He sighed. She was such a wonderful woman. He could’ve spent his entire life searching the world and never found her. Who would’ve thought such a marvel was right under his nose in his own house? “I am not going to call off the duel because you will not betray me.”
Tears glittered in her eyes and the sight made his frozen chest ache almost as if something awoke inside him.
“Don’t make me do it, Val, please. I don’t want you dueling Lady Caire’s son.”
“Your brother,” he said.
“Lord Caire.”
“Your. Brother.”
She looked at him. “Does it really matter?”
“Oh, yes,” he said grimly. “And tomorrow I’ll prove it—if I have to kill him to do it.”
Chapter Seventeen
In the morning the magician viewed the resulting misshapen cloth and said, “And now, Your Majesty, you must embroider this cloth by—”
“The light of the moon,” King Heartless snapped. “Yes, I know. But despite two nights’ lost sleep I feel exactly the same. Where is my heart?”
“Closer than you think,” the magician replied, looking wise.
Prue rolled her eyes.…
—From King Heartless
She tried reasoning. She tried shouting. She tried begging.
Nothing worked.
Oh, he was charming. He was witty and beautiful and he was mad, but he was stubborn and bent on his own wicked and strange path.
And he meant to kill Lord Caire, who, after all, was indeed her brother.
Even if Bridget couldn’t bring herself to call the tall aristocratic stranger that.
So after hours and hours of arguing and shouting and weeping until she was hoarse, she did the only thing left to her.
It was long after dark and she was hurrying along a brightly lit London street, the wind trying to catch at her hat and bringing tears to her eyes.
That was what she told herself, anyway.
It was just that she knew Val was doing all this for her, that in his own way this was a bizarre show of… of… loyalty, perhaps even affection. To Val, killing her brother was a bit like handing her a bunch of posies.
She laughed bitterly under her breath and swiped at her cheeks. She was almost to St James’s Square.
She stepped into the square, looking nervously around. Even at night London’s streets teemed with people. The square was flickering with shop lanterns and small bonfires, lit to warm waiting carriage drivers, chairmen, and loiterers, but she couldn’t see him. What if he hadn’t received her message? What if he wasn’t here? She’d have to somehow—
“Mrs. Crumb.”
She started a little, for she was that nervous, and turned.
She’d forgotten how big a man the Duke of Kyle was. He loomed from the shadows and she wondered how he’d come so close to her without her knowledge.
He bent his head as if trying to peer into her face and she very much hoped that he couldn’t see her countenance clearly. “Mrs. Crumb?”
“Your Grace,” she replied. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“My pleasure,” he replied, a polite man lying. He didn’t say anything more, merely waiting for her to speak.
She inhaled. “Val… that is… the Duke of Montgomery was challenged to a duel today by… by Lord Caire.”
“Indeed?” His voice held calm curiosity and she was grateful. Dueling was, strictly speaking, quite illegal and punishable by banishment from England for life.
“I did try to get him to apologize to His Lordship or… or to somehow decline the duel, but His Grace was quite stubbornly adamant that he will duel Lord Caire tomorrow morning.”
Kyle cleared his throat. “Yes, well, such things are normally rather binding, you understand.”
She peered at him in the darkness. Were all men idiots?
He seemed to sense her silent criticism. “Was that why you called me here, Mrs. Crumb?”
“No,” she said, fumbling with the soft bag she carried. Now that it came to the point, she found she was shaking. “I have something for you. If you show it to the Duke of Montgomery he will be forced to quit the duel.”
She drew out the ivory casket from the bag.
Kyle went very still.
She tried to see his expression, but it was impossible in the flickering light. “You must promise me, Your Grace, that you won’t use the contents of this box against the Duke of Montgomery. I’m entrusting you with his life, you see, and he’s…” She closed her eyes and swallowed. “He’s very dear to me indeed.”
“Mrs. Crumb,” he said sternly. “What makes you think I would undertake this task for you?”
“Because,” she said, “once you’ve got him to quit the duel, you can exchange this box for the rest of the King’s blackmail letters. The contents of this box are very important to the Duke of Montgomery. And…” She bit her lip, ordering herself not to cry. “And I think you’ll help me because you’re a good man, Your Grace. You’ll do what’s right and you’ll keep your word to me.”
There was a slight pause.
Then Kyle took the ivory casket from her hands. “Quite correct, Mrs. Crumb. Quite correct.”
She clasped her hands before her. “I only know that the duel is on the morrow—not when or where exactly.”
“I will find the place and time, never fear.” He turned to go and then abruptly turned back again and bowed. “Take care of yourself, ma’am. I would not wish anything ill to befall you.”
And he disappeared into the shadows.
Bridget wrapped her arms about herself and hurried back to Hermes House, even colder now. She felt empty inside, as if she were missing something.
She wondered a little despairingly if this was how Val felt all the time.
A carriage rumbled by, splashing freezing muck on her skirts. Her eyes were dry—dry and aching—and she kept thinking that she could still run back and catch him. Explain that it was all a mistake and beg Kyle to give her back the casket.
But she didn’t. She stumped on toward Hermes House instead.
Once, when she took a narrow, dark lane, nearly deserted now that it was close to midnight, she thought she heard footsteps behind her. She almost picked up her skirts and ran then. The night and dark and grief overtook her, but she firmly fought down her own hysteria and made the outlet of the lane, which came to a brightly lit street.
And then she was at Hermes House, the front entrance this time, which as a servant she rarely entered.
She looked up and saw the grand pediment, lit eerily from the lanterns at the front door below. Within the pediment was a bas-relief of the god Hermes, holding his snake staff and with a cloak over his arm.
He looked just like Val.
Because, of course, he had been the one to build the house. He’d ordered his likeness carved into stone above his own doorstep for all of London to see—in the nude.
She bit her lip, staring at the sculpture, half smiling, half trying not to cry. Such a vain man. Such a beautiful, mercurial, vain man.
And she was going to be the one to bring him down.
She climbed the front steps and knocked softly.
Bob the footman answered almost instantly—he was on duty in the hall tonight and she’d alerted him that she’d be out on an errand.
“Thank you,” she said to the footman. “Be sure to lock up, please.”
“Yes, Mrs. Crumb.”
She took off her hat and shawl, walking back to her little room next to the kitchens.
The Hermes House kitchens were dim this time of night, the bootblack boy asleep on his pallet by the hearth. He had a pallet-mate now—the ginger cat from Ainsdale Castle, curled with her eight multicolored kittens in an old basket lined with cloths. Mehmed had smuggled the cat and her offspring into the carriage on the ride home to London—something they’d discovered only after several hours’ travel from the castle, when the kittens had waked and begun mewling. Pip, who had been sniffing suspiciously at the
covered hamper beside the boy, had jumped back comically at the small sound and begun barking frantically.
It seemed the terrier had run across cats in his wanderings about London and regarded them with a combination of wariness and awe.
Bridget pushed open the door to her room and was greeted by Pip, standing on her bed and wagging his tail. Despite his friendship with Mehmed at Ainsdale Castle, he’d reverted to sleeping in her bedroom once they’d returned to Hermes House.
Even if she didn’t retire here.
Bridget hung up her hat and her shawl and went to the small looking glass beside the door. Her reflection regarded her soberly. Her brows straight and a little too heavy, too dark. Her nose narrow and unremarkable, her mouth as well. Her chin just a bit too aggressive. She wasn’t at all like her elegant mother. She wasn’t plain, but she wasn’t a beauty, either.
She looked working-class.
And yet this was the face the gorgeous Duke of Montgomery had chosen to bed. Would fight a duel for tomorrow. Silly, wonderful, beautiful man.
Bridget sighed wearily.
Her eyes were a little reddened, her cheeks and nose pink from the cold outside.
She turned and splashed cool water on her face, then blotted it with a cloth.
She returned to the looking glass, carefully smoothing a few errant strands of her coarse hair back into place with her fingers. She tried a smile. There. That almost looked natural.
She gave the sleeping Pip a last pat and closed her bedroom door quietly behind her. The house, her house, really, for she was the one who cleaned and polished and maintained it—cared for it—was sleeping. She walked the hallway, noting where the paint was becoming grimy from repeated brushing by passing bodies. Out into the main entry—the pink marble floor should be polished soon. Up the grand staircase, her gaze meeting the eyes of Val’s formal portrait at the landing. He’d been painted draped in yards of ermine, his lips with a faint, mischievous curve. Sometimes, in the months when he’d been supposedly abroad, she’d stood staring at that handsome face, wondering where he’d hidden Lady Caire’s letters.
It occurred to her now that she could have asked him where he had hidden them, for he’d told her during one of their arguments earlier that afternoon that he’d given the letters to Lady Caire.
She made the upper hall and walked to his bedroom door. Opened it. One swift glance proved that he wasn’t inside—and neither was Mehmed nor Attwell. Both valets must’ve gone to bed already.
She walked down the hall toward the library, remembering the first time she’d seen it, the thousands upon thousands of books, the rows of black marble columns, crowned by golden Corinthian capitals, marching down the sides of the room. It had been simply spectacular.
Like the man himself.
She’d worked for ancient families before, but never a duke and never such a flamboyant one. The library had taken her breath away, though she’d not shown it, of course.
Servants didn’t have emotions.
She opened the door and glanced inside.
He was by the huge, ornate fireplace, lounging on a pile of jewel-colored velvet cushions. He wore his favorite purple silk banyan. The one with the gold-and-green dragon on the back. At his side on the floor was a glass of red wine. As she neared, she saw that he held a small book in his hand, the gold covers encrusted with jewels.
She came to a halt by his elbow and at last he looked up. “Bridget.”
She shook her head slowly. Tonight she would be everything she might’ve been to him. “Séraphine.”
He drew in his breath sharply and she could see his pupils dilate. “Really?”
“Yes.” She unhooked her chatelaine and paused, looking at it. “Lady Caire gave this to me. When I came to London.”
“Ah,” he said, and he almost sounded… gentle.
She smoothed a thumb over the red-and-blue-enameled central disk, remembering how proud she’d been when she’d opened the gift from Her Ladyship. “She gave me a book, too, when I was small. Gulliver’s Travels. I don’t know how many times I’ve read it.”
She glanced up at him, expecting mockery for her confession, but he merely watched her a little sadly.
She set the chatelaine down carefully and unpinned her apron and let it drop to the floor, kicking it aside. “What are you reading?”
“Hm?” he murmured distractedly as she began unlacing her bodice. “Oh, the Koran. It’s the holy book of Mehmed’s people and mostly very boring, but maybe that’s because my Arabic needs work.”
“Then why are you reading it?” she asked, pulling her bodice off.
He smiled. “Because my Arabic needs work. And because nearly everyone in that part of the world quotes from this book. It’s rather like being illiterate not to know it.”
She nodded. That made sense. She stepped out of her skirts. “Will you be traveling there again? To Istanbul and Arabia and the places where they follow the Koran?”
“I hope so,” he said, laying aside the golden book very carefully. “The air is so hot there, warm and fragrant, the sky so blue, and the food tastes like nothing here. They have olives and dates and soft cheeses. I think you would like it, my Séraphine. You could dress in pink and gold and mahogany and lounge on silken pillows, listening to strange music. I’d buy you a little monkey with a vest and a hat to make you laugh and I’d sit and watch you and feed you juicy grapes.”
She smiled sadly and drew off her stays. “And how would we get there, Val?”
“I’d hire a ship,” he said taking a sip of his red wine. “No, I’d buy a ship—one of our very own. It’ll have blue sails and a flag with a rooster on it. We’ll take your mongrel and Mehmed and all his cats and set sail with fifty strong men. During the day we’ll sit on deck and watch for mermaids and monsters in the waves, and at night we’ll stare at the stars and then I’ll make love to you until dawn.”
“And after far Arabia?” she whispered as she drew off her chemise and stood nude save for her stockings and shoes. “What then?”
His smile faded and he looked very grave as she took off her shoes and stockings. “Why, Séraphine, then we would journey on to Egypt or India or China or indeed wherever else you please. Or even come round about here, back to foggy, bustling London, where, if nothing else, the pies and sausages are quite good, if that was what you wished. Just as long as I were with you and you with me, my sweet Séraphine.”
She closed her eyes and wondered how serious he was, for this was her dream, really. To be with him always.
She opened her eyes and knelt before him. “That sounds wonderful.”
She reached up and, one by one, took out the pins from her hair, placing each one beside his book. Then she shook out her hair, combing her fingers through the strands and pulling them forward over her shoulders.
He was propped on one elbow, watching her, his face nearly expressionless, and she wondered for the first time if he knew what she’d done. But if he did, would he have let her in? Would he have talked of Istanbul and olives and ships with blue sails?
Maybe he would. He was Valentine, after all.
Perhaps it didn’t matter. She’d done it and could never undo it.
She leaned forward and crawled to him, nude, her hair brushing the floor. When she reached him, she curled beside him and carefully, delicately, unbuttoned his purple silk banyan from the bottom. Then she spread the edges wide so that he lay on the smooth, glossy fabric nude save for his arms.
He arched one eyebrow at her.
She began at his pink nipples, licking softly, only that, one at a time.
Then she drew back and blew on them, eyeing her work as they tightened under her breath.
He swallowed, but didn’t say anything.
She bent and grazed her teeth over the jut of his hip. He smelled of cloves and some exotic perfume, and she imagined him in those faraway lands, smoking from his water pipe, lounging on his colorful silken pillows, speaking in a foreign language.
; Without her.
She tasted salt at the corner of her mouth as she licked to his navel, his belly contracting under her tongue.
She inhaled and moved downward without raising her face, without letting him see her eyes, and cupped him between her hands. Such a beautiful cock. Straight and pale, though it was growing ruddy at the head. Veins wrapped the column around as he stood between her palms, hard and proud, his foreskin pulled back, the broad tip a little wet.
She kissed him there, mingling their salt, mingling their tears, though he didn’t know it. Her hair fell forward, shielding her. Giving her a little privacy as she pressed her lips against his heat. Slowly she opened her lips over him, letting him in, until he lay on the flat of her tongue.
Then she suckled, her eyes closed, concentrating on his taste, the feel of him in her mouth, more intimate in a way than his penis between her legs. This was an act that she chose, one she didn’t have to do, one that gave her no innate pleasure.
And yet it did.
She could feel herself grow wet as she sucked and sucked again, moaning a little, her mouth filling with water and his taste, her thighs clenching, her fists squeezing along his shaft.
He muttered something and she felt him brush her hair aside.
She opened her eyes and saw him watching her, his face flushed.
Slowly, as if she were a deer that might startle, he reached out and took her head between his hands. Gently but firmly.
“Careful,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Your teeth…” He pushed his hips up, shoving himself a little farther inside her mouth. “Can you…” He swallowed. “Can you move your hands? Up and down.”
Watching him, still holding him in her mouth, she did as he asked, moving the soft skin along the hard shaft.
“Yesss,” he said on a hiss. “Like that. Just like that, Séraphine. Oh, but suck me, my darling one, suck me as well. Dear, sweet God.”
She watched him as he threw his head back, giving himself over to his pleasure. How many women had seen him like this before?
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