Lorelie Brown (18 page)

At this moment, he couldn’t remember one single reason not to indulge and take her. “You’re forgetting one thing.”

“Am I?”

He liked her. So damn much. “We’ve nowhere to go.”

“Let me take care of that. I already told you my home was best.”

He almost laughed. Because really, what in the name of God was going on here? Was he seducer or the one being seduced? Maybe a bit of both. He’d let a little slip of a girl wrap him around her finger.

His body coiled at the memory of her under his mouth. Silken flesh. Tender skin. Her responsive moans and the way she’d clutched at his hair. “Now?” he asked hoarsely.

“In a…” She broke off. Her eyes narrowed. “Near the front of the room. Near the faro table. Do you see?”

A woman stood there, facing the dealer. From his angle, Ian could only see the back of her head, where her hair was twisted into a tight knot. The gaslights shined orange off what appeared to be light brown hair. He snapped from indulgence to awareness. “Is that her?”

Lottie shook her head, nibbling on her bottom lip. “I can’t tell.”

“Come.” He took off, dragging Lottie along behind him. His grip slid down her arm, forearm, wrapping his hand around her. Their fingers laced together as they hit the bottom of the stairs.

The press of bodies was ridiculous. Too close. They could barely breathe, much less track the slip and slide of one person. Ian was tall enough to look above most of the crowd, but the problem was Patricia was short. The woman stepped to the side as a giant bruiser angled across Ian’s line of sight, toward the bar.

Frustration boiled out of his throat in a rough noise. “I don’t see her.”

Lottie muttered something as she craned upwards on the tips of her slippers. “I don’t either. I do see…” She shoved two fingers between her lips. The whistle she gave could have burst his eardrums. But it was effective.

Heads swiveled as if spun on pikes. Their mouths were as slack as if they’d been beheaded and stuck on a stick as well. Wide eyes took in the whistling lady like she was a freak at a circus.

She also got the attention of one of the big, burly guards near the front door. He arrowed in on her, but she pointed. “Her! Grab that one. Red shawl and the flower in her hair.”

He darted left. With no visible regret, he strong-armed a skinny gambler to the side. As he grabbed the woman by the shoulders, he scowled fiercely, as if the task he’d been assigned were nothing less than protecting the Queen. “Got ’er,” he roared.

There were only a dozen feet between Ian, Lottie and the guard with the woman, but it took stupidly long to get through the people who packed the space like cows. The thick smell of sweat and sticky alcohol scented the air. “Come along,” Ian said. “Clear out, clear out.”

As soon as they were within reaching distance of the woman, Ian knew. Even before the guard turned her around.

It wasn’t Patricia. This woman was of similar build and mannerisms, but not at all similar features. Her mouth was full and blowsy and her nose hooked. Her gaze flicked back and forth between Ian and Lottie. She said nothing, cowering in fear.

Disappointment filled his skull with the thudding beat of his pulse. He hadn’t realized, not really, how fully wrapped up he’d allowed himself to become in the idea that this would be over quickly. That he would soon be free.

The question remained, free to do what? He hadn’t exactly planned on devoting a whole season to displaying Etta to best advantage, but it certainly seemed more pleasant than chasing some low woman all the way across London and back. His hands fisted.

“Damn it,” Ian muttered.

“And we made too much fuss.” Lottie’s face pinched. She turned away, looking out at the crowd, and this time they were all staring at her.

There was little animosity coming from them, beyond the general displeasure that they weren’t gaming at the moment. But they’d
noticed
. They knew Lottie and Ian as not part of their type. A tall, skinny bloke with a red kerchief tied around his neck slicked his gaze over Lottie from head to toe. An avaricious gleam dwelled in his eyes.

Ian coiled his arm around Lottie’s shoulders. “Come on. It’s our turn to get out of here.”

“We’re under Fletcher’s roof. Nothing will happen to us.” She came along with him anyway and liked the way she leaned into his shoulder.

They found Sera in the back room. Her hands were filled with linen cloths and a steaming bowl of water. “Gone so soon?”

“We made a spectacle of ourselves,” Lottie said with her usual good cheer. Ian wasn’t the only one who could see through it because Sera’s mouth knotted into a pinch. “We’ll have to be off now.”

The ladies said their farewells, and Sera took a moment to whisper in Lottie’s ear. Probably something about not trusting men one hardly knew or that Lottie ought to be on her guard.

Once they climbed into the carriage and the silence wrapped around them like comfort and temptation, Lottie looked at him with a tiny smile curving her lips. “You’re coming home with me, aren’t you?”

He shouldn’t. Not by any means. There was indulgence and then there was recklessness, and it seemed that Lottie was rubbing off on him. He let his hand delve beneath the curling, soft mass of her hair and felt the delicate dip at the base of her skull where two of his fingertips fit perfectly.

She leaned into the touch. Her eyes drifted half-closed as she looked out at him from under her lashes. They were pale in color but thick. A study in contrasts, like her.

The words came from some deep place that he hadn’t known he had. It was also a place that he might come to like. Especially if it came with indulgences like Lottie. “Yes. I’m coming home with you.”

Chapter Fourteen

Lottie’s groomsmen knew when bringing her home from possibly non-Society-approved locales, they were to take her directly to the back of the house. From the mews, she slipped quietly through the gate and the garden.

Night had always been Lottie’s friend.

Even if it weren’t a matter of concealing her comings and goings, she’d always liked the way the shadows slithered around the small garden at the back of their house. Flowerbeds closed up at night, hiding away their secrets, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were less beautiful for being knotted buds. She’d spent hours there in the dark.

It was safe. She wasn’t obligated to sit with her mother or to think about her or to be a good daughter or good friend. When alone, she was no one other than herself.

It was easier that way.

Walking through the garden with Ian trailing behind her like a silent wraith was different. Her steps whispered over the gravel path, but his were absolutely nonexistent. She knew he was behind her by the weight of his attention. She had absolute knowledge that he’d focused on her.

He’d be hers soon.

She could hold him, so long as she could hold herself together.

The heady rush of power made her float. Like she were both above and in the moment. She let her fingers trail behind, held out. He took her hand. It wasn’t only the touch, which sent liquid anticipation trembling up her arms to center in her chest. His hands were finely wrought, his fingers elegant. It was the fact that she’d known he’d reach for her. That she hadn’t had to look back or to taunt him.

She’d offered and he’d taken.

How simple and how completely complicated.

The back door, the dark-painted wood slab that opened on the bowels of the kitchens, had been left unlocked for her as it always was. Her liberal control of the household meant that she was obeyed to the letter. The two scullery maids curled up in front of the fireplace to tend the flames through the night had come from Lottie’s school and before that a tinwork factory.

The girl on the right rolled over and lifted her head, looking at Lottie, who put a finger to her lips. Eloise had lost her smallest finger in a press and worshipped Lottie as the person who’d gotten her free of that world. She nestled back into her pallet. The blankets twitched over her head in an intentional move. She’d say nothing.

Once Lottie and Ian were in the hallway again, Ian pulled her close. Their hands, still laced together with warmth passing from palm to palm, were tucked behind his back. There was strength in the heavy curve of muscle barely hidden by his proper coat.

The amazing part was that she’d see all of him soon. She meant to touch and take as she liked.

Except it appeared he might be having second thoughts. A single lamp glowed at the other end of the hallway, where it opened on the foyer. Where they stood, dark shadows clung and draped along his features. They turned him into something different than the open, honest man he’d been. “Are you sure this is wise?”

His skin smelled like spice. That would be all hers soon as well. She shrugged, though it felt almost as if her body would buckle if she didn’t get her way soon. “Which part?”

“Here. Your family’s house?”

He was rather cute when uncertain and at sea. “You’ll see.”

She led him up the back stairs, the narrow ones that the servants usually kept as their domain. The fingertips of one hand trailed along plaster walls, and Ian kept the other. His grip never slipped from hers. She would know him. That closeness. That warmth. His breath slid across the back of her neck, shifting a lock of hair.

When he hesitated on what should have been the floor for bedrooms, she kept going almost into the attics, where the servants shared rooms. Below was the level that once was a nursery and playroom.

The landing was small, the hallway truncated. The stairs split and turned to keep going upward, and to the right was a single door. She fished a key out of her reticule and unlocked it.

“Here,” she said as she stepped in and lit a lamp. Her reticule spun across the petite table she kept inside the doorway. She shrugged off her cloak and draped it over the back of a gold-leaf decorated chair. “This is my…space. For lack of a better word.”

“How interesting.” He let go of her hand and wandered into the open area of her room. “Where did this come from?”

“Well, when they built the house, there were walls put up. Floors between stories. Windows here and there. The usual.” Her mouth stayed bent in a smile, but her fingers twisted in the front of her skirts.

This was…strangely personal. Very few people came to her rooms. Fanny tended to her, but she stayed toward the front quarter, which could generally be called Lottie’s dressing area.

That was the problem. The whole area was rather amorphous once compared to most rooms and buildings. This whole stretch…it was open. Wide. There had once been five rooms along here, but the walls had been removed, and now only a series of archways broke up the areas. The one room extended the full length of the building. The front section had dressers and armoires and standing closets in which Lottie stored her clothing. Past that was stacked with books and couches and a chaise lounge perched beneath the window.

Her hands clenched on the sides of her skirts, staining them with salt from her damp hands. But she couldn’t look at the pale pink blanket spread over her bed or the darker rose curtains hanging from the half tester without thinking of Ian in that space. How very masculine he’d be against those pale colors.

He hadn’t spotted the bed. He was wandering about with curiosity writ on his features, much as he had when he’d seen her mother’s room downstairs. “Don’t be intentionally obtuse,” he said.

She moved past him and threw herself down into her favorite chaise. She loved the crushed velvet and well-padded back that stretched halfway down the side. Resting her chin on a fist, she watched him. “But I like teasing you.”

He slid a look at her out of the corner of his eyes. A small slice of the London sky gleamed through the window. Half haze, half dark night swirling together. London never slept. He pushed aside the gauzy curtains. “You don’t exactly live…normally, do you?”

She was sure he didn’t mean that to hurt, but it did, more than she would have liked. Her chest clenched. “You’d be bored if I did.”

“Maybe.” He sank to the end of the chaise, beside her knees. The way he sat pinned her skirts. She tried to shift and could only move a few inches. “Tell me how this room came about.”

“Mama, of course.” She shouldn’t like that he’d immobilized her. She certainly wouldn’t if it had seemed like accidental oafishness.

When he braced his hands on each side of her head against the end of the chaise and leaned in, she knew. He was unaware of nothing. Every inch of her skin, every inch of his body, filled his mind. How they would align. He wanted her still. Wanted her held down.

She shuddered. Her breathing coiled in her throat.

“I doubt your mama held a hammer or a paintbrush.”

She could hardly believe they were having this discussion with his mouth only a fraction away from hers. She wanted to be kissed.

She settled for petting back locks of his hair that eased across his forehead. Her lips parted a tiny bit. Wonder made her tentative and appreciative.

“This was supposed to be Mama’s studio. She directed all the changes. The windows along the back were put in specially. But once it was done and paid for, she declared it not right. She couldn’t create here.”