And he had not just enjoyed it, but he had reveled in it. The softness of her lips beneath his, the way she had responded to him, and the beauty of her surrender had all undone him. He’d gone mindless with the need to claim her. To kiss her with such ruthless abandon that his mark would forever be upon her memory and her mouth both.
She made a lusty sound of unabashed pleasure, and he gritted his teeth with greater force, trying to ignore the dart of her pink tongue over her full lower lip. Trying not to recall the sweet, tentative tide of that tongue against his.
Beelzebub’s bottom, he had to think of something else. Anything else. To distract himself before he spoilt the perfect opportunity for revenge that had been all but delivered to him on a silver salver.
“I now understand why so many gentlemen flock to your club, Mr. Kirkwood,” she said when she had swallowed the bite of moist, buttery perfection he knew Lavoisier’s Charlotte to be. “The culinary mastery of your chef, despite his penchant for berating your patrons, is unparalleled.”
He seized upon her words as the distraction he required, frowning at her. “My chef does not berate my patrons, madam. Do not put that in your book, else I shall become an object of supreme ridicule.”
Her eyes glittered, a saucy smirk flirting with the corners of the mouth he could not help but want to kiss again. “I cannot fathom you being the object of anyone’s ridicule, Mr. Kirkwood.”
A strange thing happened to him. Warmth—nay, a bloody inferno—blossomed in his chest, in his gut, in his cheeks. He prickled with it. Blazed with it. He, who had for so long been lusted after and chased by females for the power he wielded or the pleasure he could bring them, experienced a novel sensation. He was flattered. He wanted to preen beneath her intelligent gaze. He had impressed a duke’s daughter, and not just any duke’s daughter but one who was lively, witty, intelligent, and beautiful.
Trouble, a voice inside nettled him. She is trouble.
He ought to send her on her way. Two more such evenings were all he had agreed to, and if he had half the wits he’d been born into the rookeries with, he would have sent her home the moment he had learned her identity.
Instead, he found himself falling beneath her spell. In this moment with the din of his club beyond them and no one to interrupt, in the place he loved best, he felt at home. Having her in his zealously guarded space should have made him eager to be rid of her. Instead, his mind was swiftly inventing more reasons to keep her precisely where she was, eating Lavoisier’s damned Charlotte with more pleasure than the most seasoned courtesan showed her lover.
“I have been the object of not just ridicule but scorn, hatred, disgust, and worse more times than I have fingers and toes, my lady,” he told her solemnly, and it was the truth.
Though he may currently preside over the most sought-after club in London, he had been born the bastard son of a Covent Garden whore. He had been beaten. Tossed into prison. Spit upon. He had been derided and scorned and mocked. He had schooled himself on everything he knew. He was not ashamed of his past, but it made him wary. It made him aware how very fleeting everything in life was. Every candle sputtered out at some point.
“I am sorry, Mr. Kirkwood,” Lady Frederica said with genuine feeling. “No one should have to endure such awful treatment.”
He studied her, searching for pity and finding only empathy. His shoulders relaxed. He rolled them once. Twice. “It is the way of this world, Lady Frederica. Some men are born to great privilege, and others to great suffering. I was the latter, but I have fashioned myself into the former. Your Charlotte grows cold.”
In truth, he wanted to watch her enjoy it. He had never supposed the sight of a woman reveling in a sweet would be erotic. Especially not an innocent like Lady Frederica. He had always harbored a fondness for the forbidden, but she was different. She was not just forbidden but wrong. A grievous lapse in judgment for which he could never forgive himself.
One he wanted more with each moment he spent in her presence.
Ever a fool, it seemed.
“Who dared to scorn you?” she asked instead of taking another bite of the delicacy before her.
A frown furrowed her brows, and despite her gentleman’s attire, he could picture her as an avenging goddess, bearing down upon the ghosts of his past. What the devil? When had he become so fanciful?
“I am the bastard son of a duke, my lady, and my mother was a Covent Garden whore before her death.” He forced himself to state the undeniable facts with a coolness he did not feel. He had loved his mother. She alone, in turn, had loved him.
Her loss had devastated him, and that, too, he laid at the door of the Duke of Amberly. Yet another sin among a myriad of them. “Everyone dared to scorn me, for I was nothing and no one. I was an urchin, a pickpocket, a thief. I stole for my supper. My mother lifted her skirts for the right amount of coin. The man who sired me will not speak to me or look upon me to this day, not even when I begged him as a motherless lad with an empty belly. Trust me, my lady, when I say I committed sins that would make you scorn me as well.”
She did not appear shocked or disgusted as he had imagined she may. Instead, her frown deepened, her lustrous eyes intent upon him. “You love your mother.”
Of all the observations she could have made, this one struck him like a physical blow as no other could. His mother’s memory was the one part of him that remained untarnished and true. He swallowed hard, recalling her end, how she had died as she’d lived, with a man’s hands around her throat. Duncan had found her, silent and still and cold, so cold to the touch, her eyes open wide. He had been just a lad then, not yet nine years of age, and he had been desperate for her to blink. To prove a sign of life.
Blink, Mama.
Please, Mama.
Blink.
Long after that horrible day, he could still hear the echoes of his childish screams, could still feel the panic swelling in his chest, making his heart heavy. Rendering it difficult to breathe. No child should have to see his mother’s corpse. But he had. And he would not forget.
He would gain his vengeance upon the Duke of Amberly. Retribution was all he had left.
“I…loved her,” he admitted thickly, uncertain why he would unburden himself to this troublesome interloper. “She was a good woman. Flawed and imperfect but nonetheless good. She deserved better than the life she was given.”
Better than the life she had been left to suffer, begging for coin from men who would abuse her so she could fill Duncan’s belly with bread. Meanwhile, the man who’d sired him had possessed enough gold to buy and sell half of London, and yet he had not offered Duncan’s mother a single ha’penny. Instead, the bastard had wasted his fortune at the tables, so greedy he had been convinced another flipped card, another wager, another roll of the dice would make him richer still.
His avarice had led him to penury where he belonged.
Until the Duke of Westlake had bought Amberly’s debts.
But that was where Westlake’s daughter, seated so trustingly opposite Duncan in her foolish attempt at masquerading as a gentleman, came into the scene, fortuitously enough. It all rather had the makings of a Shakespearean tragedy, even he had to admit. For she did not realize she was a plump hen dining in the company of a fox.
And she was looking upon him now with… Christ, what had he been thinking, kissing her as he had? She was looking at him now as if he were someone dear to her. As if she cared.
Impossible.
Ladies of the quality did not care for men like him. They used him. They allowed him to pleasure their bodies because it suited their need for the forbidden, much in the same way his use of them sated his desire for that which would forever remain beyond his reach.
“I am sorry, Mr. Kirkwood,” she said softly. “It was not my intention to cause you distress.”
How easily she could read him. He, who had bluffed his way through a thousand card games. What was it about this maddening woman that undid him? He was not a soft man, no
t given to sentiment or emotion. Indeed, he had fashioned himself into the man he was today a long time ago, a man incapable of feeling. A man who wore black, who forged his own way, who knew no weakness. “No need to apologize, my lady. Distress is for those capable of feeling emotion. Fortunately, I am not so cursed.”
“Or so you would have yourself believe.”
Her soft castigation nettled him. He stood. The moment was over. Their interlude was at an end. He had not felt so disturbed in a long time, and he did not like the way she shifted everything inside him, like an earthquake and then a hundred tiny tremors, reminding him his life could be upended at any moment. That he was not the one in control.
“Have you finished with your dessert, madam?” he asked coolly, careful to keep his expression and his tone equally neutral. He did not wish to show her how deeply she affected him.
What was it about Lady Frederica Isling that so undid him? She was his means for revenge, the final brushstroke in his masterpiece of vengeance, and yet he could not stop making one foolish decision after the next. He had given in to her demands to conduct research at his club, had even gone out of his way to ascertain her safety and wellbeing, and then he had thoroughly ruined it by compromising her. How could he make demands of Westlake, knowing how thoroughly he had kissed and touched the man’s innocent daughter? Knowing he had introduced her to pleasures of the flesh, to sins the likes of which her carefully cultivated mind would never have even dreamt, let alone known.
“You are eager to be rid of me now,” she observed in that uncanny manner she possessed, not rising from her seat.
He had never seen anything like it. “You must be delivered safely home before you are discovered to be missing from your chamber,” he said calmly, as if he was driven by common sense alone and not by his mad need to remove himself from her bewitching presence.
“I have made you uncomfortable.” She stood at last.
How odd it suddenly seemed to see her fully dressed in her gentleman’s clothes when he knew she was as female as could be. For some inexplicable reason, he longed to see her in a dress. To see her as herself, stripped of all her disguises. To see Lady Frederica Isling. Lord God, he had no doubt she would be an incomparable if he ever chanced to see her in a gown. Her beauty was undeniable. Even through her silly adornments, he could still see her.
“On the contrary,” he lied, because she had once again spoken the truth. Damnation, the woman could dissect him. What was it about her, a mere slip of a girl, an innocent, a virgin, the daughter of a duke? “I am merely busy, tasked with a myriad of duties this evening related to the running of my club. You may consider yourself fortunate I have allowed your intrusion this evening at all, Lady Frederica.”
But she is also a lady who possesses more daring and bravado than anyone you know. The voice intruded upon his thoughts when he least expected it. And damnation, the voice was correct.
Her shoulders stiffened, her chin lifting. Here was her pride, coming into action. “Of course, Mr. Kirkwood. Thank you for your… generosity this evening. I could not have managed to conduct so much research without your assistance.”
He should tell her she could not return on the morrow. He already had what he wanted. There was no need to prolong this madness. No need at all.
Except that which burned inside him, a flame kindled into a raging fire.
“Until tomorrow,” he told her, because he could not bear to say farewell.
Chapter Eight
Although Frederica expected Mr. Kirkwood to be waiting for her in the carriage the next evening at the appointed time, she had been thoroughly dismayed to find it empty. The short ride to his club had seemed interminable, her mind whirling with explanations for his absence. None satisfied her.
His defection after the heated kisses they had shared yesterday, after his revelations over dinner—when the mask he wore slipped to reveal the man beneath—left her particularly cold. She had returned home the previous evening, and she had written until her candles sputtered out and her fingers were ink stained.
To her surprise, the story had taken an unforeseen turn, and she realized the baron must be the villain. It seemed undeniable to her now, and she could not understand why she had envisioned it any differently. The Silent Baron was not the tale of a gentleman led astray, but of a flawed man struggling to find redemption.
As she made her way into his club, she reasoned their paths would necessarily cross here. Who else would hover over her like a mother hen at the nest? But she was likewise disappointed when she arrived at The Duke’s Bastard and his man of business, instead of Mr. Kirkwood himself, met her with a bow and a frown.
“Lord Blanden,” he greeted solemnly.
The man bore no expression, and yet he exuded an undeniable aura of disapproval. She could not help but wonder if he had suspected anything was amiss the day before when he had interrupted her interlude with Mr. Kirkwood. Heat scalded her cheeks and made her ears prickle. Interlude was such a tame, inappropriate word for what had occurred between herself and the gaming hell owner.
A man who mere days before had been a stranger. A man who now seemed hopelessly familiar. A man who was nowhere to be found. Who had brushed her off to the care of his staff members as if she were nothing more than a bothersome burden who must be shuffled from one person to another.
“Mr. Hazlitt,” she acknowledged stiffly, trying to hide her displeasure over Mr. Kirkwood’s glaring absence. Had she probed too deeply? Pushed him too far? He seemed a private man, a smoldering mystery wrapped in black.
She told herself she should be relieved. After all, he was also a wicked man, to be sure. His club was a haven for sin. He hosted and encouraged all manner of depravities, the likes of which she had never known existed. He ruined men to fill his own coffers.
Spending any more time in the man’s presence would be ruinous. She had already proven herself quite the hoyden, begging for his kiss. Her face went hotter, misery multiplying until it threatened to drown her.
“Mr. Kirkwood has directed me to bring you to his office,” Hazlitt said, intruding upon her thoughts. “Unfortunately, he is otherwise occupied at the moment. You may await him there, however. Will you follow me, my lord?”
Was it her wild imagination at work, or did Mr. Hazlitt just emphasize his form of address, as if to suggest he knew it was false? She swallowed the lump of disenchantment in her throat and nodded once. “Lead the way, Mr. Hazlitt.”
Through the antechamber they traveled, Mr. Hazlitt’s steps measured and brisk. Although her legs were long, her escort’s were longer, and she struggled to keep pace as he led her through the series of well-disguised halls that led to Mr. Kirkwood’s office. They entered in silence, and Frederica could not shake the sensation she was intruding. How strange it was to stand in a chamber that was so much Mr. Kirkwood—it even smelled of him, for heaven’s sake, and yet for him to not be in it.
“Will you require supper?” Mr. Hazlitt asked coolly.
She eyed him over the rim of her spectacles, rendering him crisp and forbidding rather than blurred and frowning. “Do you dislike me, Mr. Hazlitt?”
His lip curled. “I dislike trouble.”
He knew she was not a gentleman, then. The momentary thaw in his rigid expression was just the revelation she required.
She raised a brow, for the wallflower she was had been replaced with a different person entirely. In her disguise, she was free to do and say and act as she wished. If only it wasn’t fleeting, her precious liberty, slipping away far too quickly. “Trouble, sir? You would dare to refer to a peer of the realm as trouble?”
The disdain on his countenance only heightened. “You ain’t a peer of the realm, my lord. You’re a cockish wench if I ever saw one, and I’ve seen many in my day. You may have Mr. Kirkwood under your spell, but I’m not going to allow you to lead him or this club into bad bread.”
Bad bread?
She was not certain she understood Mr. Hazlitt’s rude manner of
speech, and she wished in that moment to record it lest she forget. Such speech could lend an air of realism to her characters.
Oh, dear. There she went again, worrying about The Silent Baron. Poor Mr. Hazlitt seemed to be anticipating a response. How easy it was to get caught up within her mind and story, rather akin to being trapped in a plethora of ivy vines.
What had he called her? Cockish wench? Dreadful. Her cheeks went hotter than ever.
She pursed her lips. “I do not like you either, sir, so perhaps we can dispense with formality and you may simply leave me in peace. Where is Mr. Kirkwood, and when might I expect his return?”
His gaze narrowed. “You’re a cunning baggage, aren’t you? I’ll not be telling you where he’s gone or why. You can wait here as you’re told, or I will have you removed. The choice is yours, my lord.”
Ah, yes. There it was again. The bitterness lacing his voice as he exaggerated her address. “I am perfectly happy to remain here, awaiting Mr. Kirkwood. Alone. If you will excuse me, sir, I would appreciate some quiet.”
She had already spied ink, sheaves of foolscap, and a pen awaiting her at Mr. Kirkwood’s desk. If she must wait, she would make use of her time and Mr. Kirkwood’s supplies. There was something about using his personal writing implements that seemed somehow intimate. Fitting.
“At the slightest hint of trouble from you, I’ll have you tossed on your arse,” Mr. Hazlitt warned, a hard edge to his voice.
“Noted, sir.” She flashed him a smile she little felt. “Good evening to you.”
“Nay, good evening to you. Tabitha may well occupy Mr. Kirkwood’s entire night.” With a mocking bow and a dark-eyed glare, he added, “I predict you shall be wishing for that supper.”
Tabitha.
Her mind traveled instantly to the beautiful, bold woman she had met the previous day. Tabitha with the lovely face, goddess-like form, and wandering hands. She was what had kept Mr. Kirkwood from this appointed meeting with Frederica? An unwelcome stab of jealousy pierced her at the thought. Only yesterday, he had been dismissive and cool. It made no sense, and yet it also made dreadful sense all at once. Men like Mr. Duncan Kirkwood were not gently bred. They were wild and unpredictable, uncivilized in their pursuit of pleasure.
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