Chapter 20
“Keep your head down and stay close.” Aaron’s voice came low beside her ear as their unmarked carriage rolled through the narrow streets of Whitechapel.
Louise pulled her dark cloak tighter, the rough wool foreign against skin accustomed to silk and muslin. Through the window, she watched taverns spill yellow light and raucous laughter into the fog-shrouded streets.
The carriage stopped beside a building that seemed to lean against its neighbors for support. Above a tavern door, a sign reading “The Rusty Anchor” creaked in the wind. The sound of breaking glass and shouting emerged from within.
“Perhaps you should wait here,” Aaron suggested, though his tone indicated he already knew her answer.
“We go together or not at all.” Louise met his gaze steadily. “That was our agreement.”
He helped her from the carriage with his hand firm on her elbow as they navigated the treacherous entrance.
The tavern’s interior reeked of cheap gin and unwashed bodies.
Men hunched over scarred tables looked up at their entrance.
Their eyes were sharp with predatory interest until they saw Aaron’s face.
Something in his expression made them quickly look away.
They climbed a narrow staircase that groaned beneath their weight. At the top, a single door bore a small brass plate: “M. Pellam, Financial Services.”
Aaron knocked. Silence. He knocked again, harder.
“We’re closed.” The voice from within sounded nervous.
“Mr. Pellam? I need to discuss Lord Sulton’s accounts,” his voice was low, only for Pellam’s ears.
More silence, then the sound of multiple locks being undone. The door opened a crack, revealing a thin face with darting eyes.
“I don’t know any Lord Sulton.”
Aaron pulled out a leather purse, letting the coins inside clink audibly. “I think you do.”
Pellam’s eyes fixed on the purse. The door opened wider, and a man who looked like a ferret in human form, all quick movements and suspicious glances, appeared.
“Come in. Quickly,” he urged.
The office was cramped and dim, every surface covered with ledgers and loose papers.
“What do you want to know?” He snatched the purse when Aaron offered it, weighing it expertly.
“Everything about Lord Sulton’s dealings.” Aaron’s voice carried ducal authority even in simple clothes. “Particularly anything involving Rupert Wigram.”
Pellam went still. “I don’t know that name.”
“The weight of this purse says otherwise.”
The accountant’s tongue darted nervously across his lips. He scurried to a cabinet and then pulled out several ledgers. “Lord Sulton’s accounts. Everything from the last two years.”
Louise watched Aaron flip through the books and saw his jaw tighten as he absorbed the extent of George’s financial incompetence. Bad investments, worse gambling debts, and schemes that bordered on fraudulent, she was sure.
Her brother hadn’t just been unlucky. He had been catastrophically foolish.
“There’s nothing here about Wigram.” Aaron set down the last ledger with controlled frustration.
Pellam shifted nervously, then moved to check his cabinet again. His movements grew increasingly frantic. “There’s one missing. A black leather one with the gold clasp.”
“Missing?” Louise stepped forward. “Since when?”
“Lord Sulton came here a fortnight ago. Very agitated. He said he urgently needed to review something.” Pellam wrung his hands and sucked nervously at his teeth. “He must have taken it. He was very particular about that ledger, always insisting I keep it separate from the others.”
“What was in it?” Aaron demanded.
“I never looked closely. Lord Sulton paid extra for my discretion.” Pellam’s voice dropped. “But … I did catch a glimpse of shipping manifests. Cargo lists. Things that didn’t match any legitimate business I knew of.”
Smuggling records, just like Aaron had said. Louise felt her heart sink.
George hasn’t just borrowed from criminals. He’s been keeping their books.
Aaron asked several more questions, but Pellam had nothing else useful.
“I assume that I can count on your discretion,” Aaron said at last, his words more a command than an assumption as he passed him even more money.
The man’s eyes shimmered with greed as he nodded. “But of course, sir. The utmost discretion.”
“You never saw us.”
“Saw whom?”
Aaron nodded back in response, and they left him counting his coins and descended back through the tavern’s chaos to their waiting carriage.
Louise’s mind churned through the implications. George had taken evidence of his criminal involvement with him. Either he planned to use it as leverage, or he was so deep in Wigram’s organization that he needed those records to survive.
“Come with me.”
Louise looked up, realizing they had arrived home, and Aaron was holding the carriage door open.
Instead of leading her to the main entrance, he guided her through a side door and up a private staircase she had never used before.
They emerged into his personal chambers. Louise had never been here, and despite her upset, she took in the space. Dark wood paneling, leather-bound books, a fire crackling in the grate. It smelled like him, she found.
He poured amber liquid into two glasses, pressing one into her hands. “Drink. You’re shaking.”
Louise hadn’t realized she was. The brandy burned, but it pushed back the cold that had settled in her bones.
“George is going to prison for a very long time, isn’t he?” she asked, her voice coming out in a squeak.
“Not if I can help it.” Aaron stood by the fire, his own glass untouched. “We’ll find him before Wigram does.”
Louise moved through the room, needing to occupy her hands, her mind, anything to avoid thinking about her brother’s likely fate.
A painting caught her attention. A portrait of a woman with dark hair and kind eyes.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.” Aaron’s voice softened. “Painted just before her wedding.”
Louise studied the delicate features, seeing Aaron’s bone structure beneath the feminine softness.
From the corner of her eye, she saw a leather-bound book sitting on a side table. Without thinking, she opened it.
Pages of sketches filled the book. Delicate drawings of flowers, birds, and everyday objects rendered with loving detail. But it was the last pages that made her breath catch. A drawing of a baby, perfectly rendered despite the artist never having seen her subject.
Below it, written in elegant script:
My darling child, I have not met you yet, but I love you beyond measure. May you grow strong, and kind, and know always that you were wanted, cherished, beloved.
“She died giving birth to me.” Aaron stood beside her now, looking down at his mother’s words. “I only found this after my father died.”
“He kept it from you?”
“He kept everything of hers locked away. Her rooms, her belongings, even her portraits. He was madly in love with her and wanted to keep her memory for himself.”
Louise traced the words with gentle fingers. “How terrible. To lose her and then be denied even her memory.”
“I used to think he blamed me for her death. Now, I think he simply couldn’t bear to share her. Not even with his own son.”
The raw pain in his voice made Louise turn to face him fully.
“She loved you,” she said softly. “Look at these words. She loved you before you even came to this world.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I killed the only person who might have.”
Louise set down the sketchbook carefully, then placed her hands on either side of his face, forcing him to meet her eyes.
“That’s not true. Lady Merrow loves you. She sees goodness in you that you refuse to see in yourself.”
“And you?” The question emerged rough, vulnerable. “What do you see?”
“A man trying so hard to be stone, that he’s forgotten he’s allowed to be human.”
His eyes searched hers. “How do you do that?” he whispered.
“What?”
“Undo me. So, so easily.”
And he pulled her against him, his mouth finding hers with desperate need. This kiss was different from their library encounter, deeper, tinged with shared pain and understanding.
When he lifted her onto his bed, Louise knew she should protest. Knew she should remember propriety and reputation.
But Aaron’s body was warm against hers, his breath unsteady, his restraint fraying with every heartbeat.
“Louise …” He paused only to search her face, again.
“Yes?” she breathed.
“If you’re not certain …” he mumbled.
She shook her head. “I’m certain. I want this. I want you.”
He let out a long exhale. “Good. Because I want you. Heavens, I burn for you, Louise.”
His mouth claimed hers again, deeper this time. His kiss was hungry, coaxing, drawing a soft sound from her throat she had never heard herself make.
His hands slid up her ribs slowly, learning her shape through the fabric. When he eased her gown from one shoulder, he did it as though unwrapping something precious. His mouth followed the path he revealed, brushing kisses along her collarbone, then lower, each one a question and a promise.
Louise’s fingers curled in his hair, pulling him closer despite every rule she had ever been taught. He groaned softly, and the edge of it sent a shiver through her.
“Aaron …” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure if it was meant to stop him or beg him not to stop.
He nibbled gently at the hollow of her throat, as though savoring her pulse.
“I want to make you feel good,” he murmured against her skin. “To make you forget all your troubles. Moan for me, Louise. Tell me what feels good, so that I may do it again and again.”
All her thoughts dissolved the instant his lips trailed along the curve of her shoulder. His touch was careful, almost maddeningly tender, as he continued to bare only what he dared, nothing more, his thumb brushing her skin in soothing circles as if to steady them both.
By the time he kissed the new strip of exposed skin, Louise no longer cared about propriety or anything beyond the way his mouth worshipped every inch he discovered, as though he had waited years for the right to touch her this way.
His mouth suckled one bare nipple, causing a ripple of pleasure. His mouth teased at it, flicking with his tongue.
“Do you like this, my sweet?” he purred.
“Yes. Oh, yes,” she moaned.
When he continued his trail of kisses, Louise arched toward his lips. A delightful shiver ran through her as her bare skin heated beneath his touch.
When his mouth reached the soft tuft of curls between her thighs, she opened herself to him. When his thumb touched the hard pearl, she gasped.
She ached for more and curled her fingers tightly into his hair and abandoned herself to his touch. When his tongue took the place of his fingers, she closed her eyes, savoring each heartbeat of sensation.
He brought her pleasure with his mouth, worshipping her with single-minded devotion until she shattered apart, biting her own hand to muffle her cries.
Afterward, they lay tangled together for several minutes, her breathing gradually slowing from desperate gasps. Aaron kept his arms around her, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on her bare shoulder as if memorizing the texture of her skin.
“I should—” she began, but he silenced her with a kiss so tender it brought tears to her eyes.
“I want to keep you here,” he murmured against her lips. “Lock the door and pretend the world outside doesn’t exist. That there’s no George to find, no debts to settle, no tomorrow when you’ll leave, and I’ll let you because it’s the right thing to do.”
Louise’s fingers found the scar on his ribs she’d discovered earlier, a ridge of old pain he’d flinched from when she’d first touched it. Now he lay still, letting her explore this evidence of old violence.
“Your father?”
“A riding crop. I was fifteen and had defended a maid he’d cornered.” Aaron’s voice held no emotion, as if discussing someone else entirely. “He said I needed to learn the difference between servants and family.”
Louise pressed her lips to the scar, feeling him shudder beneath her touch. “What an evil man. No child deserves such punishment. Especially when you do the right thing.”
His hand tangled in her hair, holding her against him as if she might evaporate. “And yet … here I am, taking liberties with a woman under my protection—”
“Stop.” Louise pushed herself up to look at him directly. “You gave me a choice. You gave me pleasure while denying yourself. Even now, you protected my innocence when you could have taken everything.” Her fingers traced his jaw, feeling the muscle jump beneath her touch. “You’re nothing like him.”
Aaron caught her hands, kissing each palm before releasing them. “This is safer. This way you remain … untouched for marriage.”
“I don’t care about marriage.”
“You will. When this is over, when you have choices again, you will.” He helped her restore her clothing with the same care he had shown in removing it. “You should return to your room. Before anyone notices.”
Louise wanted to tell him she would never care about some future marriage to a respectable man who would never make her feel a fraction of what he did.
But what would be the point? A duke didn’t marry a woman whose brother had fled, whose family name now carried the stench of scandal and debt.
Even if Aaron wanted to marry her, which his careful distance suggested he didn’t, the gulf between them was too wide.
She saw the resolution in his eyes, the walls rebuilding themselves even as his hands remained gentle on her, and she herself also knew that even though they both wanted … Aaron clearly couldn’t give more than he’d just given her.
“Yes. Of course,” she mumbled, and he helped her with her clothing before she slipped through the dark hallways back to her own chamber.
Her body still hummed with satisfaction. In her bed, she pressed her fingers to her lips, tasting him still, feeling phantom touches on her skin.
She thought of his mother’s words in that sketchbook, of love that existed before meeting, of being wanted and cherished and beloved. She thought of Aaron as a child, growing up without those words, believing he had killed the only person who might have loved him.
Louise stared at the ceiling, knowing sleep would elude her.
She was beginning to care for a man who believed himself incapable of the emotion. A man who gave her pleasure but wouldn’t take any for himself, maintaining boundaries that protected her reputation while his own heart remained barricaded.
Tomorrow, they would continue searching for George. Tomorrow, she would pretend that stolen moments in his chambers meant nothing beyond physical release.
But tonight, alone in her bed, Louise admitted the truth she could never speak aloud.
She was in love with him. Hopelessly, impossibly, irrevocably.
And when George was found, when she and Emily left Calborough House, that love would destroy her far more thoroughly than any scandal ever could.