“Then you should try Bleak House. Or Wuthering Heights.” She strained her eyes in the direction of the book he was holding, trying to read the gold embossed lettering along the spine. “Not The Prescriber’s Pharmacopeia.”
His laugh caught her off guard and Mary felt a blooming of heat in her abdomen at the sound. She should not be here, listening to this man’s laughter. They should not be here, together in such an indelicate situation. He should have opened the door when she’d demanded it.
But she was capable of opening the door herself, wasn’t she?
He put the book down on the table beside his hat, freeing his hands for other more dangerous pursuits. His gaze met hers. Warm. Questing. She felt an answering heat spreading through her stomach.
That was all the cue she needed to end this now. Mary took a step around him, heading toward the door to the hallway, seeking solace from her own apparent propensity for folly. She reached a hand toward the door, but froze as she caught the faint sound of voices outside, hushed and furtive.
Her mouth went dry. Oh, but could this night get any worse?
A scratch came at the door. She opened her mouth, but without warning, the scoundrel’s hand—good heavens, was it possible she still didn’t know his name?—closed over her upper arm and pulled her behind the nearby drapes, yanking them closed, dust motes stirring. Before she could so much as gasp in outrage, he’d pulled her flush against his very solid chest, her back pressing against his front, one large, capable hand clapped over her mouth. That was when she realized he might be young and stupid, but he was also very strong.
And this night could definitely get worse.
Good God, the woman was going to get them discovered.
Was she really so naive as to think that calling out, identifying their unchaperoned presence behind a closed library door, was a good thing?
Bloody hell, this was why West never dealt with innocents.
They were so damnably . . . innocent.
She might know her way around a library and be able to rattle off an impressive-sounding list of books, but it was clear she knew nothing of how the world—or, more terrifyingly, London society—worked. If they were seen together like this, there would be hell itself to pay.
The scratch on the door came again. West well recognized it, given that he and Grant had used such signals on more occasions than he could count. Another couple wanted to use the library for a clandestine tryst but didn’t want to risk their own discovery. Whoever they were, they were growing bolder for the lack of an answer. A faint knock came next, followed by a man’s low voice, murmuring to someone in the hallway.
In spite of their sticky predicament, West grinned. This could be . . . interesting. Was his poor mouse from the garden going to be forced to listen to another pair coupling? That, surely, would be an even greater horror to her sensibilities than witnessing the harmless desecration of a rosebush, which had probably benefited from his generous fertilization. He drew his hand away from her mouth, letting a finger rest against her lips, the warning clear. Not a sound.
She twisted around to face him. She smelled like . . . lemons. He sniffed, the scent tickling at his nostrils. Perhaps she used a scented soap. Or perhaps she sucked on them, to give her mouth that decidedly prudish pucker.
A knock came again, and a rattle of the door latch. He pulled the drapes more tightly around them, then tightened one hand about her waist, giving her both a warning to stay quiet and a salacious sort of squeeze. “Be still,” he warned in a soft whisper.
“Don’t touch me like that,” she choked out. “I will scream!”
He permitted himself a chuckle. “Oh, luv.” He lifted the offending hand to trail a finger against the curve of her cheek. “I confess I’d like to make you scream.” He paused, one finger lingering at the point of her chin, then gently tipped her head back until she was staring up at him, her brown eyes wide with something other than fear. “But I promise,” he added, “you would do so in pleasure, not fear.”
Her slowly indrawn breath pleased him, teased him with other possibilities. Perhaps she wasn’t as much of a prude as he’d imagined.
But he could scarcely tell her the direction of his thoughts. He couldn’t say another word. Because the door was opening, and someone—several someones, in fact—were moving into the room, multiple voices melding into a low hum of whispers. His grin returned as he caught the timbre of two male voices, and two lighter female tones.
Ah. Four of them, was it?
That was an even more delicious outrage to a mousy virgin than listening to a single pair tup themselves senseless against her precious bookshelves.
The woman in his arms seemed to think so, too. Her chest rose in indignation, and that tempting mouth opened in panic. It was clear she was about to do something imprudent.
He didn’t have time to think, only to act. He needed to silence her, immediately.
The danger of discovery was far more real now that the room had been claimed by others, and now that she’d turned to face him, he was no longer positioned to clap a warning hand over her mouth again. And so he kissed her, muffling her squeak of outrage with a generous sweep of his tongue. She began to struggle against him, her protest muffled against his lips.
“What was that?” came one of the male voices.
She quieted, her mouth going still beneath his, submitting to the invasion with surprising rapidity. She went almost limp in his arms, letting him do what he would.
Smart woman, to finally recognize the danger.
But was it too late?
Footsteps echoed, too close for comfort. West kept his mouth pressed to hers, not even daring to exhale. He could feel the tension in her body coil tighter, until it seemed as though she might shatter beneath his lips. But she didn’t pull away. She didn’t so much as twitch.
“Is someone there?” a female voice whispered, inches from where they breathed.
“There’s no one.” The second woman’s faint laugh echoed. “Just a mouse, I think.”
The footsteps retreated toward the center of the room. The voices shifted, low murmurs and an occasional husky female laugh. Despite the surge of relief he felt to have escaped discovery, West didn’t relinquish his control of her lips. Yes, it was a mouse.
A very tempting mouse, frozen in his arms.
She surprised him. He’d thought, perhaps, that she’d have some bite to her kiss, given the way she’d sniped at him, but this was a sweet surrender.
He slowly lifted his mouth, thinking perhaps she might need to breathe. Her eyes seemed huge in the gathering darkness, her lips swollen from their recent good use. She lifted a finger to her mouth, running a fingertip along her lower lip.
And then with a small hitch of breath, her arms snaked up around his neck, and West found himself pulled back into another kiss, this one far more real than the first.
Chapter 5
What, oh what, was she doing?
The buzz of impending danger hummed in Mary’s head, but it couldn’t drown out the rush of her pulse, or the low, building heat in her womb. No matter how or why it was happening, this was her first real kiss not experienced between the pages of a book.
And she wasn’t yet ready for it to end.
Later, she would burn in humiliation to think her first kiss had been delivered at the hands of an utter scoundrel, a man who had not even told her his name. A man whose hand had gripped her bum and pulled her too tightly against him, letting her feel his hard, unforgiving body. A man whose tongue had done wild, wicked things in her mouth and tangled her already vivid imagination into a great, hopeless knot.
But at present, she wasn’t thinking of how she would feel later. She was thinking only of how she felt now. She had no experience with such things, but something told her he was a very good kisser. She opened her lips, wanting to feel the sweep of his tongue inside her mouth again, and he obliged as if he could read her mind.
It felt so deliciously depraved to kiss in su
ch a manner. Had any of the books she’d read through the years gotten it right? She didn’t recall reading anything about kisses beyond lips fervently—and quickly—pressed together. But this was a different experience entirely, warm and wet and wicked, an invasion of her very soul.
Her fingers wrapped tightly about his neck, pulling him closer. He tasted of whisky and salt and utter sin, and in a startled burst of awareness, she realized she felt his hand, warm and sure against her breast. He paused there, his mouth still doing head-spinning things to hers, but his hand asking permission for something she didn’t even understand. She only knew that she liked the feel of his palm there, and so when his hand dipped into the top of her bodice and she felt the shocking warmth of his skin against hers, she didn’t—couldn’t—push him away.
His fingers dipped lower, questing, promising, but then his hand stilled, going no lower, a wish only half-fulfilled.
The voices outside the curtains remained muffled by the pounding of her pulse in her ears, but she caught a few distinct phrases.
“Did anyone see you?”
“No, I came in after everyone took their seats.”
Through the haze of pleasure, she understood that the man with his mouth currently fastened over hers was no longer focused on their kiss. Instead, he was listening intently to the conversation taking place outside the heavy drapery. She tried to listen as well.
“Constitution . . .”
An odd thing to hear whispered, certainly. Then again, what did she know of love words? Nothing beyond what was offered in books, unfortunately. She caught another word, this one whispered loud enough to set her heart pounding in a different direction.
“Assassinate.”
She tore her mouth away to suck in a silent, startled breath of air. Whatever else she’d imagined was happening outside their curtains, this was not it.
Her scoundrel had frozen, too, his body stiff beneath her palms. She wanted to ask if he’d heard that terrible, unmistakable word as well, but she gulped down the question as he set her away from him. He lifted a finger to his lips, warning her to stay silent, then turned and separated a sliver of drapes with one finger.
“ ’Ere, I think,” Mary heard one of the men say, his whispered dialect identifying him as a commoner. There was a rustling of paper. “That’s the location to do it, right enough. But when?”
“The date has not been set yet,” a second male voice answered, his crisper diction and more authoritative whisper suggesting a more aristocratic upbringing. “As soon as the end of June, perhaps.”
Mary craned her neck, trying in vain to see over her scoundrel’s shoulder into the darkness beyond the safety of their curtains.
“Given the uncertainty with dates, you must deliver the funds as soon as possible,” she heard the second man say. “These men are not so committed to their grand cause they will not abandon the plan for lack of payment.”
“Must it be me that delivers the money, Your Grace?” came one of the women’s voices, a faint fog of worry threading her words.
“We’ve been over this a dozen times, at least.” A second woman spoke up, her voice more impatient. “No one will question your association, but ours would raise too much concern. And never forget, you are being paid well for your trouble.”
“When it’s all over, we’ll have a handy scapegoat to pin it upon, and we shall all be free from scrutiny,” came the strong male voice again. “I shall see the money is delivered to St. Paul’s Cathedral, on Sunday, but then you must see it on.”
“I will,” said the first woman, though she sounded none too happy for it.
There was a rustling, as if papers were being rolled up, shoes shuffling toward the door. Mary bit her lip, praying for their departure, bursting with questions and no small degree of fear.
But then the first woman’s voice came, faint and suspicious. “Are you forgetting your topper?”
There was a moment’s pause, where Mary was quite sure the room’s occupants must be able to hear her heartbeat. Oh, no. She could see in her mind, all too clearly, her scoundrel setting his top hat down on the table, as if coming to a decision to stay and torment her further. He seemed to remember it, too, his body strung tight as a bow beside her, quivering with barely suppressed energy.
“Just a ’at that belongs to one of the ’ospital’s physicians, surely,” came the first male voice, so low as to be nearly inaudible.
There was a pause, as if they were all considering what to do with it.
The second man spoke. “Although, I would imagine whoever owns it could come back at any moment to claim it.”
A muffled curse came next, an expletive that made Mary’s ears burn.
“We shouldn’t be seen together,” said the second woman. “There is too much at stake. We need to be more careful.” The rustling in the room intensified, footfalls heading toward the door. The door latch clicked again. Silence filled her ears.
And then her scoundrel—whoever he was—was pulling her out of the tangled velvet drapery and into the very room where she had just overheard the murky details of an assassination plot.
Though his erection was still one for the record books, West had never felt more impotent.
Stumbling out into the dark room, he bumped into a chair. Cursing beneath his breath, he pulled a match from the case in his jacket pocket and lit a lamp on a reading table. With more light to guide the path for his agitation, he began to pace, trying to sort out what to do next.
Assassinate. Constitution.
They were damning words, but what on earth was he supposed to do with this information? The second man’s voice had sounded vaguely familiar, no matter that it had been delivered in nothing more distinct than a hoarse whisper. But despite that niggling sense of familiarity, he had no idea who the traitors were.
Or who their intended target might be.
He couldn’t even say what they looked like: the room had been dark as pitch with the drapes closed. He had a sickening suspicion, though. One of the women had clearly said “Your Grace”. It was a terrible suspicion to hold of a duke, but if West’s interpretation of the conversation was anything close to accurate, someone very high within London society was plotting an assassination.
“What are we going to do?” came a trembling voice.
West jerked around and stared at the woman who had asked the question. She was still here. And unfortunately, she was the smaller of his two problems.
He felt jerked back in time, to that day on board ship when it had all gone to shite and the decisions he made—good or bad—became irrevocable stamps of fate.
He would not be responsible for more deaths.
Not if he had anything to say about it.
“We aren’t going to do anything.” He pointed to the door. “You are going to leave and return to the pleasantries of Mr. Dickens.” But even as he issued the order, his gaze insisted on lingering on her swollen lips. Damn it, he shouldn’t have kissed her, and he certainly shouldn’t have kissed her like that. She was a mature woman, old enough to know her own mind and take her own risks. Yet, in spite of the fact that she was a few years older than he was, he’d tasted the inexperience on her lips, felt the quickening beneath her skin.
This was why he didn’t dabble with innocents. He’d kissed her, and now she looked close to crying. But he couldn’t deal with affronted feelings right now, the trembling lips, the claims of bruised feelings. For God’s sake, there was treason afoot.
“We need to tell someone.” Her small voice made him want to snarl. She even sounded innocent. “Did you not hear what they said?”
“I heard them.” He needed to think, to form a plan. Who had they been? Who were they targeting? And what could he do about it, given that he had no proof in hand beyond what he had heard? All pertinent questions.
None of which could be properly answered with her looking up at him with other unanswered questions shimmering in her eyes.
“Out you go now.” He took
her by one elbow, intending to escort her outside himself.
She jerked away, surprising him. “If you heard them, then you must realize the gravity of the situation,” she said, sounding decidedly less innocent of a sudden. “What are we going to do?”
It occurred to West that her voice might be small, but her spine held a bit of starch. He looked down at the image she presented, her hair mussed up by their adventure behind the drapes, a delectable slice of nipple peeking out above the rucked blue bodice.
Had he thought the shadows suited her?
It turned out Miss Mouse looked equally well in lamplight.
“I am not going to do anything,” he told her. At least, he wasn’t going to do anything more where this girl was concerned. The odd attraction he felt toward her was disconcerting. The sooner she left, the better. “Please, just go now, before you make it any worse.”
“Please don’t tell me you are a coward as well as a scoundrel.” Her eyes looked huge, mooning up at him against her pale cheeks. “Because I don’t think I could bear to know I just kissed a man who was both.”
That gave him a start. He’d long been called a scoundrel, but she was calling him a coward now, too? West raised a brow. “Then perhaps you ought to be a bit more careful about who you kiss.”
She gasped, but the sound died on her lips as the latch on the library door rattled, jerking both of their attentions to the door.
“Miss Channing? Are you in here?” A woman’s worried voice called out from the hallway.
“Don’t—” he began, only to be summarily cut off.
“Yes, I am in here!” she cried out, shooting him an irritated glare.
West clenched his fists. After all he’d gone through to protect her, she had just instantly, injudiciously thrown her carcass to the wolves? Good Christ. He felt like throwing up his hands. He was reminded, again, that she was an innocent, apparently unaware of the danger this situation posed to her reputation. Unfortunately, he himself was all too aware.
After all, he flirted with the brink of propriety on a regular enough basis to recognize that razor’s edge, the need to protect oneself from the fall.
The Perks of Loving a Scoundrel Page 5
