Violet brushed the velvet of the padded seat to hide that her fingers were shaking. The cushions were soft, and the interior of the coach had been kept warm with tin boxes of glowing coal.
How wonderful it must be to ride about in vehicles like this all the time. Daniel didn’t even seem to notice the luxury around him.
Daniel sat right next to her, giving her his smile as he covered her hand with his. The heat inside his coat warmed her magnificently.
He knew as well as she did what they’d do this night. Everything that had gone before—the walk home from the theatre, the day out in the balloon, the innocent night at the inn, the teasing over her fortune-telling—had been leading to this. Violet, in Daniel’s bed, tonight.
She couldn’t stop shaking. Violet wanted it to happen, obviously, or she would have come up with any excuse to go back into the house and continue telling her inane fortunes to insipid debs. Instead, she’d let him talk her into running away with him.
Daniel looked as calm as a sleeping cat, but then, he took ladies back to his hotel with him all the time. Last night it had been ladies with diamonds in their hair and rouge on their cheeks. Violet had dark face powder on her cheeks and her necklace was made of fake coins. She started to laugh, and the laugh was a bit hysterical.
Daniel’s smile broadened. He leaned to her and kissed her lips.
The kiss was warm, brief. Daniel tugged the red scarf from Violet’s head and ran his fingers over her loose braid.
His touch was sure, knowing. He knew how to love a lady, and tonight, he would love Violet.
And after?
Violet refused to think about after. Getting through tonight would be enough. Desire wound through her, heating her even in the cold winter night. But she was terrified.
The coach ride was not long, the comtesse’s house lying only a few miles from Marseille itself. When they reached the edge of town, Daniel tapped on the roof and gave directions to the coachman.
When the coach stopped a short time after that, Violet looked around in surprise. The street on which they’d halted was blowing with litter and smelled of horse dung. A wine house, lit and full of noise, overflowed with patrons, and streetwalkers, female and male, strolled along, looking for marks.
A man like Daniel should stay in the best hotel in the heart of the fashionable area. Surely his glittering ladies would insist upon it. Even Violet’s boardinghouse was in a far more respectable neighborhood than this.
Daniel climbed up to give the coachman his promised fee, then he took Violet’s elbow and steered her down the street toward the corner.
“Where the devil are we?” she asked.
“The dregs,” Daniel said cheerfully. “I’ve set up a hideaway here, where I can be undisturbed. You wouldn’t believe the distractions one has in the fancy hotels. Needy friends, little sisters . . .”
This was an older part of town, with narrow streets, plaster crumbling from bricks, and arched passages connecting lanes with even smaller lanes. Daniel took her through one of these arched passages, the wind cutting in the small tunnel.
They emerged into a courtyard. Shuttered windows broke the walls around them. A rickety wooden staircase ran up to a narrow gallery with doors and windows in it, all sheltered by a tiled roof.
Daniel pulled her up the stairs to the gallery and led her to a door at the end. He produced a thick key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and let Violet inside.
To cold and clutter. Daniel touched a match to an oil lamp, then another, lighting the small room with a warm glow.
As the light increased, Violet saw that the furniture in the room was fine, whole, and new. The clutter came from boxes, machine parts, papers, and books. Every available surface was covered with sketches of machines, list of equations, and open notebooks filled with scrawled writing. Books lay everywhere, some stacks put together to be resting places for the bits of machinery.
A narrow bed stood in the corner. It had a solid wooden bedstead, but the mattress was covered with more books, sketches, and maps.
A wide, cushioned window seat was the only place in the room not covered with things. The window’s shutters had been closed against the night, making the window seat a cozy nook.
Violet picked up a sketch from the table. “What is all this for?”
“A motorcar,” Daniel said.
Violet studied the drawing. A low-slung vehicle, looking a bit like a phaeton, had been rendered in great detail. Four wheels hugged the ground, coach lights hung alongside the doors, and the seats looked as luxurious as that of the coach they’d just ridden in. Variations on this vehicle occupied other drawings.
“That’s only the chassis,” Daniel said. “What I’m trying to do is build a more efficient engine, not just a more powerful one. Daimler’s are very good, of course, but he’s more interested in industrial machinery—motorcars are more of a sideline for him. His engines will propel his horseless carriages at about fifteen or twenty miles per hour on a flat surface—provided there’s no mud. I want to make my engine ten times as powerful, and design the carriage to be able to run even on bad roads. I want more gears to give power on hills or hard terrain, and wheels better than carriage wheels with a strip of rubber on them. I’m trying pneumatic tires—with air between the wheel and the rubber.” He moved another sheet. “I’m working on a motorbike as well, something more innovative than just putting a motor on a bicycle. Kind of like a cross between a bicycle and a car.”
Violet studied the drawings with interest. “I thought you were a balloonist.”
He shrugged. “My career as an aeronaut is a passing hobby. My real concern is designing engines to make vehicles go where I want at my command. Needs much work, as you saw, firsthand. Here’s the motorbike.”
Daniel came next to her to push papers out of the way. The drawing he pulled out showed different angles of what looked like a bicycle with large tires and a large box for the engine where the pedals should be.
“Haven’t got the design quite right, yet. The engine box can’t be too big, or the rider won’t be able to keep the thing upright. But not too small, or there won’t be enough power to make it faster than a regular bicycle. But bicycles can run across fields and through mud where even horses have difficulty.”
Daniel’s animation as he spoke about his designs made him different from the Daniel she’d observed with his friends on the street or at tonight’s ball. Both places he’d been full of lazy smiles and cultured charm, speaking with the same ease to courtesans as he did the comtesse.
Now his gaze held intensity, his focus all for the inventions he loved. His body hummed with his excitement, the heat of him next to her cutting through the cold in the room.
Violet liked him best like this, his hair rumpled, his eyes warm as he focused on his passions. Daniel was letting Violet into his world. The energy he exuded as he talked her through the drawings rendered every gentleman she’d met at the ball tonight languid and dull.
Then he stopped. “Damn, listen to me.” Daniel dropped the drawings to the table. “I bring a beautiful woman back to my rooms, and I talk about engines.”
“I like engines.” Violet did. Everything about the balloon and these motorcars and motor-bicycle fascinated her.
“I know you do. That’s why I adore you, lass. Hang on a minute.”
Daniel made a path to the fireplace in the corner, shoveled a bit of coal into it, and lit it with a few matches. After a moment, fire began to flicker around the coals, on their way to bringing warmth to the room.
“Better.” Daniel wiped his hands on a rag that was already stained with coal dust and tossed it down. “I’ll show you what I’ve done on the bike and the motorcar when we get back to London. For now . . .”
He peeled the greatcoat from her shoulders and ran his hands up Violet’s arms. In spite of him forsaking his gloves when they’d en
tered, his hands were already warm, dragging heat into her skin.
Violet still shook, her heart alternately squeezing in cold pulses or pounding hot.
She wanted this. She wasn’t a shrinking virgin, was she? Daniel was amazing, handsome, funny, kind. He’d brought her here to be his lover for the night, in this place of his heart, tucked away where no one would find them.
Why not take what he offered, even if only once?
But she sensed the terror lurking inside her, coiled like a waiting snake.
Daniel wasn’t the monster. Violet’s past was.
Daniel continued to caress her, his hands coming up to clasp her shoulders. His first kiss would be gentle, she already knew that. And then he’d touch her and slowly open her.
The slowness might kill her. Too much time for the fear to take over, to dictate what happened.
Violet could think of only one thing to do. She shoved his hands from her shoulders, slammed her arms around him, closed her fingers in his hair, and yanked him down to frantically kiss his lips.
Chapter 16
The force of Violet’s kiss, the small pain of her tug on Daniel’s hair, made everything go foggy for him. Her mouth was hard on his, her tongue scraping inside him. Daniel opened his lips for her and tasted her desperation.
Violet’s hands scrabbled to open his frock coat, his waistcoat. She pulled on the buttons of Daniel’s shirt until a few ripped away, then she grabbed the waistband of his kilt.
Daniel broke the kiss and caught her seeking hands as one snaked down to cup him through the plaid wool. Violet’s eyes held need, but also fear, the same fear she’d shown in London the moment before she’d reached for the deadly vase.
“Love,” Daniel said. “Slow down a little. Let me savor you.”
“I can’t.” Violet yanked her hands out of his grip and seized his shoulders, dragging him against her. “I can’t go slowly. I can’t.” She kissed his lips, his chin, the rough stubble of whiskers. “Please, Daniel.”
Daniel gently but firmly held her back. Violet looked up at him with wild blue eyes in a face pale behind the dark powder.
“Lass, I’m hungry for you too. Believe me, I am. But I’m not going to fall on ye and devour you. Much as I’d like to. I want to get to know you.” His grip softened, and he drew one finger across her cheek. “I want to know all of you, Vi, my sweet South London Sassenach.”
“I can’t.” Violet grabbed his shirt, jerking it apart, the remaining buttons tinkling to the floor. “I need to do this. I need to.”
“Violet.” Daniel’s voice went stern. He seized her wrists to still her wild clawing. “Stop this.”
“I can’t. Why should a man be able to rip into a woman . . .” She trailed off as the fear welled up, spilling tears from her eyes. “I can’t.” Her sobs came up, heaves that shook her chest. “I can’t. It’s not fair.”
“Vi.”
Violet jerked out of his grasp, spun away, and ended up sitting on the window seat. She clasped her arms over her belly and rocked back and forth.
“I can’t have you,” she said. “I can’t . . . have . . . you.”
The room undulated under Violet’s feet, the window seat like a rock in a rushing tide. Her breath was coming too fast, but she could find no air. Violet heard the sobs in her throat and knew she was going to pieces, but she couldn’t stop it.
The scent of whiskey brushed her nose, and something cool and metallic touched her lips. Burning liquid poured into her mouth.
Violet gasped, started to cough, then swallowed hard. The whiskey slid down like a river of fire. The next gasp let in air, and Violet could breathe again.
Daniel sat down next to her on the window seat, his hard thigh against hers. He kept the flask at her mouth, waiting until she drank a little more before he took the flask away.
Violet coughed again, pressing her fingers to her wet lips. She had no idea where her handkerchief had got to.
Daniel’s strong arm wrapped around her shoulders, his warm hand rubbed her arm. “There now,” he said, voice low and soothing. “It’s all right.”
Jacobi used to hold her thus, when she was ten years old and scared. He’d given her comfort—and then he’d taken it all away. After that, Violet had never known comfort again.
Until now. Daniel was strength beside her, his warmth touching where she was so cold.
“Someone hurt you, didn’t they, love?” he said, his voice a soothing rumble. “I asked you that before. I’m thinking someone pushed you against a wall and forced you. They must have done.”
Violet nodded. She didn’t wonder how Daniel knew. He was good at reading people, almost as good as Violet was.
“You’re going to tell me all about it,” Daniel said. No question, no asking her.
“I can’t.” Shame, misery, and pure rage clogged Violet’s heart, stopping her words.
“I want to know, sweetheart,” he said. “I want to know what we’re fighting.”
What we’re fighting. As though she and Daniel were in this together.
She’d never told anyone except the Parisian courtesan Lady Amber, and the woman had guessed most of it. Violet had trained herself so well not to speak of it that she couldn’t think in words, only in images, sounds, impressions of pain.
Daniel caressed her shoulder. “Let me start. How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Oh, love.” Daniel brushed his lips to her hair. “Just a child.”
“Girls marry at sixteen.”
“Don’t justify it. Tell me. Who was he?”
“Jacobi.” The word slipped out before she could stop it. She hadn’t meant to say it, because it wasn’t true, but then again, it was.
“Jacobi,” Daniel said, steel in his voice. “And who is he?”
“He didn’t . . .” Violet swallowed, tasting the whiskey bitter in her throat. “It wasn’t him. Jacobi taught me everything I know. I met him in Paris, when my mother was first starting to understand her clairvoyance. He recognized that I had a gift for figuring out what people wanted . . . what they needed. I was ten. He taught me all the tricks, how to give them a show, an experience they’d never forget. I wanted . . . I pretended . . . that he was my father.”
“And he took advantage of that?”
Violet chanced a glance up at him. Daniel’s eyes held a hardness she’d not seen in him before. His ancestors, she thought dimly, had been brutal barbarians, killing each other in bloodbaths for pieces of rocky land in the Scottish Highlands. Violet had done research on Daniel and the Mackenzies—they went back for centuries, to a man called Old Dan, who’d been granted the Scottish dukedom in the fourteenth century.
That Daniel had likely carried a heavy claymore and been given the dukedom based on how many other men he’d cut to bits. Violet looked into Daniel’s eyes and saw that Highland barbarian looking out at her.
“No,” Violet said. “That is . . .” The red-bearded man had been nothing like Jacobi. Jacobi had dark hair, brown eyes that could be kind, and pale white fingers that shook if he didn’t drink enough wine.
“Then who? Give me a name.”
“I never knew his name. Jacobi owed him money, a great deal of money, which he couldn’t pay. So when the man came to collect, and threatened Jacobi . . .” Violet swallowed, her throat tight.
“Jacobi gave him you instead.” Daniel’s words were flat.
Miserable, Violet nodded.
Daniel made no move, not even drawing a sharp breath. His eyes in the growing firelight were dark golden—hard, harsh, glittering. “Tell me what happened,” he said.
“I couldn’t believe what Jacobi had said. I thought it must be a mistake, that I misunderstood.” The words came now, loosened in the same way floodwaters loosened debris. “Jacobi left the room. He looked sad and angry, but he left.” The man with the
red beard and eyes blue like faded sky had picked Violet up from the stool and shoved her against the wall. His breath had smelled like brandy. “He was strong, so strong. I tried to fight. I tried and tried. But he held me against the wall, and he . . . he . . . I was only a girl. It hurt so much.”
The hurried, wooden monotone that spoke the words didn’t match the horror Violet the sixteen-year-old had felt. It didn’t convey her screams, her pleas for mercy, the hot pain that ripped through her when her innocence had been wrenched away.
She’d limped home, torn and hurting, blood staining her skirt. Violet had locked herself in her bedchamber alone, claiming she had a fever. Violet’s mother, with her constant fear of illness, had stayed well away.
“I thought I was going to die,” Violet said. “I remember being surprised when I lived.”
Daniel’s arm tightened around her shoulders. When Violet looked up at him again, she was stunned to see his eyes moist.
“What happened to Jacobi?” Daniel asked, his voice steady. “Is he still alive?”
“I don’t think so. He’s never tried to find me, in any case, and I’ve kept an ear out—to make sure he doesn’t spring upon me. After all this time . . . I believe he’s dead.”
“Ye left him? Good for you.”
“No.” Violet swallowed, the next part coming slowly. “I forgave him.”
“Lass . . .”
She shook her head. “I was only sixteen. There was no one strong in my life—not my mother, and I had no father. Jacobi came to find me. He was filled with self-loathing. He begged for my understanding. He said the red-bearded man would have killed him had he not paid. I believed him. The man was mean and cold and carried a knife in his boot. I had tried to reach the knife when he . . . But I never could.” Jacobi had been so ashamed, filled with the need to make it up to Violet. And she’d let him.
Daniel said nothing, only sat, his body warming hers as the fire slowly heated the room. This hideaway, with him, was safe, but Violet knew how easily safety could be destroyed.
Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie Page 19