A Touch Wicked (Private Arrangements)

by Katrina Kendrick

  James sat back with a slow, lovely smile. “So you are the infamous Marie Christine. I asked my sister once and she lied to me.” Then he laughed. “Too well, in fact. Should I be concerned?”

  “Oh, she’s only a little dishonest.” She held out her thumb and forefinger. “A tiny bit. Do you wish to sack me?”

  “Come now, Miss Dumont. You have to know that if I sacked you, my sister would no doubt choose her revenge carefully. Poison, perhaps.” Emma couldn’t help but grin, until he added, “If we’re being honest with each other, you might as well out with everything. Did she fabricate your reference from the Duke of Southampton’s family?”

  Now Emma immediately sobered. “Ah, no. That was real.”

  Oh, how tempted she was to tell him everything about how she got that reference. It would mean admitting to her duplicitous nature, a quality she no doubt inherited from the Duke of Southampton.

  Her father experienced that firsthand.

  After Emma’s mother became ill, he’d no longer visited. I, too, might become ill, Marie, her father had said. And what if I pass it onto my children? My heir? Send for me when you’re well again and I will drop everything.

  Emma suspected it wasn’t contracting the illness he feared, but the effect it had on her mother. For weeks she could barely hold down food; the result turned her skin a pallid shade. Her hair — once lush and beautiful — became brittle.

  At the end of her life, the Great Beauty known as Marie Dumont had been so fragile that she couldn't lift her arms to embrace her daughter.

  And the duke was dismayed by how his favorite lover's looks began to fade.

  Marie loved him, but she was no fool; she suspected the duke would not do his duty by his illegitimate daughter. So she had only one recourse. Take my journal, my love, she’d whispered into Emma’s ear in the days before her death. The duke told me things. So many secrets. If he doesn’t come for you, use it.

  After her mother’s death, months and months went by, and he never once came to call. Emma had heard he claimed a new lover in Paris: an actress her own age.

  So Emma sold whatever she could of her mother’s valuables and booked passage to England. The next time she saw her father, she recounted a mere half of the secrets her mother had written down: business dealings, bribes to other members of the House of Lords, and other items of interest journalists would be eager to hear.

  In short, Emma blackmailed him. All I want is a reference, she had said. Give me that and you’ll never have to find out what else my mother wrote. You’ll never see me again.

  He gave it, and Emma allowed him to burn those pages — but only those pages. She kept the rest, because she was Marie Dumont’s daughter, and she wanted a little of her mother left behind.

  Her expression must have given something away, because James said softly, “Not a pleasant memory, I take it.”

  Emma lowered her eyes to her book. “It was nothing.”

  James rose from the chair. Emma was surprised when he sat beside her and gently lifted her chin. Oh, how blue his eyes were. How tender his gaze. She wanted him to stare at her like that all the time, to strip her bare and make love to her again and again and again. It was so easy to forget, the moment her skin touched his.

  “Not nothing,” he said, brushing his thumb across her cheek. “If you ever wish to speak about it, I’ll be here.”

  “You will judge me harshly.”

  For everything. I’m not a good woman.

  She was selfish, to hold so many of his secrets in her heart and share nothing of her own.

  “Then I hope I surprise you.” His voice was so low now. “I hope you’re wrong.”

  Emma sighed and leaned into his hand; she couldn’t help herself. “Why can’t you sleep?”

  James’s hand stilled for a moment. “Bad dreams, Miss Dumont. Why were you restless?”

  “Good dreams,” Emma said. “Ones I don’t deserve.”

  That seemed to surprise him. “You think I will judge you harshly,” he said, stroking a thumb across her lower lip now. “and that you don’t deserve your good dreams. What makes you so unworthy of happiness?”

  Emma grasped James’s hand and pressed a kiss to his palm, drawing from him a soft inhale. “One day, I’ll tell you. And you’ll understand why I don’t sleep.”

  Chapter 18

  “Good god, he’s done it again!” Alexandra flicked the newspaper and groaned. “I hate men. I hate them.”

  Emma and Alexandra were having tea in the garden, on what was a beautiful, sunny day. Emma tried her best to take part in discussion, but for the last half hour had lapsed into the kind of silence that meant she was only half-listening.

  It had been three days since she had last seen James in the library. He came and went from society events, and did not return home until late. If the lack of nighttime pacing was any indication, he was finally sleeping again.

  Emma envied him that. It meant he was moving on from the mysterious masked woman.

  Alexandra waved a hand in front of Emma’s face. “You’re not listening. You’ve been elsewhere for days.”

  Emma sighed. “Forgive me. I’m out of sorts at the moment. What were you speaking of?”

  “Mr. Nicholas Spencer,” Alexandra spat, as if the name were a curse. “The Devil.”

  “Oh, dear. What did he write this time?”

  Nicholas Spencer used any opportunity to eviscerate Alexandra's work in the papers. Emma found his criticisms had merit, but Alexandra harbored an irrational hatred for the man. Whenever she’d asked about it, her friend went silent and refused to speak of it. She merely referred to him by the moniker she had given him: the Devil.

  Alexandra snapped up the newspaper. “The author is a noblewoman who seeks to understand the plight of the common people. Yet she writes about this from the comfort of St. James's, in a house that spends more on food than those in Whitechapel make in a lifetime. Surely that accounts for the limited range in her work: the ability to seek solace in her fortune after visiting the poverty in the Nichol. Some do not have such luxury of experiencing poverty as if it were a new gown, to be used and then discarded at will.” She crumpled the newspaper in her hands.

  Emma winced. “He has a point, dear. Even I have not lived in such conditions as to write about them with the same passion he does.”

  “I don’t care if he has a point!” Alexandra seethed. “He always has a point. It’s never enough. He’s a bloody—”

  “Alexandra,” a voice interrupted. “Not very ladylike language, is that?”

  Emma turned to see James coming through the path between the rose bushes. She eased out a breath. Did he have to look so handsome?

  When his eyes touched on hers, she flushed, recalling that she had kissed his hand that night in the library. She should not have done such a thing. It revealed too much.

  James’s lips curved into a smile, as if he could read her mind. God, how she’d missed that smile. It was a smile that belonged in a bedchamber, shared between them as lovers. It was intimate, and he bloody well knew it.

  Mercifully, Alexandra diverted his attention by flinging the newspaper at him. “I’ll use whatever language I see fit. Did you see? Did you see what he wrote?”

  James caught the flying pages against his chest. “Yes, I saw, and I’m not certain what you expect me to do about it. Challenge him to a duel?”

  “Don’t be daft.” Alexandra curled her lip. “Why is it that men feel violence solves all the world’s problems? I’m going to eviscerate him in my literature. I’m going to write something better than anything he’s ever penned, so the next time he tries to publish a work, I can credibly tear it apart myself.”

  Emma and James gave each other a look. Emma spoke first, gently. “My dear, don’t you think you ought to ignore—“

  “No,” Alexandra snapped. “No longer. I’ve ignored him for years, and each time he’s written about me has been a challenge. He’s going to regret everything.” She rose and sn
atched up her hat. “If you’ll excuse me. I have work to do.”

  Alexandra strode back toward the house, her heels snapping down the path.

  “The Spencers used to live near our country estate,” James mused, “And she loathed him for years before he wrote his first criticism. I’ve often wondered why.”

  “He must have insulted her before that. I think he speaks to a level of insecurity she already has about her work.” Emma tilted her head. “Would you really have challenged him to a duel?”

  “Of course not. No one duels these days. And I prefer not to shoot anyone over a literature review.”

  Emma laughed as she rose from her chair, intending to return to the house and assist Alexandra. “Well, perhaps this will encourage her to write something better. If Alexandra receives a challenge, she usually succeeds. I ought to see if she needs anything.”

  James stepped in front of her. “Before you leave, have a brief walk with me.” His voice was teasing as he added, “I’m not through with you yet, Miss Dumont.”

  I’m not through with you yet.

  God, didn’t he know not to say such things? How easily those words could be misinterpreted? Emma had kissed his palm. And though he may not know it, they had shared a bed. He had been inside her. Every moment they were alone was but another instance in which she might make a mistake — or worse, tell him.

  She ought to. None of this was fair to him, this deceitfulness. If only she knew how to phrase it. If only she knew the words in French or English to explain that what she felt for him might have begun as lust, but became something more.

  She loved him.

  She loved him. And that scared the bloody hell out of her. Servants did not fall in love with their employers.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Emma said.

  “Maybe not, but I would enjoy your company all the same.”

  Emma nodded once, and the pair began down the path in the garden.

  A breeze had picked up now, cooling Emma’s skin as she thought of James back at the Masquerade. She’d kissed the length of his body, explored every contour with her hands. Though the shape of him had been imprinted in her mind, she wondered how long it would take for those memories to fade.

  Perhaps they never would.

  “I read the book,” James told her. “Fantomina.”

  Emma’s heart slammed against her ribcage. Why had she told him about that book? What had possessed her?

  “And what did you think?”

  “Whether he deserved her did not enter into my interpretation,” James said. “Only that he believed he slept with several different women, and only ever viewed them as a source for his pleasure.”

  Emma brushed her fingers across a rose petal as they passed the bushes. “Many men behave similarly, do they not?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “But the lady of the book revels in their casual intimacy, too; anonymity affords her the same freedom as a man. Knowing that, I understood why she was tempted.”

  Emma’s smile was small, if a touch sad. “Careful, my lord. If you keep speaking like that, you’ll be considered a radical like Alexandra.”

  James was quiet as the path lead them beneath the swaying branches of a willow tree. “Have you ever been tempted, Miss Dumont?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, avoiding his gaze. She was certain he would see everything.

  “That night in the library?” His voice was low now, so quiet and hesitant. There was a boundary between them, unseen, dependent upon her answer. Upon his.

  Emma swallowed. “Yes.”

  James stepped closer and grazed his fingertips across her cheek. Emma shut her eyes at the touch; it was so soft, as soft as a dream. She could have imagined it.

  But then he spoke, and she knew it was real. “So was I,” he whispered.

  His lips brushed hers, a tentative caress. Emma answered with her own kiss. Her body couldn’t help but sway toward him as a branch would in the breeze. This kiss was not like before at the Masquerade — there was no certainty here, no assuredness of the result. He kissed her as if he were asking a question, giving her the opportunity to answer in her own way, in her own time.

  But for Emma, it had already been given. He had already learned her body. James was not a frontiersman on the edge of discovering her, but a man who had already studied her depths: her customs, her language, her song. Everything, every part of her, he knew it all by heart.

  Emma could not stop herself from deepening their kiss. From letting her hands rediscover his body as if running her fingertips along an instrument, plucking the keys. Relearning his song. And she knew his; the way he groaned when she pressed herself against him. He turned them so her back was to the willow tree. The bark abraded the skin of her neck, but she didn’t care because oh, she wanted, she wanted, she wanted.

  “Miss Dumont,” he breathed against her lips. “Emma.”

  She could have him again, like this. He’d moan her name as he came this time — her real name. He’d—

  Emma tore her lips from his, turning her face. “Stop. Please stop.”

  Without hesitation, James pulled away. The distance between them felt so vast. Each fraction a whole country between their private worlds.

  “I’m sorry.” James shoved a hand through his hair, his chest rising and falling with his breaths. “Christ, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. I . . .” How could she word this? Why was language so difficult, so inept? “I can’t do this to you.”

  “To me?” James’s smile was small, but amused. “Nothing that happened just now was against my will, I assure you.”

  “It’s nothing to do with that.” It embarrassed Emma that her eyes had begun to fill.

  James noticed and stepped toward her in concern. “Emma—”

  She shrunk back against the tree and put up a warning hand. “No, don’t look at me like that. I’m not . . . I’m not who you think I am.”

  “And who do I think you are?” he asked her.

  “Your sister’s co-writer, her secretary and maid,” Emma said with a sigh. “Your staff. You asked me how I received my reference, and that alone will tell you everything you need to know about my character. The Duke of Southampton is my father, and I used the information my mother wrote about him in her journals for blackmail. I threatened to destroy him publicly if he refused me a good reference for work. So now you know. I am not a good woman.”

  James stared at her, and for a moment she thought he might walk away. But in the end, he shook his head, “His Grace is well known to be a crooked, deceitful blackguard, Miss Dumont. He and my father ran in the same circles, so if you had destroyed him, I would have been there to cheer you on. I don’t care about what you did in the past.”

  “It’s not in the past. I’m sorry, it’s not. I’m sorry.” Emma shook her head, whisking away tears. She repeated the words as if they could take away the ache in her chest.

  But there was nothing for it. Deception had felled even gods, after all. No one was immune to its venom.

  Emma met his eyes. “James.”

  She had never said his name before now, and she deliberately kept her native accent. The way he froze, the low catch of his breath . . .

  He knew now. He knew.

  She could only whisper another apology, barely above a breath. “Je suis désolée.”

  As Emma retreated to the house, the breeze swept through the gardens and whispered across her skin once more.

  Only this time, it chilled her.

  Chapter 19

  James stared after Miss Dumont as she walked briskly past the rose bushes toward the house.

  Miss Dumont. Emma. Selene.

  His mysterious masked woman, his dream lover, had been her all along. Was it all some little amusement, then? Wrap him around her finger, watch him pine after her as she pretended to be demure, prim Miss Dumont?

  And the book. That fucking book. She’d had him read it, seeking some deeper meaning in th
e passages when it was all a game to her. She was Icognita. She was a woman who had played with him and he was just some fool who had —

  God, he’d proposed to her. He’d told her his secrets. And she had known it was him all along.

  “Fuck.” The curse slipped from his lips as he strode after her into the house.

  If the stares of his servants were any indication, he must have looked halfway to madness. Every muscle in his body was coiled tight, and he no doubt seemed close to snapping.

  He was.

  In the servants’ wing, he found the door to Miss Dumont’s room and flung it open.

  She was throwing clothes into a old, beaten leather suitcase with impressive speed. After all this, she was going to run away. She even had tears trailing down her cheeks, which he ignored, because what right did she have to cry?

  What right?

  James shut the door behind him and Miss Dumont’s head snapped up. She didn’t say anything. After all, what could she say? If you stripped away a liar's falsehoods, what words remained?

  Apologies were insignificant. They were meaningless to a liar. And even the boy who cried wolf knew what happened when he tried to tell the truth in the end. He lost the right to be believed.

  She had lost that right.

  “So you’re leaving.” His voice was cold, but calmer than he felt. His heart was rioting.

  Miss Dumont paused. “Do you want me to stay?” she asked quietly.

  “If you weren’t Alexandra’s servant, I’d consider throwing you out.” James crossed his arms. “I want you to tell me everything. No lies, no secrets. How did you know I would be at the Masquerade?”

  “I heard you and your brother the day the invitation came,” she said with a lift of her chin. “And I read it when you left the room.”

  “Eavesdropping. Reading my personal correspondence. Lying to me. My, madam, what an effort. If you wanted to fuck, all you had to do was ask. I might have hesitated, but Richard will bed any willing woman in St. James’s as long as her virtue isn’t intact. Unless, of course, you only wanted to bed a man with a title. Personal goal of yours, Miss Dumont?”