There was a romantic, faraway glimmer in her sister’s lovely blue eyes that gave her pause. This whimsical dreamer remained somehow untouched by their father’s darkness. Unease stirred in Phoebe. With her golden blonde curls and trusting spirit, Justina would be easy prey to any manner of roguish gentlemen with dishonorable intentions who’d take advantage of that trusting spirit.
Feeling her stare, Justina’s smile dipped. “What is it?”
Phoebe shoved aside concerns for the future. There would be time enough for worrying when Justina made her Come Out. “I’m merely thinking of the books I’ll find,” she lied.
Justina dropped her chin into her hand and sighed. “You are so clever and bookish.”
Her lips twitched at the compliment given that would have not been construed as such by most any other lady. “You too are clever,” she said.
Her sister wrinkled her mouth. “Not like you. I’ve tried to read your books of exploration and I find my mind drifts to romance and dashing knights and scandalous loves and…” She prattled on and on, raising the warning bells once again of the perils of sending Justina out into London Society. She would need to be carefully guarded.
Phoebe stared out at the passing London streets, the crowds thinning as they disappeared deeper down to the less traveled parts of North Bond Street, while thinking of another—a gentleman whom her friends vigorously attacked with their words and urged caution of.
Edmund, the Marquess of Rutland—a gentleman whom Society saw in one light, while in truth he, too, possessed a traveler’s soul, longing to break free from the strict confines of their gilded world and know life beyond the cage they’d been trapped within. Only, as a gentleman, he could travel and explore and go…and yet he did not. Just like her. What was it that held him here?
“Oh, dear, you have the look again.”
She released the curtain and it fluttered back into place. “What is that, dear?” she asked, returning her attention to Justina.
A twinkle lit her sister’s pretty eyes. “The look,” she whispered as though fearing the driver and the footman perched atop the box might hear her over the loud churning of the carriage wheels. “It is a gentleman, as Mother said.” Phoebe widened her eyes and made a choking sound. Her sister’s smile widened. “The look of longing…” She choked again. The look of longing? “And you wearing the expression a person has the moment they try their first ice at Gunter’s.”
“I do not,” she said, drawing her shoulders back in indignation. She was practical and logical and didn’t have dreamy eyes and faraway expressions.
Justina nodded as though the matter were settled on fact. “Oh, yes.” Then as the ultimate insult, she leaned over and patted Phoebe’s knee. “Nor did you deny there is a gentleman.”
“There is no gentleman,” she replied automatically…and belatedly. Warmth burned her cheeks.
Her sister gave her an entirely too mature of a sudden, sympathetic smile. “I am sure he is splendid.”
He was splendid; a magnificence that defied the hard, chiseled planes of his cheeks and a noble, square jaw with a slight cleft, the only hint of softness in a face that may as well have been chiseled of stone. Even with but their two meetings, Edmund asked questions of her interests as though seeing someone more than any other lady who’d made her Come Out and sought a respectable match.
“You’ve the look of longing again.”
Blessedly, the carriage rocked to a halt alongside their destination. “I do not have a look of longing,” she muttered, grateful when the footman tugged open the carriage doors and effectively interrupted her sister’s response.
Phoebe allowed him to hand her down with a murmur of thanks and paused to look at the corner establishment. She shielded her eyes against the sun’s glaring brightness. Her sister came to a stop beside her and followed her gaze. From the corner of her eye, she detected the skepticism stamped on her face. “This is the shop?”
“This is the shop.” She remained rooted to the spot while eying the sign that hung haphazardly, swaying in the spring breeze.
“It hardly seems er…” Justina scratched her brow. “The fashionable shop to contain those travel items you so love.” The shop in question was, in fact, one she’d never before visited. After Edmund’s inadvertent challenge of her dreams and love of exploration, she’d resolved to look beyond the safe, expected books offered at the more fashionable shops.
She eyed the building with the same skepticism in her sister’s suddenly wary eyes. “I have it on good authority it is a reputable establishment with original artifacts and books.”
“On whose good authority?”
Phoebe pretended not to hear Justina’s question. She could hardly say her loyal maid had put inquiries to some other nobleman’s hopefully loyal servants and had been given this particular shop. “Come along, then,” she said with forced cheer and started toward the Unique Treasures and Artifacts Shop.
“Not at all a clever name for a shop,” her sister mumbled as she followed Phoebe into the dark and cluttered shop.
Phoebe skimmed the expansive space, with floor-length shelving of books and tables scattered about the room and brimming with unfamiliar objects; some of them shining and lethal in appearance. Her heart kicked up a beat with excitement.
“Perhaps it isn’t a gentleman, after all,” her sister said at her side. She glanced at Phoebe questioningly. “You have the same look of longing.” She groaned. “Never tell me you’ve gone and fallen in love with your tiresome artifacts.”
Phoebe laughed and took her by the shoulders, then steered her off. “Go. Shop.”
“You’re trying to be rid of me.” Her sister slapped a hand to her chest in feigned hurt.
Phoebe winked. “Indeed, I am.”
“Very well,” Justina said on a prolonged sigh and then skipped off with the exuberance better reserved for a younger child.
Free of her oddly knowing younger sister, Phoebe returned her attention to the shop, and scanned her gaze over the collection of exotic creatures petrified. A black panther with a lethal gleam in his frozen, yellow eyes pulled at her. “Hullo?” she called out softly. She looked about for a shopkeeper and, at finding none, ventured deeper into the shop, drawn to the massive panther in the corner. Phoebe touched a tentative hand out and stroked his satiny smooth head. Regret tugged at her. This is not the adventure and exploration she craved. She didn’t long for a world where creatures were captured, killed, and forever memorialized as a token of one person’s dominance in a world different than the natural world they belonged to.
“Oh, hullo, there.”
Phoebe started and dropped her hand. She spun around. “Hello.” A bespectacled, tall, lean man with a shock of red hair stared back at her as though she were as rare as one of those exotic creatures on display in his establishment.
“Do you require assistance?” Though the faintly pleading way in which he studied her suggested a greater desire for a lady like her to remove herself from his shop. She took in the armful of books in his arms.
“Er…”
“Because I can help you,” he said with a touch of annoyance in his tone.
“Th—”
“But I am helping another patron at the moment.” With that, he spun on his heel and marched off.
Well. She supposed she should be offended by his surly unpleasantness. Her lips twitched instead with suppressed amusement. Phoebe returned her attention to the black panther. “You poor thing, you,” she said softly. Not only being plunged into a world in which he didn’t belong, but being consigned to a life with the foul, miserable shopkeeper.
The panther’s lips peeled back in that perpetual growl, indicated the same displeasure as the shopkeeper with her presence.
“It is hardly your fault you’re so miserable,” she said, stroking him on the head one more time. The world saw a beast to be feared and not revered. What a lonely way for any being to go through life, merely existing and not living.
&nbs
p; The shopkeeper’s flat, nasally tone carried over to her from within the shop, cutting into Phoebe’s musings. “…Captain Cook, indeed, I do, my lord.”
Her ears pricked. Drawn by those first two words, she abandoned the angry panther and moved down the aisle, picking her way around the tables filled with oddities from all over the world.
“Yes, the very same.” That deep, gravelly, very familiar baritone brought her to an abrupt stop.
Her heart kicked up a funny rhythm that had nothing to do with any of the artifacts, items, or books in the curiosity shop. Edmund. “I am looking for a book on the history of his ship, the Resolution,” he spoke in quiet tones that continued to do funny things to the organ beating too hard inside her chest.
She touched her hand to the shelving and peeked around the floor-length unit just as he accepted a book from the crotchety shopkeeper. That subtle movement caused the midnight fabric of his expertly tailored coat to pull across his impressive frame, highlighting the muscles of his back. Her mouth went dry. Gentlemen were not supposed to have broad-muscled physiques. They were supposed to be padded and proper, and not at all…well, so very masculine.
The shopkeeper glanced up and caught her gaping at them. “Can I help you?” he snapped.
Phoebe gulped and dipped back behind the shelf. She pressed herself against the mahogany structure, her heart hammering. Mortified heat burned a trail across her body. Still, for the miserable man’s notice, Edmund hadn’t noted her impolite scrutiny. No. He—
“Miss Barrett.”
A strangled squeak escaped her at the unexpectedness of that silken whisper. If that black panther had been given a voice, this is how it would have sounded. Dangerous and oddly warm at the same time. “Ed—m-my lord,” she swiftly corrected at the ghost of a smile upon his hard lips. “I—” Have nothing to say. There were no words. Phoebe remained with her back pressed against the shelf, borrowing support. “Hullo,” she settled for. After all, what else could a young lady who’d been caught gawking and eavesdropping say?
The shopkeeper took a step toward them, but Edmund leveled the reed-thin man with a frigid look that sent him shuffling off in the opposite direction. When the marquess returned his attention to her, his firm lips were turned up in a seductive grin that drove back all reason and logic that reminded her the folly in being here, alone, with him.
Though she wasn’t really alone. Not truly. Her sister even now perused the aisles. So, Phoebe remained rooted to her spot.
She and Edmund spoke in unison.
“What brings you here?”
They shared a smile and he held up a small, leather volume with one word emblazoned in gold across the front. Resolution.
She reached out reverent fingers and then caught herself, lowering her hands back to her side.
“Here,” he urged, holding out the copy.
With a tentative hand, Phoebe reached for his offering. He placed the copy in her trembling grip. Their fingers brushed and even through the kidskin of her gloves, her skin burned from the heated intensity of his touch. Desperate to give her fingers something to do, she fanned the jagged, ivory pages and then stopped at a random page. Do just once what others say you can’t do and you will never pay attention to their limitations again…
Edmund tugged off his gloves and beat them together. “You’ve come to discover those pieces beyond your Wales.” His was more a statement than a question, spoken with an unerring accuracy. How could he know her thoughts so clearly when they’d but met?
“I have.”
Her breath hitched as he reached an arm out, but he merely deposited his leather gloves onto the dusty shelf above her head. “And to look at Mr. McDaniel’s curiosities to bring you closer to those exotic places you now long to explore?”
Flecks of silvery dust danced about them. “There is nothing that says I need forget Wales for some other far-flung place.” Disquieted by his knowing, she turned a question to him instead. “Why are you here, Edmund?”
He ran his piercing brown gaze, flecked with gold, over her face. “Do you know, Phoebe, when I arrived here a short while ago, I would have said my desire to find more of Cook’s great artifacts is what drew me here.”
Phoebe dragged the small volume close to her chest. “A-and now?” she whispered.
Her pulse drummed loudly in her ears as Edmund dusted his knuckles over her cheek. “And now?” He lowered his lips closer to hers. “Now, I would say, I’m sure it was you. The hand of fate throwing us together again and again.”
“Do you believe in fate?” Her words emerged breathless. “You do not strike me as one to believe in matters of fate.” Her lashes fluttered wildly and she hated that despite her friends’ warnings about Edmund, the Marquess of Rutland’s suitability, she wanted him. Wanted him when she knew nothing of him beyond their shared love of discovery, and his kiss, a kiss she’d now known twice.
He ran the pad of his thumb over the flesh of her lower lip. “At one time I would have sneered at talk of fate.”
God how she wanted to know his kiss a third time. “And now?” she repeated once again.
He dipped his head lower, so close their lips nearly brushed. The faint hint of brandy clung to his breath, his sandalwood scent wrapped about her, intoxicating in its masculine power. “Now, I’d be mad to not believe.” Phoebe forced her eyes open, holding his intense stare with her own.
“Do you know, I’ve been warned against you?” She set aside his book upon the nearest shelf.
He stiffened, drawing back so she mourned even that slight parting. “You would be wise to heed such warnings.” He spoke in an emotionally deadened tone that chilled her, chasing away all earlier warmth. At the desolateness in his eyes, sadness pricked at her heart. What must it be like to go through life, whispered about and alone? As painful as it was to be the talked of viscount’s daughter, Phoebe had a loving mama and brother and sister, and loyal friends.
Phoebe ran her palm over his cheek and he jerked erect as though she’d run him through. “I learned long ago to not place much heed in the words of gossip.”
For a moment his thick dark lashes swept down and concealed the brown depths of his eyes. When he opened them, a whirl of tumult swirled in their depths. “You should,” he said on a gruff whisper. “You should steer far and clear of me, Phoebe Barrett, and seek out respectability instead of the ugliness that surrounds me.” She expected him to push her away. Instead, he leaned his cheek into her hand, as though craving her touch. “We are very different people. I am the thunder to your sunshine.”
He was wrong; just as she herself had been wrong mere moments ago. They shared far more than she or he had acknowledged until this moment. They both knew the pain of Society’s condemnation. It united them in a bond that could only be experienced and shared by two who’d been scorned and whispered about by the cruel, merciless members of polite Society. “I don’t believe you want me to leave,” she said softly. She stroked her thumb over his lip, mimicking his earlier movements. Even in her innocence, she recognized the flare of desire in his eyes. “After all, even a gentle flower requires both the storms and the sunshine to survive, doesn’t it, Edmund?”
God help him. She was a pawn; nothing more than a tool to guide him into the graces of the woman he would bind himself to. Phoebe had never been more than another person to be used to exact his revenge upon the one woman, nay the only person, who’d never paid the price for betraying him and shaming him before all. The numb muscles of his upper thigh from that long ago duel fought for the right to the lady’s heart, throbbed in a mocking remembrance. And yet, where was the vitriol? Where was the hungering for revenge? Instead, desire burned inside him for this innocent slip of a woman with hope in her eyes and a dream on her lips. Panic squeezed the air from his lungs.
Then she stepped away, putting the distance he himself should have between them and he breathed again. She wandered past the shelving, touching the cluttered tables with artifacts he cared not a jot about, an
d then she crooked a finger. Drawn to her like a moth to flame, Edmund followed after her, forgetting every lesson he’d learned about the perils of fire.
She stopped in the corner of the shop and then tossed a glance over her shoulder back at him. Did she think he’d not wander down whatever path she led him on? How could the lady not know her own appeal? She had a more potent hold upon him than the sirens drawing those poor fools out to sea. An encouraging smile on her lips, she crooked her finger again, urging him the remainder of the way. No, the lady did not know her allure. He stopped beside her with a deliberate closeness so his thigh crushed the fabric of her skirts.
Her smile dipped, the muscles of her throat working. “It is magnificent.”
He ran his gaze along the crown of her silky, auburn tresses and the delicate planes of her heart-shaped face. “Yes, magnificent.”
“Though my heart breaks for him,” she said, not taking her eyes from the smooth, black panther stuffed for his efforts—frozen in his last furious state of battle.
Edmund’s gaze caught the golden-yellow of the beast’s stare. The snarling creature jeered at him for having dared to forget for even one moment that he was no different than the cold, emotionless creature on display before them. “Your heart would break for a beast with no heart,” he said, his tone coolly dispassionate.
With a frown, she raised her eyes to his. “He once lived, and knew freedom and joy—”
“He is an animal,” he bit out, tired of her naiveté, for with every honest smile and wide-eyed glance, pricks of something a more human, worthy man might have construed as guilt dug at his skin.
Her smile deepened and she studied the stuffed creature with greater attention. “Perhaps,” she murmured to herself. “But I prefer to think of him as he once was.”
“There you are.”
Phoebe started and spun around, a guilty flush on her cheeks. Edmund followed her stare and took in with a lazy interest the blonde-haired, plump young lady with blue eyes. The young lady couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen. She smiled—Phoebe’s smile.
A Heart of a Duke Collection: Volume 1-A Regency Bundle Page 146