A smile touched her lips. “Why, Mr Wycliff, it almost sounds as though you care about my welfare.”
He cared more than she knew.
More than he dared admit.
“If I am risking my life to protect you, I would rather know my efforts are not in vain.” It occurred to him that his reply in no way conveyed the truth. That having nursed him for a second time, she deserved better. “You’ve suffered enough at the hands of a depraved miscreant. I should not like to see you suffer again.”
“I am aware of the dangers.” She touched his arm in a gesture of reassurance. “But let me put your mind at ease. Alcock usually walks me to the door. I am not the naive girl I once was. Nothing would induce me to race into an alley alone at night.”
“Not even to save me?”
She exhaled a soft sigh. “You are perhaps the only person I would risk my life to save.” She shook her head as if someone else had commanded her mind and spoken the sentimental words. “Dear me.” Sadness lingered in her light laugh. “You seem to have caught me at a vulnerable moment.”
The yearning ache in his chest returned. “That is the most heartfelt thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“Remember it. Such moments are rare for a scandalous widow.”
Compelled with the need to see her eyes sparkle brightly again, he captured her hand and brought it to his lips. No doubt she expected a brushed kiss across her knuckles, but he pushed at her glove with his thumb to expose the delicate skin at her wrist.
“I shall do more than remember it.” He closed his eyes and pressed his mouth to the sensitive spot. “I shall treasure every word.”
A lustful energy sparked between them.
Every muscle in his body tensed.
“I—I like this side of you.” Scarlett’s vibrant blue eyes scanned the breadth of his chest, ventured up to study his jaw, his face. “The side unafraid to speak the truth.”
“I always speak the truth.”
“No, you don’t. Neither of us does.”
They were standing on a dimly lit street, amid the muffled sound of bawdy songs and drunken cheers spilling out into the night, and yet it was as if they were alone in the dingy lodging-house off Drury Lane.
“And what is the truth?” He was determined to know. “Speak it in confidence. Speak it, knowing I won’t judge you.”
“You judged me the moment I lowered my hood in the billiard room, and you learnt of my disastrous marriage. If we’re speaking truths, Wycliff, what was it you found so distasteful?”
To tell her would mean baring his soul, explaining how her benevolence had touched him so profoundly a day had not passed w
ithout her entering his thoughts. He had placed her on a pedestal—worshipped the goodness flowing like blood in her veins. He’d fought hard against the urge to claim her, control her, to ruin her like he did everything else in his life. In battling his weakness, he had failed her, left her to the mercy of a man who thrived on torture.
He deserved punishment, not her.
He deserved to have his weak heart ripped out and impaled on a stake as a warning to all men who foolishly believed in the superiority of their position.
“Do you really want to know why I have an issue with the Widow?” He spoke as if referring to a mutual acquaintance.
She shrugged one shoulder. “Because you despise women who sell their souls?”
“No. Because no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t see you. The real you, not some figure constructed to prove a point.”
“Not even when I bared my scars?”
“Ignorance is a means of defence. The only way my conscience could cope with the sight of such horrific injuries is to believe they were inflicted on the fictitious character called the Scarlet Widow.”
The thought of any man hitting her made his blood run cold. Even now, he could dig up her husband’s corpse and take his head off his shoulders.
“And what do you see now?” She seemed both eager and reluctant for the answer.