Chapter 6
The following afternoon, Andromena died…and it was all Edgar’s fault.
That kiss—his kiss—in a slow, cumbersome carriage was nothing like the sweet, snowy one from that winter’s morn.
This was a fierce, desperate hunger, as if his very breathing depended on that kiss.
And she understood, because if he’d stopped, she was certain she would have died right there in his arms. A day later, she still didn’t know how she’d played it so collected in the immediacy of his embrace.
The things she had secretly thought abhorrent—like a man sticking his tongue in her mouth—turned out to be pure magic.
It left her wondering if she might also be wrong about what came next, whether a man’s body pressing into hers could be another kind of magic.
She had doubted that until she felt his solid weight against her, making her reconsider everything.
But the simple feel of his tongue touching hers, caressing her mouth, at least showed her why women put up with all the rest.
He left her breathless and dizzy, his touch chasing away the memory of her blackmailer.
Safe in her sister’s guest room under a warm coverlet, sleep eluded her.
It was not fear that kept her staring at the lace canopy, but thoughts of Edgar, until dawn broke and she finally drifted into dreams of him.
Sleep offered no escape from the viscount. She’d awakened to his ghost, whispering around every corner of her clouded mind.
Altogether, a lack of proper rest combined with Edgar’s outrageously thorough embrace, and also her wide-brimmed Gainsborough hat, accounted for Andromena stepping into the path of a hooded Tilbury on New Bond Street.
Upon dressing that morn, the leghorn straw hat with sparkling gauze and a dark netted veil seemed like the perfect adornment for a blackmail meeting. It also happened to be much less useful for seeing.
Shouts from the banshee heralded Andromena’s end.
As she stood, her pearl-encrusted slippers mired in both literal and figurative mud, the looming, spindled conveyance barreling toward her cast a sudden breeze that parted her netting like a curtain.
The banshees ensured Andromena would see the spindle-barreled curricle bearing down on her, and the giant, chestnut-maned mount about to trample her.
And then she was dying, and it was simultaneously terrific and terrible at the same time.
Unlike her father, who’d strangled, choked, and gagged until death overtook him, the weight of the carriage knocked the air from her lungs.
Before she could be trampled, she took flight, sailing effortlessly through the sky like one of Diana’s airborne magical women before floating gently onto her back.
That thrilling sensation lasted as long as her last heartbeat.
The force of Andromena’s collision with the earth crushed her lungs.
Her teeth clanked hard enough to break. And her vision went black.
Then stars danced behind her eyes, and she wanted to say: The stars and the moon are heaven!
I knew it. Granted, there was no moon, just glittering, floating sparks.
But an I-told-you-so to only herself was no consolation. Not when the price of death was throbbing muscles and crushed lungs.
Here, Andromena believed one didn’t feel pain in death. Hoped, perhaps, to make herself feel better after her father’s death, and then worrying and wondering about her own.
Maybe that was the price one paid for entry into the pearly gates and a chance to play among the stars and clouds.
“Are you bloody insane?”
When it came to The Almighty, she’d proven wrong. As it turned out, he was neither benevolent nor kind and loving but surly and snappish with a temper and tones to rival Lucifer.
Andromena could trace her descent to one particular act in her living years—age nine, when Campbell returned from a sea voyage with three gifts for three sisters: an opal brooch for Linnie.
A garnet necklace for Meghan. And a hay-stuffed doll for Andromena.
This is what she got for stealing the brooch.
I’m in hell, she silently wept.
“Would you cease your caterwauling?” he growled. “I’m the one in hell. You’re on New Bond Street.”
The blinding rush of light chased away the dark, replacing it with a different kind of dark.
The wild-maned chestnut beast who’d been bearing down on her morphed into an even more ferocious creature.
Andromena blinked wildly until her vision completely cleared, only to realize who had saved her. The same man who had kissed her like she was the only woman in the world he yearned for. “Edgar?”
“I would bow,” he said. “If you weren’t draped all over me.”
She snorted. “No, you wouldn’t. You are no gentleman, Edgar.” Andromena leveraged herself to look him in the eyes better. “You…You…”
But the problem was that the moment she did, she lost her tongue, her head, and senses.
His dark eyes belonged to a hunter: haunting, and meant to terrify. Yet, the sudden shivers in her lower stomach and magnetic prickle across her skin were not those of fear, but breathless anticipation.
“Yes?”
She didn’t have a clue what he was yes’ing to.
One dark, menacing eyebrow took wing. “I believe you were saying something about me not being a gentleman?”
“Y-yes.” There that was—
Her breath hitched.
His hand, buried against the side of her skirts, stroked along her thigh.
Years of lessons on decorum demanded ladylike indignation and outrage.
Or as her brothers prepared her for such insolence, a knee between the gentleman’s quite muscular thighs.
What they had not prepared her for was legs like steel rods, and all the muscles within them, and how they rippled and moved and would in turn move—
Then, it happened. Not in a ballroom or theatre box with the romantic strains of an opera swelling around her, but on the cold, cobbled streets of London. Andromena’s lashes fluttered. Her eyes rolled back. And she had her first swoon because of Viscount Kerr.
It wasn’t to be borne!
With his next crass, jeering breath, Edgar proved why.
“You ungrateful chit! I’ve now risked my own damned neck, not once, but twice, to save your fool’s one.”
They were drawing a crowd.
The viscount seemed to note as much at the same time as she. This time, he placed his fury on someone who was not Andromena. He narrowed his predator’s eyes to menacing slits and flashed the same feral snarl at their gawking, but small audience.
It was hard not to be made breathless by the way he sent several men scurrying with but a single black look.
The dapperly dressed gentlemen bumped and tripped over one another in a bid to dodge his wrath.
And fully aware of his ruthless reputation, she would wager the sun, moon, and stars that not a word of what happened here would be whispered about, lest they find themselves a feast of the wolf.
Andromena, who normally went breathless only over gloves and gowns, found herself flushed and hot, and aware all over again of the Corinthian before her.
Edgar cursed. “You injured your bloody hand.”
He sounded so put out by the possibility she frowned. “I have not. I have three much larger brothers and three also very large cousins.” None of them is near in height and power to this specimen of a man. “I assure you, my lord. I’m very resilient.”
“Then what in hell are you doing with your fingers?”
At some point, she’d begun fanning herself.
Over him. Madness!
Andromena abruptly stopped.
She hated the effect he was having on her, but she also understood it. She was, after all, a flesh and blood woman who could not help but be impressed by the power with which he, a virile, feral man, commanded.
In one smooth movement, he rolled them both to their feet. His body all fluid, sinewy muscles against hers, put her into the carriage, and on his lap, and stole her breath all over again.
This time, she told herself he was an arrogant lout, a deceiver of innocents, and still it was a hard task not to fan herself. She was, however, grateful for his intervention.
“I am grateful for your kind assistance—”
“You mean for saving your life.”
He wanted to get a rise from her. He might be a sour-faced, rude curmudgeon, but she would not stoop to his level—metaphorically speaking, of course—even the Sycamore Gap tree would struggle in a head-to-head with Viscount Kerr.
“If I weren’t so put out by you, my lord, I would praise you on a job well done in chasing off those pig-widgeons.”
“Unfortunately, the biggest one hasn’t been so deterred.”
Frowning, Andromena tipped back the enormous brim of her Gainsborough hat. She turned her gaze in a slow circle in the narrow roadway, searching for the fool who had defied the menacing Viscount Kerr.
She came to a full stop on a dreadfully bored-looking Edgar.
Andromena gasped. “You meant me.”
He smirked. “What a clever thing you are.”
Fiery heat raced to her cheeks. Something about this man turned her violent. She wanted to thwack her reticule across his slightly broken, Greek nose.
Her reticule.
Andromena’s breath stuck in her throat. She did a frantic sweep, tearing her beautiful bonnet away and letting it drop carelessly to the ground. Then, her breath caught. Against the black, damp cobbles lay a single, sparkling pink speck.
She didn’t realize she cried out. Didn’t care that Edgar thundered: “No!” or that he cursed a sailor’s litany behind her while she bolted from the carriage for the only thing standing between her and complete ruin.
Which was why, this time, she didn’t see the horse and rider until it was too late.
A black-and-brown skewbald mount reared and pawed at the air above her head. Screaming, Andromena just managed to rescue her reticule.
Rescue came—for a second time—in Lord Kerr’s quick thinking, sharp reflexes, and strength.
With a powerful arm wrapping around her waist, he snatched Andromena to safety. A fraction of a second later, the monstrous horse thrashed the empty air with its deadly hooves.