Five
It took Apollo a moment to realize what was happening. One second, he was on the receiving end of another one of those bizarrely arousing tongue-lashings from Aurora, and the next, she was staring at the street, frozen in shock. Then he saw them, a cluster of coppers standing in front of what looked like a closed print shop.
“Mierda,” Aurora cursed under her breath, before taking off like the hounds of hell were on her heels. For someone with such short legs, the little wench was fast.
“What in the bloody hell?” Apollo spun around, chasing after her, then winced, remembering the coppers were only a few yards away. He gritted his teeth and sped up with the damned Gladstone slamming his leg and the canister tucked under one arm.
“Arrête!” someone shouted behind him, but he didn’t stop to look, chasing after Aurora, who was now at least ten meters ahead of him. But he didn’t lose sight of the dervish in front of him as earsplitting whistles rang in the air.
“Aurora, que diablos—” She was racing up the street in those damned split skirts she always wore. That was probably why she had them, so she could evade the law.
“A la izquierda,” she called out breathlessly, running into what looked like a wall but was instead a pitch-black alley. Despite his reputation as a scoundrel, in all of his thirty-five years, Apollo had never been chased by police. And yet, Aurora Montalban, the buttoned-up doctor, who had once been scandalized by even the mention of a brothel, was apparently so accustomed to it, she had escape routes.
And he’d actually felt guilty for pushing himself into her evening. Even now when he had half a mind to throttle her, he could not help but admire the cojones of Doctora Montalban. If he managed not to kill her for this, he might tell her so.
After a couple of turns and a treacherous encounter with a hedge of extremely prickly bushes, they managed to lose the coppers. She finally came to a stop on a poorly lit street, where she practically collapsed against a wrought iron fence, gasping for breath. By the time he came to a stop next to her, he could only stare in amazement as he struggled to get his own breathing in order.
“Que diablos fue eso?” he demanded between gulps of air. She sent him a sideways glance, with absolutely no contrition on her flushed face.
“I told you to go home,” she managed to wheeze out.
I told you to go? That was her answer?
Apollo tried to never let his temper slip from his control, but on this occasion, he managed to govern himself with sheer force of will. Very slowly he placed the bag and canister on the ground between them while he listened to her labored breaths. He reminded himself that back there, as they walked, he’d seen the exhaustion in her face. That he’d watched her straighten her spine as if the whole weight of the world was meant for her shoulders. All important things to keep in mind, so he wasn’t tempted to ring her neck.
When he was back in control, he crouched so that he was eye level with her. As expected, she instantly bristled.
“This is not your problem,” she wheezed, still holding on to her knees like she was afraid she’d topple over if she let go. She was right. He’d inserted himself into her evening, bullied his way into her plans, but now there was no prying him away until he made sure she never did anything this damned foolish again.
“I’ve just made you my problem,” he said in a low, nasty tone. Instead of looking intimidated—like any reasonable woman would—she narrowed her eyes and pursed her mouth, as if she was considering the virtues of spitting on a duke’s face. “So help me,” he bit out. Feeling every muscle in his neck tighten. “Do not test me, Aurora.” He stood up and began to pace, furious beyond belief. “You really think running around with those ridiculous gloves is enough to keep you from harm?”
“I am not answering—”
“No more lectures, Aurora.” He picked her up by the waist and forcibly carried her deeper into the park, where he could get some bloody answers.
“What do you think you’re doing, sir?” He almost laughed at the haughty tone she took with him. She thrashed in his grip, testing his already perilously low patience.
“Do you want to attract attention from lawmen who are probably now looking for you, Doctora Montalban?” he asked right against her ear as she writhed in his hands. Even now, as furious as he was, he could not help but notice her curves were not as lush as they’d been the last time he’d touched her, and that only made him angrier. “What are you involved in, Aurora?” he asked, as he set her unceremoniously back down.
“It’s none of your business,” she seethed, looking up at him with that ever-present pugnacious expression.
“Since I was just chased down the streets of Paris by police, I would say that it’s somewhat my business,” he told her, with just as much animosity. Her clothes were so big her skirt had been practically down to her knees from when he’d picked her up. She wasn’t eating, she wasn’t taking proper care of herself and she was putting herself in danger. She was running herself ragged and no one was paying any attention. He would be damned if that went on for another second. He was so preoccupied with his thoughts he barely heard her.
“Who said they were looking for me?” She sounded so genuinely affronted that had he not seen her face when she caught sight of the police, he would’ve bought the lie.
“Listen to me very clearly, Aurora.”
She opened her mouth to object, but after looking up at his face, she seemed to think better of it and closed it.
“If you don’t want me to drag you back to my brother’s flat, wake up Luz Alana and let her know what you’re up to, you will tell me the truth.” That seemed to mollify her somewhat, which meant she’d also been lying to her friends about what she was getting up to in these clinics. “What exactly does this appointment entail?” The prevarication began instantly.
“Why do you care?” She beat her fisted hands against her sides in obvious frustration, and he could not deny she had him there. She was a grown woman and what she did or didn’t do was well beyond his jurisdiction. But the truth was that he did care. Maybe this was his own self-destructive attempt at avoiding his own problems, or maybe he was just bored, but he could not walk away from this.
“Why don’t your friends know what you’re out here doing?” The mention of her two friends took some of the wind out of her sails, so he tried his luck and pushed a bit more. “You’re supposed to be the sensible one.”
“They know the important parts.” Which meant they had no idea what she was truly up to. “Besides, this is my affair.”
“An affair that had you running from police, which I suspect is a common occurrence for you.” She set her mouth, stubbornly turning her face from him. He lowered his hand and clasped that proud chin between his fingers.
He could see the battle inside her in the way her eyes flew back and forth. This was a woman who didn’t trust anyone, not even her closest friends, with her secrets. Because she didn’t want to be dissuaded from her mission.
“There are others involved and I will not reveal anything that could hurt them.” Her eyes, which had been flashing with anger, now simmered with repressed frustration and obvious defiance. He could feel the tremors in her body, but she was not standing down. “In our night clinics,” she began, her eyes defiantly locked with his, “we provide some services for women that are not regarded positively under the guise of the law.”
He didn’t need her to tell him what that was.
“Diablos, Aurora.” She was not cowed by his censure. On the contrary, it seemed to puff her up. It was like sparring with a damned windstorm. He was constantly being knocked on his ass.
“We don’t only do that ,” she explained with an air that said she thought him much too simple to be privy to this. He crossed his arms over his chest and listened. “We provide women with information, we instruct midwives in sanitary measures, we educate young women of marrying age, we help women prevent pregnancies, and provide assistance if they come to us in need of other services.” She was careful with her language, but he could read between the lines. The long and short of it was that the fastidious, forbidding, scrupulous Aurora Montalban was spending her nights committing crimes under everyone’s nose. “If that gets a bee in the bonnet of the law every so often, then I deal with it.” She was practically daring him to judge her.
This was how she did it, he thought. She hid behind all that vitriol so no one noticed they were in the presence of a woman with a spine of steel. Anyone could take risks for their own gain. He had, and he thought himself bold and tenacious for it. But to risk it all, her fortune, her standing with society, even her family, for the well-being of others, that was what warriors did.
How had he not seen this? Even when she’d come to him that night and brazenly asked him to help her in her reclaiming , he had not appreciated the strength in her. That did not mean he wasn’t on the verge of putting her over his knee.
“You ‘deal with it,’” he echoed, eliciting a disgusted sneer.
“Yes, I deal with it . On my own.” She bared those perfectly straight teeth at him again—it had to be the fifth time that evening—and despite everything, he could not help but wonder how they’d feel on his skin. He just knew she bit and scratched. Fiera. “Now, are you finally done entertaining yourself with me? Because I still have a patient to find.”
“You cannot be serious,” he growled, at the very edge of his control.
“This was where we told the patient to come in case there was trouble, and since she’s not here—” she used a very nasty tone while making sweeping gestures with her hand “—I have to go and see if she’s lost.”
Go and see? She was going back there?
Once again, he was struck speechless. And by the time he reacted, she was already walking away.
“Oh no, you don’t,” he said, reaching for her.
“Oh yes, I do .” Her sable curls, had come loose from her very sensible coiffure and framed the sides of her face. She looked disreputable, so wild. He’d been bored to tears for the past month meeting perfectly lovely and nice girls who left him cold, but one night with this hellion reminded him the world he came from was nothing like the frigid, vapid world of the ton.
She flew in the teeth of all common sense and did so unapologetically. Willful and impetuous when she believed in her cause. A woman who guarded her secrets fiercely and made no excuses for the length she went to guard them. A woman very akin to him.
“Are you finally done amusing yourself, Your Grace?”
“You are not—” he began, then stopped. “I don’t find you amusing.” She raised an eyebrow and huffed with obvious disbelief. “I find you endlessly…” Beguiling, provocative. “Confounding…”
“I don’t find you charming, is that it?” she asked in that impatient, caustic tone of hers, and the numbness that had dogged him since he’d gotten that letter notifying him of his father’s death seemed to lift like the fog at sunrise. Life, energy, hot blood pushing through his veins once again.
“No, that is not why, Fiera,” he said softly into the small space between them. Tired of arguing, needing her closer. “It’s because ever since that night I told you I never craved seconds, you’ve made a liar out of me.” She balked at his words, just as he reached for her face. He cupped her cheek and risked running his thumb over her plump bottom lip.
She had her face tipped up to him, eyes flashing with menace, even as she placed both palms on his chest. She was like a caged wolf, distrusting, but craving touch. He wondered if she even noticed the way her fingers dug into him. How tightly she’d pressed herself to him. Aurora Montalban Wright was a firestorm. They could burn each other down to ash. Too much spirit, as his Tia Jimena would say, in them both.
“Apollo, this is not the time,” she protested weakly, even as she ran her hands over him. “The patient might still be out there.”
“And I’m coming to get her with you.”
She made a noise between a sigh and scoff, but the curve of her mouth softened, and then she let go. Her plump form falling into his. “You don’t give up, do you?” she asked, but the bite was gone from her words, replaced by something that sounded almost like bafflement.
“I’m a duke, aren’t I?” This time she did scoff, and circled her arms around his neck in apparent defeat.
“Then why don’t you kiss me,” she challenged. He could’ve reminded her that she’d just told him to leave. He could’ve done all manner of things, but instead he did the only thing he was driven to do.
Her lips parted for him with ease as he lifted her by the waist against the wall. Her tongue slid against his with astounding eagerness. This was no delicate pretense, it was the kiss he’d wanted to give her that night before he let her walk out of his apartment. It was a rough caress, that coaxed eager little moans out of her. He kissed her hard enough to bruise, but she did not pull back. He was so lost in her scent, in her heat, he didn’t hear the small voice calling for Aurora until the woman was standing right in front of them.
“Doctora?”
He let her go before she had the chance to push him away. Without looking at him, she went to the cloaked figure standing at the mouth of the alley.
“Dona Maria,” she said quietly, sending a warning look to Apollo over her shoulder. He remained where he was, attempting to calm himself down while he observed the situation. He could barely make out the woman, but she was very small, smaller than Aurora. She seemed to be wearing a veil and spoke in hushed Spanish. He did manage to hear that she’d seen the police and retreated here to the meeting place like Aurora had instructed.
She had a damned contingency plan. He had to smile to himself, at the gall of Aurora Montalban.
Even in the dark and from a few yards away, Apollo could see that the manner in which Aurora spoke to her patient was very different from how she dealt with everyone else. She was gentle, respectful, her demeanor approachable and nurturing. Her movements careful and gentle.
He’d begun to think she’d forgotten him when she left the woman just inside the alley and walked back to him. All traces of the flushed, lusty woman from a few minutes before replaced now by a self-possessed, controlled doctor on a mission.
“I have a favor to ask.” She sounded so affronted he almost laughed.
He crossed his arms over his chest, enjoying the first advantage he’d had since he’d set off on this demented caper. He leaned forward, cupping his right ear as though he had not quite heard her.
“My apologies, I thought the words favor and ask were just directed at me, but I’m certain I must be mistaken.”
“I don’t have time for jesting, Annan.”
“Apollo,” he said without thinking. “Call me Apollo.” He rarely heard his given name these days. The only thing his mother left him with. That and a San Gregorio medal he wore on a gold chain around his neck. He liked hearing his name on Aurora’s lips.
She seemed confused for a moment, but after sending a worried look to her patient, she only nodded in agreement. “Fine, Apollo .” He knew she was trying, but she still sounded like it cost her to grind out each letter of his name. “I need to use your den of immorality,” she informed him impatiently, and it had to be the late hour and the running from the law, but he almost laughed. She looked so damned put out.
“My den of immorality, which you now want to use to break the law,” he said, too genuinely stunned at her shamelessness to manage any kind of cynical intonation.
She shushed him, then canted her head in the patient’s direction as if his pointing out the nature of her request was beneath both of them.
“This procedure would be perfectly aboveboard.” To hear the affront in her voice, a man would not guess she ran from the law so often she had escape routes. And damn if that didn’t make her that much more beddable.
Given what he’d found out tonight, he wasn’t about to take her word at face value. She sighed when he sent her a dubious look.
“It’s true, she—” She cut herself off, looked over at the waiting patient and beckoned him closer. When he did and she still was not satisfied, she tugged his lapels down until he was at her preferred height. “You’re too damned tall,” she groused.
“Maybe you’re too short,” he retorted, and she narrowed those chocolate bonbon eyes at him.
“I am not arguing with you,” she informed him, with a little huff that was much too petulant to be sending a line of heat down his spine. “I swear the treatment she requires is perfectly legal.”
“Then why can’t she go to a hospital?”
For once, she didn’t send him a dirty look, and merely sighed. “What she has, most doctors won’t treat.” He pulled back at that, and she shook her head again. “It isn’t a venereal disease.” She blew out a frustrated breath, like his questions were an unnecessary nuisance. “Her situation is delicate, that’s all,” she offered vaguely.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning her brute of a husband, who is responsible for her condition in the first place, won’t allow her to seek medical treatment.” It was astounding how vicious she managed to sound in such a low tone. “We’ve been trying to get her to the clinic, but she can’t get away and—”
“The illegal clinics,” he added, which she did not like.
“The women’s clinic,” she corrected. “We’ve been waiting for her husband to leave town for long enough to do it.”
“You’re treating women against their husbands’ wishes?” He didn’t have the energy to sound outraged, and by now, he was past being surprised by Aurora’s antics.
“Yes, I am .” It was not like he expected her to sound contrite and it was much too late to pretend that anything would deter him at this point. So instead of doing the sensible thing and leaving Aurora Montalban to her illegal activities, he asked the question that had been plaguing his mind. “Do you still have your key, or will you need mine, Doctora?” She inhaled a quick breath, and the sound strummed every nerve in his body like a well-tuned violin.
She sent him one of those murderous looks, then dipped her head. “Yes, I have my key.” The answer was raspy and low, and he wanted to ravish her again.
“Good.” He took a step toward her and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “I like the idea of you carrying it all these months, Fiera.” A shudder moved through her, even as she glared at him through narrowed eyes.
“I was waiting until I saw you again to throw it in your face.” He swallowed down a laugh and wished more than anything he could pull her into that dark alley she’d brought him to and take her hard.
“I have conditions.” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “I will take you to my apartment only if you agree to have a conversation about how you’re protecting yourself in these harebrained outings.” Her head snapped up at that, but he placed a hand over her mouth when she opened it to protest. “Don’t fight me on this.” He used the voice that usually sent men scampering to follow his orders, and it seemed, for once, Doctora Montalban agreed.
That didn’t mean she was gracious about it, as she proceeded to let out an aggrieved breath while she looked between Apollo and the huddled woman waiting for them.
He could be enjoying a cigar and some of that fine rum his brother’s wife produced, but instead he was being bullied by choice by a five-foot-tall tyrant. Maybe Evan was right and he needed some time away from this marriage-mart scheme, perhaps society altogether, if this was the kind of evening he was volunteering for.
“Are we going?” he asked, sending a look to the patient. But he could tell Aurora was still mulling over something. Given the revelations of the night so far, he braced himself.
“Please be kind about the odor.” He frowned, certain he’d misheard.
“Pardon?”
With another one of those world-weary exhalations, she went up on the tips of her toes and clasped a hand on his neck and spoke hotly right in his ear.
“ I said be kind about the odor.” Her lips brushed the side of his face. It was a whisper of a touch, but he jolted backward as if he’d been shocked.
“That’s all right,” he told her. “I barely notice it these days.” She frowned at his words, and he used the moment of distraction to pat her on the rump. “One gets used to the sulfur fumes after a while,” he teased, which as expected, she did not find humorous.
“Not me, cabrón,” she whispered hotly. “My patient.” If she only knew how arousing he found her insults. “She has a condition which makes it hard to keep her hygiene, and people’s reactions can be very unkind.” For a moment he thought she’d cry, but when she stepped under the lamplight, her eyes were dry. “Stay there,” she ordered, with the duress of a drill sergeant. “I’ll inform her you are to come with us. This was not part of the plan she was given.”
“What’s her name?” Once again, she hesitated, then slumped her shoulders in surrender.
“You can call her Dona Maria.” He was satisfied with that, but after a moment she came closer. “It’s the name we give patients who don’t give us theirs.” He must have looked confused, because she leaned again. “Sometimes it’s safer for them if we don’t know.” The more he learned about Aurora’s dealings, the more he wondered if he needed to get her out of France altogether.
He dipped his head in silence, and she went off with that single-mindedness she seemed to do everything with.
“Monsieur,” she called for him after a few moments, and he took his marching orders without argument. As soon as he got within a few feet of the women, he was indeed assaulted by a pungent odor. He had to school his features not to react. What kind of monster would force someone to live like this? Aurora, for her part, seemed completely unbothered by it. With a hand over the other woman’s shoulder for reassurance, she turned to him.
“Shall we?”