refusing to turn her head back toward him. “But I learned that was weakness. You’d do better to realize it too.”
He wracked his brain, trying to think of some way to get through to her. He looked around at the rooms surrounding them—mere closets compared to her old townhouse.
“I know what you do, Katiebelle.” He lowered his voice, so that only she could hear him. “I know you fence goods and that you must be stiver-cramped.”
She stiffened. “Did you have the Gentleman look into my dealings too? Have I no privacy?”
“I didn’t need to, once he told me where you lived,” he said. “If you could afford to, I know you’d move from the East End, find a little townhouse on the edge of Bloomsbury so you could be closer to where you grew up. I know you don’t want this life.”
“You know nothing.” She spat the accusation at him.
“I know that when you were twelve, your father bought you a pony so you could learn to ride, but you preferred the roll and fall of a ship to a horse’s canter.” He edged closer to her. “I know that you wrote a paper to The London Magazine under an assumed name about cryptography when you were sixteen. But most of all, I know that you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”
For a second, her expression softened, as if drawn into the memories. Yet the past could only hold her for so long.
“Even if I wanted to help you, I can’t risk it.” She cast a furtive glance down the hall, making sure that no one was listening. “The people I work with won’t like you being back. Your case was too publicized. If the Peelers find you, you bring down all my hard work. No one will do business with me if I’ve been bummed.”
“What if I could promise you an honest wage, better than you’d make at fencing?” He pulled out a shilling from his pocket.
She stared at the coin, a mixture of fear and want flashing over her face. Her hand crept out to snatch it from him but as her fingers were about to brush against the metal she pulled back.
Lifting her jaw, she faced him imperiously. “If you think I would whore myself out for a shilling, you are sadly mistaken.”
He cringed. Her censure was warranted, for he had taken her virginity and not married her. “Kate, if this is because of what we did in the past, I’m sorry. But I will be the most proper of gentlemen, if you want me to be.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you want me to do, Daniel?”
I want you to let me into your life long enough for you to see that I’ve changed.
Daniel held onto the plan he’d developed on the mail coach ride from Sussex to here. He might have been a drunk, but he was a damn good gambler. The boys who played in Dorking’s main public house didn’t hold their liquor as well as him—and he’d made good use of their propensity to drink and empty their pockets. He had enough saved up now that he could pay for this trip to London and have blunt left over to offer to Kate.
“My knowledge of London begins and ends with the docks. That was my home, and while I could ask Atlas for help, he isn’t as familiar with Stepney or the East End.”
“You want me for my knowledge of the rookeries then.” She didn’t sound like she believed him.
He couldn’t blame her, not when he could think of seventeen other distinct reasons he desired—no, needed—her and not one of them had anything to do with the ruffians she cavorted with.
“I do require your help.” He softened his tone. “There’s a man named Jasper Finn who sells cadavers out of Bethnal Green. If I find out more about him, maybe I will be closer to discovering who set me up. Tommy Dalton was a warehouse laborer, Kate, a warehouse laborer like I was before your father took a chance on me. He died in the most brutal, sickening way and I can’t get him out of my head.”
He wouldn’t tell her of the dreams that haunted him every night, of seeing Dalton’s body convulsing one last time.
“You’ve got the most logical mind of any chit I’ve ever known, and I’m sorely in need of your expertise. I’ve seen you catalogue all of Morgan’s shipments in the time it would take three able-bodied men to do so.” Pride seeped into his voice, for she was the smartest damn woman he knew and he’d missed that. “And I know from Atlas that you keep company with some nefarious people.”
She nodded, her eyes having never left the shilling poised between his two fingers. “This is true. I do know a lot of rogues. But I won’t help you investigate my father’s company.”
He shrugged. “Maybe that link means nothing. Maybe I was someone picked out of a hat because I was an easy mark. Wouldn’t you rather know?”
She pursed her lips in thought. “Perhaps.”
“So will you accept my invitation? I can’t say that it is going to be easy, but Dalton deserves justice.” He fought back the urge to reach for her arm again to feel her soft skin against his.
Every time they touched, things began to make sense again. She was his anchor. She’d keep him steady when he needed it most.
She nibbled her bottom lip uncertainly. “I don’t know.”
“Then take the shilling, as fee for dealing with me these past two days.” He pressed it into her hand, closing her gloved fingers over it. “And if you decide to assist me, I’m at the Madame Tousat’s on the first floor.”
He lingered too long with her hand in his before reluctantly parting. “I promise you won’t regret it this time.”
***
Before Kate met Daniel, she had been a proper debutante, drinking only sherry or Madeira with dinner, or champagne at social functions. She’d learned how to drink
from him.
Four years ago, when he had been first hired as her father’s assistant, she went to his office to deliver a shipping report to him. It was late, and most of the staff had already gone home; she thought he’d already left. But instead, she found him leaning back in his chair, feet up on his desk and a flask in his hand.
“That gin?” She’d asked him. At nineteen she was certain she knew it at all.
He nodded, hand poised on the flask. He didn’t lift it to his lips, didn’t put it back down on the desk, unsure of whether or not she’d run to her father. His cheeks were as flushed as his ginger hair, his hand trembling.
She remembered thinking that he was the only man to be unnerved by her boldness. The rest of Papa’s employees found her brashness irritating, unbecoming to a lady. They were quick to correct and shun her.
“I’ve always wanted to learn to drink gin,” she’d said, flopping down in the chair across from his desk.
He’d relaxed. Passed her the flask like it was completely natural for a debutante to make such declarations. In that moment, she decided that Daniel O’Reilly was worth her notice.
“It’ll burn,” he had cautioned. “Normally, I’d tell you to get some ice to water it down.”
“I can handle it,” she’d declared. “I can handle anything.”
“I’ve no doubt of that.” He smiled, a slow, mischievous smile that made her stomach flip. Passing her a shot glass, he poured out a sixth of gin into it. “My uncle taught me a little rhyme that I used to say before drinking, until I got used to the sting. ‘Over the teeth, past the tongue, down the hatch it goes.’ Say that, and then drink it as fast as you can.”
She repeated his words, gulping down the gin. It stung like hell, but it pierced through her inhibitions. Daniel had laughed at her reaction, and took a shot himself. He could handle the spirits without showing any effect. She felt like she’d learned something that no other girl in her class could claim.
She’d felt alive for the first time.
Tonight, Kate sat with her feet propped up on the top rung of the wood chair, nursing a six and tips. She needed something stronger than her—something that could hold her up when she was in danger of falling down. The whisky cut with water had a bite to it that made her lips pucker and her throat burn every time she took a sip.