Beauty and the Rake

by Erica Monroe

  He tapped his foot against the floor. “Yes?”

  Mrs. O’Neal peered down her nose at him, her wire-rimmed spectacles slipping slightly, reminding him of when she’d scolded him as a child for sneaking another chocolate from the buffet table.

  She arched her brows at his glass of gin. So, what if it was ten in the morning? He didn’t need to be judged by his own servants, did he? He shrugged and motioned for her to continue.

  “Miss Voughteel is ready for you.” She puckered her lips, disapproval dripping from her like rain from the willow trees in his mother’s old garden. “She is in the library.”

  “Ah, very good.” He nodded. When his housekeeper made no move to depart, he regarded her skeptically. “Is there something else, Mrs. O’Neal?”

  “Sir,” Mrs. O’Neal began.

  Oh, he was going to regret asking. Every time Mrs. O’Neal called him “sir,” it was to shroud one of her notorious set-downs in the veneer of respectfulness.

  “I hope your intentions are…” Her lips compacted so firmly he half-wondered if she’d glued them shut. A full ten seconds went by, as she struggled to find the right term. “Moral, sir. I hope your intentions are moral. She’s just a young little thing.”

  He bristled, but he didn’t let his irritation show. He affixed on a smile, keeping his tone cordial. “Your favorite person asked me to take care of Miss Vautille.”

  Mrs. O’Neal perked up at the thought. “Mr. Knight?”

  Michael nodded. “Miss Vautille was friends with Knight’s wife at one time. You know how sentimental he can be.”

  “I’ll make sure she’s taken care of,” Mrs. O’Neal vowed. “Miss Voughteel was hurt. I think it’s good then you’ve brought her here.”

  “I’m pleased for your approval,” Michael said, though in truth he was more pleased he’d been able to head off one of Mrs. O’Neal’s famous lectures. He still remembered how she’d hollered at him for placing a frog in his governess’s bed.

  “And you know if you were more like Mr. Knight, you wouldn’t be without a wife,” she added.

  He suppressed a sigh, folding his hands together. “My intentions are not to wed her.”

  I’d like to bed her, but that’s it. I’ll teach her how to be a better lightskirt.

  “You should really consider it further.” Mrs. O’Neal turned on her heel, apparently considering her work done for the day.

  “I don’t want a wife,” Michael ground out, but she was already gone. He drained the last bit of gin from the glass and headed toward the library.

  8

  Michael found Abigail sprawled out upon the ivory chaise, her legs extended in front of her and her head resting on a plump pillow. For a minute, he stood behind one of the tall shelves, peeping out through a gap in the books. The last hints of afternoon sunlight streamed in through the big bay windows, casting golden glows across her pale skin.

  For once, she appeared serene. Her flaxen locks were brushed up in some sort of intricate bun. He liked this look on her, liked the way it accentuated her ethereal features. He could almost imagine her as a fairy flitting through the forest.

  He’d have to remember to thank Frances for donating her old gowns. Abigail had chosen the green dress, which had sea foam puffs of fabric on her upper arms, cascading into tight, long sleeves. Her wide emerald skirts hid an enticing view of her shapely legs—but he could just make out one ankle, encased in a creamy white stocking.

  God, she was a temptress. Her every luscious curve was etched into his memory.

  Mrs. O’Neal’s voice rang in his mind. I hope your intentions are moral. Quickly, he raised his glance from that sensual ankle to her face. Her skin was rosy from the bath. The smudges of dirt were scrubbed away, and with them the last remaining visages of a woman hardened by the streets. She could have been any diamond of the first water.

  Stepping out from behind the shelf, Michael rounded the corner. He took a seat in the chair across from her, not wanting to crowd her on the chaise. “Good morning.”

  “It is afternoon now,” she noted. “The clock chimed twelve a few minutes ago.”

  He liked that she corrected him. Her defiant streak intrigued him. “Good afternoon, then. What are you reading?”

  She held up the book: Candide. His father’s addition to the library, which meant it was the illustrated version and—

  His eyes widened. Oh hell, this wasn’t how he’d expected to introduce her to the joys of sex. He jumped up, reaching for the book. “That copy is not fit for a lady’s eyes.”

  Her jaw set. She held fast to the book. “Ah, yes, the illustrations. Those were quite interesting. Thankfully, I’m not a lady. If I’m going to be a doxy, I should know what I’m dealing with.”

  He grabbed for the book again, but she removed it from his range in the nick of time. “There are far better ways to go about this.”

  “But none of them have Voltaire,” she replied. “So, it’s got bare asses and a few tits. Nothing I have not seen before. Just because I’m a virgin doesn’t mean I’m completely ignorant.”

  Every muscle in his body screamed for him to climb atop her and demand she show him just how knowledgeable she was.

  She flipped another page. A mischievous smile toyed with her lips.

  If the pornographic pamphlet of Candide made her happy, then so be it. Who he was he to preach propriety? He settled back down in the chair, throwing his hands up to show defeat.

  “It’s not my book,” he clarified, because for some reason it mattered what she thought of him. “It belonged to my father.”

  “Then your father did two good things in his life,” she replied. “Leaving you this townhouse and keeping this splendid edition.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t agree with you there. Candide spends the whole book trying to be happy, only to decide he was happiest at the beginning with his mundane existence. It’s bloody ridiculous.”

  “Spoken like a man of privilege.” She grinned, the animosity from yesterday missing in her tone. “Of course, you wouldn’t understand Candide’s revelation, for you have been given all the creature comforts of life.”

  “I do work for a living,” he reminded her. “And I derive pleasure from that work. Still, I’m hard-pressed to find any true meaning in that lewd work.”

  “I think you’re being a literary elitist.” She grinned teasingly, and he leaned in closer, wishing he could capture those delicious lips with his own.

  All in due time. She’d agree to bed him before the week was out.

  “If you’ll pardon me for asking, but how do you even know about Candide?” He gestured to the various shelves in his library. “I didn’t think you had access to books like this in the factory. Every weaver I’ve ever had the misfortune of speaking to wants to tell me about silk.”

  He grimaced. Those were hours of his life he’d never get back.

  “I didn’t in the factories. But I’m resourceful. And I formed a lending library with my friends.” She flinched as she said “resourceful.” The movement was so slight he would have missed it if he hadn’t been watching her closely. She wasn’t telling him the whole truth.

  “You mean you stole books,” he observed.

  She floundered for a second. Her mouth opened and shut. But soon her customary control had returned, and she drew herself up, fixing him with a reproachful glare. “I prefer to think of it as liberating books.”

  He threw his head back, laughter booming out of him. Proud Abigail Vautille, with her radical speeches about class divide, was a thief! So much for her righteousness.

  She sniffed. “I don’t see what’s so funny.”

  When he was finally able to breathe again, he struggled to assume an officious air. “You know I could arrest you for that.”

  Her face paled. “You wouldn’t.”

  He let her flounder a bit longer before he smiled. “No, the image of you poring over a moldy old text whilst the rest of the neighborhood kids play ball is too delightful.
Arresting you would take all the fun out of it.”

  She released an audible sigh of relief. As he’d suspected, she did not rush to thank him.

  “So, tell me more about your book pilfering,” he said slyly.

  “That was when I was younger.” Running her hand down her thigh, she effectively directed his attention back to her shapely curves.

  Damn it. No. He had to remain focused.

  “So, when you were a child you read Candide?” Skepticism colored his voice.

  “Oh, no, that was through the BRLLS.” She spoke as though he ought to know exactly what she was referring to.

  He wracked his brain, but the acronym meant nothing to him. One more point for her. “I’m sorry, the what?”

  “The Baker’s Row Lending Library Society,” she explained with pride. “I formed it with four of my friends when we were kids. Basically, whatever books we could nick, we brought to the club and we’d all trade.”

  He’d heard of child thieves working in tandem, but never had he heard of them stealing books. “There are so many other more profitable things you could have filched. Why books?”

  “I should think it’d be obvious when you have a room like this.” Her gaze traveled the length of the library and back to him. “It’s not about the profit, but about the knowledge. I wanted to learn everything I could. Do you know how many girls born in Whitechapel get to move up in society?”

  “Given the current census, I’d estimate one out of every hundred and fifty born,” he guessed. “But that’s a generous approximation.”

  “I wasn’t going to be someone who worked in the factories forever.” Her fingers traced the engravings on the leather cover of Candide, wistfulness sweeping across her features. “So, I read everything I could get my hands on. Greek philosophies, folk lore, popular novels, even economic theories.”

  He nodded toward the right section of the library. “I’ve got an entire bookcase on different mathematical concepts, if you’d like to check those out.”

  She blanched. “I’m not much for numbers.”

  He placed his hand over his heart, gasping. “You are lucky, my lady, that I’m so compassionate. Otherwise, you’d have to listen to me lecture you for hours on the recent work of André-Michel Guerry to create a moral statistics map for crime.”

  Her hesitant smile affected him more than it should have. “I’d listen, if it was important to you.”

  He gulped. His body suddenly felt warm. It must be the afternoon sun. It could not possibly be that devilish twinkle in her eye, or the fact that she’d just volunteered to listen to him lecture on mathematics.

  No one wanted to listen to him lecture. The professors at Oxford hadn’t even taken him seriously until he’d solved the equation one of them had been struggling with for years. The fop has brains after all, they’d sneered.

  They could all go to the devil. He was an inspector of the Metropolitan Police, and he had a beautiful woman hanging on his words. He’d save the discussion of mathematics for a later date. He didn’t want to risk that she’d no longer be interested in what he had to say.

  “While the math is fascinating, I won’t bore you.” He’d deflect her to another topic, one he found far less scintillating. “Why Candide, then?”

  “I believe that the world is fundamentally flawed,” she said. “I’m a Whitechapel girl. Few people care about our existence. I used to think if I smoothed out my voice so that I sounded like the toffs, and read the proper books, I’d succeed.”

  Well, that explained her accent, at least. He leaned forward, sensing she had more to say.

  “But no matter what steps I took in the past, I’ve still ended up here. Perhaps you cannot circumvent fate by trying to find a better existence. Perhaps all that you are is exactly what’s on the surface.”

  He doubted that, when everything he learned about Abigail defied his previous assumptions. She was more than she appeared; more than he’d ever given her credit for in the past. The girl underneath the surface stunned him—her strength, her wisdom.

  “I suppose so,” he said weakly, for he did not want to dignify this new rush of feeling.

  She shrugged. “I have started to think that if I’m ever to survive, it will be because I focused on my own life—I cared for me and my own above the greater good.”

  “You will have learned to cultivate your garden,” he offered wryly.

  She nodded. “Precisely. There’s no one else who will protect me, but me.”

  And me. He couldn’t afford to make her any more promises—not now, not ever. Yes, she was here at present. Until his men caught Clowes, he’d take care of her. But that was all. He couldn’t commit to her for longer than that.

  He should leave her to her reading. Summon some foot patrollers to guard her while he went to the station house for an update on the search. Until she made her decision, she was effectively forbidden to him. He’d promised to respect her. Damn it, for the first time in his life he was going to let a woman come to him.

  Yet he was reluctant to part from her company. She intrigued him, with her strange taste in books and her fiery responses.

  “You said you had a sister, correct?” He asked.

  She looked up, suspicion splashed across her face. “Yes, why?”

  He flagged her reaction as something to scrutinize later. Did she distrust him so much that a simple question into her family made her think he was up to no good? He pushed away his natural inclination to pry further into her motives. This was not an interrogation, and he needn’t treat her as though she was across the table from him on Wood Street. He had not been with the Met so long that he couldn’t have a simple conversation.

  Or at least he hoped not.

  “It is something we have in common,” he said. “You already know of my elder sister, Frances. She’s thirty-two and convinced she knows best in every situation.”

  Abigail smiled. “My sister is nine and also convinced she has the way of the world figured out.”

  He leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other. “Is she often right? Because Frances never is. She’s a bloody badger, really, always prying into my business and judging me for how I live my life.”

  “I should not like to live with someone like that,” Abigail mused. “Granted, my sister is far younger than yours, but she is the best friend I’ve got. I’d do anything for her.”

  Anything, including spending two weeks with you. She didn’t say it, but the sentiment hung in the air between them, stifling their attempts at polite conversation.

  Abigail clasped her hands together neatly, her gaze focused on her lap. “Bess is impossibly smart. I’d let her handle the household budget, if I didn’t think she’d turn half of the money over to Papa.”

  “Ah.” He suspected she wouldn’t appreciate his actual opinion on her spendthrift father, so he simply nodded. “When Frances married Lord Elliot, all I could think of was how happy I was to get her out of the house. When our father passed earlier this year, I thought Frances and I might go to war over his will.”

  Abigail pondered this. “There is such a thing as too much family togetherness. I imagine Lady Elliot was pleased to make such an advantageous marriage.”

  “Well, she better be, for how firmly on the shelf she was.” He spoke without thinking, immediately regretting his assessment when Abigail’s nose wrinkled. “Er, that is, let me explain something about my sister. She is, for all intents and purposes, a dreadful human being.”

  “But she’s still your sister,” Abigail pointed out.

  “I don’t believe that being family excuses one’s bad behavior.” He picked up Candide from the table, flicking through the pages absentmindedly. “My father was a rotter, my mother was mad, and my sister is a shrew. There you have the entire Strickland line.”

  Her mouth fell open. She’d shocked him earlier with her openness. It was only fair he do the same.

  “Elliot is a baron, but you’d think he was the king for how he c
onducts himself,” he continued. “I’ll never understand what he saw in Frances. Perhaps he recognized a similar autocratic vein in her, or perhaps he simply realized she could make his servants just as despondent as he did.”

  “It was not a love match then, I see,” Abigail said.

  He shrugged, as nonchalant as she had been about the illustrations. “Money changed hands, as it usually does. Frances is happy, in her own miserable way. I don’t intend to marry, so the Strickland family name shall end with me.”

  “Now who is the pessimist?” she teased, the laughter not reaching her eyes as it had before.

  She’d made it clear she didn’t find him attractive. But she was a chit, and he’d never met a woman that didn’t take a man’s declaration of bachelorhood as an insult. He debated saying that if he were to marry, he’d want a woman like her. He pushed those thoughts aside, knowing they were foolish.

  “My parents married for love,” she recalled wistfully. “And for a while I think they were very much enamored. When my mother died giving birth to Bess, my father died too. Not his physical form, mind you, but his spirit.”

  Impulsively, he stretched his hand across the table, taking her small palm in his and clasping it for a second. “I’m sorry that happened to you. It’s hard enough to lose one parent, let alone two.”

  She did not speak. She held his hand. Timid at first, as if she was not sure she should be touching him at all, but then her grip became firm.

  It was the simplest gesture. Their bare skin did not touch. Her glove was cool against his smooth palm. He had never been one for handholding, finding it too affectionate. It implied an intimate connection he neither felt nor desired to pantomime.

  Rarely did he engage in any form of physical contact that did not have the result of sex; foreplay was admissible because it heightened the experience.

  Yet something about this seemed right. He could not explain the sensation, for it had no logic to it. He did not push the connection further. He shouldn’t even have reached for her hand.