This Wicked Gift (Carhart 0.5)

“Put you aside?” His gaze skittered down her breasts to her waist, and then traveled slowly up. “No. He would take you any way he could have you.”

She was not one bit sorry that she’d given herself to this man, however foolish and impulsive the gift had been.

“As I see it,” Lavinia said carefully, “you are feeling guilty because you attempted to coerce me into your bed. Then, believing I was forced, you took me anyway.”

He flinched, looking away again. “Yes. And for that, I ought to be—”

“I was not forced, and so you did not dishonor me.”

“But—”

“But,” Lavinia said, holding up one finger, “you believed I was, and thus you dishonored yourself.”

His expression froze. His eyes shut and he put his hand over his face. A shaky breath whispered through his fingers. “Ah.” It was not a sound of understanding or agreement, but one of despair. “You are very astute.”

There was nothing to say beyond that, but he looked so unbearably alone that she reached out and placed her hand atop his.

He shut his eyes. “Don’t.” His hand bunched into a fist underneath hers, but he did not pull away. Apparently, “don’t” was William Q. White for “keep touching me.” Lavinia pressed her hand against the heat of his knuckles.

“Tell me,” he said presently, “the other evening when you told the young Mr. Spencer that you had a plan, why did you not tell him immediately he could not be held accountable?”

It took Lavinia a few seconds to remember what he was talking about—the moment when James had first presented her with his idiocy.

“Why would I have told him? I would have taken care of it. He didn’t need to know any details. It was simply a matter of deciding upon an approach.”

“You would have done everything yourself? Without assistance?”

Since her mother had died this year past, Lavinia had assisted everyone else. She had assisted in the library, until her father’s illness destroyed all pretense that she was a mere assistant. She had assisted with housekeeping; she had assisted her younger brother in his lessons, and bailed him out of the sort of scrapes that younger brothers occasionally got into. She had never begrudged them the time she spent; she did it because she loved her family.

She wasn’t sure she knew how to let someone help her instead.

She tightened her hand about his, letting his warmth seep into her. “Of course I’d have done it alone.”

“Tell me.” His voice dropped even lower, and she leaned in to listen. “If I had offered that evening—would you have let me assist you?”

She looked up into his eyes. He watched her with that expression in his eyes—desire, she realized, and dark despair that ran so deeply, it was almost outside detection. He wasn’t asking out of an idle desire to know.

“But you didn’t. You didn’t offer.”

He shut his eyes.

And then the door burst open, and William snatched his fingers from hers. She pulled her hands away and tucked them behind her back with alacrity and jumped away.

James darted through the entry, his face a picture of excitement. But even he was sufficiently observant to see she’d sprung from William like a guilty child. It was easy to think of him as her younger brother, as a child. But when he looked from Lavinia to William, his lips thinning, she realized he was not as young as he’d once been.

“We’re closed,” he said, in a chilly tone of voice. “And you—whoever you are—you’re leaving.”

Before Lavinia could protest, William had pulled away and was walking out the door.

James looked her over, his gaze resting first on her flushed cheeks and then on the telltale way she put her hands behind her back. Then he cast a glance of pure scorn at William’s back. “I’m leaving, too,” he announced, and he followed William out the door, into the cold.

Chapter Four

LAVINIA’S BROTHER, WILLIAM THOUGHT WRYLY, was a thin spike of a boy. Attach a sufficient quantity of straw to his head, and he’d have made a passable broom. In polite society, he might have served as a chaperone, a place-holder designed to do little more than observe. But James Spencer, this pale wraith of a child, apparently believed he could protect his sister from someone who threatened her virtue. He had been alarmingly misled. Standing outside Spencer’s on the freezing pavement, James folded his arms—a posture that only emphasized the sharp skin-and-bone of his shoulders.

There was a saying, William supposed, about guarding the cows after the wolves had already come a-ravening. The adage seemed rather inappropriate as cows could only be eaten once. He’d promised himself he’d not importune her again, but one touch of her hand and he’d been ready to go a-ravening all over again.

James tapped his toe, frowning. “Did you kiss her?”

Oh, the barren and virtuous imagination of callow youth.

“Yes,” William said. It was easier than resorting to explanation.

James peered dubiously at William, as if trying to ascertain whether there truly was a patch on his coat. “And what are your prospects?”

“Too dismal to take a wife. Even if I chose to do so, which—at present—I do not.”

Lavinia’s brother gasped. If the boy thought kissing a woman without wanting to marry her constituted open devilry, God forbid he ever learn what had really transpired.

“If you’re not going to marry her,” he said, shocked, “then why’d you kiss her?”

William had long suspected it, but now he was certain. Lavinia’s younger brother was an idiot.

“Mr. Spencer.” William spoke slowly, searching for small words that were nonetheless sharp enough to penetrate her brother’s dim cogitation. “Kissing is a pleasant activity. It is considerably more pleasant when the woman one is kissing is more than passably pretty. Your sister happens to be the loveliest lady in all of London. Why do you suppose I kissed her?”

“My sister?”

“You needn’t pull such a face. It’s not something to admit in polite company, but we’re both men here.” At least, James would be one day. “You know it’s the truth.”

“No,” James said incredulously, screwing up his eyes. “You want to kiss my sister? I never thought—”

“Well, you’d better start thinking about it, you little fool. Everyone wants to kiss your sister. And what are you doing to protect her? Nothing.”

“I’m protecting her now!”

“You leave her in that shop with nobody to call for if she needs help except your father, who is too ill to respond. You send her out to capture your vowels from known ruffians who live near docks where sailors cavort. Don’t tell me you protect your sister. How many times have I found her alone in the library? Do you have any idea what I could have done to her?”

He was angry, William realized. Furious that he’d been allowed to take from her the most precious thing she could give, and angrier still that nobody—least of all Lavinia—was willing to castigate him for it.

“I could have taken a great deal more than a kiss,” he said. “Easily.”

James’s face paled. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t.”

He had. He would. He wanted to do it again.

It felt good to admit what a blackguard he was, even if he was hiding his confession behind safely conditional statements. “Lock the door and anything becomes possible,” William said. “I could have had—”

James punched him in the stomach. For a skinny fellow, he struck hard. The blow knocked the wind out of William’s lungs and he doubled over. That punch was the first real punishment he’d suffered since he’d had Lavinia. Thank God. He deserved worse.

When he regained his breath and his balance, he looked up. “Don’t tell me you protect your sister. You put everything on her—the burden of caring for your entire family—and give her nothing in exchange. I’ve seen her. I know what you do.”

James stood over him. “If you’re such a blackguard, why are you telling me this?”