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Her lips were the opulence of
Arabian Nights.
She tasted of cake and whiskey—sweetness and fire, like the first sunrise after the Deluge. His fingers dug into the thin calico of her blouse, hungry for her skin, her everything.

Let me. Only let me. Please.

Then she did—she kissed him back. The floor tilted, stars fell, and he was entirely vanquished. He was a stranger to her. And yet in her kiss there was an enormous trust. He was humbled; he was grateful beyond words. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt such affinity for another person, such willingness to yield everything of himself.

He pulled back. He was no longer accustomed to emotions of such intensity. His heart couldn’t seem to handle it. He didn’t know whether to rejoice or be frightened witless.

She looked at him, her eyes full of dismay. Because he’d kissed her? Or because he’d stopped?

He wanted her too much. And he knew, better than anyone else, what happened when he wanted anything too much. There was a price to be paid. There was always a price.

“You can still send me away,” he said.

But even as the rational coward in him looked for a way out, the rest of him would have none of it. Whatever the price this time, he would pay it, for the sanctuary he would find with her—for the sanctuary he had already found with her.

“I can’t,” she said softly.

And he knew then that he was hers, for as long as she would have him. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her again. The mad urgency was still there in him, but a great tenderness had overcome him. And he wanted not to overwhelm, but to cherish.

She was even more delicious this time—like boiled sweets and treacle rocks, for all the promises she held. A pulse at the top of her neck throbbed against his ring finger, a hot, fast rhythm in synchronicity with his own heartbeat.

He was a fighter, not a lover. He’d always left the particulars of lovemaking to the women who took him to bed. And so he’d feared that he would be clumsy and awkward with her. But tonight he was in grace. As his hands slipped lower to work at the buttons of her blouse, his fingers moved with an unhurried dexterity. Her skirts melted away. Even her stays presented little challenge.

When she was left only in her chemise, he sat her at the edge of the bed and continued to kiss her as he took off his coat and waistcoat. She helped him pull his shirt over his head.

He kissed her throat, her shoulders, her arms. When he bit her slightly at the base of her neck, she emitted a whimper of pleasure, a tiny sound that exploded in his veins—he wanted only to please her, and now she was pleased.

Everything he did seemed to please her. She shivered when he kissed her behind her ears. Nibbles at the inside of her elbows produced little sighs that made him dizzy. And when he licked her breasts through the thin lawn of her chemise, she all but heaved him off the bed.

He pushed up the chemise to worship her unhindered, her strawberry-scented skin, her perfectly round navel, her nipples that were like satin upon his tongue. She yanked off the chemise, wrapped her limbs tightly about him, and with the undulation of her body, let him know that she was ready for him.

It was like the first time. No, it was far better than his first time, during which he was half-drunk, still recovering from his first bout of malaria, and not altogether certain whether he’d have consented to the act if he hadn’t been so inebriated.

She scorched him. He was in torment, the sweetest, purest torment of his entire life. With every thrust he wanted to let blessed release wash over him. With every labored breath he held back, prolonging the pleasure, the tremors at the edge of the eruption.

Then she cried out and shuddered. And he could not have stopped himself had the fate of nations and the lives of millions depended upon it. His climax gripped and struck him. He shook and convulsed from the violent pleasures that tore him apart and tore him apart some more.

He let go, gave in, and fell over the edge.

He was sleepy, but he was also suffused with a splendid sense of well-being, a euphoric elation.

He rolled onto his side, pulling her with him, keeping her close. She was flushed, her hair a messy, unruly tumble, her breaths still short and uneven, like his own.

He stole a quick kiss: She looked too adorable.

“It’s after midnight, Cinderella,” he said. “You are still here.”

She smiled shyly and pulled a sheet up to her clavicle. “The modern-day Cinderella mostly understands that crime is rampant in our fair cities and that it makes no sense to run out of perfectly safe buildings into nighttime streets.”

He caressed the top of her shoulder. Her collarbone was prominent. Without the padding of her clothes she was even thinner than he’d supposed. “I’m glad the modern-day Cinderella is so prudent.”

“The modern-day Cinderella disappears at dawn instead,” she said. “When the trains begin running.”

“Prudent and logistically literate, the modern-day Cinderella is a marvel of womanhood.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips again. “Wait here.”

She had her head propped up when he returned to bed with another plate of cake. “You are hungry?”

“It’s for you,” he said, setting it down next to her. “You need to eat some more.”

Her gaze dropped. “Thank you,” she said. “Nobody thinks to feed me nowadays.”

“That is a crime.” He broke off a piece of cake and offered it to her. “Now eat, young lady.”

“You sound like my old governess.”

“Did you not eat properly as a child?”

“Not at all. I had to be chased and pinned down and threatened with dire consequences to touch my supper.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I didn’t particularly care for food until I left home and meals no longer appeared with tedious predictability on the table.” She accepted another piece of cake from him. “Nothing like hunger to focus the mind on what’s really important.”

“A full stomach?”

“A full stomach.”

He smiled. “What did you think was important before?”

“Clothes.”

“Clothes?”

“Yes, gowns, and frocks, and blouses, and bonnets, and gloves, and shoes, and—” She glanced at him. “Do you want me to go on?”

He’d like her to go on simply to hear words fall from her lips—like pearls dropping onto a silver plate. “I had no idea Cinderella was ever so shallow.”

“Oh, but she was.” A pause. “And is. In fact, I’ve always suspected that she’d gone to the ball less to snag a prince than to prance about in a new ball gown: the former is an unlikely prospect; the latter, an assured pleasure.”

“You mean to tell me gowns are more exciting than princes?”

“Oh, by far.” Her teasing expression turned rueful. “And did she not tell you? The modern-day Cinderella has recently announced a moratorium on princes, especially the amphibian sort.”

“But not on bastard brothers to amphibian princes?”

She flushed furiously. “Well, she is quite shocked about it. The brother must think very ill of her, seeing that she is obviously rather loose and easy.”

He was shocked about it too. And ecstatic. And grateful. “Easy? My God, I’ve never done so much begging in my life,” he said truthfully, stroking her hair.

And he’d been a nervous wreck. All the years of practice in concealing fears and anxieties had been the only thing that kept him from acting the blathering idiot. And she’d held herself so stiffly and had been so insulted. He’d marveled that she hadn’t realized that
he
was at
her
mercy, not the other way around. She had nothing to fear from him. He was the one who had broken a lifelong rule—never impose, never importune—to court rejection and abuse.

And yet, when her refusal came, instead of leaving immediately, as he’d promised himself, he’d parried shamelessly, buying a minute here, another minute there, stealing a few more glimpses of her at the risk of exhausting all her goodwill, arming her with knowledge that she could potentially use to bludgeon him.

He’d given her such power over him.

But she hadn’t made fun of him. She’d gifted him with her own story, a story that had made the hairs on the back of his neck rise, because it was a close thing. And when she’d described the taste of the treacle rock, her lips hovering on the edge of a smile, her eyes illuminated with the light of a long-vanished London morning, she’d been as beautiful as Hope itself.

“I believe you are as chaste as a nun, but even such virtue as yours cannot withstand the irresistible force that is my virility and charm,” he teased.

Her lips twitched, not quite allowing herself to laugh, not quite able to subdue all impulses of mirth. He couldn’t help but kiss her again, softly, making a thorough study of the contour of those lips.
She
was the irresistible one here. He’d never had it in him for playfulness, or for remaining abed after the deed was done, just to look at her, and to talk to her of nothing at all. Already he felt the stirring of fresh desire.

“I wouldn’t have guessed you were the kind of man given to kisses and sweet speech,” she murmured.

“And you would have been right,” he admitted. “I think kisses are a waste of time—if I ever think about them at all. And usually I find it a strain to talk to women. They are not interested in anything I find useful or important.”

“What do you find useful or important?” She cocked her head at a coquettish angle.

“Electoral reform. Working conditions in factories and mines. State schools. Foreign policy, especially toward central Asia.” He’d resigned from the army in disgust at the way the war had been handled. And Mr. Gladstone would always have his loyalty for having been a staunch, principled opponent of the war from the very beginning.

“I’m not sure I can find Afghanistan on a map,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

He laughed. “I could care less. Or I could show you, if you are ever interested.”

God, he was mad for her.

She cast him a quick glance and reached for the cake, chewing it slowly. He watched her. It was easy to tell when she enjoyed her food, as in the case of the boiled egg. She’d pressed the egg white against her lower lip, so that a few grains of salt and pepper stuck to its softness, then she’d licked her lip, seasoning the tip of her tongue, before biting into the egg itself. He’d heard the sighs she made, sensed the motion of her tongue inside her mouth, and it had been all he could do to not knock the plate aside and shove her into bed.

But now her mind wasn’t on the cake. She was eating for something to do. So she didn’t have to respond to his offer, perhaps. He let the silence elongate, until the cake had disappeared.

“Tell me your name,” he said.

“I thought we knew my name already,” she said.

“Your real name. It’s only fair. You know where I live. You can find out anything you want about me.”

“You already know everything you need to know about me,” she said.

“I don’t know where you live.”

“Somewhere in the shadow of the prince’s castle.”

“And where is that?” he asked, even though he already knew she would not answer.

“North of here.”

That was more than he’d thought she’d say. “How far?”

“Not quite as far as Scotland.”

That left half of Great Britain and hundreds, if not thousands, of manor houses that could qualify as a
château,
the French word that was usually mistranslated as “castle” in English. Good Lord, he was seriously trying to wrest clues out of thin air.

“Give me a little more.”

She hesitated. “It’s a place you’d have no trouble finding on a map.”

And how was that supposed to help him? He never had trouble locating anything on or off a map.

“Have mercy.” What was a little more begging? It had already been conclusively proven that he had no pride where she was concerned.

“I’ve said too much already.”

Her voice had a faint unsteadiness to it. She really believed it, that she’d said too much, when she’d given him a haystack the size of the Pennines.

“All right, then I won’t ask anymore where you live.” He would simply have to keep her in his sight. Though how he could do that
and
meet with the Lord Justice in the morning he didn’t quite know yet. “Tell me what brought you to London.”