Chapter 8
Sheets twisted around her legs, pillow flat across her face, Viveca lay in bed and waited—for sleep or for dawn, whichever came first.
Dawn, it would be, she knew from a week of experience.
She’d been catching sleep in little more than fits and starts since…Vauxhall Gardens.
A full seven days later, she could still hardly believe it.
She could hardly believe herself.
She should have been scandalized and demanded Blaze Jagger take her home.
But there was a problem with that narrative.
She had been the scandal.
At first, she’d been decidedly annoyed that known rogue about London, the Blaze Jagger, had brought her to Vauxhall Gardens, a place she’d visited on several occasions and which had never elicited more than mild interest from her.
Then he’d led her down a Dark Path and everything changed.
She’d expected to be titillated and perhaps a little shocked, but what she hadn’t expected was herself.
Her overwhelming desire—need—to kiss Blaze Jagger.
Then the kiss hadn’t been enough. More parts of her than mere lips and the nape of her neck and the small of her back needed contact with him. So, she’d taken matters into her own hands—literally.
Oh, the feel of him—the short crop of his sable hair, ticklish on her palm…the rasp of his shaven jaw…all those long, lean muscles—sinewy, strong, and hard.
Speaking of hard…
Even now, a week later, in the privacy of her bedchamber, heat rose to her cheeks, flared through her body.
His manhood.
She’d taken that in hand, as well, and other parts of her had sprung to life—intimate parts.
And those intimate parts had held a demand.
A demand that had no care for the possibility of scandal or society’s morals or the fact that they were, in fact, in a public place.
This demand had wanted what it wanted when it wanted it.
And, oh, how it wanted—demanded—Blaze Jagger.
And that long, hard shaft of his was evidence—that he’d wanted her, too.
She might be a virgin, but she knew that much.
Yet he’d had the mettle to push through demand and need and put a stop to it.
As a result, a week later, here she lay in bed yet a virgin.
She should feel grateful for his resolve.
She didn’t.
What she felt—had been feeling for this interminable week that seemed to have gone on forever and ever—was utter, unresolved ache.
She still wanted Blaze Jagger.
But he hadn’t offered himself, had he?
Their deal was one reading lesson for one night in London.
He didn’t owe her any more than he’d already given—and he certainly didn’t owe her his person.
On a huff of frustration, she dragged the pillow off her face and glanced at the curtains.
A hint of first light was edging along the seams. At last, she could stop wrestling with elusive sleep and whirring thoughts.
She untangled her legs from the sheets and rolled onto her side, automatically reaching toward the nightstand for her glass of water. Her fingers hit something else.
The manuscript Saskia had given her.
She’d forgotten all about it, in truth, her mind having been a distractable wreck for days.
Well, no time like the present.
She propped herself up against the headboard and lit the candle on her bedstand before setting the manuscript on her lap.
Untitled by Harriet LaPlume.
She flipped to page one and began reading—and didn’t come up for air until one hour and seventy-five pages later.
This book was a romance—and a revelation.
Well-written and witty, it possessed an ironic tone, like a novel by Jane Austen.
Viveca tore through another twenty-five pages to confirm that initial impression.
Miss Catherine Channing was lively and intelligent, gentry-born, not a destitute orphan, servant, or lady of the night, as Samuel Richardson had been so fond of crafting in his works, Pamela and Clarissa.
Yet this book was different from Miss Austen’s work, too.
The perspective felt more immediate and further inside the heroine than anything Viveca had ever read.
Take the heroine’s reaction to the hero, for example.
Alongside Catherine, the reader experienced all the physical sensations of, first, the lightning bolt of initial liking, then a desire for him that blossomed across page after page.
And the hero, Mr. James Neal, was, indeed, desirable—but he wasn’t a scoundrel.
Which set this story apart, for usually in these sorts of books, the man who set the heroine’s pulse racing was a man who was a rake—a man who would ruin her into utter wretchedness and destitution.
So, while Mr. Neal set Catherine alight, he wasn’t out to use or ruin her.
Somehow, he managed to be both rakish and heroic.
For here was the original central thesis of this book—the heroine could have both a rake and a hero in one good man.
This novel was neither virtue rewarded, nor temptation punished.
Yet it held a moral center—a moral that was unique and almost unheard of.
A woman should be able to have a man who both tempted her and provided for her.
This concept was new and fresh and they would sell a thousand copies in the first month. Many would be scandalized and publicly speak against it, but far more would obtain it in secret and privately devour it.
Viveca knew it.
She felt it deep in her bones.
This book would be Sirens Publishing’s first big success.
She swept the bedcovers aside and hopped to her feet. As she dashed down the corridor to Saskia’s bedchamber, a face flashed through her mind, handsome gray eyes filled with mischief, a diamond stud winking in his left ear.
Blaze Jagger.
He was both tempter and temptation—a man who delighted in that paradox. Yet he contained another paradox inside him, didn’t he? Wasn’t it a week ago that she’d learned—much to her annoyance, frankly—that he held an honorable core inside him?
He hadn’t ruined her, when she’d so clearly wanted to be ruined.
It might be that Blaze Jagger, like Mr. Neal, was the sort of man with whom a woman could have it all.
Seconds later, she was pushing open the door to Saskia’s bedchamber, then stopping dead in her tracks, surprised to find her sister not in bed, but seated at her desk. “You’re awake already?”
Of late, Saskia had taken to lying in, not emerging from her bedchamber until nine in the morning.
Her sister startled around, her eyes wide. “I’m, erm, just tallying the month’s expenses.”
“It’s not the first week of July yet.”
An awkward beat of time ticked past, then Saskia said, “One cannot be too fiscally responsible.”
“I suppose one cannot,” Viveca allowed. Disinclined to wade through the weeds of Sirens’ finances at this early hour, she held up the manuscript, triumph cutting through confusion. “This.”
Saskia’s eyebrows crashed together. “Is that the manuscript I gave you?”
“It is.” There was no containing the smile that wanted out.
A few seconds ticked past, then Saskia asked, “What about it?”
“It’s what we’ve been searching for.”
Saskia blinked. “It is?”
“It will fly off the shelves.”
“It will?”
“Oh, yes, I have not a single doubt,” said Viveca.
“But, sister, we must act fast before another publisher poaches it. We must contact Miss LaPlume today, if possible, and offer her a contract.” A thought came to her.
“In fact, let’s offer her a three-book contract, to be safe. Do you have a way of contacting her?”
Saskia’s brow furrowed. She was taking this heaven-sent news rather hard. “I, erm, do.”
Viveca’s feet were already on the move. “I’ll draw up the contract, and you find that address,” she said before adding, “Oh, and ask her for the title.”
Of a sudden, she shifted course and rushed across the room and gathered Saskia into her arms. “Finally, we are on our way, sister. We have much to do, but we might be able to release this book within six months.”
And with that, Viveca set about her day with renewed purpose and excitement pulsing through her veins. She easily had enough to keep her busy until…
Tonight.
Ten o’clock, to be precise.
In the general scheme of things, it took an avalanche of misdeeds and mishappenings to upset the balance Blaze carried inside him through life.
Until he’d met Lady Viveca Calthorp.
And though it had been a week since he’d last seen her, he was presently at Garraway’s Coffee House, seated across from the Duke of Acaster and the Marchioness of Ormonde, her brother and sister, respectively, at their monthly accounts meeting to go over The Archangel’s finances.
Blaze was, in one of those rare times in his life, unbalanced.
The meeting itself was the usual—The Archangel’s takings up against its expenses.
Then into the hairier territory of competition in the business; both old competitors and new; what was succeeding in the business, what wasn’t; staffing; which nob had incurred the most debt and how to get it out of them.
Blaze always offered up the East End way of muscle applied with brute force.
But thus far, diplomatically worded letters from the Duke of Acaster had sufficed.
Blaze tried not to be disappointed and, instead, learn. If he’d told anyone in Wapping that words worked better than well-aimed fists, they wouldn’t have believed him.
But it was the truth.
Acaster and Tessa—as she insisted he call her—had taught him that.
These last two years, they’d taught him much, in fact, and another truth was he didn’t mind learning from them.
They didn’t lord his lack of knowledge over him.
Instead, they explained everything down to the last detail, trusted him to have stored the information in his noggin, and kept moving forward.
He saw now how they were Lady Viveca Calthorp’s siblings, and how they’d shaped her. Well, she’d learned at Acaster and Tessa’s feet, hadn’t she?
How to navigate the world.
How to get what she wanted out of it.
They’d taught her well.
“If that will be all?” asked Acaster. But he was already coming to his feet, so he was telling Blaze the meeting was over.