And she was also going to buy a cottage in the country. Somewhere she could breathe in the fresh air and wander the forests and dip her toes in a babbling brook. Never mind that she could have an entire estate (and four more besides) if she married Warwick. That didn’t matter, because there was no scenario in which she would ever consent to becoming his duchess.
Speaking of which…
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” she, stabbing a piece of egg with her fork.
“Call you what?” Temporarily forgoing his meal, Warwick poured himself a cup of coffee from the silver plated pot in the middle of the table. He offered to do the same for Artemis, but she declined.
“Your betrothed.”
“But that is what you are.” Adding milk to his coffee, he stirred it clockwise and then neatly set his spoon aside before taking a sip. “You are my fiancée, Artemis. Whether you want to be or not.”
The size difference between the small porcelain cup and Warwick’s large hands was almost comical. What would those hands look like on her body, she wondered? Gliding along her arms to span her waist, his long fingers wrapping all the way around until they touched the top of her–
“Are you all right?” Warwick asked in concern when her fork clattered to her plate.
“Fine,” she snapped. Having lost her appetite–no small tragedy–she pushed back from the table and stood up, knuckles digging into the lace overlay. “I am perfectly fine.”
“You don’t appear fine, and who could blame you?” Head bent, he began to cut his bacon into quarter inch pieces. “You were pushed into an engagement you didn’t want, with a conceited arse you didn’t like, and the only possible recourse at your disposal was to flee the only home you had ever known and plunge yourself into the dangerous uncertainty of a life in the rookeries.”
While Artemis looked on in wary silence, he popped a square of bacon into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed before he continued.
“Against all odds, you weren’t murdered outright. Somehow–and at some point, I would enjoy hearing all the details–you made a name for yourself as a…what did that nice fellow with the missing teeth call you? Ah, that’s right. The Siren of Seven Dials.”
“No one calls me that,” she scoffed even as she fought a pleased smile. Lucas Black had his own name. Why couldn’t she? The Siren of Seven Dials did have a nice ring to it. Although it also carried a certain implication that she didn’t know whether she wanted Warwick to assume. Not that his opinion mattered one way or the other. But still…
“I was a thief.” She frowned at her unconscious use of past tense. “I mean, I am. I am a thief.”
With a roguish grin that did the strangest things to her belly, Warwick set down his fork and leaned back in his chair. “You’re a marvel, Artemis. Why wouldn’t I want to claim you as my betrothed?”
Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
“Because you and I…we…” Flustered, she spun away towards the hearth. The warmth of the fire matched the heat in her cheeks as she stared blindly into the flames. The butterflies in her stomach bounced into each other, and she hoped darkly that they’d knock themselves senseless.
Foolish, stupid things.
Didn’t they know that she didn’t want to be attracted to Warwick?
Not to his grin, which was admittedly charming.
Not to his praise, which was uncomfortably flattering.
And definitely not to the idea of them together, which was…well, it was ludicrous!
The very definition of insanity.
If marrying a duke who puts butterflies in your belly is insane, a tiny, unwanted voice whispered slyly, then what does that make cleaning tables at a tavern?
“Shut up,” she muttered.
“What was that?” Warwick said mildly.
“Nothing.” Furious with her sudden inability to control her emotions, she whirled around to glare at the duke. All of this was his fault. If he’d just left well enough alone, if he’d left her alone, they wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t be there! Having all these terrible, traitorous thoughts about his hands on her body, and the shape of his smile, and how much she wanted to feel the weight of his mouth on hers again.
Her eyes widened.
No.
No, no, no.
That was not going to happen.
“I know what you’re doing,” she accused, jabbing her finger at him.
Swiveling in his chair, he set his arm on the back of it and rested his chin in the crook of his elbow. “And what is it that I’m doing, exactly?”
“You’re–you’re seducing me!”
His husky laugh caught her off guard. She watched warily as he uncoiled his long, rangy frame and approached the hearth, effectively trapping her between two sources of fire: his body and the flames.
“If I was going to seduce you,” he murmured, “I’d touch your face, like this.”
She sucked in a breath as he tenderly brushed his knuckles along the edge of her jaw before his hand moved to the back of her head, fingers sliding into her hair to lightly cup her skull.
“I’d hold your waist, like this.”
She trembled when his other hand fell to her hip.
“I’d pull you close, like this.”
She let a soft cry spill from her lips when he jerked her against his hard length.
“And after I did all that,” he said in a velvety whisper of wickedness that sent sizzling sparks of heat shooting all the way to the tips of her toes, “I’d tilt your head back, and tell you to close your eyes, and then I’d taste every inch of those luscious, delectable lips. That’s what I would do if I was going to seduce you.”
Her lashes fell to the top of her cheeks.
Her body quivered in anticipation.
She waited for his kiss…and waited…and–
“Are you going to do it or not?” she said irritably, blue eyes flashing open to discover his countenance was hovering above hers and his mouth was twisted in an insufferable smirk.
“Not until you ask me to,” he said. “Are you, Artemis? Asking me to kiss you, that is.”
Yes. A thousand times yes, you oblivious buffoon.
Teeth clenching, she gave a curt shake of her head. “Of course not.”
“Of course not,” he echoed. The hand on her hip tightened, then released all together as he stepped away. Raising two fingers to his brow in a mocking salute of the one she’d given him after she had climbed through the factory window, he said, “Whenever you change your mind, I’ll be here.”
Then he turned on his heel…and for the first time in their entire acquaintance, he left her.
Chapter Eleven
For the next three days, Warwick didn’t know whether his ploy had failed or succeeded. Artemis did her best to evade him at every turn, and as the estate had more rooms than a person could visit in a month, it wasn’t a difficult task.
He felt as if he were living with a ghost. Especially when he’d enter a room just after she’d left it, leaving her delicate perfume to linger in the air.
He wanted to pursue her.
God, did he want to pursue her.
Especially since he knew the precise location of her bedchamber, having been the one to select it for her.
But if there was a single thing he’d learned about Artemis since finding her again, it was that if he wanted to win her–and he did want to win her, more than he’d ever wanted anything else–he couldn’t do so through the use of blunt force.
You could catch a fox easily enough if you sent out the hounds and armed yourself with a pistol. But the fox’s beauty wasn’t in its death, it was in its life. And if he wanted Artemis without breaking that beautiful, willful spirit of hers, he needed her to come to him willingly.
No matter how long it took.
Except the problem with that was he only had three days left…and he was no closer to convincing her to marry him than he’d been when she first arrived. In fact, if her refusal to even so much as
dine with him was any indication, he was fairly certain they’d gone a few steps in the wrong direction.
And by a few steps, they might as well have been an ocean apart.
Which was why he was so surprised when, in the middle of the afternoon, a loud knock sounded on the door to his study and before he could reply with an invitation to enter, Artemis sauntered in.
“Hello,” she said, perching a hand on her hip.
“Hello,” he replied, his tone cautiously neutral as he rose from behind his desk. “Can I help you with something?”
“I’d like to go riding.”
“Riding?” he said, taken aback by the unexpected request.
“Yes, riding.”
“On a horse?”
She frowned. “Is there some other kind of riding I’m not aware of?”
He made a choked sound, and realized by the way the corners of her eyes crinkled that she was having her fun with him.
The minx.
“I’m sure that can be arranged.” Reaching behind him, he whisked his tailcoat off the back of his chair and shrugged into it. “I’ve been buried in ledgers for most of the morning, and could use a bit of exercise myself.”
Her hand fell off her hip. “If you’d just tell me what horse I can take, I’d prefer to go out by myself.”
“If we go together, there’s a waterfall I’d like to show you.”
She hesitated, and he could all but see the wheels turning in that clever mind of hers. “A waterfall?”
“Indeed. It’s quite spectacular. It’s also quite hidden. But if you’d rather ride by yourself–”
“No, no,” she said quickly, causing him to disguise his grin with a subtle cough. “I…I’d like to see the waterfall.” Her shoulders stiffened. “But I’m not wearing a riding habit. Or a dress, for that matter.”
Warwick lifted a brow. He knew that his fiancée’s unusual wardrobe choices had caused a stir with the staff, particularly Grieves, but for his part he’d rather come to enjoy her trousers and snugly fitting vests. It would have been nothing short of a crime to cover up all those curves with a skirt, and unlike Artemis, he’d always done his best to be a law-abiding citizen.
“Did I ask you to?” he said.
“No, I suppose not,” she admitted before a glint of suspicion entered her gaze. “Why haven’t you?”
“Because it is not my place to tell you how to dress. Shall we?” he said, gesturing at the door.
Still looking slightly dubious, as if she suspected him of plotting something but she couldn’t yet put her finger on what it was, Artemis nevertheless proceeded him out of the study.
Side by side, they made their way down to the stables.
“This isn’t a waterfall, it’s a puddle.” Spinning her mare in a circle, Artemis switched the reins to her left hand and used her right to point accusingly at Warwick. “I’ve seen grander displays when Mrs. Barnes tosses her husband’s dirty bathwater out the window.”
The duke shrugged. “I haven’t been here since I was a boy. I suppose it dried up when the stream was diverted to run through the middle of the sheep pasture.”
“What are you doing?” she asked when he drew his horse, a handsome bay with a star in the middle of its forehead, to a halt and swung his leg over the side of the saddle.
“Dismounting.” Flipping the reins over his horse’s head, Warwick led the placid gelding to a nearby tree and secured it to a low hanging branch. He’d brought them to a dappled grove at the edge of a meadow where–supposedly–there’d once been a waterfall. “We’ve ridden far enough that I’m sure they’d appreciate a rest. Mae and Northwind are solid horses, but I haven’t had the time to keep them in work and I’m afraid they’re not as fit as they should be.”
“Pray tell, what demanding dukely duties have kept you so preoccupied that you cannot even ride your own horses?” Artemis said, her tone dripping with sarcasm as she leapt off Mae and stroked the mare’s soft shoulder.
Warwick ducked his head underneath Mae’s neck. “I was busy chasing after my runaway fiancée. Where did you go, when you left your parents? And what the devil possessed you to end up in Seven Dials?”
Biting the inside of her cheek, Artemis ran up her leather stirrups and then led Mae over to join Warwick’s gelding in nibbling at the green grass poking up through a colorful blanket of autumn leaves. Crossing her arms, she leaned against the mare’s haunches as she regarded the duke with a pensive stare.
She’d never told anyone about the journey that had turned her from Lady Amelia into Artemis Bishop. At least not in any great detail. But for some inexplicable reason, she wanted to share her past with Warwick. It was, to put it mildly, an unnerving realization.
“Do you’ve anything in that?” she asked, nodded at the silver flask she’d seen peeking out from the inside pocket of his tailcoat when they’d first started out.
Silently Warwick unscrewed the top and handed her the flask, his expression unreadable as she tipped it to her lips and swallowed a mouthful of brandy. It burned her throat, but it was a pleasant sort of heat, not unlike the lick of flames that had danced across her skin when he had held her in his arms in the drawing room.
The drawing room.
Now that was a story she never had any plans to tell, given it had ended in her own humiliation.
Whenever you change your mind, I’ll be here.
If only he knew how close she’d been to taking him up on his offer! To begging–not asking, she’d been far past asking–him to kiss her. But it would have meant swallowing her pride and that…that she wouldn’t do. She couldn’t do. Which was why she’d avoided Warwick these past few days. For fear that if she saw him, she’d give in to this dark temptation swirling within her, fling herself against his chest, and demand he ravish her senseless.
“Artemis?” he said quietly.
“What?”
“Are you all right?”
He kept asking her that. Why did he keep asking her that? He didn’t care about her. Not really. No one did. It was why no one had come looking for her after she disappeared. Not her mother. Not her father. Not her so-called friends. No one.
But that wasn’t true, was it?
Because Warwick had spent three years looking for her.
And now he was looking at her with those cursed gray eyes of his, all smoke and sensuality and sin.
Doing her best not to squirm, Artemis walked to the waterfall, which was little more than a narrow stream splashing over smooth, shiny rocks. Warwick stepped up beside her and for a few minutes there was only the sounds of trickling water and chirping birds and the shallow, steady rasp of their breathing.
“I went to my aunt first,” she began. “I stayed there for nearly a week, but she was insistent that I return to my parents, and so I relied on the charity of a friend. The first mistake of many. By then you’d put out your advertisement offering a reward for any information leading to my return, and when my so-called friend threatened to turn me in, I ran from her as well.”
Artemis could tell Warwick was listening by the attentive tilt of his head, but was grateful he was mindful enough to maintain his silence as she continued on.
“I slept on the streets for a few nights, every day making my way further and further away from Grosvenor Square and everything and everyone that was familiar. When I finally found myself down to my last shilling, I gave up and hired a hackney to take me back. Instead he stole my money and abandoned me in the middle of Seven Dials.”
Warwick growled.
She flicked him a quick glance, startled to discover his hands were clenched into fists and his body was all but vibrating with tension.
“What was his name?” the duke asked flatly.
“Who? The driver?” She shook her head. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“I’ll kill him for putting you in danger like that.”
“It was three years ago. I’m sure–”
“It could have been thirty years ago,” he
snarled, “and I’d still want his head on a platter for what he did.”
The warmth that pooled in Artemis’s belly had nothing to do with the afternoon sunlight filtering through the branchy leaves above them and everything to do with the mask of rage that Warwick was wearing.
Why, he wanted to defend her.
If she wasn’t capable of defending herself, she would have been charmed. As it stood, she found herself voluntarily reaching out to place a hand on his arm. Their gazes met, and she smiled gently.
“As it turns out, that driver did me a favor. If he hadn’t abandoned me where he did, I never would have met Molly. She brought me in off the street. Clothed me, bathed me, gave me food to eat and a room to call my own. She also taught me a unique set of…skills that I used to repay her for her generosity.”
Warwick’s countenance went perfectly blank. “Artemis, I am not here to cast judgement. Any woman in your situation would have done the exact same thing. You’ve nothing to feel ashamed of.”
Her lashes fluttered. “What am I not supposed to be ashamed of, exactly?”
Color rose in his cheeks, the first and only time she’d ever seen him blush. All things considered, it made him look rather adorable. For a duke who had hunted her down like a wolf after a rabbit, bribed her to spend the week at his estate, and left her aching for his touch.
“You know,” he muttered, unable to meet her eyes.
“Oh, I really don’t,” she said gravely. “Why don’t you spell it out for me?”
Shifting his weight from one leg to the other, he raked a hand through his hair. “You sold your body for money. As I said, it’s nothing to feel–”
“I did not sell my body, I stole paintings. And jewelry. And the occasional piece of furniture.”
Warwick blinked. “You did what?”
Seducing the Siren of Seven Dials (Secret Wallflower Society Book 4) Page 7
