by Zoë Archer
“I’m aware of some of the advantages,” he murmured.
Anne dropped her gaze. Last night, as he had slept, she stared at the shapes his body made beneath the bedclothes, their solidity and strength. He heated the bed far more than any warming pan, and as the night’s chill had seeped into the room, she had wanted to press herself against him. Only partly for warmth.
“Doors may open for you now. Married men are seen as more respectable than bachelors.” She traced the knotted pattern on the counterpane. “Less threatening, too.”
Leo made a soft noise, something akin to a laugh, though absent of any humor. “Perception and the truth seldom overlap.”
She glanced up. “Are you a threat?”
“To you, never.”
Some comfort in that, yet she did not miss what was couched in his response. But his gaze warmed as he looked down at her.
“You would do that—pay calls, wrangle invitations—for me?” He sounded bewildered, a man little used to kindness.
“We are married now. If we do not take care of each other, who shall?” It was more than matrimonial duty, however. She had heard the hurt throbbing beneath his words last night, the wounds that pained him still, despite, or because of, his pride. And pride Leo had in abundance. Not unlike the lion with which he shared a name.
Here was something she could provide for Leo. Something he could neither be born into nor buy. She discovered she wanted to give him something. For all the abundance of things in his home, his clothespress full of expensive garments, even those Hellraisers he called friends, he had very little truly his own, bestowed on him simply for the gratification of giving.
“I ...” He searched for words, perplexed. And then, “Thank you.”
Her cheeks heated, her pleasure intensified by the simplicity and honesty of his language.
With slow ceremony, he took her hand in his. Turned it so that her knuckles faced up. His gaze held hers, and she felt herself planted firmly where she sat, unable to move or even breathe. Then, unhurriedly, he bent and pressed his lips to the backs of her fingers.
It was not an unmannerly kiss. Not lascivious or coarse. Yet for all that, the touch of his firm, warm lips to her fingers sent dragon coils of hunger twisting through her. A contraction of want tightened between her thighs.
“I would say that you’re too good for me,” he said, his breath its own caress on her skin, “but I want good things.” With equal leisure, he released her hand and straightened. At the very least, the tightness in his jaw revealed that the courtly gesture had affected him, too.
For a moment, they simply stared at each other, spinning the fine threads between them into something stronger.
“I do have a request of you,” he said finally.
She nodded, eager.
His gaze shifted away and followed the thorny convolutions painted upon the wallpaper. “Ever since my father made his fortune and sent me away to school, I developed ... well ... one might call it an odd habit. A compulsion, you might say. I’ve become a collector. A collector of coins.”
“That does not sound very odd. Many men collect coins—ancient coins, or from other countries.” Her own father had been too lacking in resources to have anything remotely resembling a gentleman’s cabinet of curiosities. Rather than accrue small treasures, antiquities or animal bones, her father collected letters demanding payment. Occasionally, those debts would be paid.
“The coins I collect aren’t rare,” said Leo. “They’re quite ordinary. Except for the fact that they belong to other people.”
“I do not follow.”
Leo dipped his hand into his pocket and produced a handful of change. He set the coins upon the counterpane, arranging them beside her leg in a neat line. Commonplace currency: farthings, pennies, shillings.
“This.” He pointed to a sixpence. “Belonged to Lord Huyton. This.” He nudged a ha’penny. “Lord Feering’s.” Leo saw the question in her eyes, and answered, laughing, “I didn’t steal them. Merely asked for change and it was given.”
“But ... why?”
He shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. I suppose having something that was once so difficult to obtain is part of it. Now I have coin in profusion, but I like owning something that belonged to one of the gentry. Something so mundane, but important.” Leo gave a wry smile. “Now I sound like I should be in Bedlam.”
“No, it makes sense.” And it did, in a peculiar way. “Both you and these gentlemen having use of coins. Despite everything that they say, all their prejudice, the need for coins makes you equals. It confirms what they might never acknowledge.”
His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Something in an aristocratic girl’s education must make them astute. Yet,” he added thoughtfully, “I suspect it isn’t the education, but the girl that makes the difference.”
“Living one’s life dependent on others’ goodwill, one learns to make a close study of one’s environment.” She had seen hardly anything of the larger world, but that which she knew, she understood very well.
“I congratulate myself for making such a wise decision in my choice of a bride.”
“By all means,” she replied, “take credit for my perspicacity.”
He chuckled, but his gaze drifted from her face back down to the coins. And then she understood.
“You would like me to collect some coins for you,” she deduced.
“There are certain men whose coins I want.”
At first, Anne thought to refuse. She could not fault Leo for his idiosyncrasies. Almost everyone had them, including herself. Yet his was a mania altogether private, something between himself and his desires.
Still, it was such a small thing. And if it helped forge a stronger bond between her and Leo, she knew her directive.
“If you write their names down for me,” she said after a pause, “and if they’re married, I’ll gather coins for you.” She was not particularly adept at making idle, pleasant conversation, and had not the slightest understanding how she might obtain these coins, but she had faith in her wits. A solution might present itself.
“The coins must come from the men themselves. Not their wives or children or servants.”
Here was an added complication, and frankly, one even more eccentric than she had anticipated. “If that’s what you wish.”
He seemed surprised that she agreed. “Truly? You’ll do this?”
“It might be an enjoyable challenge.”
He moved so quickly, Anne had no chance to react. One moment he stood beside the bed, and the next, he leaned over her, his large hands cupping her head, tilting it back. He kissed her. Not the tentative exploration of the wedding night, but a full, sumptuous kiss, demanding and carnal. His lips were ravenous on hers.
For a moment, she could do nothing but let it happen, stunned into immobility. Then instinct and need guided her. She slid her hands up his arms, to hold tight to his hard shoulders. Her lips parted, inviting him in, and he took the kiss deeper.
This was ... extraordinary. Beyond any kiss she had ever received, the few times she had gotten them. Not just two mouths meeting, but a complete submersion into sensation. Only his hands and his lips touched her, yet she felt him, felt him everywhere. In the rush of her blood and softness of her flesh. Most especially between her legs and the tips of her breasts, now achingly sensitive. Leo kissed as he lived: without compromise, without quarter.
His tongue swept into her mouth. She touched it with her own, and Leo groaned.
She could not stop her response, the primal surge of desire. But fear sharpened the edge of that desire. It was too much. She was overwhelmed. He’d devour her, and she would not only be powerless to prevent it, she would present herself on a silver charger, the willing animal eager to be feasted upon until only bones remained. She already sat in bed. It would be easy, very easy, for him to pull her down and put his weight atop hers. Claim her fully.
A sound escaped her, a moan partway between arousal and terror
.
At once, he pulled his mouth away.
His gaze, bright and hot, held hers. He looked as stunned as she felt. As though neither of them could comprehend what had just happened.
For a moment, he seemed on the verge of taking her mouth again. His fingers tightened in her hair. Abruptly, he let go, yet she felt the strength in him it took to do so. He stepped back, until a respectable distance of several feet separated them.
“I’ll write that list up for you.” His voice had hoarsened, and she caught the trace of a rough accent. The saddler’s son emerging from beneath a carefully cultivated luster.
He turned and strode to the door and opened it. There, one hand braced on the frame, he paused. He did not turn around. “Expect me home for dinner.”
Then he was gone, closing the door behind him. Anne’s only company was the coins, their blank metallic faces staring up at her, offering not a single answer.
The carriage waited for him outside, and he leapt into it. At his nod, the footman closed the door and called up to the coachman, “Drive on.”
They clattered their way east toward Exchange Alley, but Leo did not see the familiar streets of High Holborn, Chancery Lane, nor any of the others. His mind was with Anne in Bloomsbury, and his body wanted to be there, as well.
Hell, what had come over him? His intentions to take things slowly with her had burned away. He hadn’t even planned on kissing her mouth at all, for it had been enough to kiss her hand. Yet impulse and need had taken over. Once unleashed, it became a battle to rein it in again.
She had thrown him. He prepared himself always for eventualities, outcomes, options. The Devil’s gift showed him the future, and there he often dwelt. Even without this gift, Leo could chart what was, what would be. Yet Anne continued to defy his expectations.
At first, he’d regretted telling his wife about his past, his father, fearing it made him vulnerable. But it had drawn them closer together, revealing unexpected similarities, as if the tide ebbed to uncover a hidden house beneath the waves.
Yet he knew that if he revealed his magic to her, everything they had been building together would crumble. There would be no warm acceptance, no understanding. Only fear. Perhaps even disgust.
No—he must keep his secrets.
He planned to use their strengthening connection by slowly building toward physical intimacy. It seemed the best, soundest plan.
Had she been anyone other than herself, that plan would have unfolded just as he desired. Yet what she had said this morning, what she offered ... no one had ever given him as much. He knew she did not want to pay calls and try to ingratiate herself with the wives of the highest elite. It was more than her overcoming natural shyness. It meant forcibly pulling herself from the shadows into the glare of artificial suns, suns that burned more often than warmed.
Logically, he saw how she might benefit herself by Leo gaining alliances with rich, powerful men. As his status increased, so would hers. But he knew her motivations were different. Her help was for him, and no one else.
And she would get coins for him. Coins that would show him future disasters. She had no idea what the coins revealed to him, how he used them to advance his own fortunes whilst ruining another’s. Yet she would get the coins for him because she thought it would make him ... happy. He tried to remember the last time anyone had done anything for him without an ulterior purpose, or simply because it would bring him joy. Even his father’s gifts—a pearl-handled folding knife, a book of quotations—had been to advance Leo within the eyes of the world. And the Hellraisers were a bunch of selfish bastards, just like him, offering companionship but gobbling down experiences as fast as they could be devoured.
He’d thought himself too cynical, too jaded to feel much beyond his own mercenary desires. He was unaccustomed to feeling gratitude. Yet Anne’s offer had pierced him like a golden blade.
And she had looked so damned enticing, still rumpled from sleep, her pretty face touched by morning light. That same morning light had revealed the silken shape of her body beneath her nightgown, and he had been struck with the visceral memory of her breast in his hand, its soft, perfect weight. Desire and something else, something that might have been tenderness, flooded him, and he had acted. Kissed her.
The carriage jounced as it turned onto Fleet Street. Traffic thickened as he moved farther into the heart of the city, the core of London. Yet as the carriage was forced to slow, Leo’s pulse sped.
That kiss ... Before her fear had emerged, Anne had been so responsive, so eager. Her kiss was untried, yet what art it lacked was more than compensated by enthusiasm. He’d suspected that she contained far more passion than she even realized, and he was right. It had taken every ounce of control he possessed not to climb onto the bed, gathering her soft, willing body against him. Show her how to wind her legs around his waist as he undid the buttons on his breeches. Make her fully his. He had never hungered for innocence until that moment.
Only her sound of fright had stopped him. Barely.
He had made a vow to himself. One he would not break. He might not have married for love, like his parents, but by hell, he would not conduct his marriage as the aristos did. When he took Anne’s maidenhead, no fear would exist between them.
She deserved better than an impersonal, calculated fuck. He discovered he liked her too much to treat her like chattel. So he now rode toward Exchange Alley with a faintly aching cock and the taste of her in his mouth.
His smile mocked only himself. At last, Leo Bailey had developed ethics. And his cock hated him for it.
Traffic stalled, and Leo poked his head out the carriage window to see what caused the delay. An overturned cart blocked the street. Two men argued fiercely, their faces red, as bystanders watched. One of the men swung at the other. Within a moment, the street filled with brawling.
The carriage rocked as the horse grew agitated. From his seat, the driver called down to Leo, “Sorry, sir, but we’re jammed. Oi! Get off!” The coachman knocked down a man trying to climb up onto his perch.
Leo bit back an oath of impatience. He hadn’t time for this. Occasional scuffles in the streets were as common as rats, but this altercation went beyond the usual fracas. It seemed as though it hadn’t taken much to make the little fight explode into a much bigger brawl. Yet he needed to get to the Exchange. Business hours had already begun. Missing important deals infuriated him.
“I’ll walk the rest of the way, Dawkins.”
“Are you sure, sir? It’s—down from there, you son of a whore—a bit rough.”
Leo smiled grimly, and opened the carriage door.
Amazing what a bit of brawling could do for one’s humor. As Leo wended his way up Queen Street and then turned on to Poultry, he shook out his fist. Fortunately, he knew how to throw a punch, and the ache in his hand had already begun to subside. No one in that melee had expected a gent in a fine private coach to come out swinging. But he had, and laid out three big men for their trouble. He had cleared a path for himself.
Now he had to stop himself from whistling. He hadn’t been able to obtain physical release with his wife, but fighting in the street offered more brutal means.
He reached the entrance to Exchange Alley off Cornhill. Three men waited for him. Hellraisers. Bram made a tall, dark shape against the sunlit street, and both Edmund and John glanced around with tense, strained expressions.
“What in the name of God has you out of bed so early?” The hour had barely reached eight o’clock. “Unless you haven’t been to bed yet.”
“Bram and John roused me from mine,” Edmund muttered.
The shadows under John and Bram’s eyes confirmed that neither had gone home last night. Leo realized that, for the first time in ... as long as he could remember, he hadn’t joined in for the evening’s debauchery. He had been at home. With Anne.
And he hadn’t missed going out, not a bit.
“It’s business hours, lads,” he said. “If there’s carousing to be do
ne, it must wait ’til later.”
Bram shook his head, and Leo saw that the drawn cast that honed his friend’s already sharp features came not from a night’s dissipated revels, but something else. Something troubling.
Nerves tightened along the back of Leo’s neck and his pleasant mood burst like a blister.
He glanced around. Men of business who knew him well were casting him and the other Hellraisers speculative glances. Leo’s presence at the ’Change was common, but his dissolute friends’ attendance was noteworthy.
“There’s a tavern in an alley off Threadneedle. The Cormorant. I’ll meet you there in a quarter of an hour.”
His friends dispersed, trailing shadows. Leo spent a few minutes chatting with acquaintances, maintaining the illusion that all was well, even as he knew otherwise. Eventually, he drifted away and toward Threadneedle Street. He hated missing any potential deals, but he had no choice. The Hellraisers would not seek him out at this hour unless the situation were dire.
Less crowded than a coffee house, the Cormorant tavern still held a few patrons. One man slept with his head on the table, beside his tankard. Another puffed on a pipe by the fire, watching smoke rings drift up to the stained ceiling. The Hellraisers occupied the settles in the corner, and they stared at their mugs with hard, wary expressions, as if anticipating an attack.
Leo sat next to John. He grunted his thanks when the tapster brought a grimy mug of ale, though he had no thirst for it.
“Whit’s been spotted,” Bram said without preamble. “Here, in London.”
Leo clenched his hands into fists. “When?”
“Don’t know. John and I only heard about it last night.”
“We ran into Chilton at the Theatre Royal,” said John. “He asked why Whit wasn’t with us, as he had seen him just that morning on Westminster Bridge, with a pretty Gypsy girl on his arm. Whit asked Chilton about us, wanted to know what we had been doing.”
“And Chilton told him,” added Bram.
Leo swore. He considered taking a drink of his ale just to steady himself, but something floated on the drink’s surface, and he pushed it away.
