Wicked and the Wallflower (The Bareknuckle Bastards 1)

He grinned at the distaste in her words as he lifted a black linen shirt and pulled it over his head, tucking it in before fastening the stays of his trousers. “No, you said you thought him the handsomest man you’d ever seen, did you not?”

A pause. “I suppose.”

Irritation flared, and he dismissed it. “You said you wanted him to come after you like a moth to a flame. You do know what happens to moths when they get to the flame, don’t you? You may turn around.”

She did so, her eyes immediately finding him and tracking his clothing from shoulders to bare feet. The excitement in her gaze as she gave him her frank perusal sent a thread of awareness through him—and he shifted his weight at the sudden heaviness in his freshly pressed trousers.

“What happens?” He blinked at the words, and she added, “To the moths.”

“They combust.” He pulled on his waistcoat.

Her gaze was on his fingers as he worked the buttons of the coat, and he could not resist slowing his movements, watching her watch him. Devil had always loved the female gaze upon him, and Lady Felicity Faircloth watched him with pure, unadulterated fascination, making him want to show her everything she wanted.

“Combustion sounds better than slavering,” she said, the words breathier than before.

“Says the woman who is doing neither.” He finished the buttons and smoothed the waistcoat over his torso. “Now. If you’ll let me finish . . .”

“By all means, slaver away.”

He barely resisted the huff of laughter that threatened at her smart retort. “If you want him to desire you beyond reason, you must dress the part.”

She tilted her head. “I am sorry. I am to dress for him?”

“Indeed. Preferably something with skin.” He waved a hand at her high-necked shell pink gown. “That won’t work.” It was a lie. The gown worked quite well, as far as Devil’s body was concerned.

She put her hand to her throat. “I like this gown.”

“It’s pink.”

“I like pink.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“What’s wrong with pink?”

“Nothing, if you are a mewling babe.”

She pressed her lips into a thin line. “A different gown will do what, exactly?”

“Ensure he shan’t be able to keep his hands off of you.”

“Oh,” she said. “I was unaware that men were so entirely susceptible to women’s clothing that it rendered them unable to control their hands.”

He hesitated, not liking the direction of her words. “Well, some men.”

“Not you,” she said.

“I’m more than able to control my urges.”

“Even if I were to wear . . . what was it you suggested? Something with skin?”

And like that, he was thinking of her skin. “Of course.”

“And is this a particularly male affliction?”

He cleared his throat. “Some might argue that it is a human affliction.”

“Interesting,” she replied, “because it could be said that you were just moments ago wearing something with skin, and my hands somehow, remarkably, remained quite far from your person.” She grinned. “I slavered not at all.”

The words were like a flag to a bull, and he wanted, immediately, to rise to the challenge and tempt Felicity Faircloth to slavering. But that way lay danger, because he was already far too intrigued by the lady, and that had to stop before it started.

“I shall have a dress sent round for you. Wear it to the Bourne ball. Three days hence.”

“You do realize that dresses are not simply available in the dimensions of whomever you like, do you not? They are ordered. They are fabricated. They take weeks—”

“For some.”

“Ah yes,” she teased. “For mere mortals. I forgot that you have magic elves who make dresses for you. I assume they spin them from straw? In a single night?”

“Did I not tell you I would win you your duke?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know how you’ve silenced his denial of our engagement, Devil, but it is impossible that he will remain silent.”

He did not tell her there was no denial to silence. Did not tell her that she’d played directly into his hands two nights before, when he’d made it seem impossible for her to win the duke who had already decided she was a convenient mark. Did not tell her that he, too, had decided Felicity Faircloth was a convenient mark.

Suddenly, he was not so certain she was convenient after all.

“I told you, I have a skill for making the impossible possible,” he said. “Here is how we begin: you continue to treat your lie as truth, you wear the gown I send, and he shall be in your path. Then it will only be a matter of winning him.”

“Oh,” she retorted, “just the simple matter of winning him. As though that’s the easy bit.”

“It is the easy bit.” She’d won him already. And even if she hadn’t, she could win whomever she wished. Of that, Devil had no doubt. “Trust me, Felicity Faircloth. Wear the dress, win the man.”

“I shall still need to be fitted, Devil Whatever-your-name-is. And even if I wear a magical gown, constructed by fairies and made to sweep men from their feet, I remain—how did you put it? Not unattractive?”

He shouldn’t feel guilty about that. His purpose wasn’t to make Felicity Faircloth think she was beautiful. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself from approaching her. “Shall I elaborate?”

She raised a brow, and he nearly laughed at how surly she looked. “I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t know how I shall resist swooning in the fiery embrace of your compliments.”

A smile twitched. “You are not unattractive, Felicity Faircloth. You have a full, open face and eyes that reveal every one of your thoughts, and hair that I imagine falls in rich, mahogany waves when it is pulled from its severe moorings . . .” He was standing in front of her now. Her lips had fallen open just a touch—just enough for her to suck in a little breath. Just enough for him to notice. “. . . and full, soft lips that any man would want to kiss.”

He meant to say all that, of course. To lay it on thick and begin the seduction of Lady Felicity Faircloth. To punish his brother and win the day.

Just as he meant to be this close to her—close enough to see the freckles that dusted over her nose and cheeks. Close enough to see the little crease left by years of the dimple that lived there flashing. Close enough to smell her soap, jasmine. Close enough to see the ring of grey around her beautiful brown eyes.

Close enough to want to kiss her.

Close enough to see that if he did, she’d let him.

She’s not for you.

He pulled away at the thought, breaking the spell for both of them. “At least, any proper toff in Mayfair.”

One emotion after another chased through her gaze—confusion, understanding, hurt—and then nothing at all. And he hated himself just a little for that. More than a little, when she cleared her throat and said, “I shall wait in the other room for you to escort me home.”

She pushed past him and he let her go, regret coursing through him, unfamiliar and stinging almost as much as the brush of her skirts against his legs.

He stood there for a long moment, attempting to find calm—the cool, unmoving center that had kept him alive for thirty years. The one that had built an empire. The one that had been shaken by the appearance of a single aristocratic woman in his private space.

And just when he found that calm once more, he lost it. Because the discovery was punctuated with the soft snick of the door to his chambers.

He was moving before the sound dissipated, tea

ring through the now empty exterior room to the door, which he nearly ripped from the hinges to get into the hallway beyond—also empty.

She was fast, dammit.

He went after her, down the stairs, determined to catch her. He headed through the maze of corridors to the exit, the door hanging ajar, like an unfinished sentence.

Except it was clear that Felicity Faircloth had said all she was interested in saying.

He ripped it open and burst through it, immediately looking right, toward Long Acre, where she would instantly find a hack to take her home. Nothing.

But to the left, toward Seven Dials, where she would instantly find trouble, her pink skirts were already fading into the darkness. “Felicity!”

She didn’t hesitate.

“Fuck!” he roared, already heading back through the building.

Goddammit, he’d miscalculated.

Because Lady Felicity Faircloth was heading into the muck of Covent Garden, in the dead of night, and his feet were bare.

Chapter Nine

Felicity moved as fast as she could away from the curving Arne Street, back toward the main thoroughfare where she had been deposited by the hack earlier in the evening. Turning the corner, she pulled up short, confident that she was out of sight of Devil’s home, and finally able to catch her breath.

Once that happened, she’d find herself another hack and return home.

She’d be damned if she was going to allow him to escort her. She’d be just as likely to be ruined by him as she would be to be properly chaperoned by him.

Indignant irritation flared again.

How dare he speak to her in such a manner, discussing her hair and her eyes and her lips? How dare he nearly kiss her?

Why hadn’t he kissed her?

Had it been a nearly-kiss, even? Felicity had never been kissed, but that certainly seemed to be the kind of run-up to kissing that she’d heard about. Or read about in novels. Or imagined happening to her. Many times.