by Lynne Barron
“No duels today, kitty cat,” Dunaway assured her.
“Nor fisticuffs,” Harry added.
“Oh, speaking of fisticuffs,” Kate began yet again.
“We weren’t speaking of fisticuffs,” Harry interrupted. “In fact, I haven’t time to speak of anything just now, for I’m off to accept Knighton’s marriage proposal.”
“Oh good. When will the wedding be?” Kate’s smile was so syrupy sweet it could only be fake. “I just adore weddings and positively cannot wait for my own, if only I could find a man willing to marry me.”
“You’ve plenty to choose from in Bartlesborough,” Harry replied, aiming an equally sugary smile at Dunaway.
“Elaine Bennett wrote me that the new wheelwright is positively gorgeous,” Kate, the sly creature, said, “all brawny and bearded.”
“Wheelwright, indeed,” Dunaway muttered.
“He’s sounds perfect,” Harry assured her sister. “Now I really must be off.”
“Oh, but I haven’t told you about the fisticuffs.”
“Can it wait until dinner with Auntie Alabaster on Sunday?”
“I depart for Dartmoor tomorrow at dawn,” Kate replied. “And truly, I doubt it can wait beyond five or ten minutes, depending upon the gentleman’s stamina.”
“What gentleman’s stamina?” Dunaway demanded, sounding remarkably like a concerned father.
“Why, Lord Knighton’s, of course.”
Harry had often thought Kate’s talent for talking circles around even the most intelligent of people was rather extraordinary, but just now she found the circuitous conversation beyond aggravating. “Are you saying Knighton is engaged in fisticuffs?”
“Sparring with the reigning champ in the back room of the Pickled Prince.”
“But it’s Friday!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The back room of the Pickled Prince was empty but for a trio of longshoremen nursing pints in one shadowy corner, two light-skirts attempting to entice them into parting with a portion of their hard-earned coin, one golden-haired behemoth perched on a stool perusing a racing form, and a pair of men stripped down to their trousers.
Dooley had a good two stone on his opponent and was notoriously fast on his feet and quick with his fists. Even so, Phineas didn’t appear to be in any immediate danger. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself tremendously, feinting and jabbing almost playfully, laughing and tossing out jests as the two men moved around the square chalked on the grimy floor.
Harry had taken only two steps into the room when Cedric looked up from the day’s racing schedule, spotted her and smiled.
She lifted a finger to her lips in the universally acknowledged gesture for silence. After all, she’d been ringside at dozens of bouts and, moments of giddy madness aside, knew better than to distract the brawlers.
Apparently, Cedric was from another universe entirely, never mind they’d grown up on neighboring farms in Shropshire. “How do, Harry. What brings you ‘round on a Friday?”
From there, events preceded much as one might expect.
Phineas’s head swiveled around, his eyes widened and a grin flashed across his face.
Dooley’s giant fist crashed into his jaw.
Harry let loose a scream and hurried across the room.
Phineas fell to his knees, then he fell to his arse and finally to his back.
Harry dropped down beside him in a pool of spilled skirts, dust and chalk rising from the floor and dancing in the beam of sunlight slanting through the cracked window high up on the wall. Phineas’s eyes were closed, lashes faintly fluttering. Carefully, she lifted his head to her lap.
“Bloke’s got a glass jaw.”
She looked up to find Mr. Dooley standing on the edge of the chalked square.
“Have you lost your ever-living mind, Peter Dooley?” she demanded.
“What?” the big man asked. “It was a fair shot.”
“Since when is it fair to hit a man when he’s distracted?”
Cedric sniggered, turning her attention, and a considerable portion of her agitation, his way. “And you! How could you allow them to spar?”
Cedric lumbered to his feet. “Gent was holdin’ ‘is own till you—”
“Me?” Harry interrupted. “You’re the one who hollered at me as if I were three streets over instead of merely three feet!”
“Well, hell, Harry,” Cedric muttered, scuffing his toes on the floor.
“I know for a fact your mother taught you better manners than that.”
“Ain’t hardly right to bring me mum into it,” he grumbled. “Ain’t nowhere near right, ‘specially seeing as it’s Friday.”
“What has that to do with the price of tea in England?”
Phineas mumbled incoherently, his lashes fluttering some more before slowly lifting. He looked up at her a bit dazedly as one corner of his mouth kicked up.
“Oh, my darling,” she murmured, bending to press a kiss to his crooked smile. But the angle was all wrong, what with his head in her lap and her not being a contortionist. She wound up kissing his temple. “How could you be so foolish?” Then the corner of his eye. “So reckless?” His eyebrow. “So rash?” The bridge of his nose. “So utterly mad?”
“Harry, love,” Phineas said with a chuckle, and she lifted her head to meet eyes that were rather yellow in the light of a seedy little room behind a pub. “There are worse ways to be felled than by the unexpected arrival of a beautiful woman.”
“I can name twenty right off the top of my noggin,” Peter Dooley said.
“Fifty,” Cedric countered. “Another thirty if you give me a minute to think on it.”
“I knew a man that were felled by a feather pillow,” one of the light-skirts called out cheerfully.
“Just last week my brother Joe was knocked out cold when he tried to milk a bull,” the other woman added.
“I heard tell about that,” Dooley said. “Was that your brother, then?”
“Took the beast’s tool for a teat, he did,” she chortled.
“Wellclose born and bred I am,” Dooley muttered, “but even I know teats come in fours.”
“Actually—” Harry began.
Phineas let loose a rumble of laughter, curled one hand around Harry’s nape and raised his head just enough to guide her lips to his for a single quick, hard kiss. “We’ll be here all day if you start in on superfluous teats and dairymaids milking in tandem.”
“Have you somewhere else to be?” Harry asked.
“Damn right I do,” Phin replied, sitting up and running a hand through his tousled curls.
“Maybe you ought to rest a bit before you attempt to gain your feet.”
“I’m fine, love.”
He did look surprisingly fine, his eyes clear and bright, and not so much as a bump or bruise marring his handsome features.
“A shot to the jaw can be tricky,” Cedric said, nudging Dooley with his shoulder. “Tell him, Pete. Tell him how tricky a shot to the jaw can be.”
“Right you are, tricky business,” Dooley agreed, lifting his right hand to his chest and cradling it with his left as tenderly as one might a wounded bird. “And that was a hell of shot I gave you. A fair shot, mind you, but a hell of a shot just the same.”
“Tricky how?” Harry demanded.
“Why, a fellow might think he’s right as rain, ‘til he gets to his feet and faints,” Dooley replied.
“Maybe you ought to allow Harry to coddle you some more, guv,” Cedric suggested.
“I’ll keep it in mind, should I feel myself on the verge of a swoon,” Phineas replied dryly, rising to stand before turning to help Harry up as well. “Now then, where’s my shirt?’
Harry spotted his shirt, cravat, waistcoat and jacket draped over a chair and walked over to fetch them. The garments were warm from the sun, and when she gathered them up in her arms his scent—soap and starch and musk—wafted up to greet her. Burying her nose in the clothing, she breathed deep, pulling his
essence into her lungs and holding it there.
Vaguely, she was aware of Cedric and Dooley prattling on about tricky shots, grown men fainting, and a woman’s natural need to coddle an injured man. Foolishness, indeed. Phineas was no more likely to faint than she was to coddle him, injured or otherwise.
When she turned around to retrace her steps, she found Phineas watching her with a smile so tender and sweet she nearly stumbled over her own two feet. Heat blooming on her cheeks, she made her way back to him and watched in silence as he pulled his shirt over his head before reaching for the waistcoat she held out to him.
His hand floundered in the air two inches from the blue brocade, and he listed slightly to the left.
“Phineas?”
“I feel a bit…”
“Faint?” She shoved the garments at Cedric, wrapped her arms around Phineas and held him tight. “Do you need to sit down?”
“No, no, it’s passing already,” he replied, his lips pressed to her temple. “Perhaps I just need a bit of fresh air.”
“Fresh air, of course,” Harry agreed readily.
“And then perhaps a bit of a lie down,” he added.
“Cedric and Dooley can carry you to my flat.”
Phineas’s warm breath billowed across her cheek when he chuckled. Throwing one arm over her shoulders, he tucked her close to his side. “I think I can manage on my own, if you’ll help me.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”
“Well, all right then,” Harry replied, carefully spinning them to face the door. “We’ll just take it nice and slow.”
Cedric rushed ahead of them and yanked open the door, urging them through it with an overdone bow. “I’ll pop around later with your coat and whatnot, guv.”
“No hurry,” Phineas replied, saluting the blond giant with his free hand.
The pub proper was crowded with people swilling ale and putting away Margaret Simms’ meat pasties. Harry’s neighbors called out greetings, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to see her plastered to the side of a man in his shirtsleeves.
When they stepped outside, Harry paused a moment, surprised to discover that the afternoon was waning into evening. Clouds drifted across the twilight sky, the last of the sun’s rays a virulent orange streaking across a violet backdrop. A warm breeze redolent with the distinctive aroma of the River Thames furled the leaves on the trees in the park.
“It’s a pretty little square,” Phineas said, pulling her closer and turning them toward the opposite corner of St. Sebastian Place.
“It’s seedy and loud and populated with all manner of odd ducks,” Harry replied with a laugh.
“You love every cobblestone and corner, every building and blade of grass in the green, every merchant, tradesman and resident.”
“I do love it,” she admitted. “Wellclose Square is my world, and St. Sebastian Place my center of gravity.” Just as Mayfair was his world, and all the trappings of the ton—privilege and pedigree and wealth—were Phineas’s center of gravity. “What were you thinking, Phineas?”
“I’m fine, apart from that tricky shot to the jaw,” he assured her, giving her a little more of his weight. “Or I will be after a bit more coddling.”
“No, not the sparring,” she replied as they passed the pawn shop where she’d haggled with Mrs. Tinsley and come away with more than she’d bargained for. “Though that was quite foolish as well. What were you thinking to sell off everything you rightfully own?”
“I was thinking I could square the take twice over.”
“Squaring the take is all well and good,” she replied, swatting him gently on the chest and leaving her hand there, just over his heart, “but what on earth did you invest it all in?”
“Well, let’s see. I put a bit of blunt into a publishing business, partnered up with an apothecary and bought a piece of a pub.”
“Surely you don’t… You can’t mean…” Harry stammered, her mind awhirl with preposterous possibilities. “Are you saying that, while I was selling off various business interests, you were right behind me, purchasing my castoff shares in Luther Publishing, Mallory’s Apothecary and the Pickled Prince?”
“Oh, and I sunk a few sovereigns into a bathhouse and the tobacco shop above it,” Phin continued, lips twitching as they passed the bakery where the aroma of burned lemon tarts lingered. “Then I bartered—”
“An oven!” The words exploded from Harry as she stopped and whirled around to face him. “Books by the crate load and an exceedingly well-sprung carriage!”
“In exchange for partnerships in a bakery, a bookshop and a hackney company, respectively.”
“Never say you risked everything on Mr. Prince?”
Phin gifted Harry with a gentle smile and laid his hand on her cheek. “On a phantom? A name whispered on the streets of Wellclose Square and borne on a breeze until it reached the gristmill, where it was ground into gossip and scattered about for your odd ducks to feed upon?”
Throat closing, Harry could only nod.
“I risked it all on you, Harry.” Phineas’s voice was soft, his eyes shining with sincerity. “I’ve put my fortune, such as it is, my family, my future and my fate in your hands, to do with as you will, my darling, my dearest, my beloved. My wife, if you’ll have me.”
“Oh, Phineas,” she whispered, blinking against the tears welling up in her eyes. “That’s so…it’s so…”
“Romantic?” he suggested. “Sentimental?”
“Pragmatic,” she said on a breathless laugh. “So beautifully, wonderfully sensible.”
Phineas appeared a bit abashed by the praise, his lips curling up at one corner in a smile Harry made no attempt to resist. Placing her hands on his shoulders, she rose to her toes and claimed that smile, kissing him with all the love swirling around in her heart and sweeping the corners free of all the useless clutter she’d been harboring for years.
“Well, if this isn’t a fine how do you do!”
Harry broke their kiss and whipped around.
Prudence McGuire stood on the walkway, one hand on her hip and the other holding open the door to Harry’s flat. “Land sakes, child, you’re but two steps from home, and still you couldn’t wait to kiss this fine fellow in privacy?”
“I couldn’t, actually,” Harry answered around a giggle.
“This the one you’ve been mooning over?” Pru eyed Phineas’s lack of proper attire as if she doubted his identity altogether.
Harry made the necessary introductions and offered up an explanation in the form of an abbreviated version of the events that had transpired in the back room of the pub.
“Well, I’ve left roast and potatoes warming in the oven,” Pru said at the conclusion of her tale. “Though, if Mr. Dooley’s jab was as tricky as you say, his lordship might do better with beef broth. You want I should pop into the pub and see if Margaret has some on hand?”
“I appreciate the offer, Mrs. McGuire,” Phin answered quickly, prodding his jaw gingerly, “but I think I can manage a few bites of your roast.”
“I thought as much,” Pru harrumphed. “I’ll be off to me own home, then.”
“It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Phineas said, catching the door when Pru released it and ushering Harry into the vestibule.
“She thinks you’re faking your injury,” Harry said indignantly, spinning around to face him in the cramped space. “As a means to gain entry to my flat.”
The amusement shining in his eyes as he kicked the door closed gave him away.
“You rogue,” she exclaimed. “You were faking!”
Phineas wrapped his arms around her and hauled her up against his chest. His lips found hers unerringly, and he introduced her to a kiss unlike any they’d ever shared. It was all laughter and deviltry, mischief and happiness. Swiping his tongue into her mouth, he chuckled as he spun her around and pinned her to the wall. Their teeth clashed and Harry giggled. P
hineas caught the sound and rewarded her with a gentle nip to her bottom lip. Their kisses were clumsy and wet and accompanied by all sorts of slurping, gurgling sounds.
This is love, Harry thought as he suckled her upper lip rather noisily. Sloppy and funny and so sweet.
“It occurs to me you’ve not yet agreed to marry me,” Phineas murmured against her lips.
“Perhaps I need a bit of coaxing,” she teased.
“Coaxing, you say?” he replied with a mock growl.
“Cajoling,” she clarified, gasping when he wedged one thigh between her legs. “Yes, just like that.”
The pressure was exquisite and irresistible. Shamelessly rubbing her nipples against the wall of his chest, she rode the hard muscle and sinew of his thigh. Sparks ignited deep within her core and sizzled down her limbs.
The tenor of Phineas’s kiss changed, became desperate and frenzied, his tongue stroking over and around hers, lips suckling and pulling, teeth nipping and biting as if he meant to devour her. Winding her arms up over his shoulders, Harry clung to him as pleasure, dark and decadent, coiled tight in her belly and pulsed between her legs
Phineas broke their kiss with a laughter-laced groan and set to work freeing the buttons of her gown. Impatient, she attempted to help only to have him clasp her wrists and pin them to the wall above her head with one hand. Hitching his thigh high and tight against her sensitized flesh, he finished his task and spread her bodice open. Dipping his head, he flicked his tongue over her nipples through the sheer fabric of her chemise, one then the other.
Harry’s fingers curled into fists, and she bowed her back, greedy for more.
Phineas’s lips closed around her right nipple, pulling the peak deep into his mouth to suckle as he stroked his thigh between her legs, his cock nudging her hip.
“Damn me,” Harry hissed. “That feels so good.”
Releasing her wrists, he swept her gown down her arms and past her hips to pool around her ankles. His hands fell to her bottom, pausing there a moment to squeeze and fondle her before clasping tight and lifting her clear off her feet. “Wrap your legs around me.”
