by Anne Mallory
Overly chatty bastard even then.
“It would be worth it,” Roman said lazily, his expression beyond pleased. “So, Miss Pace is living here, I hear? Couldn’t wait to rent my rooms?”
“Yes. Now get out and go home.” He motioned to the door with the knife.
“Nice desk you’ve added.” Roman smirked, putting his feet on top of the feminine abomination.
“You should be terrified by its existence. I can assure you that I didn’t bring it in here. She’s corrupting all of your thugs. I heard one say he was going to become a cobbler because she complimented his leatherwork.”
Roman tried, unsuccessfully, to hide his smile. “Well, you do always say that you don’t need lackeys. Think of it as her culling the herd for you.”
Andreas glared hard enough to sear strips through most people’s trousers. “The situation is not amusing.”
Of course, Roman would walk from the room with trousers intact and never find any of this upsetting. Roman was always of the opinion that if one wanted something, even if it meant living in poverty, one should go get it—that if a perfectly good thug wanted to be a cobbler, he should be encouraged to do so.
Thoughts like that were why Andreas was the brains behind the operation.
Thoughts like that were perhaps why Roman was deliriously happy, and Andreas was still entrenched in a world of coldness.
“It is beyond amusing, brother mine.”
Roman had been on the streets a few months longer than he had and had shared all of his knowledge—sometimes in long streams of uninterrupted dialogue—seemingly content simply to survive. Andreas had wanted far more, and after he’d recovered, after he’d fashioned stray bits of wood and metal together into what he’d needed to support and hide his weak leg, he had dragged Roman along with him to ruthlessly carve their nook in the world. Then their larger piece. Then their kingdom.
Even now, Roman would be content to retire with his wife and live happily in some tiny hamlet in the country. Happy driving her wild and seducing her every chance he got. Perhaps fleecing the neighbors if he grew a little restless. Happy.
But Andreas needed the drive. Needed the empire. His revenge would be complete soon. And there would be no family for him. Roman would make him share his family anyway. Andreas grimaced. He could see that dark path stretching before him. Short little bodies, Lucifer’s blond curls, snotty noses, and food-encrusted faces peering up at him, wanting to be lifted and spun. Wanting to hug him and be hugged. Ugh.
The vision of a tiny heart-shaped-faced girl with large brown eyes took form for a moment. He pushed it violently away.
“It is an interesting addition to this room, though.” Roman tapped the desk with his heel. The light in Roman’s eyes, and the way he had waited to bring up the subject said he knew more than he was letting on. Like always.
“It is an abomination.”
Roman threw a pair of dice, sending them skittering across the wood tops, eyes never leaving Andreas’s, even as Andreas reached out to stop them. “So, why is it still here?”
Why is she still here? was the real question he was asking.
“You will know when you meet her.”
“Right. If you recall, I know you. You can get rid of anyone in five seconds flat.”
“Not her,” he grumbled.
Roman examined him. It was sometimes impossible to know what his brother was thinking behind his masks.
Andreas didn’t know why he opened his mouth, but words emerged without permission. “Something hurts in my chest whenever she looks my way. Whenever she touches me.”
Roman’s stare went blank for long seconds before a grin slipped across his lips. “She makes your chest hurt?”
“Yes. As if I’ve been felled by a blow.” He rubbed his chest absently.
“Felled by something.” Roman looked amused. “Odd for someone to want to keep a person near who makes him hurt.”
“The pressure decreases when she smiles.” His damn lips wouldn’t stop moving. As if he had needed a confessional and a priest had finally, finally appeared. “And she smiles often.”
Roman raised a brow. “You are partial to someone having amusement?”
“I like it when she smiles. It makes me feel . . . something.”
Roman didn’t say anything for a few long seconds. “By God, you have it bad.”
“She kissed me.”
Under normal circumstances, Andreas would have fiercely celebrated the look of utter astonishment on his brother’s face, but he just wanted to finish his confession and be done with it. Then he could button it all up and ship it off to parts unknown. Never to return.
“She knows about the brace. I slept without nightmares next to her. She makes the best biscuits you’ve ever tasted.”
Roman’s mouth opened and closed, nothing emerging for a moment. “Biscuits? You eat her food?” His feet dropped from the desk, and he leaned on it, as if he needed the prop all of a sudden. “My God. You love her.”
Andreas scoffed, feeling uncomfortable. “Love? Go be poetic with One-eye or thrice-damned Downing.”
Roman’s expression went flat, serious. “Does she know—”
“No.”
His brother regarded him, his expression clearly saying that he was positively itching to say more. But he clamped his lips together and nodded, regular mask quickly back up. But Andreas could see the plotting, the whirring gears in his sharp mind. “Very well. Tell me about Cornelius. And Garrett. Everything. Then I’m going to kick the shit out of you in the sparring room.”
Andreas had no doubt that he would try.
Love? A nice sentiment for nice people. And while others might lump Roman into the same category as Andreas, Andreas took all of Roman’s sins as his own, leaving Roman free to love and be loved in return.
But Andreas didn’t deserve such. He never had.
Chapter 21
Phoebe hugged her robe to her throat as she stood outside his door. Her parents had been sound asleep when she left.
A birdie had made a very casual comment to her in the kitchens—after making sure it had been just the two of them present—that Andreas had serial nightmares, but that he hadn’t had any the previous night with her there.
Dangerously winged thoughts. Birds could be devilish creatures. Especially blond ones.
Her mother would have apoplexy if she woke to find her daughter gone, so Phoebe had left a note saying she was in the kitchens. Hopefully if it was found before she returned, it would be found at dawn. It was not unusual for her to go down to bake at first light. The idea that her mother might find the note in the middle of the night, though, was beyond terrifying. Phoebe had managed to slip back in that morning before they woke.
Following birded tweets was not without risk. But she had read sincerity beneath the words and hoped her intuition would not lead her completely astray.
She finally raised a hand to knock. The door immediately opened upon her first strike. “Oh.” She let her hand fall. “Are you on your way out?”
“No.” He stood in the doorway, his expression unreadable. “You’ve been standing outside for the last three minutes.”
He didn’t seem to be the type to wait politely for someone to knock. He was more likely to shoot someone hemming and hawing outside of his door.
Astoundingly, he answered her unvoiced question. “I knew it was you standing there.”
She couldn’t stop the smile. A balm of soothing calm slid over her skin and started to settle in. “May I come in?”
For a moment she wasn’t sure he would cede, but then he held the door open and stepped to the side. It amazed her still that she couldn’t tell that he had any injury at all—his movements were so fluid.
“What do you want?” he asked, but the question wasn’t brusque. It was more . . . awkward.
“Company.”
He looked at her for long moments, then motioned toward a set of chairs. They weren’t as comfortable-looking as the
ones in Roman’s suite, but then again, they matched the man who owned them perfectly, lean and hard.
“Drink?”
“What do you have?”
“Wine. Weak cider. Water. Whiskey.”
“A veritable plethora of ‘W’ drinks.”
“If I ever have walrus piss, I will offer it as well.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then laughed, relaxing into the stiff chair. “As adventurous as that sounds, cider would be wonderful, thank you.”
She turned her head to examine the room more fully as he poured two glasses. She had been a bit busy last night, and this morning she had been gawky with lingering embarrassment.
The room was expensive. That was the only way to describe it. Everything glittered.
“I feel a bit like a child who is going to run amok and destroy everything in here.”
“Your father managed not to destroy a thing. If you run amok, I can simply replace said ‘mok.’ ”
She took the offered glass from him. She swirled it for a moment, looking at the surprisingly plush rug in front of the fireplace. Step twelve in her fifteen-step plan said it would work perfectly. “Do you have wood for the fire?” she asked innocently.
Ten minutes later, as the fire blazed in the hearth, she had managed to coax him to the floor, long legs stretched out in front of him, while she lay on her belly on the rug. He looked infinitely more comfortable. She really had to wonder if the man used pain as a focus somehow.
“How can you lie like that?” he asked.
“Without a stiff busk, anything is possible,” she said confidently, then conspiratorially. “I must confess to a most unladylike nature.”
He snorted. “Hardly a confession.”
“Psh. You’re not being a gentleman now, Andreas.”
There was something in his eyes that she very much liked every time she used his name. “I did warn you. Besides you are a hoyden if ever there was one.”
She winked at him, liking the relaxed state he was in. “Only between the hours of ten and two.”
“More like two and ten.”
She laughed. “I was in trouble frequently as a young girl. I am sure that surprises you not at all.”
His look was all the answer needed.
She laughed again. “One escapade even required a prince to save me. It was a glorious adventure. I was the envy of all my friends.”
“Oh?” His voice sounded tense all of a sudden.
“Yes, His Royal Highness, then Commander in Chief of his Royal Majesty’s troops, Duke of York and Albany, et cetera, et cetera, ruined his best boots in order to save me from the path of a carriage. The loss of those boots was worth every penny, I feel. I would have been called Phoebe the Flat, otherwise.” She tilted her head, admiring the way the flames were snapping behind the grate. “Or perhaps Phoebe of the Dented Noggin.”
“You were saved by Frederick?”
“Yes. He even stopped by our home twice while I recovered from the lumps I took when I fell into the street. I was determined to marry him at eight years old. He was charming, heroic, and magnificent.”
She looked at him to join her merriment. But there was a cool stiffness to him that hadn’t been there before. As someone who had made many verbal blunders in the past, she knew she had said something wrong. She just didn’t know what it was.
“I was eight. I got past it quickly, I assure you. I don’t still hold a torch for him.”
His shoulders loosened. Jealousy? But she didn’t think that was it.
“I should hope not.”
“What? You think it would make me a bit mad?”
“You?”
She smiled. “Everyone is a bit mad. A little madness is fine. Christian always called me an unfettered spirit.” It still hurt to refer to her brother in the past tense in any manner.
“Unfettered. Is that what you have been all these months you’ve been holding your family together? Unchained?”
She looked at the liquid in her glass. “You make it sound like dire duty.”
“You should be at parties worrying about what dress you are wearing.”
“Come now, Andreas, what a waste that would be. Who would draft your legislation arguments then?”
“No one.”
“Then I must say with forced frivolity that it is a good thing the world is mad.”
He didn’t respond for a moment. “You didn’t yank the company from your father a year ago.”
She looked at her glass again, concentrating as she swirled. “Sometimes Father was lucid for long periods of time, and we didn’t want to let him think we . . .” She bit her lip. “I worsened matters with my dreadful emotions, I know.”
“You didn’t.”
She examined his expression and let her fingers loosen from her glass. “That is kind of you. Thank you. But it is hard not to fault oneself when one’s villain is amorphous and ever-changing, and full of emotional decisions and consequences.”
“You could blame the other men who took advantage of your father. What were their names?” His tone was casual.
She wagged a finger. “Absolutely not. There is a dark slope there I do not wish to pursue.”
“Yet you are having your revenge on Garrett.”
She tilted her head. “Mmm . . . I can’t deny that helping you draft the documents against him has been satisfying knowing what he wanted to do—and already did—to us. And that I wish Henry and Edward to be free. Perhaps I don’t see it so much as revenge as legally making sure he cannot harm us further.”
His nonresponse made her straighten on her elbows. “What we spoke of earlier . . . I thought it was agreed we would legally tie his hands by presenting evidence to Parliament if he balked. Do you have side plans of which I am unaware, Andreas?”
“Of course I do. Do not tell me that you expect otherwise.”
She opened her mouth for a moment, then shut it. “I expected you to deny it.”
“Why?” He swirled his drink. “I find myself unable to deny you much these days.”
She stared at him, at the echo of his earlier words. Words that had stuck with her all day. Which she had clasped to her.
His eyes didn’t leave hers. “You simply open your lovely mouth and touch me with your soft hands, and I do whatever you like.”
“I . . .” The fire in the hearth was less hot than her face. The flames of it springing from her belly. “That is a lovely thing to say as long as you aren’t calling me manipulative.”
“I was thinking adroit.”
“That sounds far better.”
“I thought you might like it.” His finger pulled along the rim of his glass.
She inched her way over to him, using her elbows and knees, braid hanging loose over one shoulder, and leaned her head in his direction. “You do not smell of alcohol.”
“Do you think I must have been drinking to say such things to you?”
“A small part of me, yes. Though I think very highly of you, you know.”
“Yes. It is something that continues to startle my mind.”
“You are a very confident man, Andreas, even arrogant. It startles me to realize that you feel such debasement sometimes.”
“Are you saying that you do not have attacks of uncertainty as well? I believe we were just speaking of one of your fears.”
She examined his face, and the way that he was so easily confessing to having faults and fears. Unstated or not, that a man like Andreas Merrick made such an admission meant something.
She pushed herself to her hands and knees, then sat on her heels directly in front of him. “You always make me feel strange.”
His gaze sharpened, and she plowed ahead. “I don’t mean that in the negative. But you do, and have, ever since that night I met you. I can’t say I rightly felt that way before that night, though there was something about you across the theater that made me want to get you to smile at me in return. Still, it was that night we met. I had never felt such a rea
ction to a man before. Something tight and uncertain and exciting. Wild.”
His eyes were hot on hers, and his fingers were wrapped more tightly around his glass.
“I still only feel such a reaction to you,” she added softly. “And one of my enduring faults has always been to seize those things that hold my interest. It is quite unladylike of me I suppose. I have never made a very good lady.”
She watched as he seemed to struggle with something. Struggling to maintain that last measure of reserve—whatever final barrier lay between them. “You make a fine person. If someone calls you unladylike, I’ll kill him.”
“From you,” she said earnestly, “I take the threat of murder on my behalf as the highest compliment.”
He almost smiled. She saw it there at the edges of his mouth, for a moment. But then he leaned toward her. “You should.”
Her eyes dropped to his lips, watching the end of the last word form.
“I feel that strangeness again,” she said, but suddenly it felt like her voice was coming from a great distance. She watched his lips part. Firm and seductive at the same time. “Or perhaps not so much strange as very, very alive. Do you think I might be allowed to kiss you again?” she whispered.
He was watching her lips when she asked—the echo of the question tickling his ears.
A kiss seemed a fantastic and terrifying idea. But he would have given her anything she asked for at that moment.
“Yes.”
She leaned the last few inches toward him and touched her beautiful lips to his.
Could it be called a kiss, this meeting of skin where one person pulled the soul from another? Her mouth parted beneath his, and the space that opened between them just forced his soul to flow faster, a straight conduit from him to her.
