by Anne Mallory
Charlotte curled her fingers around the note in her fist, staring at the door before her. A riot of conflicting emotions flowed through her. Knocking would make everything real. Would take her imaginings and flights of fancy from the past two weeks and thrust her fully into motion.
Would take the enticement of words spoken from silken lips and make temptation tangible. Instead of finding her in the shadows, this visit would anchor something between them in rising daylight.
He had asked, amidst inked notes and freshly plucked, dewy flowers. And she had responded. Jumped to the call.
If she were the Charlotte she had been born to be, it would have grated against her pride and her judgment, that she was falling so easily. Falling into whatever her role was in his patiently crafted plan.
But today, she was someone she hardly knew, alive, and on edge. Expecting him to emerge from the shadows—for he always knew where she’d be, as if she were a blooming flower in a bare field instead of the bare flower in the blooming field.
A bud really, desperate to bloom, desperate to open herself to the hot sun. Sucking in water, air, and soil in order to do so. Planting herself in places best designed for the sun to appear. Allowing the sun to stalk her slowly, to push away the dark shadows. Waiting.
Every evening she gambled on that bloom, putting herself dangerously in reach of Bethany’s clutches, cursing the way her heart jumped each time she caught a flash of golden hair—feeling disappointment curl alongside the relief when the head belonged to someone else.
Yet every once in a while, the Charlotte of old peeked through, demanding an explanation. Demanding decorum. Demanding accountability.
It was that Charlotte whose hand paused atop brass and painted wood.
That Charlotte who was responsible for far more than her own reputation.
That Charlotte who rebuked the new Charlotte when she drew too near the shadows or the blazing sun. Not yet allowing the patiently waiting hand to pull her through to either sunlight or unending darkness.
That Charlotte who demanded an answer—why was she here?
She curved her fingers around the note.
Seven in the morning. Your park. Wear a cloak. Bring this note.
There had been a hack. A driver. An already paid fare. A trip to the north of town. A brick house surrounded by a profusion of pink flowers, delicate and feminine.
It was the old Charlotte who didn’t know if she would actually rap the knocker her fingers rested upon.
And suddenly the decision was made for her. The door opened, her fingers gripping air, and there he was, leaning against the frame, arm stretched, holding the edge of the swinging wood.
Darkness underlined his eyes but didn’t diminish his attractiveness. It simply provided a more accurate representation of a deeper part of his nature, bringing it to the surface. She wondered how much sleep he had caught and why he wasn’t currently abed.
“Good morning.” His lips quirked. “I nearly expired from old age, waiting to see if you would actually knock on the damn thing. My heart couldn’t take it any longer.”
She lifted her chin and stepped inside, brushing past him as she did so. “So you are saying that if only I had had a few beats more, I would finally have been rid of you?”
She caught his lazy grin as she passed. “I plan to haunt you even in the afterlife,” he whispered, the air of his words brushing her ear, the door engaging behind her.
She swallowed, then lifted her chin. “You haunt me now. I doubt you will have trouble then.”
His lazy grin grew. “I had wondered if you would come,” he said, leaning back against the door.
She had wondered that quite keenly herself. For she could no longer use the excuse of him seeking her out. She had made the choice to come.
“Rather cocksure of you to think I would find your note. That I will find each of them.”
Pressed up against the wall of a cupboard. Stroked in the fronds of a back garden. Lips and hands on hers.
She tipped her head in order to keep the blood firmly from her cheeks.
She could feel the echo of those hands and lips each night as she closed her eyes, and each morning as the shadows slipped away. Could feel the whisper of them on her now even though his body wasn’t touching hers.
He pressed back against the door, shifting, smiling. “I am rather fond of that feeling.”
A pair of children scrambled down the stairs, one screaming after the other, hair on both in extreme disarray.
“Give it back t’ me, ya bloody bugger!” the little girl yelled.
“You’ll have t’ catch me, wench!” the little boy yelled back, leaping down the last four steps in one go, then racing around the corner. The girl tore off after him, pushing a swinging door wide as she raced through. The door hit its apex, revealing a woman inside the room. The door swung the other way, showing the woman still standing there, dressed in pink with her hair pulled back. Their eyes met, and the woman’s widened, then narrowed. The door hung for a moment, then swung closed, its next jag not opening far enough to show her again. Only bits of blank air and nondescript cupboards.
Charlotte stared at the swinging door as it gave its final death knell, something in her freezing. Stupid, girl. To make assumptions based on whispers in the dark.
“Yours?” Her voice was calm, even. Polite inquiry her refuge, as always.
“Good God, no.” He shuddered, pushing away from the door. He couldn’t have seen the woman to know that Charlotte was asking about more than just the children. But the thought of her presumption was still accurate. What difference did it make if they were his, all of them? None. Silly, stupid girl.
“Come. The fleabags will be back soon.” He held a hand toward the stairs. “After you. First door on the right.”
She stiltedly climbed the stairs, thoughts and lingering questions choking her. Why she had come, what she was doing here, where she was going . . . was she so resigned, or heaven forbid eager, to be ruined that all rational thoughts ceased around this man?
She stepped into the first room on the right and was surprised to find herself in a study that was less appointed than his rooms at the hell though still comfortable.
He motioned for her to be seated. She was surprised when he sprawled in a cozy-looking chair to the side and slightly behind her, which required her to turn in her seat in a less-than-ladylike manner in order to see him. He smiled.
All of which unnerved her. “I must be back by noon,” she said coolly.
He waved a hand. “This should only take an hour. Today.”
She simply stared at him, her arm pressed against the back of the chair, waiting for him to elaborate. Wondering . . . but no . . . he couldn’t mean . . .
“Working off the night in one-hour increments seems far removed from the spirit of the bet we undertook.”
He laughed with a tenor approaching delight and picked up a lash from a side table. A lash? Did he mean to bind or whip her?
“You didn’t assume I was calling in your night’s debt when I asked you here, did you, Charlotte?”
He examined the leather, amusement curving his lips—whether at the implement he held or at her assumption, she didn’t know. He obviously knew what she was thinking though—he winked at her—the bastard.
“I assumed nothing. But with your blatant summons cast in parchment, and your whispered words in the night, I wonder what you think I might be willing to do.”
“I am hoping that you will be willing to do quite a lot.” He continued to smile, pulling the leather strips through his fingers. Like a recalcitrant schoolboy lounging in his chair, turning the tables on his strict teacher. “But I am thinking that we might negotiate your father’s debts. Give you time to breathe.” He said it as if he savored the taste of the word.
Breathe. Just as she’d stated—a confession—in the middle of the night. Breathe. She could barely accomplish the task at the moment. As if he had taken all her secrets, yanked, then exposed the
m to the world.
“Pardon me?”
He looked at her below hooded eyes. “It is what you desire. You said as much. Time to breathe. I can give that to you.” Artful, silky promises.
She wanted to ask how, but it wasn’t the most pertinent question. “Why?”
“Oh, it will benefit me too. Mutual benefit, that is the key, is it not? Using each other to get what we desire?” He smiled, something unreadable in his eyes. “Like the Delaneys’ plan.”
“I . . . yes.” She had thought of the Delaneys’ plan as working together, but someone else might easily see it as mutually using each other to gain a desired result.
“Then we are settled.”
She stared at him. “Nothing is settled. I have no idea of what you are specifically speaking.”
“Is there something you’d be unwilling to do for obscene amounts of money?” he asked nonchalantly, his voice a smooth layer covering jagged edges.
“Yes,” she said forcefully. “Of course there would be.”
There were many, many things she’d be unwilling to do.
The uncomfortable tendril of thought wrapped through her though the list dwindled significantly when she substituted “to forge a good marriage” instead. But her world was of social survival. Insignificant things, such as having enough money to purchase food, weren’t pertinent. Her father had repeated that sentiment for years now. Gospel.
And if she was as good as she was supposed to be, then she would secure a title and a plethora of money. Gospel—the chapters that Bethany, and those like her, would love to gleefully revise, striking her family’s name from their registers.
She gave Roman a tight smile. The right side of his mouth curved, but the expression in his eyes was dark. As if he knew of what she was thinking.
“What if I can assure you that you will have space to breathe?” he asked, voice less casual, more enticing. “For what would you be willing to bargain?”
Her heart picked up speed. “I already owe you one night. I can claim no grasp of intelligence if I were to wager with you again.”
The edge of the waterfall of leather, the apex as the strands drew, then fell, touched her chin. “I don’t doubt your intelligence.” He lifted her chin with it gently, examining her throat. “What I want is you, unrestrained, and out of control.”
Want. Desire. Longing.
“You already have that,” she said, knowing the heavy beat more than gave her away already. “I find no semblance of control when you are near.”
He smiled, real pleasure in his eyes now. “I crave your admissions, and you give them away so freely.” He whispered the last, pulling the leather underneath her chin. “It is enough to drive a man from drink totally, addicted to your lure instead.”
Baited folly. “And you know exactly what to do and say to make me think beguiled thoughts,” she whispered in return.
Pathetic, enchanted thoughts. That had no business in her mind or on the path she had to tread.
He leaned forward, his lips so close to hers. The odd arrangement of him sitting in the chair, with her half-turned, canted toward him, just made it more like they were bridging some invisible divide.
“Do I?” The bound-leather strips disappeared from her flesh, and two bare palms touched the edges of her cheeks. “Will you tell me what those thoughts say?”
“No,” she whispered. A thousand times this scenario seemed to have played in the last two weeks. And each time she just became more entangled in the net. It had started to get so that she couldn’t see the escape. Knotted. Drowned. “It would give you far too much power. And you already have it all.”
“Do I?” He smiled and drew her lips to his. A soft touch. Then a more consuming one.
She shivered, her own hands clenched around the edge of the chair as she strained toward him. The Charlotte of old clung in that clench. In that lingering refusal to give in completely to her own insanity. The craziness he called up within her. Everything else about her—her own mouth upon his, her body heating, edging toward him—was the new Charlotte who was one heartbeat away from grasping the dark fingers of the devil’s temptation.
If he pulled her from her seat, if he bent her over the desk, or laid her upon the small settee by the fireplace . . . right now, the new Charlotte would win. Would defeat the old Charlotte with one easy flick of her wrist. One easy lift of her skirts. One beautifully engaged press of bodies. Hot, not cold; wanting, not simply satisfied.
He pulled away from her slowly. Letting the invisible net stretch along her skin, twisting about her. His eyes connected with hers, hot and dark, unreadable.
“What you do to me.”
She wasn’t sure which of them said it. But new Charlotte owned every word.
“Why are you sitting there, and why am I over here?” Her voice was breathless, half-turned and inclined as she was in her position—which was not thrown over the settee.
His eyes examined her, some cool amusement sinking back in, covering the darkness, the naked want. “I could have chosen to sit on the other side of the desk, but I hate desks.”
She took a moment to process his statement—his lack of an answer to her real question—as he reclined in his chair, lash back in hand. Sprawled and casual.
“Desks are pieces of furniture. You can’t hate them.”
He lifted his brows. “It’s quite possible to dislike furniture.” He smiled, a bit slyly. “You probably like desks, though, as they are very proper and stiff.”
She narrowed her eyes, unnerved by his continual press, advance, then withdrawal. “And you prefer lumpy, disreputable chairs, where the stuffing is poking through?”
He patted the arm. “Disreputable old chairs you can count on.”
“Chairs you should probably replace,” she said tartly.
He gave her a chastising look. “Now, Charlotte, it’s bad form to replace a solid, comfortable chair just because you see a pretty, sleek, new one. A thoroughly loved chair never disappoints.”
Her lips twisted at an odd angle, frozen on her face. “How do you know the desk won’t turn into a well-loved companion piece then? Once the patina wears and the nicks appear? Perhaps it might unbend in time.” She clamped her lips together to stop from uttering something even more ignorant, such as, “desks need love too.”
His eyes pinned hers. “Ah, but instead I choose the right chair in the beginning instead of trying to change the desk.”
She smiled, her social smile. “Of course.”
He examined her for a moment, but she couldn’t read the expression. “And sometimes a chair has been used as a desk for so long, it stops believing it is anything else.” He waved a hand suddenly, flicking out the lash so that the cords snapped. “Now, footstools. I think we can both agree that there is something inherently wrong with them.”
She stared at him. “Perhaps you really do require a woman to talk you dumb.”
His mouth pulled, and he stroked the lash threads from root to tip. “Oh, you aren’t giving yourself enough credit, Charlotte. I want you to suck me dumb.”
Her mouth opened, but nothing emerged. She should be used to it by now since even when he lured her into thinking of him as cultured, he reverted to uttering something base. Making all manner of things sputter inside of her.
His lips curved into a smirk that she longed to wipe free of his face. “Ah, it’s the smallest of pleasures really that make my day.”
As if the reference to time triggered something, he glanced at a clock in the corner of the room and briskly pulled himself up. “But there isn’t much time left.”
“You mean we aren’t going to sit here for the morning, angled oddly, exchanging repartee while you fondle that . . . that whip?”
Wanting to kiss you?
He smiled, as if he had heard the silent addition. “Unfortunately, no; Samuel will be here any moment.”
She stiffened. “You have invited someone else here?”
He waved a hand. “It’s his house
. And you needn’t worry about him keeping your presence a secret. Samuel is a tar pit when it comes to information.”
The relief that came from knowing that the house—and likely everything and everyone in it—belonged to someone else was irritating. Along with the realization that she had forgotten any initial thoughts of a harem of other women sometime between climbing the stairs and being devoured.
“That is easy for you to promise. It isn’t your reputation that is at risk,” she said stiffly.
“Isn’t it?” He regarded her for a moment. “But anyway, to the task at hand. Samuel wants to participate in the Delaneys’ project, but he, hmmm, how can I put it, isn’t exactly on the guest list.”
She looked around the study. It wasn’t grand, but whoever owned the house wasn’t poor.
Roman rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. The gesture alarmed her. He was always a self-assured man. “Not everyone’s money is . . . clean.”
Someone involved in crime then? “You were invited,” she pointed out.
“Our main businesses are aboveboard. It is our tactics that are questioned.”
She wondered what “other” businesses they might have that weren’t aboveboard.
“Well, prostitution is really just a matter of making sure the prostitutes are happy, right?” she said.
She meant it to be a joke, but Roman’s eyes lit up. “Exactly. Perfect.”
“Wh—?”
He waved a hand. “I should have known you wouldn’t hold it against them. Here is how things will work then. You help with this each morning for a week, and I will pay one of your father’s debts each day.”
Her mind was whirling, still clamping around the prostitution response. What the devil did he—
“The most important debts, of course,” he said. “Easy enough to see which ones weigh the heaviest.”
Something suddenly sparked through the swirling confusion. She lowered her eyes briefly, before meeting his. “Oh?”
His lips curled, his fingers pulling along the lash again. “Only your father’s debts. You didn’t think I’d relinquish such a claim on you, did you? Tsk, tsk, Charlotte.”
She tilted her head, trying not to come to terms with how she felt relief at that too. “What is this task you need help with?”
