In truth, he wanted to watch her enjoy it. He had never supposed the sight of a woman reveling in a sweet would be erotic. Especially not an innocent like Lady Frederica. He had always harbored a fondness for the forbidden, but she was different. She was not just forbidden but wrong. A grievous lapse in judgment for which he could never forgive himself.
One he wanted more with each moment he spent in her presence.
Ever a fool, it seemed.
“Who dared to scorn you?” she asked instead of taking another bite of the delicacy before her.
A frown furrowed her brows, and despite her gentleman’s attire, he could picture her as an avenging goddess, bearing down upon the ghosts of his past. What the devil? When had he become so fanciful?
“I am the bastard son of a duke, my lady, and my mother was a Covent Garden whore before her death.” He forced himself to state the undeniable facts with a coolness he did not feel. He had loved his mother. She alone, in turn, had loved him.
Her loss had devastated him, and that, too, he laid at the door of the Duke of Amberly. Yet another sin among a myriad of them. “Everyone dared to scorn me, for I was nothing and no one. I was an urchin, a pickpocket, a thief. I stole for my supper. My mother lifted her skirts for the right amount of coin. The man who sired me will not speak to me or look upon me to this day, not even when I begged him as a motherless lad with an empty belly. Trust me, my lady, when I say I committed sins that would make you scorn me as well.”
She did not appear shocked or disgusted as he had imagined she may. Instead, her frown deepened, her lustrous eyes intent upon him. “You love your mother.”
Of all the observations she could have made, this one struck him like a physical blow as no other could. His mother’s memory was the one part of him that remained untarnished and true. He swallowed hard, recalling her end, how she had died as she’d lived, with a man’s hands around her throat. Duncan had found her, silent and still and cold, so cold to the touch, her eyes open wide. He had been just a lad then, not yet nine years of age, and he had been desperate for her to blink. To prove a sign of life.
Blink, Mama.
Please, Mama.
Blink.
Long after that horrible day, he could still hear the echoes of his childish screams, could still feel the panic swelling in his chest, making his heart heavy. Rendering it difficult to breathe. No child should have to see his mother’s corpse. But he had. And he would not forget.
He would gain his vengeance upon the Duke of Amberly. Retribution was all he had left.
“I…loved her,” he admitted thickly, uncertain why he would unburden himself to this troublesome interloper. “She was a good woman. Flawed and imperfect but nonetheless good. She deserved better than the life she was given.”
Better than the life she had been left to suffer, begging for coin from men who would abuse her so she could fill Duncan’s belly with bread. Meanwhile, the man who’d sired him had possessed enough gold to buy and sell half of London, and yet he had not offered Duncan’s mother a single ha’penny. Instead, the bastard had wasted his fortune at the tables, so greedy he had been convinced another flipped card, another wager, another roll of the dice would make him richer still.
His avarice had led him to penury where he belonged.
Until the Duke of Westlake had bought Amberly’s debts.
But that was where Westlake’s daughter, seated so trustingly opposite Duncan in her foolish attempt at masquerading as a gentleman, came into the scene, fortuitously enough. It all rather had the makings of a Shakespearean tragedy, even he had to admit. For she did not realize she was a plump hen dining in the company of a fox.
And she was looking upon him now with… Christ, what had he been thinking, kissing her as he had? She was looking at him now as if he were someone dear to her. As if she cared.
Impossible.
Ladies of the quality did not care for men like him. They used him. They allowed him to pleasure their bodies because it suited their need for the forbidden, much in the same way his use of them sated his desire for that which would forever remain beyond his reach.
“I am sorry, Mr. Kirkwood,” she said softly. “It was not my intention to cause you distress.”
How easily she could read him. He, who had bluffed his way through a thousand card games. What was it about this maddening woman that undid him? He was not a soft man, not given to sentiment or emotion. Indeed, he had fashioned himself into the man he was today a long time ago, a man incapable of feeling. A man who wore black, who forged his own way, who knew no weakness. “No need to apologize, my lady. Distress is for those capable of feeling emotion. Fortunately, I am not so cursed.”
“Or so you would have yourself believe.”
Her soft castigation nettled him. He stood. The moment was over. Their interlude was at an end. He had not felt so disturbed in a long time, and he did not like the way she shifted everything inside him, like an earthquake and then a hundred tiny tremors, reminding him his life could be upended at any moment. That he was not the one in control.
“Have you finished with your dessert, madam?” he asked coolly, careful to keep his expression and his tone equally neutral. He did not wish to show her how deeply she affected him.
What was it about Lady Frederica Isling that so undid him? She was his means for revenge, the final brushstroke in his masterpiece of vengeance, and yet he could not stop making one foolish decision after the next. He had given in to her demands to conduct research at his club, had even gone out of his way to ascertain her safety and wellbeing, and then he had thoroughly ruined it by compromising her. How could he make demands of Westlake, knowing how thoroughly he had kissed and touched the man’s innocent daughter? Knowing he had introduced her to pleasures of the flesh, to sins the likes of which her carefully cultivated mind would never have even dreamt, let alone known.
“You are eager to be rid of me now,” she observed in that uncanny manner she possessed, not rising from her seat.
He had never seen anything like it. “You must be delivered safely home before you are discovered to be missing from your chamber,” he said calmly, as if he was driven by common sense alone and not by his mad need to remove himself from her bewitching presence.
“I have made you uncomfortable.” She stood at last.
How odd it suddenly seemed to see her fully dressed in her gentleman’s clothes when he knew she was as female as could be. For some inexplicable reason, he longed to see her in a dress. To see her as herself, stripped of all her disguises. To see Lady Frederica Isling. Lord God, he had no doubt she would be an incomparable if he ever chanced to see her in a gown. Her beauty was undeniable. Even through her silly adornments, he could still see her.
“On the contrary,” he lied, because she had once again spoken the truth. Damnation, the woman could dissect him. What was it about her, a mere slip of a girl, an innocent, a virgin, the daughter of a duke? “I am merely busy, tasked with a myriad of duties this evening related to the running of my club. You may consider yourself fortunate I have allowed your intrusion this evening at all, Lady Frederica.”
But she is also a lady who possesses more daring and bravado than anyone you know. The voice intruded upon his thoughts when he least expected it. And damnation, the voice was correct.
Her shoulders stiffened, her chin lifting. Here was her pride, coming into action. “Of course, Mr. Kirkwood. Thank you for your… generosity this evening. I could not have managed to conduct so much research without your assistance.”
He should tell her she could not return on the morrow. He already had what he wanted. There was no need to prolong this madness. No need at all.
Except that which burned inside him, a flame kindled into a raging fire.
“Until tomorrow,” he told her, because he could not bear to say farewell.
Chapter Eight
Although Frederica expected Mr. Kirkwood to be waiting for her in the carriage the next evening at the appointed t
ime, she had been thoroughly dismayed to find it empty. The short ride to his club had seemed interminable, her mind whirling with explanations for his absence. None satisfied her.
His defection after the heated kisses they had shared yesterday, after his revelations over dinner—when the mask he wore slipped to reveal the man beneath—left her particularly cold. She had returned home the previous evening, and she had written until her candles sputtered out and her fingers were ink stained.
To her surprise, the story had taken an unforeseen turn, and she realized the baron must be the villain. It seemed undeniable to her now, and she could not understand why she had envisioned it any differently. The Silent Baron was not the tale of a gentleman led astray, but of a flawed man struggling to find redemption.
As she made her way into his club, she reasoned their paths would necessarily cross here. Who else would hover over her like a mother hen at the nest? But she was likewise disappointed when she arrived at The Duke’s Bastard and his man of business, instead of Mr. Kirkwood himself, met her with a bow and a frown.
“Lord Blanden,” he greeted solemnly.
The man bore no expression, and yet he exuded an undeniable aura of disapproval. She could not help but wonder if he had suspected anything was amiss the day before when he had interrupted her interlude with Mr. Kirkwood. Heat scalded her cheeks and made her ears prickle. Interlude was such a tame, inappropriate word for what had occurred between herself and the gaming hell owner.
A man who mere days before had been a stranger. A man who now seemed hopelessly familiar. A man who was nowhere to be found. Who had brushed her off to the care of his staff members as if she were nothing more than a bothersome burden who must be shuffled from one person to another.
“Mr. Hazlitt,” she acknowledged stiffly, trying to hide her displeasure over Mr. Kirkwood’s glaring absence. Had she probed too deeply? Pushed him too far? He seemed a private man, a smoldering mystery wrapped in black.
She told herself she should be relieved. After all, he was also a wicked man, to be sure. His club was a haven for sin. He hosted and encouraged all manner of depravities, the likes of which she had never known existed. He ruined men to fill his own coffers.
Spending any more time in the man’s presence would be ruinous. She had already proven herself quite the hoyden, begging for his kiss. Her face went hotter, misery multiplying until it threatened to drown her.
“Mr. Kirkwood has directed me to bring you to his office,” Hazlitt said, intruding upon her thoughts. “Unfortunately, he is otherwise occupied at the moment. You may await him there, however. Will you follow me, my lord?”
Was it her wild imagination at work, or did Mr. Hazlitt just emphasize his form of address, as if to suggest he knew it was false? She swallowed the lump of disenchantment in her throat and nodded once. “Lead the way, Mr. Hazlitt.”
Through the antechamber they traveled, Mr. Hazlitt’s steps measured and brisk. Although her legs were long, her escort’s were longer, and she struggled to keep pace as he led her through the series of well-disguised halls that led to Mr. Kirkwood’s office. They entered in silence, and Frederica could not shake the sensation she was intruding. How strange it was to stand in a chamber that was so much Mr. Kirkwood—it even smelled of him, for heaven’s sake, and yet for him to not be in it.
“Will you require supper?” Mr. Hazlitt asked coolly.
She eyed him over the rim of her spectacles, rendering him crisp and forbidding rather than blurred and frowning. “Do you dislike me, Mr. Hazlitt?”
His lip curled. “I dislike trouble.”
He knew she was not a gentleman, then. The momentary thaw in his rigid expression was just the revelation she required.
She raised a brow, for the wallflower she was had been replaced with a different person entirely. In her disguise, she was free to do and say and act as she wished. If only it wasn’t fleeting, her precious liberty, slipping away far too quickly. “Trouble, sir? You would dare to refer to a peer of the realm as trouble?”
The disdain on his countenance only heightened. “You ain’t a peer of the realm, my lord. You’re a cockish wench if I ever saw one, and I’ve seen many in my day. You may have Mr. Kirkwood under your spell, but I’m not going to allow you to lead him or this club into bad bread.”
Bad bread?
She was not certain she understood Mr. Hazlitt’s rude manner of speech, and she wished in that moment to record it lest she forget. Such speech could lend an air of realism to her characters.
Oh, dear. There she went again, worrying about The Silent Baron. Poor Mr. Hazlitt seemed to be anticipating a response. How easy it was to get caught up within her mind and story, rather akin to being trapped in a plethora of ivy vines.
What had he called her? Cockish wench? Dreadful. Her cheeks went hotter than ever.
She pursed her lips. “I do not like you either, sir, so perhaps we can dispense with formality and you may simply leave me in peace. Where is Mr. Kirkwood, and when might I expect his return?”
His gaze narrowed. “You’re a cunning baggage, aren’t you? I’ll not be telling you where he’s gone or why. You can wait here as you’re told, or I will have you removed. The choice is yours, my lord.”
Ah, yes. There it was again. The bitterness lacing his voice as he exaggerated her address. “I am perfectly happy to remain here, awaiting Mr. Kirkwood. Alone. If you will excuse me, sir, I would appreciate some quiet.”
She had already spied ink, sheaves of foolscap, and a pen awaiting her at Mr. Kirkwood’s desk. If she must wait, she would make use of her time and Mr. Kirkwood’s supplies. There was something about using his personal writing implements that seemed somehow intimate. Fitting.
“At the slightest hint of trouble from you, I’ll have you tossed on your arse,” Mr. Hazlitt warned, a hard edge to his voice.
“Noted, sir.” She flashed him a smile she little felt. “Good evening to you.”
“Nay, good evening to you. Tabitha may well occupy Mr. Kirkwood’s entire night.” With a mocking bow and a dark-eyed glare, he added, “I predict you shall be wishing for that supper.”
Tabitha.
Her mind traveled instantly to the beautiful, bold woman she had met the previous day. Tabitha with the lovely face, goddess-like form, and wandering hands. She was what had kept Mr. Kirkwood from this appointed meeting with Frederica? An unwelcome stab of jealousy pierced her at the thought. Only yesterday, he had been dismissive and cool. It made no sense, and yet it also made dreadful sense all at once. Men like Mr. Duncan Kirkwood were not gently bred. They were wild and unpredictable, uncivilized in their pursuit of pleasure.
With great effort, she kept her expression as serene as possible, showing nothing of her tumultuous thoughts. “Rest assured, Mr. Hazlitt, if I grow hungry, I shall call for you. You are dismissed, sir.”
Hazlitt made an exaggerated bow and left the chamber, the door closing with more force than necessary at his back. Frederica winced, every bit of fight in her suddenly drained. She plucked her spectacles from her nose and tossed them against the wall, not caring if they smashed. Her hat was the next victim, torn from her head. Followed by a handful of leather-bound volumes atop his desk.
She rather hoped she cracked a spine or two.
Still fuming with pent-up irritation she had no wish to feel, she devoted herself for a time to reviewing the titles of the books in his office. Poetry volumes, all of them save one, which was entitled Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentleman. Perhaps he studied the locations, architecture, and priceless artwork on display in the country homes of his patrons, all the better to know whom to fleece.
The unworthy thought reminded her of just how much a stranger Mr. Kirkwood was to her. Today marked the fourth since he had appeared in her life, and already she was throwing tantrums, kissing him in hidden halls, and spying on lords engaged in shocking acts of depravity. There was also the matter of costuming herself as a gentleman and sneaking about London.
&n
bsp; But the kiss. The kiss had altered everything.
A shiver trilled through her. What had become of her? Where was the sensible wallflower who was keener to devote herself to books and her secret passion for writing than anything and anyone else?
She has awakened from a long sleep.
Frederica approached his carved chair, noting the depiction of what was undeniably Hades on one half and Persephone on the other. Life and death, darkness and light, come together. She traced a lone finger over the intricate carvings, absorbing this small manner in which she could make sense of Duncan Kirkwood.
The man who had kissed her as if she were his life’s breath.
The same man who had abandoned her the next day.
A fierce urge to write overcame her then. Words crept into her mind. Scenes and emotions unfurled. She had come here to be near her characters, their world, to bask in it and understand it in some small measure. Here was her chance.
Despite her misgivings and the tumult at work within her, she settled in Mr. Kirkwood’s chair. Her fingers, still stained with midnight ink, itched to write more. She dipped his pen into the inkwell, trying to ignore the scent of him that seemed to permeate everything, especially her resolve.
Her quill scratched over the paper. The owner of the gaming hell appeared before the baron, and he rather resembled Mr. Kirkwood, much to her consternation. But she quickly became swept away by the characters and the plot. There was a mystery afoot as well, one she had not previously conceived.
She wrote furiously, caught up in the scene, in the emotions, in the intrigue of it all. Losing herself in her writing could be so easy some days, and others, she arrived at passable sentences with great difficulty.
With a sigh, she dropped the pen back into the well and took a moment to read what she had written. To her surprise and delight, it was quite good. The thoughts were well formed, the plot growing in intrigue and strength. Even the dialogue had flowed exceptionally well, despite her irritation at Mr. Kirkwood’s abrupt abandonment of her.
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