by Clee, Adele
“Not as bland as eating broth every day for months,” she said, amused. “Nothing could be as uninspiring as that.”
“That depends on how it is served.” Having her feed him the vile concoction, witnessing the care and consideration that went into spooning every last drop into his mouth, had been a moment of pure bliss.
He would have continued the interesting conversation were it not for the numerous heads turning their way. Lord Rathbone whirled around from his group of friends, practically drooled at seeing the woman in the red silk pelisse gliding along the lush green walkway. Joshua Steele met Damian’s gaze before quickly turning away. He pushed through the crowd, eager to hide amid the sea of top hats and pretty bonnets.
Damian noticed the Marquis of Blackbeck holding court near the Turkish Tent. The lord commanded the attention of a small, select group of people. Influential gentlemen listened to his pompous drivel. Elegant ladies hung on every banal word. There wasn’t a woman in the ton who did not aspire to trap the marquis into marriage.
Damian cast the Scarlet Widow a sidelong glance.
Well, perhaps there was one.
“Your father should grace the stage,” his widow said. “He certainly knows how to play to the crowd.”
“Oh, the marquis is rather skilled at twisting a tale.” Bitterness infused Damian’s tone. “He repeats the same lines so many times one wonders why the ladies scramble for his attention.” The lord was in his fiftieth year. Surely he was tired of playing the juvenile.
“It’s not his attention they seek,” the widow replied. “It’s his money and title.”
Damian snorted as he steered her towards the Grove, hoping to avoid another confrontation with his father. “Then theirs is a wasted effort. The man will never marry.” No, the lord enjoyed growing his list of conquests.
The widow clutched Damian’s arm as they navigated the boisterous crowd swaying along to the music. “Word is the marquis will marry the first mistress to fall pregnant with his child.”
The crashing of cymbals made it impossible to hear with any clarity. “I beg your pardon?”
She repeated her comment and added, “The marquis is desperate for a legitimate heir.” She leaned closer, so close the seductive scent of her perfume filled his head. “Some say he has developed a problem in that regard. Hence the reason he refuses to take a wife without having proof of her fertility.”
Damian came to an abrupt halt amid a swarm of eager revellers. He swung the widow around to face him. “How is it I know nothing of this?” A host of emotions fought for prominence: confusion, jealousy, barely contained rage. Had the marquis married Maria Alvarez, he would have his legitimate heir.
She shrugged, opened her mouth to speak just as the musicians banged their drums and blew their blasted horns. Frustrated by the lack of privacy, he grasped her hand and led her through the Grove to the supper boxes in the Handel Piazza.
“How is it I know nothing of my father’s intention?” Damian repeated now they were free from all distractions. How was the widow privy to such intimate details?
“Perhaps because you have spent an inordinate amount of time abroad these last three years. Perhaps because people know you’re a man who despises gossip.”
This wasn’t gossip. Knowing the depth of the marquis’ conceit, Damian suspected this snippet of information bore a remarkable likeness to the truth. And yet that was not the comment he found so damnably intriguing.
“An inordinate amount of time?” he said, drawing her to sit opposite him in a supper box reserved for someone else. He preferred to stare into her eyes when he stripped off her mask. “You should be careful with your phrasing, my lady. A man might think you’ve taken a particular interest in his whereabouts.”
A pink blush stained her cheeks, but she made a quick recovery. “Your vanity leads you to jump to conclusions, sir. I seem to recall Mr Cavanagh mentioning the fact you’ve spent too much time abroad.”
She had been too slow to disguise her initial embarrassment, and so he pressed his point. “You made a specific reference to the last three years. The three years since we parted on a promise.” The need to delve into her mind and discover the truth proved overwhelming. All anger at his father dissipated in light of learning this beauty’s secrets. “My vanity leads me to conclude that you made it your business to keep abreast of my private affairs.”
Noting a flash of panic in her eyes, he reached into his coat pocket, withdrew his flask, pulled out the stopper and offered her a nip of brandy. “It’s not rack punch but should suffice.”
As she reached out to take the flask, he brushed his fingers against hers—a ploy to unsettle her composure. The mere touch sent a hot bolt of recognition to his chest.
Roles reversed.
He was the one who struggled to hide his sudden intake of breath. It was his stomach performing a range of death-defying flips.
A smile touched the widow’s lips. Amusement turned her eyes a vibrant shade of blue as she sipped the liquor into her mouth.
Damian watched her reaction—the glint of pleasure as the warm liquid slid down her throat, the wide-eyed shock as it left a scorching trail. He took the flask and downed the contents before replacing the stopper and slipping it back into his pocket.
“Well?” he prompted, for he would not let her escape so easily.
She arched a brow. “You’re right. But how might I hold you to your promise without knowing where to find you?”
Clever minx.
“Though as a man who acts on impulse,” she continued, wearing her champion’s smirk, “keeping track of your movements often proved difficult.”
And finding her had been downright impossible. “And you left the lodging-house like a ghost in the night. After a few months spent searching, I presumed you were dead.”
How was it a man could grieve for a kiss he had never stolen? For the loss of a lover he’d never bedded? A wife he’d never wed?
“You looked for me?” She seemed surprised.
Looked for her? People did not simply disappear. He had been out of his mind with worry, far too obsessed with her welfare. Not that he’d admitted his weakness to anyone.
“A bit of bread and a sack of kindling hardly seemed a fair reward for a woman who saved my life. The landlord contacted the supplier when thieves stole the sack left outside your door. Your sudden departure seemed out of character.”
She remained silent as her curious gaze searched his face. Suspecting this woman had the power to see beyond the fixed expressions he showed to the world, Damian decided on a tactic to unnerve her.
“So you have thought about me many times during the last three years.” His leg brushed hers, his knee coming to rest against her thigh.
The hitch in her breath was unmistakable. “P-perhaps as often as you have thought about me.”
He doubted that.
He thought about her whenever he stripped off his clothes to reveal the jagged scar on his thigh, whenever he slid into the bathtub to ease the aching muscle, whenever a woman straddled him and rode him hard. Many times he had breathed her name as his own hand pumped his throbbing shaft. Too many times he had dreamt about her only to wake and experience the same gnawing emptiness within.
The Lord found novel ways to punish sinners.
And yet …
Fate had forced them together again.
It was time to change the subject, to discuss matters of revenge and murder. Something that did not make his heart stretch and beat against the confines of its prison. A topic that did not make his cock throb and ache to push inside her warmth.
But then the supper whistle rent the air, bringing a horde of hungry revellers bursting through the Grove, heading for the boxes. Waiters in tired-looking livery rushed to lay the covers.
The marquis flounced forward like a strutting peacock, his cortege of obedient pets in tow.
Lady Rathbone noticed the widow sitting in a box and waved, while her grandson gaped and stared as i
f spotting the most delicious thing on the menu.
The Steele siblings were nowhere to be seen. A fact Damian found somewhat disconcerting.
“Are you hungry?” he said, his knee still resting against her thigh. “I find I have lost my appetite.” He’d lost his appetite for food but not for her company and certainly not for the need to slake his lust inside her sumptuous body.
But he wanted to make love to the actress, not fuck the widow.
“Hungry?” She looked confused. “I’m famished. You said we were to take supper this evening.”
“And we will, a little later.” He was aware of Cavanagh and Trent strolling towards them, too, in the company of Mrs Crandell and numerous other patrons from the den of vice on Theobolds Road. “There are too many people here keen to pry into our relationship, keen to spread malicious lies. I’ll not have you make a mistake so early in the game.”
“Me, make a mistake? I have spent two years perfecting this facade.”
The comment gave him pause. “Only two years?” He slid out of the box and offered his arm in the hope the action seemed less like a command.
The lady exited the supper box and gripped his arm. “Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, it takes time for something new to emerge from something so cruelly destroyed.”
The last word sent his heart sinking to his stomach.
“You contradict your earlier statement.” Despite his previous misgivings, he lived in the hope that his sweet Scarlett had escaped the bonfire. “You said the woman you once were still lives beneath the hard shell.”
“I did say that, though I am surprised you remember.”
He forgot nothing when it came to the angel who had saved him. “Perhaps where you’re concerned, I am keen to learn the truth.”
She was about to reply when Lady Rathbone and her grandson came upon them.
“Lady Steele,” the matron said with exalted enthusiasm while the lord drank in the sight of the widow’s ebony locks fashioned in an elegant coiffure. “As you’re sitting in our booth, am I to hope you’re joining us for supper?”
The matron offered Damian a strained smile, for few ladies of breeding curtsied to the bastard son even if his father was a marquis.
“Forgive the intrusion,” the widow said, all charm and light. “But we’ve decided to take a stroll before supper.”
The matron patted the widow’s arm. “Then we will wait for you, my dear.”
Lord Rathbone said nothing, though his gaze lingered on the widow’s lips. Damian considered stamping on the fool’s toe and delivering a sharp uppercut to the chin.
“Please, do not delay your meal on my account. Mr Wycliff kindly agreed to escort me the full length of the Walk.”
The matron glanced at Mrs Crandell, who had changed direction and sauntered to a box at the end of the arcade. “Mr Wycliff has friends here,” the lady said, sneering down her nose as she undoubtedly did when navigating street urchins littering the road. “I am sure he can amuse himself while you dine with us.”
Clearly the invitation to sup extended only to Lady Steele and not the rogue out to ravish her in the gardens.
“Thank you for your kind offer.” The widow inclined her head graciously. “But I am here at Mr Wycliff’s invitation and have promised him my full attention for the entire evening.”
Damian offered the Rathbones a smug grin. “Can I help it if the lady finds me irresistible?”
“Then you must dine with us tomorrow,” the matron said, ignoring Damian’s comment. She seemed most keen to have the widow’s company. Perhaps she did want her grandson to marry a woman of notoriety. A woman more courageous than any who graced the ballrooms of the ton.
“I shall check my appointment diary and send word in the morning.” Without further ado, the widow took hold of Damian’s arm, his cue to lead her away.
“I believe Lady Rathbone has designs on having you as a granddaughter,” Damian said as he escorted her towards the Triumphal Arches. “Had she Medusa’s power, I would be just another stone statue decorating the arcade.”
Sensing the matron’s burning gaze boring into his back, he glanced over his shoulder. And yet Lady Rathbone was not the only person whose piercing stare followed them. The marquis seemed just as displeased, while Lord Rathbone looked pained if not distraught.
“Trust me. If Lady Rathbone wanted me to marry her grandson, she would not be so subtle. If anything, I am inclined to believe that she is short of friends and enjoys the attention that comes with playing companion to the Scarlet Widow.”
After a brief pause, he said, “Will you dine with them tomorrow?” The thought of her spending time in Lord Rathbone’s company roused the devil in him.
“Perhaps,” she said pensively as they passed through the arch.
They turned right, heading for Lovers Walk.
“You do not sound eager for their company.”
Silence ensued as they strolled the narrow avenue between the bank of trees and the topiary hedge. Away from the orchestra, he could hear the heaviness of her breathing, hear the numerous sighs that told him her mind was troubled.
“Are you not tired of this life?” she suddenly said. “Are you not tired of the games, the lies, the falsehoods?”
No one had ever asked him the question. While his head said no—he lived to bring the marquis misery—he had never considered the other half of himself.
“I take satisfaction knowing my father’s life is as vacuous as my own.”
“Is that what you truly want? Is that what your heart desires?”
He snorted to hide the uneasiness he always felt when discussing one’s emotions. “I could ask the same of you. You seem content to play the Scarlet Widow.”
Her fingers slipped from his arm. She stopped abruptly and swung around to face him. “You think this is the life I want?” Moonlight and the glow from the festoon of lanterns illuminated the pain swimming in her blue eyes. “I want a house with countryside views that stretch for miles. I want a family who picnics in the park, children to love, a husband to adore. But they are the dreams of the foolish and naive, and so I shall settle for the one thing within my grasp.”
Damian was too busy forming pictures in his mind to respond. It wasn’t that he could envisage the house with remarkable clarity, the children laughing and chasing their dogs, but that he saw himself in the beautiful painting, too.
Foolish was too tame a word to describe the dream.
Ludicrous seemed more apt.
So why had the ice around his heart cracked?
“That is why I came to you,” she continued, oblivious to these odd sensations plaguing his mind and body. “You can give me the one thing I want.”
Were he a better man, he would give her everything her heart desired. “You should know I will never father a child out of wedlock.” He was meticulous about such things, bordering on obsessive.
“Not a child,” she said, and somewhere in a place deep in his chest, he felt a pang of disappointment. “You can bring me peace, Wycliff. Peace from the endless nightmares. Peace from this sordid world full of hatred and greed.”
He understood the value of a calm mind. During his many sojourns abroad he often pretended he was a different man—one without bitterness writhing like snakes in his belly.
She touched his arm. “Do you know what scares me the most?”
“That the villain will succeed in his attempt to end your life?”
“No, that during the game, I will lose sight of what’s important.”
Again, the comment made him mentally stumble.
What was more important than vengeance?
“By now you must know that revenge is the basis of my every thought and deed,” he said. “The only thing I consider important.”
Her other hand came to rest on his upper arm. A vibrant energy flowed between them, brighter than the myriad of lights shining at Vauxhall. “It seems you do many things to annoy your father—drink and duel, bed witless women. Wha
t do you do for yourself, to nourish your spirit?”
He arched a brow. “Is that a trick question?”
“What is your heart’s desire?”
“I don’t have a heart. I traded it with the devil for this impressive body and striking good looks.”
But if he did, he would go back to that hovel in Covent Garden and tell the actress her kindness had touched him in a way he’d not thought possible. He would offer friendship, save his angel from the beast hiding in the wings waiting to strike.
“Yes, you do,” she said, placing her palm over his beating organ. “Many times while I nursed you, I checked your heart was still thumping in your chest.”
“Who’s to say I didn’t make the deal after you breathed life back into my bones.”
“Your argument is weak. You were as handsome then as you are now.”
He held her gaze for longer than a heartbeat. “And more often than not, I find you just as endearing.” His tone carried the affection he harboured for the woman who saved him. “But if you’re asking me what I dream about, let me show you.”
Before logical thought persuaded him otherwise, he tugged on the front of her pelisse and pulled her closer. With deft fingers, he’d unfastened the first button from the loop before she had time to object.
“Wycliff?” She swallowed deeply, more than once. “Wh-what are you doing?”
“Responding to your earlier question. My heart desires that I press my lips to your scar.”
“My scar? What? No!”
“No?”
“It’s ugly.”
“We all have scars. For most people they’re hidden, hidden away from the world’s scrutiny.”
She stiffened as he slipped another button free and another but did not bat his hand away or offer further protest. Once all the buttons were undone, he pushed the red pelisse off her shoulders.
“I prefer you in blue,” he said, running his finger slowly across the neckline of her gown. She shivered as he eased the sleeve down a fraction to reveal the tip of the mark that began at her collarbone.
“You have made your point, Wycliff.” Her breathing quickened as he lowered his head.
