She twisted her ankle one way, then the other, and to her surprise, her foot slipped from its moorings.
“That’s a girl,” he praised. “Now hold fast while I step down.”
Oh, aye, she thought, tightening her arms about him in pleasure. She was barely aware of the smooth descent until she heard him chuckle.
“You can release me now, we’ve reached the ground.”
Her eyes snapped open. Her head jerked back from his leg.
He braced her against him with one arm crossing her back and the other hand cupping her thigh. A hot iron to her flesh could not have burned a deeper imprint.
It took a bit of acrobatic maneuvering to set her upright. Standing on her feet at last, Faith’s knees felt weak as pastry dough, and her instincts blared a warning to step away, put some distance between him. But with his arm lingering around her waist, holding her close to his powerful frame, thigh to thigh, breast to chest, she could do naught but stare into the eyes fixed on hers. Her mind went numb to all but the musky scent and male heat of the body pressed against hers.
A bit of moon peeked out from behind the clouds sliding across the sky, giving her a glimpse of his darkening pupils. More perfect features had never been created on a man. A sloping jaw, shadowed in whiskers. Smooth, firm mouth, temptation incarnate. And most compelling, eyes like the sea, which seemed privy to the deepest secrets of her soul.
What did he see when he looked at her? Could he see the wild street urchin, abandoned by her family? The foul pocket-thief, desperate to survive? The lonely young woman, lured by delusions of being a lady?
Then his eyes narrowed. All traces of amusement left his face. “What happened here?” With the same unexpected gentleness as he’d shown before, he tipped her chin toward the light of the waxing moon and brushed his thumb across the discoloration in the hollow of her cheek, and the world stopped along with her heartbeat. “Who did this to you?”
Faith blinked. The question seemed to come from a tunnel.
“Did someone strike you?”
The murderous rage in his eyes took Faith off guard, as if given the chance, the baron would kill whoever touched her. Rip him apart with his bare hands. He might not be as bulky as some or as robust in frame, but there was no doubt in her mind that with his lean and wiry strength, he could brawl with the best of them.
“Maybe I scraped it against the wall.” It wasn’t a lie. Exactly. Jack hadn’t done more than bruise her pride. It was more a twist to divert the truth, she told herself. Not to protect Jack Swift. She did it to protect herself. Somehow she knew that if he learned Jack had struck her, he would hunt him down, and though the knowledge filled her with unaccustomed tenderness and bittersweet shame, she didn’t want Lord Westborough knowing the extent of the depths to which she’d sunk. Bad enough she was already labeled a guttersnipe and thief.
“Oh, Faith . . .” The tender stroke of his finger against her cheek was nearly her undoing. “What am I going to do with you?”
Hold me close. Tuck me into you heart. Make me yours. “Let me go,” she found herself whispering. “I’ll get ye back yer money somehow, I swear I will.”
His hand dropped slowly, as did his lashes, shuttering his thoughts. “I can’t do that, cherie.”
She almost wept. “Why not? It ain’t as if ye need the money—crikey, two hundred pounds is a drop in the bucket to gents like you!”
“We have an agreement, Faith, or have you forgotten?”
“T’hell with our agreement!” she cried recklessly. Then, aware that she might be treading on dangerous ground, she took an instant step backward and put herself out of his reach. “Ye might as well summon the magistrate right now because I’d rather spend the rest of me days in Newgate than step foot inside that house again.”
“You don’t approve of Radcliff?” The sweep of his hand encompassed the opulent surroundings.
Approve? Crikey, it was everything she’d ever dreamed of! “T’ain’t nothing wrong with it.”
“Then what is it, cherie? Is prison so much more preferable to working for me?”
If he’d demanded an explanation, she could have kept up her guard. But the infinite gentleness in his smoky tone broke through her reserves and sent her defenses crumbling. “I don’t belong here,” she whispered, her voice as raw as her fear. “I don’t belong here at all.”
“Neither do I. But it seems that we both must make the best of our situations.”
She’d half expected him to laugh off her angst, or at the very least, scoff at her for being a silly twit.
She hadn’t expected him to understand.
“Come,” he commanded, taking her by the hand. “Everything will look brighter in the morning.”
As they turned away from the trellis, the baron stopped and bent low. When he raised up, he had her pack and hat clutched in his hand. The cap he returned to her, but the rucksack he slung over his shoulder. “I think this should remain in my safekeeping for a while.”
Faith couldn’t find the will to protest. It wasn’t as if she’d be needing the tools anytime soon.
He guided her across an overgrown courtyard and through a rust-hinged gate to a side door that opened into the kitchen. Her rejected bowl of stew still lay on the worktable where she’d thrown it earlier. She stared at it wistfully as they passed but said not a word.
She followed him up the stairs in dull obedience. When they reached the landing, she started toward the room she’d been assigned, only to be brought to a firm halt.
“No you don’t, Faith.” Gripping her arm, the baron inclined his head toward the door of the room in which she’d used to make her escape. “You’ll sleep with me tonight.”
For a second, Faith wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. She had been awake for nearly two days straight. Her mind was dull and her body numb with fatigue. But as she replayed the words in her mind, there was no mistaking them. “Over me dead body, baron. I’ll sleep in me own bed.”
“Your bed is wherever I decide it is.”
She’d known it would happen. She’d known he would show his true colors; she’d just convinced herself it wouldn’t happen so soon. “I won’t sleep with ye, baron. I won’t be no one’s whore.”
“Whore? Good God, where do you get such ideas? The fact is, Faith, you tried to escape before working off your debt to me, and I can no longer trust you not to escape again. Therefore, I plan to keep my eye on you every moment—even if it means tying you to my bedpost—until our agreement is fulfilled.”
And in that moment, she hated the Baron of Westborough with every beat of her heart. How could she for a moment have been fooled into thinking she was safe with him?
With one last glower, she yanked her wrist free and entered his room, the very same one she’d used to climb out the window. The irony didn’t escape Faith. The bed seemed to have increased in size. Her first thought was to flee, but there was nowhere to go. Nonetheless, she lingered near the door, her arms wrapped around her middle. The baron made his way toward the hearth. She watched in surreal detachment as he knelt before the stone mouth and fed it wedges of wood. So this was how it was to be then? A hundred pounds of flesh for two hundred pounds of coin? The price for her crimes? The punishment for her sins?
She’d known she should not have trusted him at his word.
Maybe she should be flattered that he would deem her body worth even a farthing of that. But all she felt was bone-deep resentment and soul-licking terror.
She would fight him, she decided, mentally scouring the room for a weapon. She didn’t want to hurt him but if it meant—
“There’s an extra quilt on the chest. You may sleep on the bed or the floor, it makes no difference.” He lifted himself up and away from the fire now flickering in the grate. “But be aware that I am a light sleeper. I will hear you if you try to leave.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“ ‘Tis half past three o’clock in the morning, Faith. I am
weary to my bones, and we must be ready to leave in a few hours.”
What? He wasn’t going to punish her?
He rounded the side of the bed, seeming to forget her presence. Dizzying relief washed through her. She slumped back against the wall, her knees too weak to hold her, and closed her eyes. She couldn’t believe he would spare her.
Then she opened her eyes and caught him pulling his shirt from his waistband.
“Ye ain’t taking off your clothes!”
He paused. His eyes crinkled at the corners. “ ’Tis the natural order of retiring.” Then he drew the shirt over his head and discarded it into the round-backed chair by the secretary.
And for the first time in her life, Faith swore she was about to swoon. He was neither brawny nor scrawny. Instead, his build seemed in perfect proportion to his height. Wide-shouldered, deep-chested, long-waisted and long-legged, not an ounce of spare flesh marred the beauty of his body. He was simply corded muscle and tightly stretched skin, the deep, rich hue of dusk.
Faith had been raised among boys of all ages and had seen countless number of men in all manner of dress—and undress. But not a single member of the male species compared to the Baron of Westborough. Not a single one aroused her fascination as he did. He looked sleek and sinuous and more irresistible than she ever dreamed a man could look. She could easily imagine him besting a Nordic warrior as waltzing across a ballroom floor. Watching him, the fluid play of bone and sinew, the purposeful gestures, the smooth and somehow deliberate dance of motion, captivated her. Intrigued her.
Tempted her.
Her nails cut into her skin as she clenched her hands. The urge to let her hands roam across his bare chest, to explore the hard wall of his torso became nearly unbearable. A line of fine dark hair extended from his navel to the waistband of his gray, form-fitting breeches.
The warmth in her veins rose to a blazing wildfire. She felt feverish and dizzy. The air in the room seemed to disappear. How easily it would be to cross the distance between them, climb into that four-poster bed, lift her skirts as they were, and let him tumble her.
And become the one thing she’d sworn on her mother’s soul never to become.
His fingers adroitly released the buttons on the front placket and Faith’s eyes slammed shut. She heard the squeak of bed springs, two muted thuds on the floor as he removed his boots, the rustle of material. A sudden picture of him sitting on the bed wearing nothing but skin appeared in her mind, the image so clear he might as well have stripped down to nothing before her very eyes.
The room went silent, save for the pop of firewood nearby. She cracked open one eye, then the other. He now stood by the bed, folding his britches. Much to her relief, and disappointment, he wasn’t naked as she’d expected. Instead, a pair of loose cotton underdrawers covered him from waist to knee.
He opened a large valise and withdrew a simple white shirt. Rather than covering up his bare chest as she hoped, he tossed the shirt at her. “Put this on.”
Faith caught the garment on sheer reflex and gaped at him in astonishment. Take off her clothes?
“Remove them, or I will remove them for you.”
Ah, so that was his game. Bastard. The baron had no wish to bed her. He only wanted to lord over her. Bring her to heel. Humiliate her. She pursed her lips, summoned her pride, and reached for the top button of her coat.
And Troyce was entranced.
Never in his life had he been so aware of a female. So sensitive to her sound, her presence, her scent. He told himself only the worst of scoundrels would look. Good God, she was hardly more than a child on the brink of womanhood. Yet he couldn’t stop himself from watching if his life depended on it. Morbid fascination kept his attention fixed on her as, with her back to him, she kicked off her shoes and shed her coat. Her hair was shorter than was conventional, just past her shoulders, and firelight danced in loose curls of saffron and amber. The coat sailed toward one of the chairs in front of the hearth, hit the back, and tumbled to the floor.
Then she began unbuttoning her shirt. If she was aware of him spying her, she gave no sign. She kept her head down, and he imagined her gaze focused on the buttons as she slipped them through their corresponding holes, her fingers long, tapered, graceful in their task, stirring his fantasies, fanning a heat in the room that already seemed suffocating.
Once the fasteners were dealt with, she shrugged out of the ratty garment, not bothering to hide her figure from his prying eyes as she bared her shoulders, her back, her waist.
And Troyce nearly choked on his own shock. He’d seen undernourished before; working on the coast made him privy to all manner of characters who disembarked ships from all over the world, the promise of a future paved in gold destroyed by misery, illness, and starvation. Yet no amount of experience prepared him for the sight of Faith’s emaciated figure. He could count every joint in her arms, every vertebra in her spine, every rib in her torso. When she turned slightly and raised her arm to shove it into the sleeve, he realized that only her breasts had been spared starvation. They were full and proud and high, seemingly too heavy to be supported by her fragile frame.
His loins tightened. His blood thickened. His brain kicked into carnal gear.
And in that brief moment, one thing became starkly apparent.
She was hardly a child.
Feeling her glare burning holes into his skin, he glanced up from her beautiful breasts and met her over-the-shoulder stare unflinchingly, hoping none of the lascivious thoughts parading through his mind were visible to her. With near-defiant purpose, she shoved her arms through the sleeves, poked her head through the neck opening, and covered her nudity. The sleeves dangled past her fingertips, and the tail of his shirt kept her bottom half concealed as she then peeled away the stiff britches and kicked them away. What he could see of her legs told him that they were just as thin as the rest of her, yet delicately turned at the knees and ankles, and her feet were small and slender.
“There. Are you happy now?”
The sheen of tears in her eyes made him feel like England’s most depraved cad. How could he put her through this humiliation? He hardened himself against the sympathy and the desire. “Almost.”
He plucked the divested shirt and britches off the floor and threw them into the fire.
“What are you doing?” she cried, racing toward the hearth as the rags burst into flames.
“Ridding you of those hideous garments once and for all.”
“You had no right!”
“I have every right. You are in my employ, and I’ll not have people thinking I cannot care for my own people.”
She glared at him for several seconds, her doe brown eyes growing almost black. Her chest heaved, her fists clenched. “I hate you, Baron.”
His heart fell, and his chest went suddenly hollow. “I know you do.” He left her to stew by the hearth, knowing that if he stood there much longer, he’d give her a reason to really despise him. “Good night, Faith.”
Moments later, he lay on his stomach between the sheets, his pillow beaten into submission beneath his head, his fist curled against the bedcovers. Faith had taken the quilt from the chest and was spreading it on the floor in front of the fire. Pity, he thought, when there was so much room beside him. So much empty room.
This was absurd, this damnable desire for her. He could hardly deny it when the proof of that desire throbbed hot and rigid between his belly and the mattress. What he didn’t understand was how. Or why. Aye, she promised to be a comely woman, but he’d known many a comely women in his day; not a one of them aroused him to such a degree.
So what was it about a scrawny wisp of a cutpurse that kindled his passions and tied his emotions in knots? Devon was right; Faith would no doubt rob him blind the instant he turned his back. And if there was one thing Troyce could not abide, it was a thief.
The wisest thing would be to cut his losses and take her back to London where he’d found her. Or at the very least, find her a positi
on in another household where she’d not pose such a temptation. And yet, from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, he could not bring himself to turn his back on her. It felt too much like abandonment.
So instead, he’d brought her not just into his home, but into his very bedchamber, where he could be sure she’d not escape.
As he drifted off to sleep, he did so with the scent of roses strong in his nostrils and a strangely disturbing contentment deep in his heart.
“What do you mean, you lost her!”
Scatter flinched in spite of himself. Jack didn’t raise his voice like he normally did, and Scat almost wished he would. Hollering would ha’ been much easier to block out than the frozen gravel of his tone. He clutched his hat in his hand, rolled the brim, unrolled it again, over and over. “After we bilked the pair of gents over by the docks, one of ’em got Fanny and took ’er away in some fancy coach.”
“Who took her?”
“Don’t know, Jack. I ain’t never seen the bloke before.”
“Then find out!” He slammed his fist down on the tabletop and sent a pile of coins from the gent’s pouch rolling helter-skelter. “I want to know where she is, and who she’s with.”
His nod felt wooden, as if his head had suddenly gotten too bulky for his neck. “Aye, suh.”
“And Scatter, do not return without news.”
Again, he forced himself to nod. Zounds, why couldn’t Jack just be happy with the money he’d given him? He was so tired. He’d hidden in the old shoemaker’s shop for hours and hours, waiting for Fanny to meet up with him like she’d done hundreds of times past.
But she’d never shown.
So he’d gone back to the tavern. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he found her there, but he knew he couldn’t just sit around waitin’. Him and Fan, they’d been mates for a long time, and a mate didn’t just leave a mate.
At least, that’s what he’d always thought until he’d seen her get into the hack. She wasn’t struggling either. She looked almost like she’d wanted to go away. And he remembered all the times she’d talked about gettin’ out of the band, of leavin’ Bethnal Green.
A Scandalous Lady Page 7
