Nineteen
“I should’ve worn something nicer,” she told Apollo under her breath as he guided her along a gravel path. He glanced down at her jacket and waggled his eyebrows in apparent appreciation.
“Are you fishing for compliments again?” he asked, in that teasing voice she’d grown to adore. “You know I’d tear all that tweed off of you at the first opportunity,” he told her when they were hidden behind an enormous hedge. She truly wished she didn’t find his lechery as flattering as she did.
“Stop pretending you like my clothes,” she said, slapping his hand away when he reached for something suspiciously close to her breast.
“I’m not pretending.” He had the gall to appear offended. She rolled her eyes at him but offered up her neck for some kisses. When he didn’t and insisted on staring at her, the silence began to nettle.
“What?” Her voice was a bit too high.
Perhaps he truly thought she was vying for compliments. But she wasn’t. It was that he’d never pretended with her. It was what made things between them so good. Apollo wanted her, even when he didn’t like her, and it was the same for her. False compliments were things friends did, and she didn’t think she’d be able to extract herself from this if she began to think of him as a friend, despite what he’d said to her brothers.
“I thought you were aware how far I’ve come around when it comes to your apparel,” he whispered. Their bodies were pressed together and his breath feathered over her ear, making things happen in regions she did not want to be aware of in this particular setting. She should redirect the conversation to less explosive topics, but this was the problem with her and this man. She could never get enough, even of the things she knew would get her in trouble.
Especially of those things.
“Based on the multiple items of clothing you’ve torn, ripped or generally ruined, I assumed you were sending me a message about my choice of clothes.”
A delicious feeling erupted in her belly at the predatory sound he made.
“The message, Doctora, is that I’m very fond of everything you so cruelly keep concealed under this.” He ran a finger over the cuff of her jacket, and even that light touch had her gasping for air.
“Fine, you like my clothes.” She would not grin at him like a loon. She was a physician, a woman of the world, for God’s sake, not a blushing virgin. “No, stop it,” she reproached as he reached for a button.
“Is this the thanks I get for opening my home to your cause, Doctora?” he asked with that slithery rasp in his voice that made her insides slip and slide.
“Thank you for inviting the Hymen Brothers?” she bleated, as he undid two of them before planting a kiss right above her breast.
He interrupted his ministrations to the curve of her neck, then looked up at her and winked. “I thought you handled yourself quite well with them,” he admitted, to which she responded by pinching his stomach.
“Do you like seeing me suffer?” she asked, peevishly. “You know those two hate me.”
“Their invitation was my aunt’s doing,” he told her, then flashed her a wicked grin. “Though I must say witnessing that verbal evisceration was quite a treat.” Which was all well and good for Apollo’s entertainment, but those two would do their best tonight to talk her clinic down.
“If you must know, that encounter has only made me more nervous about this blasted speech you’re requiring I give.”
“Am I to understand that you—” he pointed a finger in front of her face “—Doctora Aurora Montalban Wright, are intimidated by the Maiden Marauders?”
She sucked in a breath to keep from laughing. How was he making her laugh when she was quite close to a panic?
“ Don’t call them that, and stop pointing that thing at me, or I’ll bite it off.” She reached for it, but he planted the finger with the rest of his hand on the column she was leaning against.
“Don’t tempt me,” he countered. Hiding in corners with this man was a habit she absolutely needed to break. Especially when he was in formal wear. God, she wanted to climb him. “Are you truly afraid of a few snobs and a pair of sanctimonious pricks in bad suits?” he asked, with genuine surprise.
“No, I’m not afraid of them,” she pouted. “My nerves just get the best of me at times.” She sighed and looked up at him, and found that steadfast regard that, somehow, she’d begun to trust more than any other.
“Am I hearing right?” The pendejo actually cupped his ear. “That you, the woman who lectures me constantly on how the medical establishment doesn’t know what it’s doing, are considering missing an opportunity to educate all those aristos?”
“Do you keep a record of everything I say?” she snapped back. He only grinned.
“I might.” Why did he say things like this when this could never be more than what it was now? Tonight only made that fact that much clearer.
“Virginia deserved this more than I do.” His gaze took that haunted look she’d seen before in his eyes. Like her words clawed at him sometimes.
“But I didn’t do this for Virginia, I did it for you.” Her chest pounded, and howling, needy things that could never see the light of day almost tore out.
“You’re giving me an unfair advantage, then,” she tossed out, in a desperate attempt to rein in her emotions.
“That’s right, Bella Doctora.” He lifted a shoulder, his coffee-bean eyes shining with defiance and something much more volatile. She felt like he was looking right into her soul. “I’m the Duke of Annan, and I’m using my power, my position and my money to give you what you deserve. What about it?”
What a terrible thing it would be to have to give up this man.
“Won’t this hurt your efforts to make alliances?” She’d been concerned about this for days now. It seemed particularly obtuse, even for Apollo, to advertise a connection to a clinic he knew did things that were not exactly legal and certainly not considered moral by the very people he was attempting to ingratiate himself with.
“Fiera, you underestimate me, as always,” he told her with a wolfish grin, and her legs nearly buckled from the effect. “My house is currently packed to the gills with the progressive ilk of the aristocracy. They’re simply delighted to support my entry into the ton,” he informed her, affecting a ridiculous posh accent. “You see, I will be such an excellent representation of my people.”
Aurora frowned at that and slowly asked, “What people?”
Apollo’s grin was sharp as a blade. “I have not managed to extract that answer from a single one of them. What I have been regaled with are plenty of stories about their abolitionist ancestors and how their great-grandmamas handed out blankets to street urchins.” His tone was light enough, but there was a cutting edge to it. “They’re always so forthcoming about their good deeds, but things do become quite less jovial whenever I ask if their abolitionist grandparents received any of that twenty million the king awarded the great and good of the Empire in compensation for losing their slaves.”
She was struck once again at just how good Apollo was at hiding in plain sight. The ton had no idea they had a wolf in their midst.
“I presume you know quite well which ones did,” she said, and he made a very gratified sound, like a cat who’d just brought back a tribute to his master and received a nice scratch for his trouble.
“I keep a list of the names on my desk, Fiera.” Other women might not find Apollo’s dogged insistence on schemes and machinations arousing, but she certainly did. “They might have forgotten the finer details of their Slavery Abolition Act, but I never will.”
“They won’t see you coming, will they?” she asked, momentarily stunned by his wiliness.
“Not even when I reach for their throats, sweetheart.” That smile, it made her ache.
She imagined this was what it looked like when people used their power for good. Not exactly pretty, even ruthless at times, but still righteous. “Now, what do you need to go out there and help all those ladies of leisure feel good about themselves while we extract some of those ill-gotten gains of theirs?”
“What I need help with is focus,” she informed him in a breezy tone.
“Focus, you say?” the duke asked, in that molasses voice of his, which sank deep into her bones. It made her weak.
“Indeed.” She circled her arms around his neck. “But I keep thinking about kissing you and it’s much too distracting.” His other arm joined the first on that spot on the column above her head as she raised herself on the tips of her toes.
“What kind of host would I be if I didn’t help my guest of honor?”
“Kiss me, Your Grace,” she demanded.
“For the good of science,” he teased, with a graze of his lips that felt like the static in the air before a thunderstorm.
“For science,” she agreed, turning her head, and then he was there, inside. With a kiss like roaring flames. His tongue razing through nerves and thoughts of fickle aristocrats and men who ruined lives.
It was one of his deep kisses. The ones where their lips almost melded together. When their lungs seemed to be sharing each breath. His palm like a brand against her throat kept her where he wanted, and he took her mouth like it belonged to him. Like he’d drawn a map of his property and he’d explore it like he damned well pleased.
Licks and bites, whispered words of praise. How sweet her mouth was, how much he loved kissing her. When she was ready to sink to the ground, he pulled back.
“Is your focus much improved?” She wasn’t sure how she ever thought asking the man to kiss her could result in anything but absolute chaos in her head.
“Yes,” she lied, as she found her footing.
“You seem a bit unsteady, Doctora,” he jested, and planted a sweet kiss to her brow that made her heart flutter.
She was a lost cause.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Your Grace,” she told him, hoping she’d make it out of this hedge on her own two feet. “I’m simply worried that I’ll be booed for my objectionable beliefs.”
“You were invited here to share your objectionable beliefs,” he told her.
“Apollo, I won’t pull any punches for this crowd.” She was proud of her work, but it was hard to fully let go of the habit of making her views palatable to people. “I will speak about the clinic’s work with midwives, our stance that they should be considered an integral part of the medical establishment.”
“How do you mean?” She’d already explained all of this to him, but he was looking at her like he’d never heard any of it and she figured she might as well batten down the hatches with this affable—if troublesome—audience of one.
“As I’ve told you before,” she remarked with a growl. “As medicine has become more formalized, and even with the entry of women into the profession, our access to services has decreased.” He gave the finger she was pointing at his face a sardonic glance. She would need to watch that habit. She sheepishly put it away and launched into her speech again. “Midwives have been marginalized and pushed out, which has resulted in men controlling the kind of services women are able to receive. And it’s all done in the name of our welfare.”
“And who were these midwives again?” he asked, with a furrowed brow. As if the entire thing was much too vexing for him.
“I’m getting tired of repeating myself, Apollo.” He only stared at her with blank eyes. “Fine,” she harrumphed. How could he do this, melt her one second and drive her absolutely mad in the next? “The midwives,” she said the words slowly as if to a toddler, “by and large in the Americas were Indigenous or Black women. Here in Europe, they typically belonged to the working class. For centuries, they safely provided contra ception, education, counseling and care for women and their children.” Just saying these things made her angry all over again, and she would need to mind her tone in the room with all the aristos. “Now the same women who birthed generations have been branded as quacks and systematically pushed out of the profession.”
“Do you work with them?” Now he was being intentionally obtuse, and she did not have the time for that.
“Of course I do,” she groused. “We work with them at our clinics, and I have been training a few in more complicated procedures, like fistulotomies.”
“And contraception,” he remarked.
“Yes, contraception too, especially now that the Comstock Act in the United States has prompted other countries to enact similar laws to control women’s access to them, you know all this, Apollo,” she bit out, none too happy, while he looked at her with a strange expression on his face. She would not explain the blasted American legislation that made all distribution of contraception, or even information about it, a criminal offense to him again. She’d already discussed Anthony Comstock’s—who was a postal servant, of all things—war on family planning, ad nauseam.
But when she looked up at the Duke of Annan he did not seem very bothered by her refusal to answer his questions. On the contrary, the man seemed utterly pleased with himself.
“There, now you’ve given your speech to the most important person here this evening and he fully endorses it,” he declared, with a satisfied smile.
“If you wanted me to recite the speech, I could’ve done so,” she told him, much too stupefied by his handsome face to even conjure up annoyance.
“I could’ve, but now we’re both certain that you’re quite ready to skewer all the men of science out there.” He winked and clasped his hand to the nape of her neck. Something she’d developed a concerning proclivity for. “If not, I could invite them to have a word outside and attempt some of my own methods of persuasion.”
Some women might be wooed with flowers. Others perhaps appreciated a serenade. But for Aurora, there was nothing more sensual than a man offering to do violence to a group of misogynistic bastards on her behalf.
“I don’t know if dukes ought to be starting brawls at charity events for clinics,” she teased, and he flashed her that lupine grin that turned the lower part of her body hot and liquid.
“That would be dukes from around these parts, Fiera. Cartagena dukes do things a little differently.” His thumb was making circles on her neck. A motion that she’d also become quite fond of.
There went her focus again.
She placed her palms on his chest and pushed firmly. “It is time to go, Your Grace, or we will never leave this corner.”
“Fine, but we will continue this later at the den of iniquity.” She nodded in agreement, not bothering to deny what they both knew to be true. She let him kiss her on the neck, and she may have bitten his bottom lip, but this time, she managed to get them both off the column and down the gravel path without any more diversions.
As they emerged into the light, with the comforting weight of his arm looped with hers combined with the slight sting on her lips from his kisses and the fall breeze on her face, Aurora wondered if this was what people felt when they said they were happy.
In the heels of that thought, the sound of a woman’s voice stopped Apollo in his tracks. “It’s my Tia Jimena,” he told her, looking up the path to where a lady and gentleman were walking toward them. She stiffened at the mention of Apollo’s rela tive, who had not been very warm when Aurora had arrived earlier that evening.
“I should go,” she told him, ready to make up something in order to avoid a potentially awkward confrontation. And it would be awkward. She knew the condition Apollo’s kisses left her in.
“Apollo, querido,” the woman called, still concealed by the shadowed path. The man she was with was very tall and had his head bent saying something to her. Something about him sent a cold shiver down her spine.
“Who is that?” she asked as unease flooded her. It was the nerves again, she thought. It was one thing to do her speech for Apollo, another to contemplate doing the same for his forbidding aunt.
“Lord Forsyth. My aunt’s beau.” By the way Apollo’s mouth soured, it seemed he was not fond of the man, but his aunt certainly felt differently. She seemed very taken by whatever he was so passionately parlaying.
“Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you,” Apollo’s aunt exclaimed as she stepped out of the shadows with a man Aurora had hoped never again to see in her life. “Look who I found when I was out here looking for Juliana.”
He was still handsome, the blond hair that mesmerized her at fifteen might have more silver at the temples, but it was still lustrous and perfectly coiffed. The blue eyes she’d told herself shone with interest and desire, instead of the malice she’d later encounter, were still that tantalizing cerulean blue. Tall and beautiful, the kind of man a girl—or a woman—could lose her head over. Except she knew the fangs and scales hidden under the surface. She felt herself begin to shake and locked her legs, clenched her muscles. Forced herself to stand tall as she ignored the frantic hammering of her heart.
Philip Carlyle would not get the best of her ever again.
“Doctora Montalban,” he said, extending a hand. “How long has it been?”
“A lifetime,” she said, looking at his hand without offering hers.
The last time she saw him, he’d threatened to turn her in to the authorities and destroy her life if she didn’t agree to marry him. But by then, the life she thought she’d have was already destroyed. Since that day, she’d wondered what it would be like to see him again. She wondered if she’d be fearful or ashamed of how easily she’d fallen into this charlatan’s trap. Only months ago, a moment like this would’ve brought her to her knees, but now all she felt was rage.
“How do you know each other?” Dona Jimena asked Forsyth, who dropped his proffered hand awkwardly when Aurora would not shake it.
“Miss Montalban’s family and I were quite close when I was in Mexico a decade or so ago.” He looked her up and down, but she refused to let him make her feel inadequate. He should be the one who was ashamed.
“Was she always passionate about medicine?” Dona Jimena asked Philip about Aurora, as if she wasn’t standing right there.
“Miss Montalban was passionate at everything,” he said. His tone was innocent enough, but the way he smiled at her made her skin crawl. She thought of Apollo’s mischievous smiles, his taunts, and realized that while he infuriated her, his teasing had always been an invitation. He was not interested in dishing out barbs she could not return in equal measure. But this man looked to humiliate, to put her in her place, and she wanted very much to humiliate him.
But if she did, Philip would attack, she could see that in the sly way he examined where Apollo’s arm was linked around hers. Could almost hear his machinations as he shot her a look that said “if you expose me, you’ll expose yourself.”
She couldn’t look up at Apollo, who she could feel tensing up at the exchange between her and Philip. But this was going to happen eventually. Her past, her mistakes, coming back to haunt her. It was the choice she’d made after all. She’d refused to let her fate be sealed at age fifteen and that had a cost. The cost was that her place in respectable society would always be in peril.
Apollo knew of her parentage, but that was not something she’d been responsible for. She was responsible for the choices she’d made about her body and her future, and she stood by them. But she would not allow him to be impacted by them. It was one thing to let him raise funds for the clinic, but it was another to allow Philip to harm Apollo’s standing among his peers. Not when she knew how much he had yet to do.
She had to let him go.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, sliding her arm from Apollo’s. When he tried to keep her with him, she tugged free. Her eyes downcast, her heart breaking. But Aurora had never been one to shirk from consequences, and she would not today. “I need to go to my friends and prepare for my speech,” she told the Duke of Annan, before walking away.