by Lily Maxton
He was torn between amusement, and sympathy, and the urge to cradle her in his arms. Which was bollocks itself. He wasn’t the sort of man to give comfort to anyone.
“And you!” She whirled on him.
“Me?” he said blankly.
“Lady Sarah is not a trophy to win. She deserves to be loved for who she is!”
“And you think that would happen? Even if I stepped out of the way,” he said. “It’s called a marriage mart for a reason. And it isn’t one-sided. If I’m weighing how Lady Sarah’s position in Society can help me, she’s also weighing what I have to offer.”
“Then why does it have to be you?”
“Why shouldn’t it be me?” he asked harshly. It was a question he’d repeated to himself for practically his entire life. For as long as he could remember.
Eleanor made a small noise of disgust and turned from him. She hung the mufflers back on the wall. And then she shrugged out of her tailcoat and waistcoat and fumbled with her cravat. In just her shirtsleeves, her cravat hanging open at her throat, she walked to one of the sash windows and pushed it open.
His gaze inadvertently drifted over her body. The breeches she wore clung tightly to her legs and backside, revealing more than a dress could, even a gauzy muslin one. She was slender, delicately built, but soft in the right places.
Fire danced in his blood. He hadn’t been this aware of a woman since… Had he ever been this aware? Maybe when he’d been a boy, and he’d first started noticing the opposite sex, noticed that they were different, and had been intrigued by those differences.
But that was so long ago, he could barely remember. And this, Eleanor, was only feet away.
“Why is this room so hot?” she wailed, leaning on the windowsill.
“It’s not,” he said, moving closer against his better judgment.
“It’s Smith’s punch, isn’t it? They might as well drink lamp oil. It would probably taste better.”
He laughed.
“Do you ever overindulge?”
“I have, but not often,” he said. “It doesn’t have a very good effect on the body.”
“How did you become a pugilist?” She wasn’t looking at him. She was still staring out the window, her face taking the full brunt of the cold air. For some reason, the lack of eye contact made him feel easier about discussing his past.
“We lived in a close in the Old Town. My mother and I. Tenement housing. She laundered clothes when she could find work, but it was barely enough and I wanted to help. I…I tried my hand at being a resurrectionist.”
She faced him, frowning. His chest throbbed fiercely, and this time it wasn’t worry over her wellbeing. It was worry over what she might think of him.
“A grave robber,” he explained softly. “Selling bodies made good money. They need them for dissection—surgeons and doctors, the university.” He didn’t know why he was trying to explain it as though it had been a good deed. She probably knew more than he did about dissections, and he hadn’t cared what the bodies were used for, he’d wanted the blunt. A freshly buried, well-preserved corpse could fetch up to ten pounds…that was more than his mother made for months of work.
Her eyes widened, and this time, he was the one who turned away. “Of course, it was risky. There were patrols to dodge, and other body snatchers to compete with. I got pummeled a few times, and lost out on a lot of money. Eventually, I learned to fight. And eventually, I realized I liked fighting. A hell of a lot better than I liked robbing graves.”
He lifted his shoulder. “I got bigger, and better, and I snuck into as many prizefights as I could to learn even more. And then I started entering them myself. I lost a few, but I won most of them. I made enough to keep a roof over our heads, and to take care of my mother when she was healthy, and then when she took ill.”
When he told his story, so simply, so inarticulately, he realized he’d been fighting his whole life. Ever since the time he’d first stepped into a graveyard at night, afraid of every little rustle or snapped twig, but determined to do whatever he had to do to survive.
He glanced at Eleanor, but her face, usually so easy to read, was impassive. He wished he knew what she was thinking. He wished he knew if she was disgusted. Good people didn’t steal bodies. Good people didn’t leave the relatives of the dead to mourn the violation of their loved ones’ graves. Only poor, desperate cowards did that.
And he’d been one of the poorest and most desperate of the lot.
But if she was horrified, she didn’t tell him.
Finally, he had to break the silence. And change this godforsaken subject. “How did you become interested in entomology?”
After a very long pause, she said softly, “I was very close to my father. He was a physician, but he liked to picture himself as a man of all science, I think. He would point things out to me—plants, insects, stars in the night sky. One day we were walking, and we came across a dung beetle. It was rolling a ball of dung that had to be at least a hundred times its own weight. And my father said, ‘Just imagine, Elle, if humans were as strong as insects, we would be invincible.’”
She laughed quietly, almost sadly. “After that, I was fascinated by beetles. I never stopped being fascinated.” She glanced at him. “Do you miss your mother?”
He answered the only way he could. With the simple truth. “Yes.”
She nodded. “I miss my parents, too. But I have my siblings. You’re alone.”
He knew she didn’t mean anything by it. He knew she wasn’t trying to hurt him. But still, the words struck him like a blow. He’d been alone for so long now, he should have been used to it.
But he didn’t know if one ever got used to silence.
He was quiet for too long. She stepped close to him and rested her hand on his sleeve. “Are you all right? James?”
The sound of his name in her soft, careful voice—not Mr. MacGregor, not just MacGregor, but the name his mother had given him—the closeness of her whisky-speckled eyes, the way her breath felt puffing gently against his cheek—all of these things made him forget just what he’d been fighting for so long.
Maybe he was alone, but right now, he didn’t feel alone.
“Eleanor,” he said. He didn’t know if it was a plea or a question or if he was simply saying her name because he wanted to. He just knew that her eyes darkened, and then she was leaning, leaning close, leaning against him, her face tilted toward him. She pressed her cold lips to his.
When he didn’t move an inch, she started to pull back, but the hesitant motion finally spurred him into action. He followed her, and then his mouth was on hers, and one of his hands wrapped around her waist and the other buried in her hair and her back was against the wall.
He warmed her wind-cold lips, tasted them, sipped at them, and then he tasted her tongue. Rum and heat. Spice and sweetness and desire. He was hard almost instantly.
She arched into the kiss. Her hands settled on his ribs, moving, testing, greedy. They were both greedy, like they’d been waiting for this for days. Like they’d been starving for just one taste of each other. And perhaps they had been.
Their antagonism had imploded, and all that was left was the fast, sweet ache of lust. Maybe the antagonism had been the only thing standing between them and lust in the first place.
No longer. The barriers were down. The gloves were off.
She slid her palm to his throat, to make contact with bare skin. It was a sudden, delectable shock. He wanted her hands everywhere—his throat, his back, forging trails down his chest, gripping his cock. He let his own hand slide down and grip her backside through the soft, stretchy fabric of the breeches. He yanked her forward with a growl, hips against hips, softness against hardness, and she gasped into his mouth.
“You smell like rosemary,” she drew back to whisper, almost accusingly. Hot breath fanned his cheek. “I love the smell of rosemary.”
Her words penetrated the smoky spell that had wrapped around them. It was like being dropp
ed in an ice bath.
He’d forgotten…for a second, he’d forgotten the state she’d arrived in, because he’d been drowning in her kisses. And even if she wasn’t quite as foxed now as she had been, she was still foxed. And he was still courting Lady Sarah. Or hoping to court her.
His hands moved to her shoulders and pushed back gently. His body felt bereft as soon as the soft pressure of hers was gone.
“James?” Her lips were bruised, red, and swollen. Her hair, once pristine, coiled around her head like Medusa’s snakes. She looked like she’d just tumbled out of bed after a night of wild lovemaking. His gut clenched. Unfortunately, not with remorse.
“I’ll take you home,” he said.
She frowned, teeth denting her swollen lower lip. “I can take a hackney.”
He backed away from her. He wasn’t positive he could stop himself from pulling her back into his arms if she was within arm’s length. He retreated, almost to the other side of the room, and watched her smooth her hair back and pin it with ruthless efficiency. Watched her put on the wig and spectacles and turn, once more, into Cecil.
He still desired her. Even her transformation into a small, bespectacled man couldn’t stop the throb of lust in his groin.
It was a damned bloody nuisance.
One that he had to put an end to, here and now. “Have you sent out the invitations yet?”
“The invitations?” She stared at him, lips twisted downward. And he knew the instant she remembered what he was speaking of. Her face flushed a violent red. “I should…should I still send them?” Her voice was quiet, hesitant.
His heart ached, but he pushed down any shred of feeling, any shred of decency or guilt. He mercilessly stamped out the last remnants of desire still clinging to his skin.
He gave one curt, unmistakable nod. “Let me know when you do.”
“I…” She swallowed hard. Blinked twice. And then her back straightened, until she was as stiff and pointed as a steel rod. “Yes, I will,” she said, too loud in the silence.
She left the room without another word to him, and he sagged against the wall in relief. He glanced out the window to make sure she made it safely to a hackney coach, but he didn’t let himself feel anything as she bundled her greatcoat around her, braced against the wind, and disappeared inside.
He’d come too far, and fought too hard, to let one kiss disrupt his entire life.
Chapter Fifteen
The three siblings passed some time in the drawing room after dinner that night. Georgina practiced the pianoforte, with an exuberance that Eleanor was certain any piano instructor would frown upon. Robert was leaning against the mantel, staring at her worriedly.
“Why are you watching me?” she asked, closing the book in her lap with a soft thud.
“You have been looking at the same page for nearly twenty minutes,” he said.
“Have I?” The more ebullient effects of Smith’s punch had faded, leaving her with nothing but a pounding head and a dry, rancid mouth. The more she knew of men, the less she understood them.
And she was doing her best not to remember a certain kiss…or a certain several kisses…with James MacGregor.
After another few minutes of staring at the same page, it was impossible.
If only she hadn’t been the one to initiate the kiss. That kiss, that soft, tentative press, had been a question…and she’d thought…well, she’d thought his energetic response had been an answer, of sorts.
Until he’d turned as cold and unyielding as the frozen Thames. Until he’d reminded her of their agreement with all the subtlety of a rampaging bull.
“Robert,” she said slowly, and more than a little hopefully. “Is it possible to drink so much that one can’t remember their actions?”
She’d have to face James MacGregor again, and it would be much easier for everyone involved if she could feign ignorance.
There was a silence so profound that Eleanor jerked her head up.
“Is this a hypothetical question?” he asked. He muttered something that sounded like “please” and “God.”
“Of course,” she said quickly.
The tension left his shoulders, but he still peered at her suspiciously. “It’s possible, but you’d have to drink an unsafe amount. Why do you wish to know, Eleanor?”
She shrugged. “Science?”
Robert’s forehead wrinkled. “You’ve been acting strangely. Does this have something to do with MacGregor?”
“No.” She sighed, running her hand along the leather binding of her book. “Perhaps. Do you think he even has a chance with Lady Sarah?” she finally asked.
“I doubt her family would be overjoyed, but I’ve seen stranger things. Manners and good taste can go just as far as breeding, in some cases, if he’s truly serious about it.”
“But that’s the thing…he doesn’t have manners and good taste. He’s only pretending. Is he going to pretend his entire life?”
“Some people do,” Robert answered, a hint of weariness in his voice. “Some people do it all the time. Why does it matter? These are his problems, not yours.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
But in some odd way, it did. And not only because he’d told her about growing up in the Old Town and she’d told him about her father, and she’d kissed him and he’d kissed her back, and she’d assumed all of those things meant something. It mattered because if a man as uncontainable as James MacGregor felt like he needed to change who he was to be accepted, what hope did a socially awkward, science-minded almost spinster have?
…
“Do you know much about the Townsends?” James found himself asking Stephen the next day.
“The Townsends,” Stephen repeated. “Well, the Arden title is an old one, and a powerful one. That’s enough to make them accepted. In the strictest sense of the word. But they’re a bit on the fringe.”
“The fringe?”
“They didn’t know they were going to inherit an earldom. I hear their father was a physician…worked his entire life.”
James ignored the tightening in his chest. “But a physician is still a gentleman.”
“True. But again, in the strictest sense of the word.”
James was getting annoyed by that phrase—the strictest sense of the word. “And what about the Townsend children. What’s said of them?”
“What isn’t said? The earl is a recluse. There are so many rumors swirling around about him that it’s not even possible to begin sorting fact from fiction. The rest are…varied. Mr. Townsend and Miss Georgina Townsend have become quite popular for their charm and amiability, and Miss Georgina is a bit of a favorite, even among the stodgiest of matrons. They say she’s beautiful despite the unfortunate scarring. She had small pox when she was young,” he said in explanation.
There was something about that phrasing James didn’t like—beautiful despite the scars, as though one had to separate her from the scars before she could be beautiful. As though she couldn’t be beautiful with them? But Stephen had no idea James knew Georgina Townsend, so he kept his mouth shut.
“But there’s another sister, isn’t there?” His voice sounded too tight.
“No one thinks that one is worth discussing,” Stephen said, with a laugh that made James want to give into his more violent urges and throttle him.
“Why?”
“Shy and plain. Born a wallflower and she’ll die a wallflower. Probably move into one of her brothers’ homes and look after his children. But that’s the destiny of women like that…wilting.”
His cruel, mocking dismissal made James’s hands clench. If Stephen knew her…if he truly knew her…he wouldn’t use the term shy with such derision. Maybe she didn’t open up to people quickly, maybe there were some people she would never open up to, but if Stephen was one of the ones she spoke to about her love of entomology, about her love of her father, and her family, and her vehement distaste for Smith’s punch…he would know he couldn’t simply dismiss her with one c
areless word.
And if he’d ever seen her eyes spark with intelligence, with indignation, with desire…he would never call her plain.
“But why all these questions, MacGregor? I thought your interests lay with the fair Lady Sarah.”
“They do,” he said quickly. And then he was ashamed he’d said anything at all when he saw Stephen’s knowing smirk.
“She’s still the jewel in the crown of Edinburgh Society, even if Miss Georgina brings her some competition.”
He didn’t need Stephen to tell him that. He knew. He already knew.
Just as he knew this restless, shifting hole inside of him wouldn’t be filled until he’d won her.
Chapter Sixteen
They prepared for a ball. Robert grumbled and Georgina threw herself into the task with her usual enthusiasm. Eleanor approached the event with the air of a man walking to the gallows—it was too late to stop, too late to dig herself out, she’d just have to march to the bitter end.
They invited some of the most sought-after Edinburgh families—the ones who, like Lady Sarah’s family, stayed for the Season instead of spending most of their time in London out of loyalty to their city, and the ones who were wellborn and well-off, but didn’t have quite the amount of riches needed for a London Season.
While Eleanor took on the mind-numbing task of invitation writing, she thought of James MacGregor as a boy, alone except for his mother, poor enough and desperate enough to become a body snatcher, even though the memory was clearly distasteful to him. She couldn’t imagine him as that boy, small and scared, who didn’t yet know how to use his fists to defend himself. She couldn’t imagine him scared. Couldn’t imagine him vulnerable, at all.
