Wicked and the Wallflower (The Bareknuckle Bastards 1)

She was too close, but his back was up against a trellis, and he couldn’t move. “And were you very pleased?”

“Oh, yes, I was over the moon,” she said, pertly. And then, after a moment, “You addlepated cabbagehead.”

His brows shot up. “Excuse me?”

“You sent me away,” she replied, speaking slowly, as though he were a child who could not remember the events of two nights earlier. “You climbed up onto a horse with your idiot weapon—which is no kind of protection from bullets, I might add—and rode off into the darkness without a second thought for me. Standing there. In the courtyard of your warehouse. Certain you would be killed.” Her cheeks were flushed, her nostrils flaring, the pulse in her throat racing. She was more beautiful than she’d ever been. “And then your henchman packed me into a carriage and took me home. As though everything was fine.”

“Everything was fine,” Devil said.

“Yes, but I didn’t know that!” she said, her voice high and urgent. “I thought you were dead!”

He shook his head. “I’m not.”

“No. You’re not. You’re simply a bastard.” With that, she turned on her heel and left him, giving him no choice but to follow her, like a dog on a lead.

He didn’t care for the comparison, nor its aptness, but follow her he did. “Be careful, Felicity Faircloth, or I shall start to think you concerned for my well-being.”

“I’m not,” she said without looking back.

The sulk in the words made him want to smile, which was strange in itself. “Felicity?”

She waved a hand in the air as she crossed into the high, labyrinthine shrubbery at the rear of the garden. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“You summoned me,” he said.

She whirled toward him at that, her earlier frustration tipping over into anger. “I did no such thing!”

“No? Didn’t you send my boy packing to fetch me?”

“No!” she insisted. “I sent Brixton packing because your spies are not welcome in my hedgerow.”

“You sent him with a clear message for me.”

“It wasn’t clear at all if you think I meant to summon you.”

“I think you always mean to summon me.”

“I—” she began, then stopped. “That’s ridiculous.”

He couldn’t stop himself from approaching her, from drawing near enough. “I think you issued a challenge in the yard of my warehouse, looking like a queen, and when I did not rise to it, you thought to bring me to you. You imagined that I’d turn up here, desperate for you.”

“I have never imagined you desperate for me.”

He leaned in. “Then you are not as creative as I thought. Did you not pronounce to all assembled two nights ago that you were not through with me?”

“No, as a matter of fact. I pronounced that I was not through with Covent Garden. That’s quite a different thing altogether.”

“Not when Covent Garden belongs to me.”

She turned away, heading deeper along the hedge path. “I hate to disabuse you of your pompous self-worth, sirrah, but you were not in my thoughts, except to let you know that I was prepared to deliver on my debt to you.”

He stilled, not liking the words. “Your debt.”

“Indeed,” she tossed over her shoulder. “I thought you’d like to know that your lessons worked.”

Of all the things she could have said, those were the words most likely to set Devil off. “Which lessons?”

“Your lessons in passion, of course. The duke was here this morning to discuss the terms of our marriage, and I took matters in hand.”

His grip tightened on his cane sword, instinct making him wish he could unsheathe it and set it to his bastard brother’s neck. “What matters?”

She turned, still moving deeper into the gardens, spreading her hands wide as she walked backward, cheeks flushed. “Kissing, of course.” And then, as though she’d remarked upon the weather, she completed a full circle and continued away from him. “Did Brixton not report back?”

Devil tapped his walking stick in his hand twice. A thread of unease whispered through him. Brixton had reported that Ewan had kissed her, of course. But when Devil had pressed the boy for more information, he’d been told that the caress was short and perfunctory—the very opposite of what had happened with him in the ice hold two nights ago.

There was nothing perfunctory about the way he and Felicity had come together.

So what had happened after Ewan had sent the boy packing? She wasn’t wearing gloves. Had they touched? Skin to skin? Had he kissed her with passion?

Good God. Had she kissed him?

Impossible. And yet . . .

I took matters in hand.

Devil followed her, coming around a corner to see her headed for one end of an enormous, curved stone bench that must have been twenty feet long. “You kissed him.”

“You needn’t say it like you’re shocked. Was that not the purpose of your lessons?”

No. Their kiss might have begun as education but it had ended as eroticism—pure, unfettered pleasure. Pleasure that Devil would refuse to believe she’d been able to echo with Ewan.

Pleasure he imagined he might never be able to echo with anyone ever again.

But Devil did not say any of that. Instead, he asked, “And? Were you satisfied with the outcome?”

She seated herself, spreading her skirts wide and lifting an embroidery hoop from the bench. “Quite.”

His blood was rushing in his ears—loud enough to make him wonder if he was going mad. “What did you do?”

She tilted her head. “What did I do?”

“How did you win him over?”

“What are you suggesting? That I shan’t singe his wings after all? What happened to You’re not a hog, Felicity Faircloth? With such a rousing assessment from you, how could I not have won him over?”

“You’re not a hog,” he replied, feeling like an ass. Feeling off balance. “But that’s not the point. You’ll never get passion from Marwick.”

“Perhaps I won his heart with my remarkable kiss.” Her lips curved in a perfect bow, making him wish they weren’t talking about kissing, but doing it, instead.

“Impossible.” Her face fell, and he hated himself for the way he stripped her power from her. Wa

nting, instantly, to return it, even though he shouldn’t. Even though returning it would only make her more dangerous.

“Is it? Did you not promise me he would? Did you not say I would have him slavering after me? Singeing his wings?”

He tapped his cane against his boot. “I lied.”

She scowled. “Somehow, I find myself unsurprised.”

“Marwick is not a man who can give you passion.”

“You don’t know that.”

“In fact, I do.”

“How?”

Because I’ve seen him turn his back on it without a second thought.

She narrowed her gaze on him. “No one in London knows him. But you do, don’t you?”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

“How?”

“It’s not important.” What a lie that was.

“As he is going to be my husband, it seems quite important.”

He’s not going to be your husband. He couldn’t say that to her, and so he stayed quiet.

“I should have realized it from the beginning,” she said. “From the moment you promised him to me. Who is he to you? Who are you to him? How do you have such control over him?”

“No one has control over the Duke of Marwick.” That much was true. That much he could tell her.

“Except you,” she said. “Who is he? A rival in business?” Her brow furrowed. “Is he the reason your men were shot?”

“No.” At least, Devil did not think so.

She nodded once, lost to the memory of the night in the rookery. Her gaze found his, full of concern. “Your men. Brixton said they were not—”

His chest tightened at the realization that even now, even as she released her rage at him, she worried for the well-being of his men—boys she did not know. “The shipment is gone, but the men live.” The two men had been lucky, all things considered. He and Whit had found them unconscious, not from blood loss, but from cracks to the skull. He’d been awake for nearly two straight days, threatening doctors to ensure they remained alive. “They shall heal.”

She released a breath. “I’m grateful for that.”

“Not so grateful as I.”

She smirked up at him. “A pity all your ice was stolen. Strange thing to be on a thief’s list.”