Tempting Fate

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “Don’t be coy,” he said with a droll sniff.

  “No one has ever called me coy before,” she informed him, turning back to study Kessinger. “Handsome isn’t so important to me in a husband. Not if he is good and gentle and kind.”

  Good, gentle, and kind. That was all she required, and he still didn’t fit the bill. Something dark and wretched twisted in his chest. “Don’t you see it would be heartless to select him? People would speculate. They would be cruel to him, insinuate you were with him for any of the ugly reasons people marry for. Desperation. Power. Titles. Indulgences. They’d expect you to cuckold him. They’d count the months in between your wedding and an heir and speculate as to whom the child belongs.”

  Aghast, she lifted a hand to her lips. “You don’t really think—”

  “He would resent you, in the end.”

  The shadows in her eyes became bruises as she contemplated this, then the liquid blue hardened to chips of ice as she scowled up at him. “How would you know anything about it? Someone with your attractions, your masculine allure, could never hope to empathize with poor Mr. Kessinger.”

  “Now who is being cruel?” he sneered.

  “What?” Her glare gave way to several confounded blinks. “How might a compliment be cruel?”

  “When it is so blatantly for the sake of kindness,” he pointed out the bloody obvious. “Such as calling a portly person thin, or someone like me attractive.”

  “But—”

  “Miss Goode, I believe I am next on your card.” One of the wolves, a fair-haired fellow blessed with almost symmetrical perfection, sidled up to her with a gallant hand outreached in offering.

  Fumbling a bit, Felicity checked the card on her wrist. “So you are, Lord Melton.” She slid her hand into his and allowed him to lead her to the floor, only frowning back at Gabriel the once.

  His blood heated to a degree that could surely smelt metal. Sweat bloomed on his flesh just as a dull, cold pit developed in his chest.

  Masculine allure.

  Was that what sent handkerchiefs fluttering to his feet, and jaded, middle-aged women swooning into his arms?

  Posh birds love a bit of rough, Raphael had once said to him on his way to a night of debauchery.

  His eyes devoured Felicity as she seemed to melt into Lord Melton’s arms.

  Would she?

  Not bloody likely. Gabriel wasn’t a bit of rough, he was an entire mountain of it. His hands, his body, his heart, his vocabulary and comportment.

  His need.

  This was fucking torture.

  The sight of Melton’s hand on the curve of her back. His arms directing her this way and that as they floated over the dance floor. Their bodies a whisper away from each other, her skirt comingling with his legs.

  That should be me.

  The thought clawed its way through his head, and he grappled the beast back into its cage.

  No. It should not.

  What sort of offer could he make a woman like her? What did he have to offer her? His past and his sins and the blood on his hands? The money he’d amassed by pilfering from her fellow nobles, or doing their dirty work?

  Enemies that would seek to crush her. That might already be trying to do so.

  A life of secrets and darkness?

  No, she needed to be here in the light, waltzing beneath crystal chandeliers doing their utmost to match her innate illumination. She was a creature meant for this glittering place and these gentle lads.

  And he could only hope to watch her from the shadows.

  Gabriel couldn’t take much more of this. He needed to find out who posited a threat to her, kill them most brutally, and take to the wind once she was safe.

  Before she could uncover his deception.

  Perhaps she should marry Kessinger. The hedgehog was a gentle-looking man. He’d at least keep her on the pedestal she deserved.

  Images of the viscount rutting on top of her made him turn to the table beside which he stood. He came within an inch of flipping the entire thing over, just to watch everything shatter and everyone scream.

  Thinking better of it, Gabriel escaped to a small private garden whose doors had been flung open to air out the increasingly warm ball room, but the entry had been roped off to deter guests.

  He burst into the cool, familiar night, gulping in lungsful of the cool evening air.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He needed to break something.

  Someone.

  He didn’t belong here. Not in this world. He wasn’t worthy to touch the silk hem of her gown.

  Plunging his fingers through his hair, he gave a frustrated tug. What was he doing? What had he been thinking? How had he allowed himself to be pulled into this strange world wherein he slept beneath her roof and followed her around like some protective overgrown puppy?

  All because he’d pathetically craved her presence for so long. Yearned to speak to her. To touch her. To be a part of the world in which she lived, and was presented with the inexplicable opportunity to do so.

  He should have known this would be a disaster. He wanted all the eyes that touched her to be gone, to keep her only for himself like some primitive savage.

  He’d vowed that once he’d dismantled his father’s organization, he’d no longer be a beast. That his only revenge could be to refuse the legacy intended for him.

  But here he was, wanting to rip a man apart with his teeth. To truss up a woman— with or without her permission— carry her back to his den and…

  And…

  And what? He’d never be able to degrade such an angel with the wicked— fiendish— acts his body yearned for.

  And he’d no experience with the act. No skill or reference.

  Just unspent lust and unfulfilled need.

  A prickling of his skin alerted him to an interloper silently approaching from behind.

  Gabriel’s hand reached beneath his jacket to find the blade secured to his back before turning to face the very subject of his tormented reflections.

  “It’s unbearably hot in there.” Felicity feathered a glove over her flushed brow. “What a splendid idea to escape.”

  He shook his head, pointing to the door. “You should go back inside. It won’t do to be caught out here together. If you’re overheated, we can take refuge in the public gardens—”

  “I can’t face the public gardens.” She frantically looked about, finding a hedge to the side of the door that blocked a cozy pergola from view. Retreating to it, she sank to a bench and bent forward as far as her corset would allow, breathing heavily, her face pinched with tension.

  Struck with concern, Gabriel went to her. “Are you unwell? Do you think whatever is plaguing Mrs. Winterton has found you?”

  She shook her head, still visibly fighting for breath.

  “Then what is it?” He hovered over her, his hands itching to examine her, but for what, he couldn’t begin to define. “Should we take you to Dr. Conleith?”

  His ruse would be over, but that didn’t matter if she were in danger.

  Again, she gestured in the negative, holding up a hand for his silence as she fought some internal battle he could only watch.

  Finally, after a minute or two, she dropped her forehead into her hands and let out an eternal breath. “It’s over… It wasn’t as dreadful as it can be.” The words muffled against her gloves.

  He sank beside her, his heart, already galloping with his own turmoil, now racing with concern for her. “What is over? What is wrong?”

  The eyes that met his were so haunted he could barely stand it. “Do you ever feel like you’re empty, Gareth? Like you’ve run out of words and wit and energy? Like your smile is so heavy and yet so brittle, the muscles can no longer keep it aloft? And all this because people took that smile from you… demanded it from you, even when it seems you have less to give than most?”

  The bleak note in her voice stole his ability to speak.

  The side of her mouth quirked at him. “Of course not. Y
ou don’t smile in the first place. And no one dares to command you.”

  She could.

  He tried on a smile for her. It had been so long, but he made the valiant effort. Wrinkled his eyes and relaxed his lips into a soft curl.

  “Look at that, it does exist.” Her gloved fingers lifted, as if she thought to touch his mouth, to test his attempt with her fingers.

  Ultimately, she thought better of it.

  “You are pale,” he pressed. “Are you certain you’re not ill?”

  “No, I just… I have spells sometimes.” She frowned down at her fingers in her lap, curling them tightly. “When I’m overwhelmed or upset.”

  At that, he became instantly alert. He never should have come out here. Shouldn’t have left her side for a moment, thinking her safe in a sea of her peers, dancing in a crowded room.

  “Who upset you?” he demanded.

  She lifted a creamy shoulder. “No one. Everyone. I-I just… I don’t have anything to say to these people. And, if I’m honest, I don’t want to hear what they have to talk about either. I don’t care about gossip or politics, fashion or scandal. And they don’t care about botany or books. They all hate each other and yearn to impress each other in this perverse and endless circle of deceit, envy, and need.”

  Looking up, she closed her eyes and let the breeze toy with the wisping ringlets at her temples and neck. “I’m being overly harsh, I know. I have to learn to belong here. Or everything I have is gone… And yet, even if I do select this life, everything I have goes to whomever I chose to marry.” She opened her eyes and stared up into the vast canopy above them as if she could find answers there. “I am inconsequential either way… Sometimes I really do wish I were born a man. Though I would have made a terrible one.”

  Gabriel ached to pull her close. Her circumstance did induce a well of sympathy he’d not previously had. How could someone be so privileged and helpless all at once? Was there a way out of this?

  “You could untether from your fortune,” he suggested. “Turn to any one of your family members and be done with all of this.” He waved his arm toward the ballroom, where the orchestra was tuning for another waltz.

  She chewed on her lip. “I know this is going to sound strange, but now that my father’s company is in my hands, I feel so utterly responsible for it. When I select someone to marry, I am selecting a future not only for me, but for the business. For the country.

  “My father’s industry employs so many people. The vessels bring food, mechanical imports, implements of everything from medicine to textiles. It’s such a worthy endeavor, shipping. Such an important part of the economy and society. I’m loath to abandon that to just anyone. And…”

  She pushed away from the bench, pacing the length of the pergola with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “When it comes to my family… I’d thought to grow old with Mercy, but now…” She turned to grasp the railing and stare up at the half moon. “Do you want to know my greatest fear? Being the spinster sister in the corner watching everyone in love. I want to belong somewhere. To someone.”

  “Someone like Melton?” Gabriel ventured, remembering how she’d looked in the man’s arms.

  She astonished him by laughing. “Least of all Melton. He was vapid and smelled like he’d bathed in aftershave. I can still taste it.” She made a face.

  His wry sound of amusement seemed to distress her, and her pacing quickened, her gestures becoming animated.

  “I know I’m being selective. But I want what is in the novels. I want to be struck by lightning and shaken by thunder. I want to put my heart in a man’s hands and know he’ll keep it safe. I couldn’t abide a useless lord who would while away my fortune as I sat and watched and withered into a bitter old woman. Is it too much to ask to not only share love with a man, but admiration and respect, as well? To find someone who makes this world better for being in it? Sometimes I feel like I’m this endless abyss of unfulfilled desire and I— I can never ask for what I need. I can never find it. I don’t have the courage.”

  She flopped against one of the columns, resting her head against it with aggrieved antipathy. “And so here I am. Hiding in the garden like I always do.”

  A hollow ache lodged within as he watched her bare her heart to the night.

  He knew the longing she felt, acutely.

  Except, he’d already found the lightning, it struck him breathless each time he saw her.

  He wished to be the answering thunder.

  But he was nothing like the man she’d described. Feeling raw and exhausted and more than a little bleak, he drifted to the pergola steps, putting space between them.

  “I… take it you’re done dancing for the evening, then?” he said hopefully. “Should I call for the carriage?”

  She nodded, casting a longing glance back toward the ballroom. “If I had my druthers, I’d dance until my legs gave out. I love it so much, losing myself to the rhythm, focusing only on the music and what my feet are doing… It’s the only time my thoughts are truly quiet. Usually, I’m Nora and Mercy’s bespectacled little sister. No one of consequence. But tonight, I could feel everyone watching and I… I forget how to dance.” She pushed a breath through her lips, puffing them out. “There are days I hate who I am.” Her little fists clenched, and she shook with an emotion other than fear. He watched the war on her features with a helpless compassion.

  Without thinking, he stood and went to her, offering his hand. “No one is watching now.”

  She blinked up at him in confusion. “You said you didn’t dance.”

  “I know the basics, I suppose.” He lifted a shoulder. “You can lead. I’ll follow. I’m a quick study.”

  “Me lead?” She looked around the private garden as if he’d said something scandalous. “You won’t feel… I don’t know… emasculated?”

  At that a true smile touched his lips, one he couldn’t suppress if he wanted to. “Miss Felicity, if my manhood could be threatened by learning something from a woman, then I wasn’t much of a man to begin with.”

  His words seemed to please her so much, she unclenched her fingers before sliding her glove into his. “Indeed not.” The smile she granted him had lost its brittle edge.

  She stood across from him, glittering like a moonbeam, and set her hand on his shoulder, moving into the circle of his arms. Her fingers disappeared into his as she stretched their hands away from their bodies to adopt the waltzing posture.

  Gabriel stood still and solid, worrying that she’d change her mind. That somehow, she’d recognize him.

  He knew it was gauche to look at her, that their necks should arch away to avoid the intimacy of eye contact.

  But she never broke her gaze from his as she stepped one way, and then— encouraged by his effortless follow— she stepped again. And again.

  Gabriel’s body attuned to her every gentle cue, to the nearly imperceptible nudges of her hands. The soft wisp of her slippers as they kissed his shoes, urging him in time to the music. This waltz was a slow one, thankfully giving him time to adjust. He’d watched her dance once before at the disastrous Midnight Masquerade and marveled at the change in her. The confidence she’d possessed when she’d drifted out of her mind and into her body.

  Just as she did now.

  The temptation to join her in that place was undeniable, and before long, Gabriel became lost in the rhythm of their movement and her breath and his thrumming heart.

  “You, Gareth Severand, are either a liar or a natural,” she said after a while, her eyes twinkling in the dim light of the garden lanterns. “I can hardly believe you’ve not done this before.”

  “A liar,” he confessed ruefully. “My mother did teach me a bit before she died.”

  “Oh?”

  A pang lanced his heart at the memory. His lovely, young, ebony-haired mother trying to teach an impatient boy of eight a new waltz. “That was very long ago. I hardly thought to remember.”

  “It sounds like the memories of your mother
are good ones.”

  “All of them,” he murmured.

  “And your father?”

  The last thing he wanted in this conversation, in this moment with this woman so close to his body, was the intrusion of his father.

  “None of them.”

  Observant as she was, she seemed to accept discussion on that account was closed.

  They were silent a moment, lost in the steps. In their thoughts.

  “Do you really not have a sweetheart?” she ventured. “I think that’s an awful shame.”

  Lord, but did she think to poke every bruise his soul possessed?

  “No. I do not.”

  “Why not?” Her mouth drew into a vague little pout. “Did someone break your heart?”

  No, but she would eventually.

  “My heart is not sweet, Miss Goode,” was all he could offer by way of explanation.

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “You don’t know who I am.”

  She considered that for a moment, narrowing her eyes in thought. “Who are you, then?”

  Gabriel swallowed over a gathering lump in his throat.

  He could tell her.

  I’m the man who took a bullet for you. He could say. I’m a gangster used to wielding power and precedence over an organization of ruthless criminals. I am a damned soul who has done unspeakable things to survive. My brother is married to your sister and I’ve been watching you for longer than Raphael even knew the two of you existed.

  Who am I? I am Gabriel Sauvageau. The fallen prince of a dismantled empire.

  And I love you.

  He said none of that as he gazed down at her upturned face. He was too selfish a bastard to utter anything that might drive her from his arms.

  He loved her.

  He wasn’t certain how to describe the phenomenon before now.

  But he loved her. He did. He thought about her every morning upon waking. Every night before sleeping. He pictured her when pleasuring himself. He’d kept her image on the backs of his eyelids during the months of suffering through the several surgical procedures that left him only just palatable to be seen in public without a mask. Her safety and comfort were his first priority, a responsibility he assigned to himself without a thought of asking for anything in return.