“That was well done of you,” Honoria complimented. “I only wish my aunt’s maids were as obliging.”
Phoebe’s father’s servants were loyal to the Viscountess Waters and her children. That devotion was likely a product of pity for the horrid father and spouse the Barrett family suffered through. It was well known that the servants in Honoria’s aunt’s employ were loyal to her harridan of an aunt and not much more.
From the corner of her eye, a ray of sunshine slashed through the windows at the top of the room and splashed light off a glass display case. She squinted down the length of the room at the wide map contained within that particular exhibit.
Gillian followed her gaze and groaned. “There is hardly anything interesting in a map. Bah, what does it show?” She jabbed her finger toward the stuffed snake. “As opposed to that magnificent—”
“Go.” Phoebe laughed. “I’ll not be long.” Still they hesitated. “I assure you the nefarious sort is hardly lurking about the Egyptian Hall.” Not allowing the young ladies an opportunity to issue protest, she started down the hall for Captain Cook’s collection.
At last the young ladies were alone. Invariably, those scheming ladies with scandalous families ultimately found a way to disentangle themselves from their chaperones.
From where he stood behind the massive Doric column, Edmund tucked away the note from the lady’s father, a bald, greedy Judas, and lazily studied Miss Barrett’s hurried steps. She cast a longing gaze forward, walking with purposeful strides. He narrowed his eyes. She met a lover. There was no other accounting for her solitary presence in Lord Delenworth’s gardens a few days ago and now the eager glint in her brown eyes.
Never taking his gaze from the young lady, Edmund moved with slow, stealthy steps along the perimeter of the famed Egyptian Hall. He strode past the handful of visitors present, those other patrons foolishly engrossed in the useless artifacts collected about the room.
It mattered not that there was some other gentleman who’d ensnared her notice. He’d seen the stirring of interest in her eyes, the breathless whisper of a sigh as his lips touched hers. Then, she stopped abruptly before a broad, crystal case. She cast several furtive glances about, her gaze lingering upon her two friends thoroughly engrossed with the massive, coiled serpent and the prey the frozen snake intended to devour. Phoebe turned her attention back to the case and he strode forward. With the same ruthless speed of a lethal serpent, he stopped just behind her.
Her shoulders stiffened and her singular focus shifted from one of Cook’s worthless artifacts to his hovering presence. She spun around, hand to her breast, and then a smile wreathed her cheeks. “You.” Her eyes made her more transparent than the crystal panes of the case. Shocked pleasure lit her blue irises and then the familiar wariness replaced her earlier excitement. “My lord,” she said again, this time more composed.
He sketched a bow. “Hello, Miss Barrett. What an unexpected pleasure.” He lied. There was nothing unexpected in this meeting. This had been carefully planned since Lord Waters had sent round a missive detailing the ladies’ plans for that week. He angled his head toward the case. “Never tell me you are also an admirer of the legendary Captain Cook.”
Flecks of gold danced in her eyes. “Oh, quite!” Ah, so she didn’t meet a lover. Her love was for a dead explorer. How singularly…odd. He’d never before known a woman who’d worn that silly, starry look about anything other than a bauble or the promise of passion between the sheets. He shifted, disconcerted in a world where he was always only sure. She gestured to the map. “This is…” Her words trailed off. “You’re an admirer of Captain Cook?” she whispered.
He was, now. With her breathless question, he was restored to the ruthless Edmund. He made a show of studying the display case. “I must confess it is not Captain Cook who has singularly captured my attention.”
She widened her eyes and a hand fluttered up to her breast. “It isn’t?”
With a deliberate slowness, he returned his attention to her. “No,” he murmured. He dropped his gaze to her lips, studying them, remembering the taste and contour of the plump flesh. And just then he was ensnared by his own game, wanting to take her mouth under his and explore the hot depths of her and more. He blinked back the momentary lapse in sanity. “Travel,” he managed at last.
Phoebe tipped her head, the passion dipped and faded from her eyes, replaced by the thick haze of befuddlement.
“I find myself fascinated by exploration and those who’ve traveled and been places and seen the wonders and magnificence beyond the confines of the stifling London Society.”
Her breath caught.
Everyone had their weaknesses. The trick to life was identifying those weaknesses and exploiting them; taking them and twisting them to suit one’s uses for that person. He grinned. This was the moment where he’d effectively trapped Phoebe Barrett. “What of you, Phoebe? Do you, too, dream of far-off places and escaping,” he gestured about the walls of the museum. “This?”
She followed his gesture and then ultimately fixed her gaze upon that map trapped behind its crystal confines. “I do,” she said softly.
He put his lips close to her ear. “It begs the question, what would you escape from?” The safe answer she wasn’t aware of was, in fact, him.
Her brow creased. “That is a rather intimate question.” There was a faint hesitancy to those words that hinted at a logical, practical woman of some caution. She angled her head back, craning to look at him. “What if I were to say I’m not escaping but searching?” she asked, instead, proving she was not cautious enough, not when those unguarded words let him, a stranger, far more into her world than she should ever dare allow.
“And what are you searching for?” For the span of a heartbeat that question was borne of a desire to know what would make a polished, English lady seek a life beyond the glittering world of their London Society. Why, when ladies were mercenary creatures, driven by greed and a lust for the material and their own pleasures?
Her expression grew shuttered. “I…” She flicked her gaze about and then settled her stare on his cravat.
He’d unnerved her. A triumphant sense of power filled him. It was entirely too easy.
“Do you know what I am searching for, Phoebe?” Revenge. Domination. Control.
She gave her head a little shake and again looked up at him.
“The thrill of knowing more,” he said on a soft, gentle whisper he’d not believed himself capable of any longer.
She folded her hands together and then stared down at the interlocked digits. “I understand that.” Those quietly spoken words barely reached his ears. “I believe we are kindred souls in that way, my lord.”
“Edmund,” he automatically corrected. The lady was wrong in that regard as well—everyone knew the devil didn’t have a soul.
“Edmund,” she whispered. Phoebe stole a glance about. Ah, so she had at least some sense to know they shouldn’t be viewed conversing, unchaperoned, in this public manner. She slipped by him and walked the length of the giant elephant, running her gloved fingertips over the ropes about the massive creature.
He trailed after her, allowing her the freedom of the slight distance, and the sense of control she strove for—strove and failed.
When she reached the back middle portion of the gray beast, she froze beside a tall column.
Edmund stopped and stared at her expectantly.
“Would you find me silly if I say I detest London?”
He frowned as she confirmed his earlier suppositions. “I would say you are truthful and wise,” he said, giving her the first truthful words he’d spoken in either of their exchanges up to this point. He closed the remaining distance between them and then stopped when but the span of a hand separated them. “I also detest London.” And that was the second truthful piece he’d imparted. A sudden unease filtered through him at this sense of being exposed before her—when he never laid any part of himself bare before anyone.
; She clung to his words. “The insincerity, the glittering opulence, the cruel gossips, and unkind words and whispers. What person would prefer such a place?”
In short, she spoke of a world Edmund had always been suited for. An increasingly familiar disquiet continued to roll through him; powerful and volatile and all the more terrifying for it. “If you could go anywhere, Phoebe,” he said, shifting the conversation to this woman who represented a means to an end of the one chapter in his life that had seen him defeated.
A wistful smile played upon her lips and he stilled at the sincerity of that unabashed expression. Had he ever been so unrestrained? One time, yes. Before he’d confronted the vile depravity of his own parents, and then everyone else around him.
“Wales.”
Wales. When presented the possibility, even imagined, to go anywhere—the decadent halls of Paris, the crystalline waters of the Caribbean, the wonders of the Orient—she would choose Wales. It spoke to the lady’s imagination…or rather lack, thereof.
Merriment danced in her eyes. “By your expression you find exception with my choice.” Hers was a statement.
Edmund leaned against the pillar. “I gather there is nothing you do without purpose, and certainly a woman of reason…has her…reasons.”
She dropped her voice to a soft, husky whisper. “Anglesey.” That whisper washed over him, drowned out her word, his question, their discourse. All he heard, felt, or saw was her and the eager gleam in her eyes. Some unidentifiable force of emotion slammed into him, something more potent than lust for the unfamiliarity of it—a desire to crave something with such ferocity for nothing more than the mere unjaded want of it; sentiments not driven by revenge or power.
Desperate to fill the void left by her whispery soft utterance, he repeated, “Anglesey.”
With a widening smile on her lips, she nodded once. “The great Vikings and their raid upon Anglesey, and Rhodri Mawr’s ultimate defeat of the leader Gorm.”
He flicked a gaze over her, discovering the new, next, unexpected bit about Phoebe Barrett. She was a bloodthirsty thing. “And you are intrigued by the ruthlessness of the Vikings?”
“Not their ruthlessness.” She gesticulated wildly with her hands until he had to look away or become dizzy from her frantic movements. “They were seafarers.”
“They were raiders,” he said bluntly.
“And traders,” she continued as though he’d not spoken.
Ah, it made sense. The lady would make something romantic of a bloodthirsty, savage lot bent upon conquering and destruction. A thrill of inevitable victory coursed through him. Where Miss Honoria Fairfax would wisely and safely keep him at arm’s length, Phoebe, in her unjaded innocence and naiveté would wander into the darkened corners of the Egyptian Hall and weave romantic tales of savages who’d slaughter, rape and pillage.
By the slight downturn of her lips at the corner, she’d followed the direction of his thoughts on her Viking raiders. “They traveled the Mediterranean and North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.”
She spoke with the same excitement and enthusiasm as a tutor imparting a favorite lesson to his charges. The muscles of his lips tugged and pulled and then, for the first time in more years than he remembered, an honest smile formed, tight and stiff from the lack of use.
“What is it?” she blurted.
Edmund schooled his features. He ran the pad of his thumb over her plump, lower lip. “Oh, Phoebe, you’d go to Wales to be closer to your Vikings, instead of spreading your wings and daring to dream of those sapphire waters of the Mediterranean or the opulent beauty of the Far East.” He relished the rapid rise and fall of her chest that hinted at her body’s awareness of him. “You deserve more in your dreams and for them,” he said quietly and claimed her lips in a faint kiss.
This meeting of mouths was only part of his ultimate plan to ensnare her in his trap. Yet, if that were so, then why did desire course through him, filling him with this pained hunger to make her his, to mark her when he’d learned to never want anything of a woman beyond the immediacy of his and his lover’s immediate desires? Phoebe leaned into him, reaching up on tiptoe and returning his kiss with boldness no innocent had a right to. He wrapped his hand about her and dragged her closer to his chest, so that the generous mounds of her breasts crushed against him. A desperate little moan escaped her and Edmund angled his head, deepening the kiss and swallowing that breathy sound of her desire. He wanted her. Now. He wanted to layer her to the pillar that served as her only protection from ruin and take her here, hard and fast, so that her moans became screams as she found fulfillment.
The tinkling giggles of ladies from somewhere within the museum penetrated the momentary spell Phoebe had cast upon him. Reality reared its unpleasant head. He set her away with alacrity. Panic pounded in his chest as he, who prided himself on his mastery over self-control, had succumbed to his hungering for the breathless, wide-eyed innocent before him. “Go,” he commanded gruffly.
“I—”
“Go,” he ordered again, his tone harsher than he intended.
She squared her jaw and, for a moment, it appeared as though she intended to defy his orders. And for an even briefer moment, he wanted her to do exactly that. But then she spun on her heel and ran from him as though the devil trailed on her heels…and as Edmund stared after her, he supposed the devil, in fact, did.
Chapter 6
Phoebe strode quickly down the perimeter of Egyptian Hall, returning to Captain Cook’s map and the other handful of artifacts that no longer sung to her soul, called back this time by the words Edmund had revealed—words that had served as a window into his troubled soul—that had proven they were kindred spirits, of sorts. She paused beside a column, borrowing strength from the massive, white pillar, all the while praying her friends were so engrossed in their own explorations they’d not noted her disappearance. Her skin pricked with awareness and she brought her shoulders back—he studied her. He’d commanded her to leave, but he hovered in the shadows, his gaze burning a mark onto her skin. She closed her eyes a moment. Her friends were correct. This senseless attraction to Edmund was imprudent and dangerous and all things rash. Yet, when he spoke to her, his own thoughts echoing her heart’s wishes and sentiments, she forgot the need to use caution where the famed rogue was concerned.
Her friends stepped into her path.
“Where were you?” Honoria snapped.
Phoebe pressed a hand to her racing heart. “You frightened me,” she said, praying her world-wary friend did not take in the color on her cheeks and piece together some man, nay, a specific man she’d expressly warned her against, had set her pulse to racing once again.
Honoria planted her arms akimbo and took another step closer. “Why are you blushing?” Of course, ever the guarded one of their trio, she missed few details.
Their friend, Gillian, ever the maker of peace within their group, shifted nervously back and forth upon her feet, glancing at the ceiling, the column behind Phoebe, Captain Cook’s map—anywhere but at her friends who never quarreled—until now. Now it seemed they did it with a staggering frequency.
Honoria clearly tired of Phoebe’s silence. “I saw him,” she hissed. “I saw him in the museum moments ago.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she returned, as with that one lie, Phoebe descended into some dark, unfamiliar plane of her and Honoria’s friendship. Her friend narrowed her eyes.
“You would lie to me?” Shock, hurt, and pain all underscored that question.
Even Gillian, who strove to avoid any and all conflicts, pursed her lips. “Not well-done of you, Phoebe.” She shook her head. “Not well-done of you at all.”
Guilt rolled through her. “What would you have me say?” She held her palms up. “You’ve already judged him just as the rest of Society has and found him lacking.”
“Not lacking.” Honoria held a finger up. “Evil. Vile. Reprehensible—”
“Stop,” Phoebe cut in, her
tone sharper than she intended. As the victim of Society’s cruel gossip through the years, she’d long ago vowed not to listen to the gossips’ opinion on another person’s worthiness or, in this case, unworthiness. “Who are we to pass judgment?” She stole a glance about to be sure there were no interlopers in this charged exchange. “My father is one of the most reprehensible letches in London. He is a faithless coward, a profligate gambler, and by Society’s accounts, I am no better than he because of my connection to him.” She paused, as the familiar hurt of living in the whispers of her father’s scandals struck at her with a pain she suspected would always be there. “We’ve all been judged,” she said softly to her friends. Not once had anyone looked at her, truly looked at her, as anything more than an extension of the dishonorable man who’d sired her. Phoebe folded her arms and hugged herself. There had been nothing in Edmund’s eyes or his kiss, which had given any hint that he’d judged her worthiness by her father’s shameful ways. “He is no different than any of us,” she said, looking between her friends. By the tightness of their lips and the concern in their eyes, they appeared unfazed by her passionate defense of the gentleman.
“He is nothing like us,” Honoria spat. “It is not his family members’ worthiness that is called into question, but the gentleman himself. The papers purport he’s done scandalous things with scandalous women and—” She drew in a slow, steadying breath and stole a glance about at their very public surroundings. Young ladies did not speak of scandalous things and scandalous women as Honoria now did. “Stay away from him, Phoebe. No good can ever come to be with a dark devil such as Rutland.”
Phoebe set her jaw at a mutinous angle. Gillian placed a staying hand upon her, stopping the rebuttal on her lips. “We do not want to see you hurt.”
Oh, dear. She was being schooled on matters of practicality by Gillian. “I’ll not be unwise,” she reassured them.
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