“Yes,” she replied as she snapped off a tiny piece of chocolate and popped it in her mouth. It was deliciously sweet, with undertones of black cherry. Precisely the treat she needed to help restore her spirits. “Only a tad sore.”
If she were home, she would have drawn a hot bath. But as they were only allotted a certain amount of water per day courtesy of Mrs. Privet’s draconian rules (and none of it was particularly hot), she would have to make do with some mild stretching and rainwater.
She was leaning down to touch the scuffed toes of her leather ankle boots when there was a loud, staccato knock at the door.
“Is rent due again already?” she asked Evie, who shook her head.
“Not for another three days. It’s probably Mrs. Benedict.” But when Evie opened the door, it wasn’t their kindly neighbor standing on the other side of it.
“Hello,” came Kincaid’s deep, somber voice. “You must be Miss Thorncroft’s sister.”
Her heart in her throat, Joanna jerked upright.
“And you must be Kincaid,” Evie said with all the warmth of a snowstorm in the middle of February. “Come to check on Joanna after you abandoned her in the street, have we?”
Kincaid’s piercing stare shot past Evie and landed squarely on Joanna. Behind the clear lenses of his spectacles, his eyes were as dark as coffee and, above them, his brows were drawn together in a taut line. “Are you all right?”
Why did everyone keep asking her that?
She’d taken a tumble, not fallen off a bridge.
And the pain she felt in her body was nothing compared to the aching in her heart.
“I am fine.” She pursed her lips. “Not that you care.”
“I do care, Miss Thorncroft,” he said roughly. “I care too damned much.”
Evie’s gaze darted between them. “If you need me, I’ll be, ah, down the hall.”
Off she dashed, leaving Joanna and Kincaid to stare at each other across the room.
“What do you really want?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to make sure you made it back.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “You mean after you stormed off and left me.”
“Yes, I…” His Adam’s apple bobbed in a hard swallow. “I have no excuse, Miss Thorncroft. No reason to do what I did. It was wrong, and I apologize. If I could go back and change my behavior, I would have escorted you to the boarding house as any gentleman should.”
Her eyebrow lifted. “You’re no gentleman, Thomas Kincaid.”
The hint of a smile broke the severe line of his mouth. “Not around you, at any rate.”
“Is that a compliment or a complaint?” she said coyly.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“You can come in, if you’d like.” Grabbing the chair she’d sat in while Evie repaired her hair, she turned it to face the bed and then retrieved what remained of her slab of chocolate. “It’s not as fancy as your office, but there’s someplace to sit, and sweets.”
“I’d hardly describe my office as fancy,” Kincaid said with a snort.
“It’s better than it was. Come on,” she coaxed, waving the chocolate at him. “I’d like to clear the air between us, and there are things we need to discuss.”
His expression wary, he took one step into the room, then another, before he stopped short.
“All the way. You can sit here,” she said, gesturing at the chair. “And close the door. Mrs. Holden, three doors down, is notorious for eavesdropping.”
“I really don’t think—” he began tersely.
“Oh for heaven’s sake. I won’t bite.”
The mattress creaked as she rested on the corner. After a moment’s hesitation, Kincaid reluctantly nudged the door shut, but did not sit.
“Chocolate?” she offered, cracking off a piece.
“No, thank you. Miss Thorncroft—”
“I was very angry with you, Kincaid.” She met his gaze without blinking. “For what you said, and what you did.”
His shoulders tensed. “I understand, and as I said, I am—”
“Fortunately for you, it’s not in my nature to stay angry for long.”
Goodness, but he was handsome. Standing there, all flustered and flushed. He hadn’t bothered to change his clothes since the last time she’d seen him, and there was a hole torn in his trousers as well as a dirt stain on his shirt. At least he’d cleaned the cut above his brow and on his chin. They weren’t deep, and they wouldn’t scar. But they did give him an air of reckless danger that she found very becoming.
“Why did you leave?” she asked. “You said you had no excuse or reason, but I know that isn’t true. You were upset by what I shared with you. About my personal feelings.”
“Yes,” he said without further explanation.
“Why? And this time, I deserve an answer. It’s the least you can do for what you did.” She bit off a piece of chocolate and waited while it melted on her tongue.
Kincaid ran a hand over his mouth. “I…”
“It is all right,” she said softly. “You can tell me.”
He sat in the chair. Heavily, she noted, as if he carried an enormous, invisible weight. Removing his spectacles, he slid them into the front pocket of his vest and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I was still working for Scotland Yard when I met her. I’d just been made an inspector, and given my own division. I had two dozen men under my command, which meant I could delegate the smaller cases and pursue the larger ones myself. Lord Townsend was such a case. Someone was stealing from him. A servant, he suspected. Though he had no proof. Over the course of my investigation, I stayed at his country estate. That was where his wife and I first struck up a…rapport, I suppose you could call it.”
Joanna’s eyes widened ever-so-slightly, but she didn’t interject. This was Kincaid’s story to tell, and having waited this long, she wasn’t going to risk giving him a reason to stop telling it.
“Lady Townsend told me things about her marriage. At the time, I believed they were true.” Kincaid’s hand dropped from his face. He spread his knees apart and rested his elbows upon them, his eyes on the floor between his feet as he continued to speak in the low, impersonal tone of someone recalling the weather. “She implied that her husband was cruel. That he shouted unnecessarily, and drank too much, and struck her where he was certain no one would see the bruises. All lies,” Kincaid sat flatly as he straightened in his chair. “But I did not realize that at the time, and I…I developed feelings for her. I wanted to protect her.”
Of course he had, Joanna thought. Because that was what Kincaid did. He protected people. And shame on this Lady Townsend for taking advantage of his giving nature. For using what came naturally to him and twisting it into something perverse.
“We began an affair.” He met Joanna’s gaze and then looked quickly away as a cord of muscle stood out in his neck. “I am not proud of it. I knew she was married. That she was not mine to have. But we made plans to run away together. I was going to leave Scotland Yard. She was going to leave her husband. We were to meet at dawn. I already had a private coach arranged to take us to Edinburgh.”
“But she didn’t meet you,” Joanna said, unable to keep her silence any longer.
“No, she did not.” He closed his eyes, and her heart ached at the raw pain she saw flash across his countenance. “I waited in the rain for hours. When I finally came to terms with the fact that she was not coming, I returned to Scotland Yard. Where I promptly found myself arrested and thrown in a cell.”
“For what?” she said indignantly.
“Lady Townsend told her husband about the affair, and implied that I had…forced it on her.”
“But that’s not what happened!” she cried, aghast that a woman would lie about something so serious.
“Can you be that certain?” he asked hollowly. “Others weren’t. Good men I’d served beside for years suddenly could not look me in the eyes.”
“Then they did n
ot know you as I do, Kincaid.” She sprang off the bed and was beside him in an instant, her hand on his thigh, her gaze imploring him to believe and trust in what she was saying. Even though now she finally understood why trusting was difficult for him. “What Lady Townsend did was wicked and cruel. Not only to you, but to all women who have the courage to bring their abuse to light only to find themselves doubted and disbelieved.”
He clenched his jaw. “I never should have become romantically involved with a client’s wife. That blame is mine, and mine alone.”
“No, you probably shouldn’t have,” Joanna agreed, ignoring the twinge of jealousy she felt at the idea of Kincaid with someone else. Of him caring for someone else. Of him loving someone else, when he refused to love her. “But if there is blame to be had, this Lady Townsend owns her fair share of it.”
“Lord Townsend agreed to withdraw the charges if I left Scotland Yard. My captain requested my resignation that day, and I gave it.”
Joanna’s lips parted in protest. “But if you were innocent—”
“A trial would have resulted in a scandal, no matter the outcome. A scandal which would have eroded the public’s faith in the peelers. It was the right decision.”
“So that’s why you became a private investigator.”
He gave a brusque nod.
“Did you…did you ever see Lady Townsend again?”
Beneath her hand, his leg stiffened. “Shortly after I opened my new business, she arrived unannounced. Even after everything had happened…I still asked if she was all right. If she needed anything. If her husband was treating her well.” He dragged his fingers through his hair. “What a bloody fool I was.”
“What did she say?”
His mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “She said that Lord Townsend never raised his hand to her. She said he was busy with his mistress, and she was bored, and she’d always wondered what it would be like to have an affair with a commoner.”
Joanna’s breath expelled in a shocked gasp that rocked her back onto her heels. The nerve of that woman! To nearly ruin a life because she was tired of her dull, perfect life and seeking entertainment. Had she any comprehension of what she had done to Kincaid? Of the hurt she’d caused? The hurt she continued to cause? For it was clear that even though years had passed, Kincaid was still affected by what had happened. And why wouldn’t he be?
He had loved Lady Townsend. Joanna heard it in his voice. Saw in his eyes. Felt it in the unconscious clench of his muscles whenever he spoke her name. He had loved her, and she had betrayed him. In one of the worst ways a woman could betray a man. Not out of desperation. Not out of necessity. But because she was bored.
It was almost beyond belief.
“I am sorry, Kincaid. I am terribly, terribly sorry. I had no idea.” Sliding her hand to his knee, Joanna shifted her weight until she was crouched directly in front of him. His head was down. His arms were limp at his sides. He appeared defeated. And she hated, she hated to see him this way.
Which was why she did something she probably shouldn’t have.
She stood up and stepped between Kincaid’s thighs. He lifted his head, his eyes dark and wary. But he did not say anything, and neither did Joanna. The only sound in the room was their ragged breathing as she slid her arms around his neck. She wet her lips. Swallowed once, twice, and her heart pitched inside of her chest.
And then she kissed him.
Chapter Sixteen
During his first year at Scotland Yard, Kincaid had been ordered to investigate an abandoned factory in the middle of the night. Although the factory, once home to the largest manufacturing company in London, had been shut down for nearly half a decade, the owner continued to store large pieces of expensive equipment inside the crumbling brick building, and he was worried about trespassers after he’d passed by and seen a flicker of candlelight from within.
Kincaid was on the third floor when a storm rolled in over the Thames, bringing with it a wall of thick, eerie, gray fog that spilled through the broken windows and pooled on the floor like dragon’s breath.
He’d begun to make his way back down the rickety staircase when he heard it. The unmistakable creak of a board, followed by the scrape of something heavy being dragged across the floor directly below him.
Withdrawing his pistol from the folds of his greatcoat, he had descended the stairs as silently as a cat, every muscle in his body poised to strike. Except it was as black as pitch inside the factory, and with the bloody fog on top of it he did not see the man behind him until it was too late.
The pistol went flying when he was tackled to the ground. Grunting, cursing, he grappled with his attacker, managing to land as many blows as he received despite his unfamiliarity with his surroundings and the damned faceless bastard outweighing him by at least two stone.
A blow to his jaw sent him reeling. As blood filled his mouth, he reached for the knife he always kept tucked in his boot. As he grasped the hilt, lightning exploded across the sky.
The massive bolt lit up the factory, allowing Kincaid to see the second assailant charging towards him with a metal pipe clenched between his meaty fists. Kincaid ducked, then spun around and slid his knife between the man’s ribs. The pipe fell with a clatter, and both of the brutes scurried off into the darkness like rats into the sewer.
Breathing heavily, Kincaid bent forward, his hands on his knees and his head hanging limply as his heartbeat gradually slowed. He spat out a mouthful of blood, then staggered to the nearest wall and leaned against it as a boom of thunder shook the factory.
If not for the lightning, he would have been dead with his head bashed open. That violent surge of electricity had saved him. More than that, it had changed him. In those few precious moments between the blinding white flash and driving his blade into flesh, he had been faced with his own mortality. His triumphs and his failures. All he had accomplished…and everything he had yet to do.
When Joanna leaned down and kissed him, another bolt of lightning, straight from the hand of Zeus, shot across the sky.
This one came from inside of his soul, but its point of origin made it no less potent or powerful. And as he wrapped his arms around the tempestuous, fiery American who had been driving him wild since she first sauntered into his office, Kincaid’s life was changed as it had been then in that dark factory all those years ago.
Why, he asked himself as their lips parted and he sampled the delicious nectar of her mouth. Why had he denied himself this? Why had he damned himself to hell when he could have been living in heaven?
Yanking up her skirt and all the blasted petticoats that were underneath it, he grasped her hips and lifted her effortlessly onto his lap. Her knees hugged his ribs, her boots falling to the floor with a soft thud as she hooked her ankles around the back of his chair.
His cock surged between them, hard as a railroad pike, and her neck muffled his groan when she wiggled closer, inadvertently stroking herself on his arousal.
Had her kiss happened ten minutes ago, he would have stopped their desires here. Before it went too far for either of them to control. They were already teetering on the brink. A ship about to plunge into deep, untested waters. But having stripped his soul bare, he had no inhibitions left. No compulsions to do what was right. What was honorable.
And thus, he chose what was wicked.
But how could this be wicked when it felt so bloody good?
His fingers dove into Joanna’s coiffure, scattering pins in every direction as his mouth forged a blazing trail down her neck to her shoulder, which he nipped before burying his face between her breasts.
She leaned away from him, shamelessly offering her taut nipples to his tongue. He licked them through her gown, but the fabric mocked him. With a growl, he grabbed the back of her dress and quite simply tore it away, along with the cotton shift underneath. This time, she wore no corset, for which he was exceedingly grateful, and a whistle of appreciation formed between his lips as the sinking sun bathed her naked
skin in an orange glow.
“Better,” he murmured as he devoured the sight of her breasts. Perfectly formed, they were neither too large nor too small, rounded beneath and slightly concave on top, with nipples painted a dusky rose. “Much better.”
He suckled one sweet tip and then the other, lavishing attention upon the sensitive buds until Joanna was all but writhing and her slender arms trembled from the exertion of holding herself upright. Lifting his head, he gazed at her from eyes heavy lidded with lust. Her cheeks were flush with color. Her hair cascaded over her body in a luxurious wave of crimson. Her lips were parted, her breaths coming in small, little pants.
She was a vision. A masterpiece. A goddess.
He’d never seen anyone so beautiful. He was almost afraid to touch her, for fear that some of his darkness might tarnish such raw, ravishing magnificence. But how could he deny himself such delicious pleasure?
As need warred with logic, as past mistakes mingled with new, he picked her up and changed their positions so that she was sitting in the chair and he was kneeling in the middle of her long legs. A few tugs, and her drawers and stockings were gone until the only thing she wore was her perfume. It wrapped around him in a haze of violet that reminded him of the first day they’d met. She’d smelled of rain, then. Rain and flowers and a hint of desperation.
With the exception of the rain, nothing had changed.
His knees dug into the floorboards as he braced his hands on the armrests of the chair, his hungry gaze drawn to the auburn curls nestled at the apex of Joanna’s thighs. She was already damp with passion, and a growl rumbled deep in his throat as he imagined sinking his hard, pulsing length into all of that wet, clenching velvet.
“Let me taste you,” he said hoarsely, lifting his head. “Just a taste.”
Her brows drew together. “I don’t under—oh,” she gasped when he sank between her legs. A gasp that turned into a moan when he pressed his mouth to the inside of her knee and began to kiss his way up, up, up until he reached the center of all her breathless passion.
Bewitched by the Bluestocking Page 21
