Chapter Six
Where a Rake Turns Protector.
Ever wondered if he’d turned his heated musings into reality when a rain-drenched Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook stumbled into his office, a tiny flat hidden in a warren of establishments along an unremarkable lane in Islington.
Anger hit hard and fast. He glanced over her shoulder to the figure looming behind her in the shadowed corridor. Brick was the only other living soul who knew of this place. “You thought to bring her here?”
“She barged into your residence, commanding as a general.” Brick shuffled his feet, shrugging his massive shoulders in a gesture Ever knew well, though it took him a moment to name it—masculine confusion born of an overwrought female.
“Good news, there’s a first-class companion this time.
Prim as a nun, a right judgmental gel I left shivering on the entryway stairs.
The lady wanted to speak to you in private. ”
Ever lowered his gaze, noting Isabella’s red-rimmed eyes.
Tears, recent ones at that. They were a penetrating chestnut just now, nothing gossamer about them.
Emotion deepened the hue. He added that to his growing list of observations about her.
His regard opened the floodgates, and she bowed her head, her shoulders shaking.
Bewildered, Ever dismissed his manservant with instructions to serve tea to the disapproving chaperone.
Rain struck the windowpanes hard enough to dull the echoes from the street, the sound steady and enclosing as Brick’s footsteps retreated.
When the door closed, he reached Isabella in three urgent strides.
“Stop, Isa, I have it.” He knocked her hands aside as she tried to undo her spencer’s hooks—they’d been fastened wrong, a tangle that should have alerted him.
He’d been trained to look for just such a thing, mainly to use as leverage.
She was without a bonnet, the damp darkening her hair to the color of raw honey, strands curling about her sleek jaw.
Instinct urged him to gather her close, to ease her pain in a way he feared would crush them both.
He hadn’t once pictured her crying, and the lone tear that trailed the rounded curve of her cheek before slipping past her jaw undid him in ways he’d believed he was beyond feeling.
As if to prove how shaken she was, she let her arms hang at her sides as he removed the soaked garment.
Beneath it, her gown clung to her, every generous curve revealed in a way that stole what little breath he had remaining.
Hell’s teeth, her body was a glory.
Without thinking, Ever pressed his handkerchief into her hand, startled to see it was the one she’d embroidered. Her birthday gift, never far from his person since she had presented it to him.
The small shift of power lifted her chin and her spirits. Her eyes were watery, but the weeping was under control. Enough, in any case, to allow her to step back, withdrawing from a situation clearly headed toward an embrace. Or more.
The air fairly quivered with his desire to—
Exhaling roughly, Ever moved to the mock sideboard he’d erected on a crate.
He selected his finest brandy and poured them two fingers each.
He feared he needed reinforcement more than she did.
When he turned, it was to find her doing precisely what he’d dreaded: standing before a shelf that held pieces of him he didn’t even trust keeping in his home, she inspected each with exacting care.
She was no longer observing from a distance; she’d stepped into his orbit.
The walls closed in, the stakes rose, a lethal familiarity having nothing to do with sex, the only kind of intimacy he knew.
Crossing to her, Ever handed her the tumbler. It was chipped, a cast-off from Merevale House once meant for the rag-and-bone man. “What happened?”
He ought to have questioned why she’d come to him in crisis rather than to her family. But it felt too satisfying to be her port in the storm, to have her here, in his sanctuary.
Taking the glass, she leaned toward a signet ring on the back shelf, the motto engraved inside the band barely visible: Attend, then act. She didn’t touch it, but her fingers hovered, as though she instinctively understood it mattered enough to keep, if not to wear.
Taking a fast sip, her eyes met his. They glittered with fresh tears, and he sent a silent prayer that (1) he could solve her problem and (2) he had the strength to keep from touching her.
“He knows. About the garters,” she whispered, words piling atop each other.
“He was following me for weeks. I don’t know how long.
Does it matter? I’m his first choice, as if that’s a prize.
Something I’d want.” The gulp of brandy was more than she’d prepared for, and she coughed before continuing: “He’ll ruin me unless I agree.
Which I only care about because it will hurt Weston and Penny, mostly Weston.
My brother-in-law is trying to get his steam enterprise going, as you know, and society’s approval is required.
Americans aren’t exactly welcomed here. My reputation was wrecked long ago anyway.
I’m delighted,” she added with brittle cheer, “to become a sad spinster!”
“Slow down. Who’s been following you?” His grip tightened around the crystal until he feared shattering it as he drew on every vestige of professional skill to keep his expression bland.
Turning aside, Isabella zeroed in on that bloody ring again. Before she could ask, Ever tucked it behind an atrocious vase his sister had made for him, the gesture shocking them both.
Her amber gaze was amused, just enough, when it lifted to his. From a hidden pocket in her skirt, she slipped his embroidered handkerchief free and pressed it into his palm.
She was going to be fine. And so was he, he vowed as he tucked his gift away.
Ever would play her tender mainstay, while wishing, dangerously, that it were true.
In thirty-six days he would retire to Derbyshire—fix his leaking roof, assist with repair of the village’s roads, and coordinate with his tenants on crops he’d been researching as having the best chance of success.
Adopt a dog, a family of felines, erect proper fencing for the livestock he wanted to house in the field behind the manor.
Find someone of appropriate age to entertain on occasion—a willing widow, perhaps—someone who didn’t make him feel this tangle of need and trepidation every time he got within range of her.
Those were things he could accomplish without distraction.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me, sprite.”
Isabella swallowed, her throat clicking.
Picking up his mother’s thimble, she turned it over and stared into the dented void.
He had to work to quell the urge to hide it as well.
“Ireton. He knows about my little venture. The racy garters, not my Rake Review connection. That would be the ultimate disaster, too much aggravation for even him to undertake. Outside my family and the Brazen Belle, only you know about that.”
Ever sipped while counting to twenty and back in Latin.
He hadn’t approached that miscreant at Landry’s ball, reasoning that society preferred theft by charm over any contest of strength.
Mr. April had no need to press a blade to a man’s throat to win the girl when, in his other life, such measures were routinely required.
But he’d known Isabella didn’t trust the man because of something nefarious in their shared past.
He’d erred in judgment, and not for the first time.
“What does he want?” Ever asked once he was certain his voice would be devoid of emotion.
She returned the thimble to the shelf. “My dowry, first off, made very clear. A connection to a duke, possibly second. Children, third, aside from those crafted with his mistress. The usual.” She touched an ammonite fossil he’d found as a child and once had to hide from his brother, who’d destroyed anything dear to him.
“Oh, and my immediate and public dismissal of you. I have two days to make that happen before I attend the Fisher-Hawthorn garden party on his arm.”
Ever strode to his desk and wrenched open the top drawer. That bloody bastard.
Isabella sealed his fascination when a soft laugh shivered through her—a husky sound he wanted to hear again when there were no chaperones, no clothing, and no restraint between them.
“My, the bloodcurdling expression on your face. How does anyone think you’re harmless?
But can we criticize his methods when we’re playing a genteel game of purchasing each other’s silence? ”
Ever glanced up, letterhead only an agent in the profession would recognize in his hand.
His wound had begun to ache, matching the dull beat of his heart.
“Ireton has you by the throat,” he growled.
“The difference is, he enjoys it. I don’t revel in any part of hanging someone out to dry. In fact, most days I loathe it.”
She dragged the rim of her glass along her lower lip, causing his breath to catch, his body to tighten. His cock was nearing a state that would soon be difficult to disguise, though the desk offered a measure of mercy. Unable to stop, he held her gaze, struck again by the inconvenient truth of her.
Too young, but otherwise, perfect.
“I suppose I cannot, in good conscience, condone violence,” she murmured, though her predatory smile suggested otherwise.
“I don’t have to touch him.” Ever scribbled a note, the pen biting too hard into the paper, reflecting on what a brilliant agent she would make.
“Physical force is for those with nothing to hide, and I doubt the marquess qualifies. I have a colleague who specializes in acquiring information quickly.”
“Will it take long?” she asked. “I had to agree to that blasted garden party to keep him quiet.”
“I’ll have enough to end this before sunrise.” He crossed to the door and rapped twice against the corridor wall. Brick appeared and took the folded note without comment.
“Fraser,” Ever instructed. “He’ll know what to do.”
When the door closed, he didn’t immediately turn to her.
There were things he couldn’t say—things that might have given her a kinder impression of him, or at least a truer one.
The cost of trusting the wrong person. The habit of keeping pieces of himself hidden even from those closest to him.
He’d learned early what faith could cost. His brother and father had taught him well.
“Why did you come to me, sprite?” he asked at last, not because he had to know, but because he wanted to. He hadn’t craved such familiarity before this.
The pop of an ember in the hearth and the soft click of her glass being placed on the shelf echoed about the room. When she spoke, there was no guile to it at all. “Because I trust you.”
The rain, harder now, needled against the high windowpanes, the hushed statement threading through him.
“I trust you,” she repeated, the words thin but steady.
He shook his head. You shouldn’t.
She did. And she went to him.
Each step deliberate, the faint whisper of her skirts trailing like fingertips across his skin.
The shift in the air before she reached him was palpable, his lungs quickening at her nearness.
When she halted before him, it was close enough to see her lashes quiver, the pulse at her throat flutter.
Her nipples were puckered beneath her sodden bodice, tips he imagined circling with his lips, his teeth.
She stepped close enough that her breath warmed his throat. “I came because I knew you’d understand.”
He should have stepped back. “You came to the wrong man, Isa.”
“Then tell me to leave.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth, his pulse racing. “You know I can’t.”
Rising on her toes, she went in for the kiss.
Ever allowed it, let her press him back against the door and capture his lips with hers.
She grasped his shoulder with one hand while tangling the other in his hair.
He even closed his eyes—fuck, he couldn’t watch this—though he could still smell her, soft and floral, and feel her nails score his scalp with marked enthusiasm.
Still, he held back.
For the sake of his bloody sanity, he caged his hands at his sides and let her take what she wanted.
Despite the bountiful press of her breasts against his chest, heat searing through layers of clothing.
Despite their heartbeats tangling into the same wild rhythm.
Despite her tongue slipping between his lips to graze his teeth.
Despite yearning for Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook as he’d never yearned for anything in his life.
He understood, even if she didn’t—one kiss would alter everything.
“You’re playing with me,” she whispered, palms flat to his chest as she forced space between them.
He opened his eyes to find her more beautiful than when he’d closed them.
Golden strands had slipped from a sinking chignon to brush her shoulders, her eyes bright and unguarded, her lips flushed from a kiss that had been anything but involved.
The color in her cheeks and the way her fingers twisted in her skirts betrayed the vulnerability she tried to hide.
Bracing his fist against the doorjamb, he gave a small shrug. “The truth is, I’m not.”
She didn’t ask why. She drew in a tight breath that lifted her breasts, a sight that tempted him when he needed no further encouragement.
“I’ll be persuasive in public, sprite. Private is another matter. Showing you this side of life wasn’t part of our deal.”
“Fine,” she whispered, temper slipping through the word. “I only wondered. Something to compare to the others.”
He straightened from the door. “Others.”
It came out low and possessive before he could stop it.
And there it was. Her mouth curved, slow and satisfied. “Others.”
“Ireton?”
“Of course.”
Ever tipped his chin and looked down at her. There was no chance she didn’t feel his arousal pressed hard against her hip. “This is a trap. I know you’re a chit who likes to spin them.”
“And yet,” Isabella murmured, “you’re still here.”
“Don’t,” he said softly. The word was for him, not her.
He broke his own command with a low oath.
He stopped fighting himself. His arm curved around her waist and guided her back into the door, his free hand braced high as his mouth took hers.
The exchange was deliberate, unrelenting—meant to pin her there until she understood what she’d set loose, until he showed her the full measure of his wanting.
It wasn’t a kiss he’d ever give as a trial run, a test of chemical compatibility, a we-shall-see approach. This was possession, born of images of her with other men blazing through his mind.
He recognized her manipulation (jealousy) and his own (seduction) with brutal clarity.
And still he seized her like a man starved.