Chapter 2
Lucy Makeblythe regarded Adam Chevestrer warily across his carriage.
He was turned out splendidly in shoes with a mirror shine, a shirt with a modern oxford collar, and the finest beaver top hat she’d ever seen.
The whole combined to emphasize that he was a man of fashion — read: relentless change — and was not to be trusted.
She tried not to notice how handsome he was. Tried and failed.
They’d had a nice day in the park and she certainly liked her new togs, but she needed to return to being a maid while he returned to whatever he did to make money (business of some sort) and whatever he did for amusement (fucking other women, likely).
Lucy did not plan on being his amusement again.
“Where’d you grow up, Luce?” he asked while looking out the window.
Why was he asking? It was one thing to buy her a bunch of nosegays while on a stroll and another entirely to share confidences.
“London,” she said breezily.
“I’m a London boy myself. Took years to hoe over the Covent Garden accent.”
She looked up in surprise. So he could share something of himself — other than his copious seed, which he’d failed to direct away from her womb, as they’d agreed in the ducal hallway several months ago.
Lucy had felt the past few months that she was living in a moralistic novel: she, a maid and a maiden, seduced by the handsome and wealthy man; their immediate lust leading them to that fateful encounter; and her filled, first with his seed, and now his baby.
At the end of the ecstatic, disastrous tup, he’d shoved a wad of banknotes into her hand and run off as if chased, barely getting his trousers secured before racing away.
Lucy, who had been so careful thus far, had landed in a real scrape.
She imagined what they’d say at the orphanage at which she’d been raised if they could see her now, some rich man’s fancy piece, and with a baby on the way to boot.
Having read stacks of books from the highest of moral literature to the works kept in secret rooms at less reputable booksellers, Lucy knew what would happen if she confronted Adam with the growing consequence of his error. Surprise, hurt, anger, and deflection.
If Lucy Makeblythe had one great sin, it was pride. A pride that meant she would not go quietly. He had decided to continue their relationship, and for that, she would extract a price.
The carriage slowed, and Lucy looked out to find that they were not outside the Astwell townhouse.
“Thought we could enjoy a refreshment at my own place afore I take you home,” he said as the footman opened the door to his spectacular carriage, which framed his even more stunning townhouse.
Adam’s face was innocent, but she knew what this meant: a quick tumble and pat on the arse before she was sent back to service.
She’d ignored the lessons in her books to her own detriment once; never again.
She was about to refuse to exit the carriage when he slid his gloved hand into her own.
Lucy’s insides twisted, and not in the way they’d been doing each morning since shortly after the messy hallway encounter.
Now, she recalled that irresistible pull that had led her there.
That feeling of being entirely in this man’s control.
Lucy let him pull her into the house, but she decided she would use whatever means she had to get the upper hand on her erstwhile beau.
***
They’d toured the townhouse’s extensive gardens and enjoyed tea in his opulent drawing room. Lucy had remarked on liking the pattern in the watered silk used to upholster his chairs. She possessed the refined taste of a duchess, and he knew several.
Adam was so convinced that the afternoon was going well that he saw nothing amiss about Lucy’s request to tour the rest of the house. They’d had such a marvelous time in the duchess’s hallway. Maybe she wanted to tryst in his own place. He certainly did.
Adam adjusted himself discreetly in his trousers as he watched Lucy walk before him down the hall, her bustle swaying most appealingly. He knew from first-hand experience that the bits of her under all that fabric swayed most appealingly, too.
“Your rooms are this way?” she asked over her shoulder.
Oh, she wanted to see his bedchamber? He’d give her something to look at, something to feel, something to—
She stopped at the door to Adam’s own apartments, and he took out the key to unlock the door. Lucy plucked it from his fingers.
“Just what I needed,” she said, setting to work opening his door.
The lacing running down her back distracted Adam, so he didn’t immediately move when she entered his inner sanctum. The urge to lift her skirts overwhelmed him.
“Very nice,” she said, sailing by the grand four-poster covered in plush red.
He wasn’t sure of the name for the blankets and pillows heaped on his bed — and they did have names, if the decorator’s invoice was to be believed, but home furnishings were not his domain.
They came from France and cost a fortune, so he was pleased to let his girl see them.
Perhaps she’d like to feel them on her back.
Lucy was skipping ahead and entered his dressing room before him. When Adam rounded the corner, Lucy was regarding his pocket watches, all displayed on ultramarine velvet.
“When I raised capital for my business ventures by being a stud, I never imagined I’d have so much money that even my pocket watches would wear jewels,” he said, admiring a particularly fine timepiece from Switzerland.
Lucy’s brow creased. “But there aren’t any gems on the case.”
Adam turned a watch over and popped open the back. “The jewels are inside,” he said over her shoulder. “To better keep the time.”
Lucy peered at the timepiece, her jaw slack. “It’s all hidden inside? You have jewels nobody can even see?”
Adam popped the back cases open for the entire row of watches, proud to show off the fruits of his business acumen.
Inside, Lucy raged. This handsome peacock was outfitted with secret jewels, and she was about to be the destitute mother of his child because he couldn’t control his cock?
Adam Chevestrer was living without consequences. Why, aristocratic families had even paid him to serve as a stud, imagine!
Then and there, Lucy decided now was the time for Adam to experience the consequences.
“This is a fine collection,” she said, snapping the back case in place on one watch.
“Thank you, Luce. Now, if you just come over—”
She wasn’t attending. Instead, she was opening her new reticule determinedly. In went the key to his bedroom. He watched her, unsure of how to respond.
With her eyes on his, she plucked the first pocket watch from its velvet bed and dropped it in her bag.
“Lucy…” he breathed.
She held his gaze, then snapped the back case on another of the fine watches.
“What are you doing, Lucy?”
Dropping the second watch into her bag, she let it clink against the other before responding.
“You have so many. Four pocket watches with hidden jewels for one man. I would like half.”
Her heart beat so loudly she thought it might shake the walls of that room filled with Adam’s beautiful things.
At any moment, he would be within his rights to call the constable and have her arrested for theft.
But she knew he wouldn’t do that to her.
He wouldn’t hurt her, at least not because she took his treasures right before his eyes.
The pain he inflicted was of a different variety.
And how could she say that what she wanted wasn’t a watch or even those interior gems, but a way to drive a stiletto in this untouchable man who would otherwise never experience a consequence for what he’d done? She could hardly explain the impulse to herself.
“But those are mine,” he intoned. “You can’t just take things. You’re in service, you know that.”
Oh, that rankled. Of course she was in service, for fuck’s sake. And laws of morality extended to all but the highest tiers of society; Adam thought he’d entered that echelon. He was wrong.
Lucy placed her gloved hand on a third watch.
“Luce, is this because of what happened outside the closet?” He was now moving his hands as he talked. He’d thought to plow over his Covent Garden roots? She’d bring up those weeds yet.
In went the third pocket watch.
“Lucy, I’m sorry! I should have controlled my cock and not come inside. It’s just that I was a stud so long—”
He wanted to blame his actions on seeding women professionally?
Clink. The fourth and final watch hit the interior of her bag with the others. Lucy turned to take in the rest of the dressing room. Her work wasn’t finished.
“But I worked hard for those,” he railed, following behind her as she stuffed so many of his monogrammed handkerchiefs into her reticule that it wouldn’t close.
Satisfied and unwilling to walk out of his townhouse with men’s shirts in her arms, Lucy turned to him.
“Taking things of value to you is the only way you’ll learn,” she said sternly.
She was on thin ice. But for once, she wanted a moralistic novel to end with a fallen woman getting revenge rather than dying in a pile of rags, in a cold attic. If she couldn’t find such a tale already published, she’d write one herself — all over Adam Chevestrer’s life.
“Fuck, Lucy,” Adam growled, adjusting his cock in those fine trousers. “I don’t know why, but you’ve got me so hot.”
She wanted to hit him with the bag. He was getting hard over her efforts to extract justice?
“I’ll give you more. Anything. Just let me in that cunny again. I promise I’ll pull out this time.”
Lucy groaned and spun on her heel. In her confusion, she went deeper into his dressing room and jerked on two cupboards before spinning around.
Then she paused and realized what she’d seen. Lucy walked back as if in a trance, all signs of panic gone. She opened the door.
“It’s quite something, isn’t it?” asked Adam, coming behind her and pressing ever so slightly against her bustle.