Ash sat back down and buried his face in his hands. His first thought was to go home and tell Verity that his life had taken a turn that was ripped from one of the gothic novels she occasionally published—a lost heir, a wicked uncle, a dying duke. It struck him that this would likely be the last conversation he would have with Verity—Verity Plum, confirmed radical, would not rub shoulders with the heir to a dukedom. And whatever life was like for a duke, or a duke-in-waiting, or whatever he was, it likely did not entail illustrating dirty books and living in a ramshackle house in Holywell Street. He was going to lose Verity no matter what. He was going to lose everything that made him who he was.
“I planned to bring you back,” she continued, “once I was of age or married to someone with enough power to help me. But I had underestimated how easy it is for a child to slip through the cracks. There was simply no trace of you when I went to look. I am terribly sorry, and there is nothing I can say or do to make that right. In my defense I was sixteen, and perhaps not as clever as I thought I was. It remains the greatest regret of my life.”
He didn’t know if it was his imagination or the whisper of a memory, but he thought he could picture a younger Lady Caroline, equally worried, but bolder, less timid. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen. If this entire business seemed the scheme of a fanciful child, perhaps that was because it had been. “If you are correct, then it seems that you saved my life, ma’am. I thank you.”
“Piffle. I made a poor fist of the entire operation,” she said, as if referring to bungling the repotting of an orchid, and not foiling her brother’s murder plot. He supposed that, living the life she led, murderous brothers and potted orchids featured equally.
“Will your brother not revenge himself upon you when he finds out that you mean to unseat him?”
She let out a nervous breath of laughter. “He tried to murder a child of four years old. Come now, Mr. Ashby. Or, Lord Montagu, I ought to say.” His stomach turned at hearing her brother’s title applied to him. “You know well that he’ll try to harm me one way or the other. I only ask if you’ll help me stop him from doing more harm.”
Ash had the sense of his old, self-constructed family crumbling away, leaving him only with those who had cast him out to begin with.
“I have one condition,” he said. “I need time. A month.” A month wouldn’t be enough, not nearly enough, to get used to the idea that he might be the person Lady Caroline thought he was, to assimilate all that meant. And it wouldn’t be enough time to bid farewell to the life he thought was his own. But he could spend that month living without the fear of losing more people, because that—if Lady Caroline was correct—was now all but a certainty. He would lose Verity, he would lose his work and his life. He could spend a month living as a man with nothing to lose.
Chapter Nine
Verity looked up from cutting a new nib to find Ash leaning against the doorway to her office, feigning nonchalance. That was his tell. Verity hadn’t lost a single hand of cards to him since discovering that Ash’s only way of dissembling was to feign absolute indifference to things that he considered greatly important.
“I brought you something,” he said when she beckoned him to enter. He placed a few items on her desk and sat in his usual chair, crossing his legs languidly. If Verity hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was bored, come to dismiss a tiresome errand.
“A bottle of wine and a stack of explicit illustrations,” she said, surveying Ash’s offerings. “Two of my favorite things. And”—she peered inside a paper-wrapped parcel he placed on her desk—“ a wedge of cheddar. Three of my favorite things, then. Thank you. To what do I owe these earthly delights?”
“It’s a celebration. I saw you’ve sold out of the Ladies’ Register again.”
She grinned. The second issue had been easier to compile than the first—a few letters requesting advice, a theater review, and a scary story. The third issue could be devoted almost entirely to answering correspondence, and she was looking forward to it with something like relish. “Will you join me, or am I meant to celebrate in solitude?”
He tsked. “Be serious, Plum. There’s far too much cheese for you to eat on your own.”
“How little you know me,” she said mournfully. This was a seduction. She was being seduced with cheese and lewd drawings and she could not be happier about it. From the top drawer of her desk she removed a corkscrew and a knife and passed the latter to Ash so he could pare the cheese while she opened the wine.
“I noticed you’re answering the letters under your own name.” Ash slid a piece of cheese to her as she took a pull from the bottle and handed it to him.
“I figured Verity Plum already sounds enough like someone’s nom de plume, so might as well take advantage of it.” For the first issue, she had answered the letters anonymously. For the second, she hadn’t bothered. “The truth is that I never put my name on the Register. First because it was Nate and my father’s, and later because I didn’t want to go to prison. And it never felt necessary. Everyone knows I ran the Register from the week my father died.” She supposed she might sound arrogant, but it was the simple truth, and to Ash she could own it. Even with Nate in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, she was having surprisingly little difficulty managing the business on her own. “But with the Ladies’ Register, it’s mine and I want to put my name all over it.”
“You should be proud.”
“I am.” For a moment there was no sound but the distant murmur from the street below. Nan had left, the shop was closed, and the men in the print room had finished for the day. Ash and Verity were alone in the house. She took the bottle from his hand and drank, feeling his gaze on her. When she put the bottle down he was still looking at her, not bothering to conceal it. She looked back. He raised an eyebrow. She gave him what she knew to be an especially feral smile.
“Plum,” he said. Not warningly, but with intent.
“My cards are on the table, Ash. Every last one of them. You can play yours however you like and there’s no losing.”
Ash’s mouth went dry. She was making this easy for him, he knew that, but the sight of her, wine bottle in hand, mouth quirked up in half a smile, was more than he could face with equanimity. But if he let her see how invested he was in this—hell, if he let himself see it, if for even half a minute he acknowledged to himself how badly he wanted this, and how horrible everything was going to be when it was over—then he didn’t know how he was meant to go on.
He didn’t know whether he was acting on false pretenses. If he were heir to a dukedom—and he was filled with an odd sense of mortification at the thought, as if he had done something shameful and was waiting for his disgrace to become public knowledge—then he owed that information to a woman he planned to . . . court. But this was no common courtship: Verity didn’t want a husband. Maybe, though. Maybe she would change her mind. Maybe she could see a way forward with him even though he wasn’t who she thought, wasn’t even who he had thought. Maybe after seeing how good they could be together, she’d agree to be with him anyway. She was his best, his closest, his dearest friend. Maybe she could accept him despite everything. And when he thought of the child who had been sent from place to place, without a name or a home or even a sense of who he was, he wanted to believe more than anything that she would.
So he raised one finger and beckoned her over, praying to any gods that might be watching that she’d understand all of what he couldn’t say, understand that he was hanging on by the fingernails.
She pushed out of her chair and stood before him, one hand on her hip and an oddly serious expression on her face. He swallowed.
“Is this to be a lecture?” he asked, looking up at her. The last bits of his composure were in tattered shreds and he could hear the urgency in his own voice. “Teach me, Plum.”
She settled in his lap, the soft curve of her breasts so close to his face, the scent of her soap and books and just Verity filling his senses. “I’m trying to
decide what to do.”
“Ah.” She loosened his cravat, her fingers deft and sure against his throat. “For the record, Plum, I can’t see that I’d object to anything you might choose. I’m feeling—” he groaned as she settled further into his lap, pressing against him “—very amenable.” She rocked into him, as if to show him that she knew exactly how amenable he was, and, really, at this proximity there could be no mistaking the matter. He bit back a groan and she made a soft shushing sound. She took hold of his cravat and gave it a tug, not hard enough to actually pull him near, but quite hard enough to make his prick take an avid interest in the proceedings. Then, still holding him fast, she leaned forward and brushed her lips against his as if it were the merest trifle, as if it weren’t the single most important event to have happened in months, years, of his life.
He realized that he was going to have to perform some kind of conversion, as if from a foreign currency, where kisses had an entirely different value to Verity than they did to him. It was fine, he told himself. He had a month to wind up his affairs, to do what it took to bid farewell to his old life; he had thirty days to engrave a handful of plates and to get his fill of Verity. The other night in the oyster room she had told him that this—his hands on her, her lips on his, the way their bodies felt pressed together—was something she could take or leave. And that was for the best—it meant that when their month was up, she’d be unharmed. But it was proof that she had a totally different relationship to these things than he did. His main goal at the moment was to avoid dismaying her or embarrassing himself with undue displays of fervor. She needed him to provide a pleasant distraction or to chase away her cares and burdens; he needed her as a plant needed sunlight. Nothing was wrong with that disparity. What mattered was that he never let her know.
She nipped his lower lip and he thought he might faint.
“Wait,” he breathed. “Slow.”
She gentled her kisses and then pulled away. “Is this all right?”
He moved his hips so she could feel his hardness, biting the inside of his cheek to keep some semblance of calm. “More than all right.” He slid his hands around her shoulder blades and started working open the buttons of her gown. She made a soft sound of satisfaction at the contact of his fingers on her back. He could not begin to understand how to get her out of her frock, so instead he rucked up the hem, seeking skin that way. She responded by hauling him close by the collar and giving him a punishing kiss. He had never allowed himself to imagine what this would be like, but when the thought crept unawares into his mind, it had never taken this form—Verity on top of him, manhandling him, having her way with him.
As he ran his hand up her leg, past the top of her stocking and over the soft skin of her thigh, his hand encountered nothing but bare skin. His hand progressed unimpeded up her leg until he was cupping her backside in one palm. “Plum,” he managed. “I hate to be to the bearer of bad news, but your drawers seem to have gone missing.”
She stopped kissing long enough to lean back and wrinkle her nose. “I don’t wear drawers. Mother always said they were common.”
Ash tried to assimilate the knowledge that Verity had been wearing nothing under her shift for the past ten years, during each and every one of their meals and conversations. He was going to need to consider this in considerable detail in private, but for now he tried to look as if he had only a scholarly interest in her underpinnings. “Is that so? I’d have thought in that case you’d have worn a dozen pairs. All at once. Embroidered with liberté, égalité—”
She shut him up with a kiss. “You cannot mean to jest,” she murmured into the skin of his jaw. “Are you always this unserious when you have your hand up a woman’s petticoats?”
“One hundred percent of the time, Plum,” he said in absolute honesty.
“Now I’m going to ask every woman I know about her drawers,” she said, kissing the sensitive skin just under his jaw. He thought he might black out. “I will be known far and wide for my scholarly interest in drawers.”
He gave her backside a firm pinch to silence her. She must have liked that because she took hold of his shoulders and pushed him firmly against the back of the chair, her hands greedily running over his arms and chest. He slid his hand between her legs, feeling the slick heat of her. She sighed and pushed against his palm, riding his hand. The entirety of his universe shrank to the place where he touched her, the rhythm of her hips, the sounds she made. “You’d better show me how you pleasure yourself,” he said, trying for the tone one uses when buffing one’s fingernails on one’s lapels and instead landing on something like a dying man’s prayer.
She leaned back and gazed at him, somehow managing to look both dazed and arch. “What, you’re not going to do it for me?”
“I fancy watching you. Indulge me, Plum.”
“Well, then.” She hitched her skirt up. Shameless. He loved her—he let himself form that thought and hold it for a full heartbeat before sending it away. He watched, enraptured, as she made little circles with one finger. He didn’t know why he expected that she’d touch inside herself, but she didn’t.
He tore his gaze away from where her fingers stroked between her legs and grinned at her. She met his eyes. “Well, you asked,” she said.
“Perfect,” he managed. “You’re perfect, Verity.” Her skin was glistening with wetness, though, and he needed to touch her. He slid his hand beside hers, not interfering with what she was doing, just stroking the folds of skin and damp curls beneath his fingertips.
“Yes,” she said, guiding his fingers to her entrance. When he slid two fingers inside, she started rocking into his palm, and he thought he might come on the spot. All he could think of was how her slick heat would feel around his cock. He wanted desperately to unfasten his trousers, take himself in hand, do anything to ease the pressure. But he knew that if he did that, it would put paid to any hopes he had of watching Verity climax, and he wanted to see that very badly. He watched his fingers disappear inside her again and again, felt her clench around him, rising and falling on his hand as if she were riding him. Their fingers tangled and their hands bumped into one another, and it ought to have been clumsy and awkward but it was perfect.
“Plum,” he said from between gritted teeth, “this is the best thing I’ve seen in my life.” She clenched around his fingers. “Thought I ought to let you know.”
With the hand that wasn’t busy stroking herself, she cupped his head and gave him a hungry kiss.
“Oh,” she murmured, pulling away. Her body went as taut as a bowstring and then she came apart in his arms, contracting around his fingers, soft moans on her lips.
“Christ, Plum, you utter fucking genius.” He had no idea why that of all things was the praise that came to him, but it was true, and it was probably a minor miracle that he said anything intelligible at all, his entire mind being occupied with the alarming state of his cock.
Her eyes were shut, her lips parted, and she collapsed onto his shoulder. He slid his fingers out of her—they had been inside Verity’s body, what a world—and wiped them on his trousers.
“Let me touch you,” she said.
“Please,” he managed. There ensued a flurry of tussling and hand swatting over who got to unfasten Ash’s trousers. Verity prevailed.
“I’ve always wanted to see how these things worked,” she mused as she wrapped her hand around him.
“I’m happy to oblige,” he said “I’m afraid you’d better be a quick study, because you’ve got about three strokes before the lesson concludes.”
She gave a happy, throaty laugh and gave him a slow stroke. “I want to put it in my mouth.”
If she kept talking like that, he wasn’t even going to last three strokes, so he pulled her close, thrusting into her fist, imagining it was the tight heat inside her. He kissed her for a moment, a disorganized tangle of tongues and teeth. “I’m going to—”
“Wait, I want to see.” She sat back and watched him, and as the pl
easure took over his body, all he could see was Verity watching him, her hand on his cock, her lip between her teeth, his entire heart under the sole of her shoe, if that was what she chose.
He took a few ragged breaths and gave her the handkerchief from his trouser pocket. After she made use of it he half expected her to sit at her desk and get to work now that they had concluded their business. But she collapsed on top of him, soft and sleepy. He let himself run his fingers through her disordered hair. When she nestled her face into his neck, he kissed her forehead. Thirty days, he thought. We can have this for thirty days.
“You smell good,” she murmured. “You feel good too. This is the best idea we’ve ever had.”
He hoped she wasn’t wrong.
Chapter Ten
Ash woke with a gasp, his heart pounding and his sheets soaked in sweat. He had dreamed again of Arundel House, of sweeping stairs and marble floors. Of falling. It was an old dream, one that sometimes visited him nightly and other times waited years to reappear. But now he knew the setting to be Arundel House, and he knew the fall to have been the accident that injured his arm. Not an accident, he reminded himself, but his uncle’s attempt to murder him. Unless, of course, Lady Caroline was mistaken. It could be an odd series of coincidences, surely.
“Ash?” Verity stood in the door to his room. “I knocked but there was no answer.”
He probably hadn’t heard her over the sound of his heart thudding and the blood rushing in his ears. “Bad dream,” he said.
“You called out. I thought you might have had a seizure.” She wore only a night rail, not even having bothered to reach for a dressing gown before rushing to his door.
“Just a nightmare.” He wished he could tell her the truth, but she was the last person he could talk to because she was the most affected by his future. If he were to be a duke—utterly ludicrous—then any future with Verity would either make her a duke’s mistress or a duchess, and as much as he wanted to believe that she’d want to be with him no matter his title or status, he did not think she would jump at either option. That left them with this month, and he wasn’t going to ruin it for her—for them—by burdening her with truths she’d find out eventually.
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