A Dangerous Temptation (Bow Street Brides Book 5)

by Jillian Eaton

  He rolled out from beneath her and she collapsed onto the sofa in a boneless heap, too sated to even lift her head. Sitting up, Tobias leaned his forearm on the edge of the sofa cushion and rested his chin atop it. With his mouth still damp from tasting her and a thick curl hanging low over one brow, he looked deliciously rakish. Idly reaching out and brushing the curl away from his temple, Amelia smiled with feline satisfaction.

  “That was…unexpected,” she purred, her body still humming with tiny little aftershocks of pleasure.

  “Ye said we could anything we pleased.” Catching her wrist, he pressed his thumb against her pulse. It fluttered in response, her breath quickening at even the slightest touch. “It pleased me tae taste you.”

  A dull, mottled red swept up Amelia’s neck and pooled in her cheeks. Had she really thought she’d been the one seducing him? A smoldering stare from those amber eyes and she was a puddle of lust at his feet, willing to do whatever he wanted. Wherever and whenever he wanted it.

  Her blush deepened as she imagined the picture they must have made. Her thighs wantonly splayed, her head thrashing back and forth while he…well, while he did whatever it was he had done with his tongue.

  Magic.

  It had been nothing less than sheer magic, and she feared what would happen if he ever guessed the power he yielded over her.

  You ruin me, he’d said, but that wasn’t completely true, was it? Because he had ruined her every bit as much as she’d ruined him. How was she supposed to look at another man, let alone kiss them, without thinking of Tobias? Without yearning for him? Without wanting him with every trembling fiber of her body?

  “Here,” he said gruffly, picking her wrapper up off the floor. “Ye need to get dressed.”

  Yes, she did. They were in the drawing room, after all, with her parents sleeping upstairs and an entire household of servants lurking on the other side of the door. Yet that hadn’t stopped either of them from a carnal act so sexually deviant it made her quiver just to think of it.

  Tobias held her wrapper while she slipped her arms through, his hands hovering on her hips as she adjusted the bodice of her nightdress and then tied the wrapper closed, giving the ribbons an extra hard tug as if to assure herself they were going to remain knotted.

  At least for a little while.

  Once she was properly clothed she braced herself, for this was always the moment where Tobias turned from her. Where he grew cold, and distant, and said something to the effect of ‘this will never happen again’ even though they both knew it was a lie.

  Except this time he didn’t step away. Or give her a lecture. Or jump out of a moving carriage. This time he swept her pale hair to the side and pressed his mouth to the back of her neck in a kiss so sweet and soft and endearing it brought tears to her eyes.

  “I won’t let anything happen tae you,” he murmured, his tone quietly fierce. “You have my word.”

  “Why would something happen?” Amelia hadn’t forgotten the knife pressed against her throat, nor the sheer terror that had accompanied it. Terror she hoped never to feel again. But it was over and done with. She hadn’t been harmed. At least not seriously. And when the Runners concluded their investigation she was almost certain they’d discover the culprit was a common thief; a vagabond searching for jewelry and trinkets to fill his pockets no matter the strange things he’d said to her during the attack.

  She turned to face Tobias, pleased – albeit slightly confused – by his solemn vow. The warm glow of candlelight brought out the gold in his irises and exposed the worry lurking in the depths of his gaze. Worry…and a deep, drowning sadness. Her heart ached to see the pain he was in, pain she suddenly and quite clearly understood.

  “There was a woman before me, wasn’t there?” she asked softly, searching his countenance for an answer she already knew. One she should have known all along. “There was a woman, and you lost her.”

  It explained everything.

  How he could be burning with passion one moment, then cold to the touch the next. His reluctance to pursue an intimate relationship even though it was clear they were attracted to each other. The intense way he looked at her sometimes, as if he were afraid she was going to disappear in a puff of smoke and he was trying to commit every inch of her face to memory. The fear she’d seen in his eyes when he had frantically tried to rub the bloodstains from her nightdress.

  She placed her hand on his chest and felt his heart galloping beneath her palm, its frantic pace at direct odds with his carefully blank expression.

  “You can tell me, Tobias. You can tell me anything.”

  “Her name…her name was Hannah.” He spoke haltingly, and visibly winced when he said the woman’s name out loud. Amelia remained quiet even when the silence between them stretched and grew, for this was not her story to tell, nor hers to decide how quickly it should be told. “She was my wife, and she was beautiful.”

  Amelia despised the envy that soured the back of her throat, but how could she not be envious when all she wanted was for him to speak about her with the same love and reverence? Biting the inside of her cheek in an attempt to quell the bitter emotion, she waited for him to continue.

  “We’d been married less than six weeks. I worked at night down by the docks keeping the riffraff at bay, and she was a seamstress during the day.” A wistful smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Our only time together was in the morning. A single hour. It wasn’t a lot, but for us it was enough. On the day it happened…on the day it happened I stopped for flowers. Yellow daffodils,” he said, shaking his head. “I was going tae surprise her with them. But I never got the chance. She was already dead by the time I found her. Her throat sliced ear to ear.”

  Everything inside of Amelia went impossibly still. Her eyes welled as she looked at Tobias in horror, not wanting to believe what he’d just told her to be real but knowing by the look in his eyes that every single word he’d spoken was true.

  “I…I’m sorry. I am so terribly sorry.” She might as well have thrown a pebble into an ocean for all the good an apology could do, but it was the only comfort she had to offer, no matter how meaningless or insignificant it might have been. “When – when did this happen?”

  “Five years ago. By all accounts, she was his first victim.”

  “Whose victim?” Amelia asked softly.

  His eyes filled with a hate so brutally savage that she instinctively withdrew her hand from his chest and took a step back. Tobias didn’t even seem to notice. He’d gone somewhere else, to a place Amelia wasn’t certain if she wanted to follow.

  “The Slasher. Hannah was killed by The Slasher.” He drew a ragged breath. “And I’m not going tae stop hunting him until the bastard’s six feet under the ground.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next few days were a flurry of activity, both on Bow Street and at Webley Castle, the country seat of the Duke and Duchess of Webley.

  While Runners scoured London for Amelia’s attacker, a veritable army of maids and footmen readied the castle for the Duke of Webley’s arrival. Sitting behind a five-acre lake, the old, stately manor was surrounded by woods on one end and fields on the other.

  The house itself was enormous, with more windows than one could count in a day and enough rooms to house the entire Parliament. When Amelia was a child she used to drive her poor governess to tears by playing hide-and-seek, often disappearing for hours at a time. In recent years it had become a safe refuge from unwanted suitors, and while they waited for her in one of the front parlors she often slipped out the back and went down to the stables, or to the stone wishing well, or to her aunt’s cottage nestled in a grove of trees beside the lake.

  The servants had only been given three days to prepare for the Tattershall’s arrival, and although the manor and surrounding grounds were always kept in impeccable condition no matter if the duke and duchess were in residence or not, clean linens needed to be placed on every bed, floors needed to be buffed with beeswax, and the pantr
ies needed to be stocked with fresh meat and vegetables.

  It was a testament to Tommen’s leadership – the butler had traveled all night in order to arrive first thing in the morning to prepare his troops for battle – and the servant’s considerable grace under pressure (not to mention a strong work ethic) that when the Webley coach trotted up the long gravel drive flanked on either side by towering oak trees there wasn’t so much as a pebble out of place.

  A second carriage followed the first. Within it Aunt Constance dozed while Amelia read a book. Behind them were two more carriages, each only heavily weighed down by a variety of trunks, and finally a lone rider on a gray horse brought up the rear.

  Amelia watched out the window as her parents departed from their coach and immediately went inside, both declining a footman’s offer of cool lemonade before they retired to their separate chambers. In London their bedrooms connected via a short hallway, but with ample space to separate at Webley Castle they might as well have been in completely different houses. From experience Amelia knew she would only see them together at dinner and the occasional function. Otherwise they kept to their own schedules as they’d done since she was old enough to remember.

  With her father’s arm nearly healed – he’d stopped wearing his sling four days ago – it was only a matter of time until he left again. She gave it a week, mayhap two. If he stayed any longer than that she knew it would only be because he felt guilty for leaving so soon after The Ordeal (as her mother was now calling it), and not out of any genuine yearning to be close to his family.

  Oh, he’d been kinder during this visit. More compassionate as well. But she could see in his eyes that he was restless and impatient to return to the life he preferred. One without a wife or child or the burden of social calls and dukely responsibilities. She wondered how long he would be gone this time, and considered it a mark in her favor that she really did not care. For as much as she had long wished otherwise, her father was not going to change and there was nothing she could do, except stop being surprised and hurt whenever the inevitable abandonment occurred.

  The carriage jostled as one of the wheels struck a small rut, and Amelia unconsciously rubbed her arm where the knife had sliced through her flesh. The small cut had healed just as the doctor said it would, and although she still kept it bandaged per his orders it had already shriveled to a small, inconsequential mark that revealed none of the terror Amelia had endured as she fought for her life.

  With every passing day the shadows beneath her eyes grew darker as sleep continued to elude her. After the initial rush of adrenaline had worn off and Tobias had left, she’d laid on a sofa in the library until dawn, too scared to close her eyes less her attacker return and too proud to admit she was frightened.

  That night, and every one since, she’d startled awake at any tiny little sound. The creak of a floorboard settling. The whisper of wind against the window. The yap of one of her mother’s spaniels as they fought for room at the foot of the duchess’s bed.

  She’d taken to roaming the halls until her legs were too weary to support her and she fell into mindless slumber on a chaise lounge in the parlor or an oversized chair in the drawing room or a bench in the kitchen. Never in her bedchamber. Not when she still glanced at the armoire and saw herself huddled against it, or sat on the edge of the bed and could swear she felt a hand creeping out from beneath the mattress to wrap around her ankle.

  Genuine fear, Amelia had discovered, was a tricky beast not easily quelled once it reared its ugly head. She had never had cause to experience it before, and she prayed she would never have to again. But praying didn’t stop her mind from conjuring all sorts of horrible thoughts when the house was quiet and all was still and she was alone, just as she’d been when she woke to find a man with a knife lurking in the shadows.

  After quickly concluding their initial investigation, Tobias and Lord Hargrave had agreed with her first assumption: that the man, whoever he was, had been looking for jewelry and money. With the majority of the ton already in the country, he’d most likely assumed the house would be empty and had reacted out of sheer violent desperation when he realized it wasn’t.

  It was a probable explanation. Certainly more believable than the Duchess of Webley’s theory. Yet despite their conclusion, Amelia couldn’t help but feel there had been something deeply personal about the attack.

  More fear, she supposed, disguising itself as paranoia. There was no reason in the world to think someone had come to kill her on purpose, or been hired by someone else to do so. Her only enemy – if she could even call him that – had been Lord Reinhold, and he was dead. Stabbed to death, Tobias had revealed, but the same monster who had murdered his wife.

  The Slasher.

  She’d heard of him before, but only in whispers. He’d been a warning of what could happen if young ladies went wandering by themselves. A punishment of what might come to pass if they did not lead chaste and moral lives. She had never once considered he might be real…or ever dreamed that Tobias had directly suffered from his hand.

  To lose a wife at all, but to do so in such a gruesome manner…it was unthinkable. It was unimaginable. But at least now she knew why he was the way he was. She knew what had caused his bitterness. What drove his wrath. What kept the hate alive in his heart.

  What she didn’t know was how to help him.

  Or herself.

  She was hopeful a change of scenery would help clear her mind and stop her from looking for shadowy villains around every corner. She certainly hoped it allowed her to sleep better, for she didn’t know how much longer she could go on without any definitive rest.

  Fortunately, Aunt Constance did not share her problem.

  “Auntie, we’re here.” Leaning forward, Amelia tapped her snoring aunt lightly on the knee. With a grunt and a groan Aunt Constance cracked one eyelid, then the other.

  “Already?” she complained. “I just fell asleep.”

  “I’ve been listening to the sweet symphony of your snores for the better part of five hours.”

  Aunt Constance blinked owlishly from beneath the wide brim of her bonnet. “That long?”

  “That long,” Amelia confirmed with an affectionate smile. Stretching out her arms, she muffled a yawn as the carriage rolled to a stop in front of the manor.

  “You’re still not sleeping, are you?” Aunt Constance asked.

  Amelia hesitated. Whenever her mother or father asked how she was doing, she always said that she was fine. Couldn’t be better. Had already put The Ordeal behind her. All lies, of course. In reality she was the furthest from fine she had ever been. But her parents never seemed to notice.

  “No,” she admitted after a long pause. Biting her lip, she looked down at her lap where her traveling habit had creased from too much sitting. Wetting her thumb, she attempted to smooth out a wrinkle. “Not really. I’ve been trying to, but I just can’t.” Her shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug. “Every time I close my eyes I see him standing over me with that awful knife.”

  “Not to worry,” Aunt Constance said matter-of-factly. “You’ll soon start to feel like yourself again. It will just take a little time.”

  “How much time?” Amelia asked bleakly. It was ironic, really. After the attack she’d felt perfectly all right. Frightened, certainly. She would have been foolish not to be. But with Tobias there to distract her and kiss her and reassure her, the incident had seemed inconsequential. Then he’d left, and she’d been alone, and when the shadows closed in and darkness descended she had relived it all over again.

  Her choking scream. The glint of moonlight against the blade as it descended towards her throat. The black gleam of her assailant’s eyes. The sound of his voice, rough and hoarse and somehow, in some way she couldn’t quite place, eerily familiar.

  That was what terrified her the most.

  Not believing the attacker would seek her out again.

  But that he was someone she already knew.

  “The amount
of time it will take is not for me to decide,” said Aunt Constance as they departed from the carriage. Removing her bonnet, the left side of which had been crushed in from sleeping against the window, she gave it a good shake before plopping it back on her head. “Or for you, either. Time is a deeply personal thing, unique to all of us.”

  “I hope it passes quickly. If I do not sleep soon I’m going to start looking like a badger,” Amelia muttered, lifting her skirts to prevent the hem from dragging in stone dust as they started towards the house.

  “Oh, I think it will,” Aunt Constance said confidently, blue eyes twinkling.

  “And why do you think that?” Accepting a glass of lemonade from the footman, she took a long sip, cheeks puckering as the bitterness of the lemon touched the back of her throat. “If anything the nightmares are getting worse with every day that goes by, not better.”

  “Yes,” her aunt acknowledged, “but now you have an excellent distraction.”

  Amelia followed her aunt’s amused gaze to the outrider on the gray horse. He was in the process of dismounting, and she couldn’t help but admire the sculpted line of his backside as he swung his leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground. She took another gulp of lemonade as a wave of heat washed over her.

  “You know,” she said when the rider turned and his eyes, more amber than black in the bright sunlight, met hers. “I think you may be right.”

  From across the courtyard Tobias inclined his head ever-so-slightly. Then he took his horse’s reins and walked towards the stables, leaving Amelia staring after him as the warm blush that had overwhelmed her countenance slowly faded away.

  “Do you think we made the right decision, sending Kent out to Webley Castle?” Speaking in a low voice so as not to be overheard by Juliet (the damn woman had the ears of a fox), Grant took a lingering sip of his brandy before setting it aside.

  He and Owen had retreated to his private study after an enjoyable dinner with their wives. Scarlett and Juliet were out in the back garden sharing a glass of wine, but the windows were open to admit the cool evening breeze and he didn’t want his inquisitive wife to know he was talking business without her. Particularly since that business involved Bow Street.