“Well,” he grumbled, wandering over to the sideboard and piling a plate full of breakfast ham, sausage, kippers, and egg. He added one additional scoop of eggs and then carried his plate to the head of the table. When no response was forthcoming, he glared at his wife.
“We were speaking of Phoebe making a match,” Justina said softly, even in her innocence wise enough to leave off on details.
With gusto, their father speared the meat on his plate and proceeded to shovel heaps of food into his mouth. “Oh,” he spoke around his food. “A match with whom?”
Phoebe dropped her gaze to her untouched dish, repelled by the abhorrent man whose blood she shared.
He belched and helped himself to another bite. “I said—”
“The Marquess of Rutland,” Andrew blurted. “Ouch.” He flinched and frowned petulantly at Justina which could only mean she’d given him a deserved kick.
Father picked his bulging, wide-eyed gaze up from his plate and glanced about the table. “Rutland, you say?” A flicker of something flared in his bloodshot gaze that gave Phoebe pause; a sense of knowing, which was, of course, madness. Her father didn’t know anything of her interests, hopes, or desires. He never had. And he’d assuredly not be aware of the secret of her regard for Edmund.
Their mother wrung her hands. “He is a marquess and therefore quite respectable.”
Her husband snorted and opened his mouth as though to say more on it, but then promptly flattened his lips and took another bite of cold ham.
Phoebe’s shoulders drooped with relief as her father once more demonstrated the same regard he had through the years, asking nothing further about Edmund or his courtship. Another tug pulled at her heart. Or his previous courtship. She shoved back her chair so quickly that it scraped along the wood floor. Her family eyed her with mixed degrees of concern and, in her father’s case, apathy. “If you’ll excuse me.” She dropped a curtsy and walked briskly to the door, her neck burning with the stares trained on her person.
“Where are you off to, gel?”
Her father’s words jerked her to a halt in the doorway. Phoebe turned slowly back around, dismayed by this unexpected inquiry. “Where am I off to?”
“Is something wrong with your hearing, girl?”
“The museum.” She ran her palms over her skirts, uncomfortable with his sudden, inexplicable interest. As a girl, she’d become accustomed to his detachedness and didn’t know what to do with a father who asked probing questions.
“Which museum?”
Such as that one.
“The Leverian.”
He fell silent, scrunching his mouth up in deep concentration as though he sought to file away that rather uninteresting piece. Phoebe tipped her chin up. “Does that meet with your approval?”
Either too self-absorbed or too stupid to detect the mocking challenge in that question, her father waved a hand about. “I don’t care how you entertain yourself, chit.” With that he returned his focus to consuming his plate of breakfast meats, dismissing her.
She used the distraction to make her escape, suddenly very eager for her visit to the Leverian so she could be away from her father, her inquisitive siblings and mother, and then perhaps even away from the hurt of Edmund’s defection.
Curtains pulled tightly closed, it was unnaturally dark in Edmund’s office. Seated on the aged, brown leather sofa with his head in his hands, he pressed the heel of his palms against his eyes in a desperate, now futile, attempt to drive Miss Phoebe Barrett from his thoughts. He’d believed that simply staying away from the dark-haired beauty would restore order to the cold, debauched life he’d lived all these years. Alas, the lady had a power more potent than the witch Medusa, for Phoebe had managed a feat no other had—she’d frozen him and muddied every belief and pledge he’d carried through the better part of his life. A vow to never know pain or care, but damn it, she had slipped past his guard and like her beloved Vikings, vanquished his sanity.
He’d resolved to not use her as part of his master scheme of revenge against Margaret Dunn. A bitter, ugly laugh rumbled up from his chest. When he’d first met Margaret, he’d fancied himself in love. After he’d been humiliated at the Earl of Stanhope’s hands, fighting for the right to the lady’s heart, he’d had a bloodlust for revenge. It had driven him. Consumed him. Only strengthened by the daily reminder of his own failings as a man. How very strange to realize he wanted something more than revenge—he wanted Phoebe.
It defied logic; this hungering for a lady so wholly innocent that she’d be fool enough to see good in even him. She is not so wholly innocent anymore thanks to your selfish desires… The muscles of his stomach clenched reflexively as something…something that felt very much like guilt swamped his senses. When he’d led Phoebe to Lord Essex’s gardens, the sole intention had been to assuage his lust for the lady. He’d not given thought to anything but having his fill and purging her from his thoughts. Edmund dragged a hand down his face. Only now, in the light of a new day, having emptied his seed into her tight, virginal channel did he confront the mind-numbing truth—once would never be enough. His breath came hard and fast as terror momentarily blinded him. A knock sounded at the door bringing his head up. “Enter,” he rasped out.
The door opened and his old, faithful butler shuffled slowly in bearing a missive in his hands. “M-my lord.”
With a silent curse, Edmund leapt to his feet and met the man in four long strides, saving him from a lengthy walk across the expansive office. “I told you to have one of the footmen see to this task,” he snapped. “If you insist on holding your damned post, you should be circumspect with your footsteps.”
A smile played about the heavily wrinkled face. “The movement is—”
“If you say good for your constitution, Wallace, by God I’ll sack you.”
Wallace’s grin deepened. “We shall say beneficial, then, my lord.”
He snorted and accepted the letter held between the servant’s gnarled fingers. His heart thudded to a stop in his chest at the familiar crest stamped upon the note. Edmund slid his finger under the seal and quickly scanned the hastily penned note.
She is at the Leverian.
A Judas is what the lady’s father was.
And what does that make me? The temple guard at Gethsemane?
Edmund crushed the note in his hands, wrinkling it into a noisy ball. What was this? These weak feelings of regret and pain and remorse, he barely recognized within himself, sentiments he’d thought himself emotionally dead to.
“May I be so bold, my lord?”
He stiffened at the unexpected interruption, slowly returning his gaze to Wallace, who, with his dedication through the years, was the closest Edmund had ever come to friendship. “Would it matter if I said no?”
“It would not, my lord,” Wallace said, inclining his head.
His lips pulled at the corner. You smile and then it is as though you remind yourself that you do not want to smile and this muscle twitches… He gritted his teeth so hard a pain shot up his jaw.
“But you’ve smiled, my lord.” He waggled bushy, white brows.
“I don’t…”
The old servant looked at him.
Edmund swiped a hand over his face.
“I took the liberty of having your carriage readied.”
Because Wallace often knew everything and anything Edmund intended before he himself did. He glanced down at the wrinkled note and gave a curt nod of thanks. The old servant turned on his heel and shuffled through the entranceway, leaving Edmund alone. With a curse, he stalked over and tossed the note from Lord Waters upon his desk, staring down at the page.
Four days had passed since he’d last seen Phoebe and in that time this pressing desire to see her had not lifted. Instead it had, if possible, grown into a gripping desperation. As a man who’d taken what he wanted and expected everything as his due, he now knew he wanted her.
With that resolve and a short carriage ride down Blackfriar Bridge la
ter, his driver stopped before the entrance of the Leverian. Edmund didn’t wait for the servant. He tossed the carriage door open and stepped down, looking up the impressive façade of Museum Leverianum, as it was called. The most complete collection of curiosities, it boasted the efforts of Sir Ashton Lever. What manner of lady was so intrigued by such oddities? Despite a physical effort to tamp down this weakening, a dammed lightness filled his chest and he started forward, his skin prickling with the sensation of being studied by passing lords and ladies.
The gossips had already noted his interest in Miss Phoebe Barrett and likely even now tried to sort through what business the most black-hearted scoundrel had at a museum. Edmund entered through the front doors, his eyes struggling to adjust to the dark. He scanned the long rows of display cases filled with exotic creatures, and shells, and other artifacts. The irony was not lost on him—he’d now pursue a young lady and be afforded a dark museum with hidden nooks and crannies made for sinning.
Edmund strolled forward, making his way methodically down aisle after long aisle. He spared barely a glance for the shells encased in crystal for the viewing pleasure of polite Society and pressed on. Frustration grew and spread, fanning out. What if he’d missed the lady? What if her harebrained father had the wrong of it? Edmund came to the end of the row and continued on….and then froze. All the breath left his body.
Of its own volition, his hand came up to rest against the cool, solid display case, borrowing stability from the inanimate object when all his strength carefully constructed these years crashed down about him. Phoebe stood, head cocked at the side, as she studied a small, blue bird, forever trapped behind its crystal cage. An emotion pulled at him, undefinable and gripping, all at once. In their gilded world, she was not very different than the creature she now admired.
As though feeling his stare, she stiffened, and then glanced about. Their gazes collided.
Even with the length of the aisle between them, he detected the flash of shock and joy melded together in the crystalline depths of her eyes. Emotion stuck in his throat. But for fear, loathing, and disgust, no one had ever felt anything for him. Not even his own parents. Heat burned his neck and he was ashamed and humiliated by such weakness. Just then, she spoke, “Hullo.” Only confirming she was far braver and more courageous than he’d ever been or ever would be.
Silently, he slipped down the row, never removing his gaze from her person; trailing it over her from the top of her thick, auburn tresses, most of those locks sadly concealed by her bonnet, down to the tips of her ridiculous, innocent, white satin slippers. He stopped beside her.
Phoebe tipped her head back to stare at him, knocking the silly, white ruffled bonnet, better suited to a shepherdess, askew. He’d long preferred the women he’d take to his bed in satin-dampened garments with plunging, wicked décolletages. How very wrong he’d been. The innocent allure of Phoebe’s modest skirts was more potent than the strongest aphrodisiac. She coughed into her hand. “It was a pleasure seeing you,” she said quietly. “I’ll leave you to your outing.” With hurried movements, she made to step around him.
His outing? He didn’t go on outings. Edmund placed himself before her, deliberately blocking her path. “This meeting is no chance one. No hands of fate have been involved.” Instead, the lady’s own father had turned her whereabouts over, again.
“I-it isn’t?”
“No.”
“Then h—?”
“I’ve my ways,” he cut in, wanting to kill the words which roused the truth that had brought them together this day. He loosened the strings of her bonnet and shoved it back, appreciating the luxuriant, silken locks, then ran his knuckles down her cheek. “I’ve missed you.” They were the three truest words he’d ever spoken to her.
“Did you?” A bitter regret tinged her question. Yet, they should also be the only words of his she’d called into question.
He lowered his head, so that the gentle puffs of her rapid breaths fanned his lips. “I have.” The memory of her had been more potent than any spirit he’d consumed and for all his resolve to set her free, he’d proven himself to be the selfish bastard he’d always been—wanting and taking. “I’ve tried to stay away from you.” But he wanted her in a way that defied the sexual emptiness he’d known with past lovers. Edmund wanted to take her again, he wanted to lose himself in her, and meld his soul to hers until she cleansed the black vileness from him, replacing it with the shine of her goodness.
“Why?”
Their breath blended together. “You’ve weakened me.” His chest tightened at that admission which made him vulnerable to this slip of a lady who’d occupied the better part of his thoughts, both sleeping and waking.
She caressed his cheek and he leaned into her touch, craving her naked fingers upon his skin, damning her kidskin gloves for robbing him of that simple pleasure. “Oh, Edmund. You’ve gone through life fearing all and trusting none, I suspect.” Her words jerked him ramrod straight.
“Is that what you believe? That I live my life afraid?” he snarled, drawing back, even as that parting cost him far more. He looped an arm about her waist, applying such pressure, a startled squeak escaped her. “I assure you, Madam, I do not fear anyone. Men and women quake in my presence. I’m a vicious, dangerous, black-hearted monster and that is what has kept me away from you.”
She winced; at his words? His touch? And he lightened his hold upon her. But with her reply, she proved herself the same bold, fearless creature he’d first stumbled upon at Lady Delenworth’s balustrade. “There is a difference between fearing anything and fearing oneself.” Phoebe ran the pad of her thumb over the bridge of his nose, broken too many times in too many fights when he’d been an equally angry boy away at Eton, fighting everyone, over everything. “And a man who warns a lady to avoid him and professes himself to be a danger isn’t really that dangerous, though. Not when it hints so very loudly at caring and concern for the person you’d warn me away from.”
“Why are you so determined to see more in me than I truly am?” That ragged whisper wrenched from some part deep inside.
Phoebe leaned up on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his in a fleeting, barely-there meeting of their mouths so that he wondered if he’d merely imagined the faint caress. “I think perhaps I’m the one to see the truths you hide from even yourself. Come.” She took him by the hand and guided him down the aisle.
“What—?”
“Here,” she said, drawing them to a stop beside the end of the crystal case. With a flick of her wrist, she motioned to a fierce vulture, trapped and frozen in time for polite Society’s viewing pleasure.
Edmund furrowed his brow and looked from her to the creature and then back again.
“What do you see?”
“A revolting bird,” he said flatly.
A laugh, clear as tinkling bells, bubbled past her lips. She pointed her eyes to the ceiling. “Look closer.”
In a bid to see just what it was she saw in the brown creature with its red head and orangish beak, he peered and then gave a shake of his head. “If anyone sees me studying birds, I’ll be ruined,” he muttered.
“Do focus.” She swatted his arm. “What do you see?”
Edmund took in the sharp beak and jagged claws. No one could ever possibly look at the foul creature and see anything redeeming in it. “I see a fierce, ugly, vicious beast.” And he didn’t see much more than that.
“Ah, yes. Of course, you do.” Phoebe captured his hands, interlocking their fingers. “Do you know the vulture will never attack the living? On the outside, you are correct, they appear quite fearsome.” She raised their entwined hands up. “But they’re not really. When you know them, when you learn all those pieces about them that you’d not ordinarily know.”
His throat worked with the force of his swallow and he trained his attention on their fingers. Ah God, she would make him into what he was not. He was not harmless and he’d spent the better part of his adult life striving to teach memb
ers of the ton just how fierce and ugly he was. He hastened his gaze back to hers. “If you knew the things I’ve done, you’d leave and never look back once.” And it would destroy him. A panicky pressure closed on his chest, making it difficult to breath, to think, to move.
Instead of being warned into leaving, she squeezed his hands. “I’m stronger than you’d believe, Edmund.”
Yes, she was stronger than anyone he’d ever known before. This delicate, bold, and whimsical miss had shattered his defenses and laid siege to him. In a desperate bid to reclaim order, he cleared his throat. “We might also add informed lady of bird facts to your rather impressive talents.”
“Yes.” A twinkle lit the blue depths of her eyes and she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “And proficient reader.” She nodded to the information card posted upon the bottom edge of the vulture’s case. “I read it a short while ago.”
A sudden bark of sharp, unexpected laughter burst from his chest, unfamiliar and rusty from ill-use, and it blended with her carefree, unjaded laugh. Standing there, in the crystal rows of the Leverian, Edmund thought perhaps she might be right—perhaps he was more—or, at the very least, could be more—for her. And she deserved more.
She deserved a proper courtship.
Chapter 12
It may have been mere moments, or perhaps even hours, that Edmund remained fixed to the marble floor, staring at the foyer door. He dusted his palms together and made another attempt to move both his legs and then promptly stopped. Though it was not his crippled limb that halted forward movement this time. With a curse, he rocked back on his heels. And continued to stare. At the door. A door that represented far more—or rather him stepping past that dark wood panel that signified far more.
Bloody hell he was not that gentleman. Nor was he any manner of gentleman, for that matter. He wasn’t a man who collected a lady during fashionable hours and escorted her for a ride in his open carriage, declaring boldly for the world that she was his—staking his claim of possession. He closed his eyes a moment. To do this thing, ordinary to any other nobleman, would reveal to polite Society the lady had a hold upon him. And there was no greater danger than that.
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