Chapter 12
S he’d panicked.
The Dove had warned her that Jasper Jones was clever, but Frankie had not understood how clever he was at reading people. It was absolutely fascinating the way he was able to discern a truth from a lie simply by studying a person’s face and the tiny reactions he or she exhibited. For someone like Frankie, who half the time could not even tell when someone was being sarcastic, such a talent was as unimaginable as being able to juggle flaming swords.
It also gave her the strangest sense of being kept on her toes. Frankie had always been book-smart, and had she not been blessed with an equally clever sister, she would have had an extraordinarily dull childhood. In Fidelia she had found someone with whom she could develop codes and equations. They had played games with elaborate rules that other children would not have comprehended, and they had pushed one another to greater conceptual understandings. Frankie had been disappointed when she’d ventured into the world and discovered that very few people were as extraordinary as her sister. The Dove was one of them; Frankie would not wager on matching her wits with that woman.
Jasper was another, even though they’d had entirely different childhoods. Frankie had been raised in a genteelly impoverished household that could not afford a governess, but they had always had food on the table and coal in the grate. Jasper had been raised on a wharf as a fishmonger’s son, and she doubted food and heat had ever been a given. Frankie and her sister had taught themselves how to read and write and calculate using dusty tomes from the library. Schooling had likely never been an option for Jasper. Frankie had been taught—or at least her mother had attempted to teach her—how to smile and nod her head and laugh and be generally pleasant. Jasper had taken the opposite approach—ascending to his position in life through sheer ruthlessness.
And yet despite all their differences, Frankie was certain that if it came to a battle of wits, Jasper would have her on the run. In him she had found an equal, and the feeling gave her a thrilling sense of satisfaction.
Unfortunately, that meant that when he’d caught her trying to break into his study, he had not fallen for her lies, not even a little bit. And Frankie simply hadn’t known what to do to extricate herself from the situation. She could not admit the truth, and every other scenario she’d quickly thought of and discarded had all led back to the same conclusion: Jasper would not allow her to leave without a satisfactory explanation for her presence at his study door.
So she’d taken the biggest gamble of her spinster life, and she’d kissed him.
When she’d tugged Jasper’s mouth to hers, it had been with the full expectation that he would pull back in shock, possibly horror, thus giving her the opportunity to run away in faux tears and spinsterly humiliation.
But he didn’t pull away.
He kissed her back.
None of Frankie’s factual or forbidden reading had prepared her for the warm, dry pressure of Jasper’s mouth on hers. How could she have ever imagined the way the rasp of his stubble would feel on her skin? Or how he would smell of aftershave and spice? Or that she’d be able to taste the liquor he’d drunk earlier on his lips as they gently moved over hers?
With aching slowness, Jasper tugged her lower lip between his teeth and sucked.
Frankie jerked her head back and touched her fingertips to her bottom lip. It was wet and plump from his attention.
Jasper arched a brow, but he did not shift away from where he’d crowded her closer to the door. His breathing was erratic and his pupils dilated, but his tone was cool when he said, “Now if you are done distract—”
Frankie lifted onto the balls of her feet and hastily pressed her mouth to his again, smothering the words. This time Jasper slid his palm around her waist, the heat of his hand searing through her corset as he pulled her forward, pinning her to the warm breadth of his body.
Although he held her closely, he hesitated for a moment, pulling back so that his lips hovered over hers. He was offering her a moment to change her mind, to slap him, to draw away in horror. She probably should. No, she definitely should, but she was burning and far too curious about what he would do if she stayed.
So she waited, her face tilted in invitation for him to press his lips to hers again, and was surprised when instead his hot mouth began to drift, feathering along her temple. She shivered when he continued his torturously light exploration, tracing his lips down her cheek and placing a soft kiss just below her jaw. “Open for me,” he murmured.
There was something about the deep silk of his voice that made her anxious to do his bidding. Jasper lifted his head to stare at her wet, parted mouth, and his thumb dragged over her bottom lip. “Have you been kissed like this before?”
“No.” Her voice was so thick she barely recognized it.
“Do you want to be?”
There were a hundred reasons to say no: spinsters still had reputations to uphold, she was a governess, she was spying on him… And there was only one reason to say yes: She desperately wanted to be kissed. For once, she wanted to feel desired.
“Yes.”
Jasper made a noise in the back of his throat and pressed his mouth to hers, stroking his tongue inside in a hot, languid lick that had her toes curling in her slippers. His tongue continued to rub against hers, intimately, sensuously, and for one of the few times in her life, Frankie felt completely inadequate in the face of his skill. She was certain what Jasper was doing was considered wicked and immoral by polite society.
And she was certain she wanted more.
She eagerly tangled her tongue with his. In response to her boldness, he tightened his arms around her and made a growling sound. He pushed her against the door to the study, and when Frankie’s shoulder blades met the cool wood it sent a shiver of excitement through her. He tilted her head back with his hand on her jaw and took full advantage of her mouth, the pace of the kiss changing from sweet and exploring to heated and ravaging, his lips moving with such unrestrained lust that she began to feel hot and confused and driven to a height of arousal that seemed to have no peak. She pulled on his shoulders, the lock-picking tools in her hand digging into his coat, encouraging him so close that he was almost crushing her against the door with his weight. If only she could get near enough, then maybe this burning need low in her belly would be sated.
A door slammed down the corridor, exploding into the moment like the crack of a whip. They sprang apart, Frankie’s breaths coming out in shallow bursts and her pulse pounding in her throat. She was certain her lips and face were red from the abrasion of his stubble. If someone were to catch them like this—she felt ill at the very thought of the consequences.
Guilt, entirely too late on the draw, finally swooped in to reclaim her senses. She’d been positioned in his house to search his papers, not his mouth. What had she been thinking ? She hadn’t been, that was the problem. What had started as a solution to being caught trying to break into his study had quickly spiraled into something so much more.
It was little consolation that for the first time since she’d met him, Jasper, too, seemed off-balance, his hair mussed and his breathing uneven.
Without a word, Frankie slipped underneath his arm and escaped down the corridor. When she reached the stairs she lifted her skirts and began to run, her brain a thousand jumbled thoughts that refused to clarify into anything that made sense. She was a bundle of nerves from the kisses. She felt raw and exposed, surprised and confused to have reacted to Jasper in such a powerful way. She felt stunned that he had kissed her back in the first place. Had continued kissing her.
When she reached her chamber, she locked the door and ripped at her gown. Once free of her dress and corset, she slid to the floor and dropped her forehead into her hands.
Her sister was out there somewhere, and while the Dove hunted for her, Frankie had failed at her only task. Worse, she’d kissed the very man she’d been sent to investigate, even if she no longer considered him a suspect.
As a devout bachelor and infamous rake, Jasper should have passed Cecelia’s needs onto a female relative or some other caretaker. Instead, he’d become actively involved in her life—to the point where Cecelia was trying to marry him off so that she might have some peace. He had refused to allow Cecelia to attend the Houndsbury house party as if he were an overprotective father rather than the king of London’s underworld. To soothe Cecelia’s hurt feelings, he had then permitted her to throw a soirée. When she’d run amok, he’d been angry, but Frankie knew Cecelia’s punishment would be a scolding at best—and the girl knew it, too. In fact, Frankie would go so far as to say Jasper was a pushover when it came to his niece. Would the Jasper Jones she had come to know, who protected his fifteen-year-old niece like she was his own daughter, also trick other young women into marriage with cruel men?
Her gut response was a vehement no . Logically speaking, his care of Cecelia brought her to the same answer. And it wasn’t just his care for Cecelia, but for everyone under his roof, including Cecelia’s great-aunt, whom he had not been under any obligation to take in, but had anyway. On Frankie’s first day Jasper had been demanding and rude and intimidating, and yet in her short time there she’d been amazed to discover that he was intensely adored by his staff. His house ran smoothly not out of fear, but loyalty. The silver was polished because the maids did not want to disappoint him. The larder was stocked because the cook wanted to please him. His clothes were laundered and finely brushed because his valet respected him. If she had to guess, she would say Rockford’s operated in much the same way, which was no doubt part of the secret to its success. Could a man who inspired such fealty also conceal a darker side?
Then there was the matter of his finances. Frankie had not yet succeeded in finding his ledgers, but if the gathering below was any indication, Jasper was not lacking in funds. When a woman with the breeding and standing of Lady Evelyn was willing to overlook a man’s common birth and lack of title, then he must be extraordinarily wealthy indeed. Why, then, would Jasper risk it all to pocket a little side money from orchestrating a morally filthy racket? It simply did not make sense.
Frankie lifted her head and sighed. She knew in her heart that as annoying and conceited as he could be, Jasper Jones was innocent. All she had to do now was prove it to the Dove.