Wicked and the Wallflower (The Bareknuckle Bastards 1)

“Yes,” she said, cheeks blazing.

“That sounds like the plot to a ridiculous romantic novel.”

“It wasn’t ridiculous. And it was terribly romantic for the woman already married to the duke.”

“Hmm,” he said. “So, I have it all right? Impoverished spinster wallflower?”

Felicity rather hated to be boiled down to three unflattering words, but, “Yes. You have it right. Except for the bit where I proclaimed to be affianced to a duke whom I had never met.”

“Ah. Yes. I had nearly forgotten that.” The words weren’t dry. They were honest. As though he had forgotten why they were conversing altogether.

He might be mad.

Felicity pressed on. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, but why on earth would you—a young, handsome duke with a clear past—choose to remain affianced to me?”

“Are you trying to convince me not to remain affianced to you?”

Was she?

Of course she wasn’t. He was, after all, a young, handsome duke with a clear past, was he not? She’d falsely proclaimed him her fiancé, plunging herself and her family into certain social and financial ruin, and here he was, offering her rescue.

I promised you the impossible, did I not?

For a strange, wild moment, it occurred to Felicity that it was not the duke offering rescue at all—it was the Devil, with his outrageous offers and his wild deals and his wicked deeds.

A ducal moth, straight to her flame.

And here it was.

Magic.

“But . . . why?”

He looked away then, turning back to the dark gardens, his gaze searching, as hers had done before he’d appeared. “What do they call it? A marriage of convenience?”

The words settled between them, simple and unsatisfying. Of course, the offer of a marriage of convenience should have sent Felicity into convulsions of pleasure. It meant she’d save her family’s reputation, and her own. It meant money in her father’s coffers, the restoration of the estate, the protection of the name.

And that was all before she became a duchess, powerful in her own right, welcome once more in the bright, glittering ballrooms of London. No longer strange or scandalous, but valued. Returned to the place she’d been before—plain, but empowered. Duchess of Marwick.

It was all she’d ever wanted.

Well, not all. But much.

Some.

“Lady Felicity?” the duke prompted once more, pulling her from her thoughts.

She looked up at him. “A marriage of convenience. You get an heir.”

“And you get a very rich duke. I’m told that’s a precious commodity.” He said it as though he’d just learned the fact earlier that day, as though all of recorded history hadn’t been predicated on women being forced to find wealthy matches.

Her mother would be beside herself with pleasure.

“What say you?” he prompted.

She shook her head. Was it possible it was so simple? A single meeting, and her lie made true? Her gaze narrowed on the duke. “Why?” she repeated. “When you could have any of them?”

She waved a hand at the open door to the ballroom, where no less than a half-dozen women openly watched them, waiting for Felicity to misstep, and for the duke to realize his mistake. Frustration flared, alongside that familiar indignation—the emotion that had set this insanity in motion. She resisted it as his gaze followed hers, lingering on prettier, younger, more entertaining unmarrieds, considering them.

When he turned back to her, she expected him to have realized that she was not the most qualified bride for him. She was already imagining the disappointment in her mother’s eyes when this false engagement was no longer. She was already scrambling for a solution to Arthur’s empty coffers. To those of her father. Perhaps she could convince the duke to break off the engagement without revealing her stupid mistake. He did not seem a bad man. He simply seemed . . . well, frankly, he seemed uncommon.

Except he did not break off the engagement as she’d expected. Instead, his eyes met hers and, for the first time, it seemed as though he saw her. And, for the first time, she saw him, cool and calm, not at all unsettled by the fact that she was there, and they were about to be engaged. He seemed not to care at all, actually. “I don’t want them. You turned up at the right time, so why not you?”

It was ridiculous. Ducal marriages did not happen like this. Marriages in general did not happen like this—on empty balconies with no more than a vague whim born of convenience.

And yet . . . this was happening.

She’d done it.

No, Devil had done it. Like magic.

The words whispered through her, at once true and terribly false. Devil hadn’t worked magic. This duke was no moth. Felicity was not flame. She was convenient.

And there was nothing magical about convenience.

“Have you room on that fan for another dance?” the duke said, interrupting the rush of awareness that flooded her at the thought.

She looked down at the fan, at the empty slat that remained. An echo came from earlier. A vague imagining of another man marking that slat. Claiming that dance. A man who disappeared into the darkness, replaced with this one—who reigned in the light. She tried a smile. “I do have room, as a matter of fact.”

He reached for the fan, stopping before he touched it, waiting for her to offer it to him. Devil hadn’t waited. Devil wouldn’t have waited. She extended her hand to the duke and he lifted the fan, taking the little pencil dangling from it in hand and writing his name across the bare stick. Marwick.

Felicity imagined she should feel breathless at the action—but she didn’t. Not even when he released the fan and claimed her hand instead, lifting it in a slow, deliberate motion, until his full, handsome lips grazed over her knuckles.

She most definitely should have felt breathless at that. But she was not, and neither was he. And as she watched the Duke of Marwick—her proclaimed fiancé turned real—lift his head, a single thought rioted through her.

The duke’s wings remained unsinged.

Which meant the Devil had not made good on his deal.

Chapter Thirteen

Devil was already spoiling for a fight the next night when he stepped through the well-guarded door to the Bastards’ warehouse—so much so that the sound of the lock turning in the great slab of steel did not comfort him the way it should have.

He’d spent much of the day attempting to focus on his ledgers, telling himself that it was more important than everything else—that he had plenty of time to seek out Felicity Faircloth and discover precisely what had happened between her and Ewan.

In fact, he knew what had happened. His watch had seen her home only two hours after he left her—along with her mother, deposited there by her brother—after which, no one had left Bumble House, not through any of the ground-level egresses, nor down the trellis beyond Felicity’s bedchamber. This morning, the ladies of the house had spent the morning in Hyde Park with the marchioness’s dogs and returned for luncheon and tea and note writing or whatever it was that ladies did in the afternoons.

Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had come to pass.

Except Felicity had met Ewan. Devil had watched from the shadows as they’d spoken, resisting the instinct to go to her and stop their conversation. And then Ewan had kissed her—on her gloved hand, but kissed her nonetheless—and Devil had gone stone-still and somehow turned his back on the scene rather than giving into his second, baser instinct, which was to destroy the duke, carry Felicity off to Covent Garden, lay her down, and finish the kiss they’d started the last time she was there.

But she wasn’t for him. Not yet.

Not until it was time to thieve her away from his brother and remind him of how easily he could be raised up only to be dropped, hard and fast, to the ground, ensuring Ewan never again considered flying too fast or too far.

That was why Devil had been so kind to her. So complimentary. Because Fe

licity Faircloth was a means to a very specific end. Not because he actually thought she was beautiful. Not because he actually cared if she was wearing pink undergarments. Not because he actually wished her to believe in her own worth.

He didn’t. He couldn’t.

And so, he told himself that it was nothing more than general curiosity that sent him to the warehouse to find Whit in shirtsleeves, hook in hand, overseeing the distribution of the shipment that had been sitting in the ice hold for more than a week, waiting to move.

General curiosity in the business and not the memory of Ewan’s lips on Felicity’s knuckles. Not remotely.

After all, Devil told himself, a smuggling empire did not run itself, and there were workers to be paid and deals to be inked and a new shipment to arrive next week, laden with liquor and contraband, which they wouldn’t have room for if they didn’t get rid of the one in the hold.

General curiosity, and not a keen need to resist the urge to go to the Faircloth home this afternoon, climb the damn trellis, and talk to the girl.

He was a businessman. What mattered was the work.