Beauty and the Rake

by Erica Monroe

  All there was between them was a future of broken promises and complications. She deserved to be worshipped by a man who could commit to her. A man who’d want her for a wife, not a mistress, because he was steady and capable of seeing things in long-term relationships. Though he knew he could never be that man, for his life was a strange mix of bureaucracy and intrigue, he didn’t break away from her.

  He remained when he knew he should run because the grip had turned from the comfort of a second to something more unwieldy and harder to define. For a second—maybe a minute, he lost track of time as everything seemed to slow—they sat there like this, him leaning toward her, their hands joined over the coffee table.

  Abigail's gaze flicked to their united hands. She couldn't deny the tumbling of her stomach when he'd reached over the table and slid his palm on top of hers. Couldn't pretend that she was unaffected by the sweetness of it. His proposal to school her became more tempting, simply because it meant more time with him in this wonderful room.

  She breathed in. This must be what heaven smelled like: musty books and leather furniture. A handsome man.

  The old book stalls in the Crispin Street markets paled in comparison to Michael’s library. Floor-to-ceiling shelves of solid oak spanned most of the room. Each shelving unit created a separate haven for her to hide behind. A place to tryst. A fantasy.

  She could live a million lives in the pages of these books, untouched by the cruelness of the outside world.

  Her gaze darted to the copy of Candide on the table below their linked hands. At least three of those million lives she’d share with Michael. The circumstances would be different, of course. They’d be equals, partners forged in the fires of passion and kept lit by their dueling intellects.

  She ought to remember who she was. Tend to her own garden, instead of imagining pretend romances with a man she’d just met. She’d no use for fanciful notions. If she kept to her plan, she’d be able to earn enough money that Bess could have a secure future.

  She dared to look at his face. His eyes were closed. Her gaze darted to his mouth, half-open, begging to be nipped. A boy at the factory had kissed her like that once, but she’d felt little apart from initial confusion.

  With Michael though, she sensed it’d be marvelous—that he’d know what to do. Heat swarmed her body, unwelcome and unwanted, just from their connected hands. Dangerous, how he affected her. Dangerous and daunting.

  She could no more pull her hand from his than she could deny the salacious turn to her thoughts. He was a hero to her now, giving her the gift of deciding when she’d tear out the last stitches of her old life and become the wicked Beauty.

  The night before, if he’d chosen instead to take what she’d volunteered out of duty and desperation, would they still be sitting so calmly like this? Or would everything have become irreparably altered?

  Michael hadn’t moved. His breathing was even. While her heart flapped against her chest like the wings of the devilish birds that morning, he seemed perfectly happy to sit in silence with her.

  She doubted he thought of her as anything more than a charity case. She ought to tell him now that she wanted only to learn from him. Nothing else. But instead, she lingered in this moment. Pretended that she had all the time in the world to decide, that another course of action would appear before her.

  His blue eyes opened. A lopsided smile cracked the perfect symmetry of his face. Slowly, as though he had all the time in the world to spend with her, he ran his thumb against the bridge of her forefinger.

  She was—God help her—content.

  His finger to her brow had scorched her skin before. But this, his thumb dragging against her palm in the softest glide, marked her. It said that she was his, for two weeks at least. He'd laid claim not to her body, but to her soul.

  This unspoken understanding between them, forged from their similarly irrational families, was far more treacherous than if he'd simply bedded her. She didn't want his comprehension. Didn't want him to see the parts of her she kept hidden from the world, for that would make her vulnerable.

  She dragged her hand from his and moved so was she sitting upon her offending limbs. There, no more temptation. She ignored the answering pang within her.

  She hadn’t come here to fancy him. Any physical contact between them needed to be in line with her plans. She’d sell the illusion of love, not the real thing—in these close moments with Michael, she feared it was all too genuine. She couldn’t attempt to seduce him under these conditions.

  Michael watched her, his brow arched. He did not speak. The silence closed in upon her. So, she fidgeted, hummed a little ditty. She did everything that would create noise because she could not bear the nearness that came with this quiet. The intimacy would leave too dark a stain upon her soul.

  With Clowes loose, she needed to summon her strength. She'd hold fast to those dark places in her mind and allow the rage to encompass her as it had since that awful night. She'd been a victim then, weakened by her loyalty to Poppy. But now Abigail had no allegiance to anyone but Bess. Not to Strickland, not to her father, and certainly not to the bitch who had ruined her life by her insistence on poking her nose in places where it didn't belong.

  Michael cleared his throat. He'd settled back against the cushions of his chair, and now watched her for signs of acquiescence to their new friendship. She assumed the sourest expression she could manage. A deep-set scowl, lines rutted into her forehead. She was a warrior, damn it, and she wasn’t so easily cajoled.

  “When my mother died, I told myself I wouldn't believe in love,” she said briskly. “Love is a foolish notion for poets. There is a fine line between madness and bliss, and I intend to stay on the right side of it.”

  Darkness passed over Michael’s face, an oppressive melancholy that emanated off him in waves. He sat with his shoulders hunched, his hands gripping the armrests of the chair as though they were lifeboats in a troubled sea. The quickness of his transformation threw her, forcefulness in his expression when before there had been empathy.

  My father was a rotter, my mother was mad.

  The memory of his words crashed into her. She’d meant to put up her own defenses, not strike an arrow into his heart.

  She rubbed her thumb across her palm, tracing where he’d touched before, her mind racing. “Micha—Inspector Strickland?” She shouldn’t use his name, not when she’d offended him.

  His livid eyes set upon her, robbing her of breath for a second. How callous she’d been—how callous she’d continue to be, if she didn’t apologize. So surrounded by her own grief, she’d ignored his pain.

  A part of her questioned why she should even care. Once the two weeks were done, he’d be gone from her life. The memories would be locked away in the recesses of her mind. She’d have to be coy, seductive, and able to convince wealthy men she wanted only them.

  But for now, she could choose her own course. Abigail clasped her hands in her lap, drew herself up to her full height, and faced Michael’s irate gaze.

  “I’m sorry.” The emotion in her voice rang out. “I spoke without thought and in doing so I cast a shade upon your mother’s memory. I meant only to say that I wished my father had loved my own mother less, so that he might have taken her death better. Were his heart not so lost, I doubt I’d be here now.”

  His hands relaxed. Slowly, he flattened his palms. She watched him closely for any signs that he’d forgiven her heedlessness. His nostrils no longer flared. Yet the shadow across his features remained.

  “What a pair we are,” he remarked dryly. “Both victims of our families.”

  She didn’t want to be a victim any longer. She wanted to live. But how could she be anything but broken? She’d forgotten how to exist normally.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated, quieter this time. No longer was she sure to whom she was apologizing: him, his mother’s specter, Bess, Papa, or even herself.

  “Nothing to be sorry for.” He shrugged, the movement lacking his
usual fluidity. “I am not some namby-pamby weakling, prone to fainting spells simply because you referenced my mother’s malady.”

  “I didn’t think you were, but I’d suppose it’s difficult to speak of,” she hedged, not buying his show of indifference.

  “It is nothing,” he insisted. “Why must you women always insist on examining your emotions? When you all retreat to the drawing room after dinner, I’m certain it is to flatter and braid each other’s hair.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she snapped, prickling at his inference. “I’ve never been to a formal dinner party.”

  “I assure you, you aren’t missing anything,” he said without remorse. “Four courses of the most uncomfortable conversations you’ll ever have, all in the name of God, country, and that bastard etiquette.”

  She widened her eyes, blinking up at him innocently. “Why, if I wanted uncomfortable conversation, I’d just spend the night with you.”

  He snorted. “The lady doth wound.”

  She smirked. “I speak the truth.”

  Trading barbs with him was easier than the tenderness they’d shared before. She knew the power of a backhanded compliment: the last ten years with Papa had taught her the effectiveness of manipulative passiveness.

  “You called me inspector before, and every time you address me like that, I feel four times my age. A man doesn’t want to be professional in his own home.” A sly grin toyed with his lips. “With an insult like that, my dear, I think we can now consider each other friends, or as friendly as two society wankers pretend to be.”

  “Very well, I’ll make a concerted effort to think of you as Michael.” He needn’t know she’d already taken to doing so. His name felt good on her tongue, more than it should.

  He scraped the pad of his thumb across the shadow of stubble on his chin, reminding her how he’d looked in the hell. So cocksure, certain he’d charm all he encountered.

  She brushed at an imaginary wrinkle in the fabric of her borrowed skirt. God, he’d worked his magic on her, just as he did on everyone else. He’d enchanted her with books and sweet buns and now his every word enspelled her.

  He crossed one long leg over the other, his arm lackadaisically hanging over the edge of the chair. “You know, your sentiment was cruelly constructed, but apt.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “I believe it was my father who drove my mother mad.”

  “There is no history in your family of mental incapacity?” She congratulated herself for that erudite turn of phrase. “Mental incapacity” sounded so much more polite than “as crazed as a syphilitic drab.”

  He barked out a hollow laugh. “When Father was alive, he loved to recount to a captive audience how my grandfather disguised my mother’s madness with a particularly large dowry. Father swore Mother’s lineage traced back to Anne Boleyn, and we all know she was mad as a March hare.”

  “At least you’re related to a past queen?” She tried to look at the positive. Her own Huguenot ancestors had stowed away on a freighter and ended up as penniless weavers.

  Michael rolled his eyes. “There’s no truth to the Old Bastard’s ranting. Mother was perfectly sane when she met my father. He destroyed her, through inattention and flagrant disregard for her feelings. I wasn’t but four when I found him in bed with a Drury Lane vestal.”

  She recoiled, falling back against the cushions of the sofa. “Your poor mother! He was married.”

  “How old-fashioned of you, Abigail,” he remarked drolly. “Men often take mistresses in marriage. It was not the infidelity that concerned my mother, but his lack of discretion in conducting his affairs.”

  Abigail frowned. “I don’t imagine he was an easy person to live with.” For all of Papa’s sins, at least he had been faithful to her mother.

  “Frances and I didn’t call him the Old Bastard for nothing.” Michael picked up Candide, holding the book sideways and eying the illustration. His smirk widened. “Fancy that pose.”

  She schooled her features into an expression of boredom, so he’d return to point.

  “Ah, yes,” he said absently. “Father worked for the Night Watch. Thought he was doing the King’s work, when in reality he was a prick with a billystick and a need for control.”

  She bit back a retort about how the new Met was no different from his description. She didn’t want to insult him, not now. “Yet you still joined the Met.”

  His hand paused mid-flip of a page. His grin faltered. “It’s just a job, Abigail, what I do. It pays the bills.”

  She’d touched a sensitive subject for him. “Still can’t be easy to live in the shadow of your father.”

  “He was a scaly nigit. I don’t care that he had affairs, but I resent the way he treated my mother.”

  “You truly don’t care that he was unfaithful?”

  “Of course not. I expected you to be a bit more open-minded in your ideals.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Because of why I’m here?”

  He shifted in the chair, not meeting her eyes. “No, I simply meant because of your past in the factories.”

  She hadn’t expected such a judgment from him. Oh, she’d heard it all before: the religious fanatics reported that women who worked in factories not only took to drink quickly, but also were liberal with their affections. Until Clowes stripped her of her dignity, she’d prided herself on being different from that label.

  Pushing herself up from the couch, she moved away from the table. Only when she was several paces away did she spin back around, facing him with her hands planted on her hips. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a royal arse, Michael?”

  “Often, actually.” His long strides brought him next to her.

  She stiffened, preparing to flee in case he should try to touch her. But he simply loomed next to her, the woodsy scent of him flooding her nostrils.

  He undid the buttons of his coat, winding his thumbs in the waistband of his trousers. “Perhaps we don’t assume things about each other then. I’ve never enjoyed people categorizing me prior to making my acquaintance.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I’d prefer for your impression of me to be formed by our experiences together and not the words of others.” He extended his hand to her in a sweeping motion. “I promise to only allow my opinion of you to be colored by what you tell me, if you’ll do the same.”

  Damn him. Even his grovels were smooth. She retreated from him, setting back her shoulders.

  She nodded briskly but did not take his hand. “To a blank slate.”

  9

  Two days passed. It was the fifth day of Abigail’s stay with him. He’d heard from one of his sergeants that Clowes had been located in St. Giles by an informant. His men were monitoring the area for further activity, but if Clowes was truly in West London, that was hopeful. The farther away he was from Abigail, the better.

  He glanced at the clock. Twelve in the afternoon was at least a reasonable hour, unlike the early mornings he’d been keeping since Abigail arrived. He used to sleep through breakfast, for he usually went out to the hells after his shift with the Met. But with Abigail here, he awoke at nine to eat with her. She spent the afternoon in the library, while he went to his office to process the morning reports dropped off by his sergeants. They’d reconvene in the evening for dinner.

  As he pulled on his greatcoat and did up the buttons, he marveled at the ease at which she'd slipped into his life. He should have found her company tiresome.

  Yet the hours spent with her in the parlor after dinner passed in mere seconds. They talked about their mutually foolish families, the strange cases he'd investigated during his time as a sergeant, and the time she'd spent in the factory. He loved it most when she'd describe the books she read to him, for only then did her eyes sparkle. Her joy was infectious; he found himself smiling too, for no other reason than her happiness.

  When the clock struck midnight each night, he was reluctant to part from her. He wanted one more smile
, one more scathing remark, one more laugh from her.

  Last night, he'd lingered too long with her hand in his. He'd kissed her gloved hand, as was customary, but he had not withdrawn his grip afterwards. The scant space between them had crackled with restless energy.

  His gaze had centered on her bow-shaped mouth. Those plush, sweet lips he ached to draw between his teeth. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. He'd edged closer to her. Just as he'd been about to kiss her, she'd dashed away.

  He'd been left as cold as the snow falling outside on this frigid October day. As he scooted the curtain back from the window to survey the garden, he remembered another early snowstorm, when he'd been a lad of six years. At four years his senior, Frances had considered herself far too advanced to play with him. But on this day, she'd been in a rare good temperament, constructing a fort with him out of the snow.

  Hopefully, the winter storm would bring forth a similar agreeableness in Abigail. Michael tugged his hat onto his head and wound a wool scarf around his neck. Sheepskin-lined boots encased his feet. He had everything he needed for a walk out in the garden. Everything but her.

  He’d invited her to come with him, but she was late.

  Mrs. O'Neal and Smithers appeared, both looking too pleased with themselves. Michael mouthed a question, but they didn’t answer. They parted to opposite sides of the hall. The door opened.

  Now he understood why his servants were so smug. Silhouetted in the doorway, her maroon cloak adorned with white fur pulled up over her head, Abigail glowed.

  He didn't move toward her. Rather, he waited by the window, watching as she came toward him. The cloak billowed out from her, showcasing the svelte lines of her rose-pink dress with the matching maroon bodice.

  She must have felt his gaze upon her, for her cherubic cheeks pinked. God, her maidenly blush made his cock twitch to life. She stirred something primal in him. All he could think of was that he wanted to be the first—the only—to see that innocence alter into the lush crimson of a well-pleasured woman.