The Heart of a Hellion

by Jess Michaels

  He didn’t know how long he stood there, contemplating the complication of his life after meeting her, but eventually he was drawn from his reverie by the sound of music in the distance. He jerked his head toward the door. The music room was on the opposite side of the big house. So where was the sound coming from?

  He closed his journal, tucked it in a drawer so that Barber wouldn’t find his list, and set out down the hall toward the sound. A few twists and turns, and he found a door that had been left ajar. The music came from behind it.

  He pushed it open a fraction and drew in a breath. It was a small parlor, unused if the dust cloths over the furniture were any indication. The only thing uncovered was a pianoforte in the corner. Selina sat at it, her fingers moving over the keys gently, then passionately, then softly as she played a song he didn’t recognize.

  He stood mesmerized for a moment, his hand dipping into his pocket, finding her incriminating glove. He stroked his fingers over it like he was caressing her skin.

  How had it gotten in that room? What had Selina done? Or was this some kind of way to frame her? But to what end? What purpose?

  She crashed her fingers over the keys again, and he felt the passion of her playing through every nerve of his being. He stepped closer and cleared his throat. “Selina.”

  She jerked her head up, her fingers smashing on to the keys in a discordant note as she noticed him standing there. She leapt to her feet with a gasp of “Oh!”

  He held up a hand. “Oh no, please don’t stop. You play beautifully.”

  Color filled her cheeks and she broke her gaze from his as if she were shy. He’d never seen that little look from her before. Selina was normally so brave, so bold, so unapologetically herself.

  “I suppose it is one of the few ladylike pursuits I have any grasp of,” she said, breathless and still not looking at him.

  He paced a little closer, looking around. “What is this room?” he asked.

  That blush deepened. “I believe it might have been the private parlor of Robert’s late mother. The last Duchess of Roseford.” Derrick raised his eyebrows and she bent her head. “Yes, I know she would hate me being here.”

  “Why is that?” he pressed.

  She shrugged. “I’m her husband’s by-blow. She would have surely despised me. Certainly she wouldn’t have wished for me to play her pianoforte.”

  “Then why choose to play here?” he asked. “Why not go to the more public music room?”

  “Because I didn’t want to exhibit,” she said with a huff of breath. “And that room is all about people hearing you play and watching you. Judging you. I just wanted to play for myself. For…for…”

  “For what?” he pressed, reaching out to take her hand. It was softer than the damned and damning glove in his pocket.

  She let out a shuddering sigh. “Atonement.”

  He drew back a fraction. “What do you have to atone for?”

  Her lips parted and she shook her head. “I don’t know. My existence? My life? My boldness?”

  He let his eyes come shut for a moment. Whatever was troubling Selina, it was opening a door for him as an investigator. He ought to take that door without hesitation, but with her there was nothing clear-cut. He wasn’t just a man bent on finding the truth about the Faceless Fox. Not anymore. He was this woman’s lover. He was becoming more than that with every moment he spent with her.

  The truth of that nearly set him back on his heels, but he managed to keep himself calm and in line. He had questions for her. And yes, those questions would help his investigation, perhaps. But he wanted to ask them for far more personal reasons. He wanted to ask them because he wanted to know her and understand her and protect her from whatever might come in a day or a week or a month.

  “Selina,” he whispered.

  There must have been something in the way he said her name, because she flinched. There was a flash of vulnerability and pain, fear and regret, that cascaded over her expression in a horrible waterfall.

  “Selina,” he pressed, holding tight to her hand when she tried to back away. “Why were you on your own?”

  Chapter 16

  It felt like everything in Selina’s world froze in a flash as Derrick asked that question. The question that revealed everything. The question she’d been running from for years. But this man asked it so sweetly and so gently and without any ulterior motive to it. And she desperately wanted to explain it to him.

  She desperately wanted to run away, too.

  “Derrick,” she murmured, at last freeing her hand from his. Now she could run, but she didn’t. She stayed, looking up at him, lost in him and everything he offered with his presence in her life. Everything he threatened.

  “You told me before that you’ve been alone since you were a child. And I need to know why.” He reached out and cupped her cheek, stroking his thumb over her lower lip gently. “Please,” he whispered.

  Her eyes closed and a sigh ripped through her, ragged and broken, just like she was broken under the surface she tried to present as a protection. This had been her burden to carry and hers alone for many years. She’d never shared the whole truth of it with anyone.

  Showing him that vulnerability was dangerous, and yet she yearned to do just that. To open herself just a fraction and let this honorable man past the gates. Perhaps if he heard her past, he would understand why she’d become what she was. Perhaps he’d hate her less if and when he figured out she was the very thief he despised and hunted.

  And perhaps she just needed to say it to see if he was as good and decent as he pretended to be. To test his mask and see if it fell or if it was his true face.

  “My mother was the daughter of a baronet,” she whispered. “She met the last Roseford at some party in London. She was staying with an aunt as chaperone, sampling the delights of the Season. But the aunt was very old and mostly deaf and easy to escape. So when the duke crooked his finger…”

  Derrick nodded. “It was easy for her to make her escape and meet with him.”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “He was married, of course. But he was also handsome and, from all accounts, quite persuasive. I have no idea what he said to make her love him, to make her give herself to him when she had to know there was no future. But she did. They carried on an affair for months, with him whispering promises of protection and faithfulness and a lot of other lies she was foolish enough to believe.”

  “What ended it?” Derrick asked, no judgment in his tone.

  She shrugged and then lifted her gaze to his. “Me,” she whispered. “She discovered she was breeding and the duke was livid. He accused her of a dozen awful things.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “Oh, we’ll come to that,” she said with a false smile that felt as brittle as glass. “Don’t rush the crescendo, Mr. Huntington.”

  “Selina,” he said, taking her hand again.

  She stared down at their intertwined fingers. Felt the weight of them against her palm. The comfort of them. This man made everything so easy, even this story that was so damned hard.

  She cleared her throat and continued, “He sent her back to her father, all his promises broken in one sweep. She tried to hide me for a while, but in the end how could she? Her pregnancy became obvious and it revealed the truth of what she’d been up to when her father thought her safely chaperoned to parties and teas like a lady above her station.”

  “He must have been furious when he found out the truth,” Derrick said.

  “Yes,” she said with another humorless chuckle. “But with her, not Roseford. My grandfather arranged a marriage to a merchant within days of discovering the truth. He paid the man handsomely to claim her bastard as his own and never spoke to my mother again.”

  He winced. “So you never met him.”

  “No,” she said. “I saw my grandfather once. At a party at the Earl of Grangerfield’s London estate. I froze, staring at him. I have his eyes, you see. But I never got up the nerve t
o talk to him.”

  “You, not have the nerve?” he teased gently, his fingers smoothing over hers. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You should,” she murmured as she pulled away and paced to the window. “I wanted to confront him, to rip him to shreds, but instead I just stared at him, like a gaping fish.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  “Save those platitudes until the end, Derrick,” she said, staring out the window without seeing anything in her line of sight. “The story doesn’t get better. You see, Peter Oliver, my stepfather, was willing to overlook the bastard he didn’t sire for the tiny fortune that came along with his bride—in theory. But in truth?”

  Derrick flinched. “He was cruel to you?”

  “Sometimes. Never physically. I think there might have been some lingering fear that the Duke of Roseford would materialize and punish him if he laid a hand on me. But he certainly took great pleasure in hurting me in other ways.” She sighed. “He despised me, and that only grew more potent as he and my mother established a real relationship. He loved her, in his own vague way. And she accepted anything he did to me because he sometimes brought her flowers.”

  Derrick’s jaw was set now, his anger lining his face plainly. “You were a child.”

  “But not his child. The first time he told me that, I was six. He pointed out Roseford getting out of a carriage on the street near a market and told me that was my real father. My world was shattered. Once he saw he could hurt me that way, he did everything he could to cause more pain. He was the one who showed me the letters from Roseford to my mother, calling her a whore, calling me her bastard. He helped me find letters from my grandfather, too, the ones that cut us both off.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Derrick bit out. “Tell me he is still living so I may give him the beating he so roundly deserves.”

  She shrugged. “What would be the point? The past is in the past. I’ve moved on. And he did settle down in the end. Ultimately the peace they came to was to ignore me. Both of them ignored me most of the time. And that gave me remarkable freedom. Even more freedom when they had their own children.”

  “You have other half-siblings?”

  “Oh yes. I have nothing full and everything half,” she said with a shake of her head. “Clara was born when I was ten. George when I was twelve. And I adored them, but I was always kept separate. The real children and the bastard one.”

  “Did you ever seek out Roseford?” he asked.

  “The previous?” she said. “My father? Yes, the same year George was born I tried to reach out to him. I found his address and snuck myself into the house. He was enraged I’d sought him. I’d dared to defile to his home. He made it clear I wasn’t wanted either, but that I would have a settlement when I came of age. Then he made me leave through the servants’ entrance.”

  Her breath felt constricted in her throat and she fought to remain impassive and flat and unaffected as she always pretended to be.

  “I learned to live with it,” she added once she could actually speak again.

  Derrick’s fists were tight at his sides, his shoulders shook with righteous rage on her behalf. “You shouldn’t have had to.”

  “But I did,” she insisted. Then she forced a smile, praying the mask made her look wicked and not broken. “And you cannot mourn for me completely. When I was eighteen, I received my father’s promised settlement. A large sum at majority and a healthy monthly allowance ever since. I bought a little house and got a companion and have lived happily ever after in my own way ever since. I do what I please, with whom I please and how I please.” She stepped up to him and placed a finger on his lips. “You’ve benefitted from my freedom, I think.”

  “I would have rather not if it would have spared you one moment of that pain,” he said. “You can be flippant about it, you can dismiss it and disconnect from it, but you must have been brokenhearted by these events as they were occurring.”

  She dropped her hand away. “What do you want, investigator?” she asked, her tone harsher than perhaps she had intended. “Do you want me to pour my blood onto the floor in front of you? Do you want me to weep and gnash my teeth and relive every—”

  She cut herself off because her eyes were stinging with tears she didn’t want to shed in front of this man. Memories she didn’t want to recall. Emotions she had told herself were long put away.

  “No. Of course not,” he said. Softer, gentler now. Like he was trying to soothe a rabid beast. Perhaps that was what she was in the end.

  “They didn’t want me,” she whispered past a tightness in her throat. Even after all these years, there it was. “I cannot complain. It made me strong, it made me independent, it made me—”

  She cut herself off then. If she spoke too much, she’d reveal the truth. She’d reveal how she’d created the Fox for revenge and for safety and for a thousand reasons that had everything to do with what she’d endured.

  And then he would hate her. And then he would leave her, too.

  He drew a long breath and then took a step toward her. Another. Another. Until the distance between them was erased. Until he stood before her, a wall between her and the pain. He reached out and touched her face, cupping her cheeks. His thumbs stroked, and he was wiping away tears she hadn’t realized she was shedding.

  “I have nothing but utmost admiration for you, Selina Oliver. I did before. I do now. I always shall.”

  “You can’t promise that,” she whispered.

  He arched a brow. “I do promise it. Nothing could change it.”

  She almost laughed at that idea. Of course that could be changed. He wouldn’t care for her once he wasn’t in the same space as she was, let alone once he knew the truth about what she’d done. What she still intended to do.

  This was going to be over, and sooner rather than later.

  “Do you want to do something for me?” she whispered. “Do you want to help?”

  He nodded slowly, solemnly, a man of honor. A man of goodness and kindness and gentleness. A man unlike any she’d ever known in all her life. “I do.”

  She shivered at the low timber of his voice, the intense eye contact, the fact that he was still cupping her face, staring down at her like she was treasure of far more value than any she’d ever stolen.

  Everything about this man made her quake. That was dangerous and desperate and she didn’t care. She wanted him. All of him.

  “Then take me to my bed,” she whispered. “And help me to forget again. Help me to pretend all of that never happened.”

  His lips pursed, as if he didn’t completely approve of that method of dealing with her past. But he didn’t argue. He didn’t fight her. He just took her hand and led her from the room.

  Derrick drew Selina into her chamber and released her hand. She crossed to her bed and stood there as he closed and locked the chamber door. He gave her a half-smile before he moved to the dressing room door and locked it, too.

  “No interruptions,” he murmured, then looked around. “It’s funny how different a room looks in the day than at night.”

  She nodded. “I’ve often thought the same. There’s something very scary and romantic about a darkened chamber, especially one where you don’t belong.”

  “Scary and romantic?” he asked with a smile.

  She returned it, and he was pleased that this time the expression actually looked real, not as forced as what she’d worn as she told him about her horrible childhood. “Scary can be romantic,” she explained. “Just a tiny bit of a scare is thrilling. Uncertainty is thrilling. You are scary, Mr. Huntington.”

  He arched a brow as he moved toward her, drawn to her, yet again, like the moth to the flame her companion had spoken about a lifetime ago. “Am I?” he whispered. “I don’t try to be.”

  “If you tried to be, you wouldn’t be,” she said, and chuckled as she wound a hand up into his hair and guided his mouth to hers.

  He kissed her as she demanded, tasting remnants of tears on he
r lips, deepening the kiss to erase them all. She melted against him with a little moan, her fingers gripping his forearms, her body molding to his from chest to hip, her skirts tangling around his legs.

  He could have stood like that forever, just holding her and tasting her and being in her presence. But she had something else in mind if the way she lifted into him was any indication. Today he had no intention of letting her down.

  He broke the kiss and smiled down at her. The one she returned was shaky, not the usual confident display that normally brightened her face and drove him mad. Confession had made her vulnerable. He wanted to honor that.

  He turned her so that her back was to him and flicked each button of her gown open one by one, revealing her bare back, the arch of her spine. He chuckled. “Do you ever wear undergarments?”

  She shook her head and leaned back against his chest with a little sigh. “Never.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly to him, then leaned in and kissed the side of her neck. She arched a little, granting him greater access, making a soft sound of pleasure as her shaking body relaxed against him.

  He reveled in the surrender. It was not easily won with a woman like Selina. Normally when he made love to her, it was a battlefield, all passion and fire and parry and thrust. Today he wanted to give her something different.

  He slid his fingers into the gap of her dress, dancing the tips along her soft skin, eliciting a hiss of sensation from her. Then he pushed the gown forward. She tugged it away, giving her hips a little shake so that it pooled around her feet.

  She turned into him, rising on the balls of her feet, wending her arms around his neck, kissing him hard. It was so easy to get swept up in her, just as she intended it to be. But he managed to keep his wits about him. When she thrust her tongue, he caressed gently, slowing the kiss, pushing his fingers into her hair to angle her for better access, deepening and tasting and exploring like they had all the time in the world.