Wicked and the Wallflower

Chapter Fifteen

The idea that any human male would not want Felicity Faircloth beyond reason surpassed understanding. Not that Devil intended to tell her that.

It was important to note, however, that when the thought crashed around him in the dark hold beneath the Bareknuckle Bastards’ Covent Garden warehouse, Devil did not count himself in that particular group of human males.

Obviously, he had plenty of reason when it came to Felicity Faircloth. He wasn’t near beyond it. Not even when she stood mere inches from him, wearing his coat, and speaking of burning men to cinders.

He was immune to the lady’s charms.

Remember the plan. The words echoed through him as his hands itched for her, fingers flexing, wanting nothing more than to reach for the lapels of his coat and pull her to him, close enough to touch, until she couldn’t remember the Duke of Marwick’s name, let alone the way the man danced.

Like a dream, my ass.

He cleared his throat at the thought. “You want a love match. With Marwick.” He scoffed. “You’re too old and too wise for simpering, Felicity Faircloth.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t say anything about a love match; I want him to want me. I want passion.”

It should be illegal for a woman like Felicity Faircloth to say the word passion. It conjured images of wide expanses of skin and beautiful, mahogany locks across white sheets. It made a man wonder how she would arch her back to his touch, how she might ask for it. How she might direct it. How her hand would feel on his, moving his fingers to the precise location she wanted them. How her fingers would feel against his scalp as she moved his mouth to the precise location she wanted it.

Thank God they were standing fifteen feet from a hold full of ice.

In fact . . . “This way.” He raised the lantern and moved down the long, dark corridor, toward the ice hold, forgetting, for the first time, ever, that he didn’t care for the dark. Grateful for the distraction, he spoke as they walked. “You wish for passion.”

Remember the plan.

“I do.”

“From Marwick.”

“He is my future husband, is he not?”

“It’s only a matter of time,” he said, knowing he should be more committed to the endeavor, considering that Ewan and Felicity had to be engaged before Devil could steal her away from the engagement. The engagement was part of the plan. A part of Ewan’s lesson. Of course Devil wanted it.

“He asked me last night.”

He just hadn’t wanted it so quickly, it seemed.

He turned to her. “He asked you to do what?”

Her hair glittered copper in the candlelight as she smiled up at him. “To marry him. It was really quite simple. He introduced himself, told me he was happy to marry me. That he was in the market for a wife, and I had . . . how did he put it? Oh, it was terribly romantic.” Devil’s teeth clenched as she searched for the words and then found them, dry as sand. “Oh, yes. I had turned up just at the right time.”

Good Lord. Ewan had never been a brilliant wordsmith, but that was particularly bad. And proof that the duke, too, had a plan. Which meant that perhaps Felicity Faircloth’s request was not such a terrible idea after all. “Terribly romantic, indeed,” he said.

She shrugged. “But he is very handsome and dances like a dream, as I said.”

It didn’t seem possible that she was teasing him. How could she possibly know how the words would grate? “And that is a thing all women look for in their husbands.”

She grinned. “However did you know?”

She was teasing him. She was teasing him, and he liked it. And he shouldn’t. “You want the man mad for you.”

“Well, I remain unconvinced that he is not mad in general, but yes,” she said. “Doesn’t every wife want that from her husband?”

“Not in my experience, no.”

“Do you have a great deal of experience with wives?”

He ignored the question. “You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he said, turning back down the corridor.

She followed him. “What does that mean?”

“Only that passion isn’t a thing one toys with—once the wings are singed, the moth is yours to deal with.”

“As the moth shall be my husband, I imagine I will have to deal with him anyway.”

But he won’t be your husband. Devil resisted the urge to say it. Resisted, too, the emotion clawing at him as he thought the words. The guilt.

“You promised me, Devil,” she said softly. “You made me a deal. You said you’d make me flame.”

He didn’t have to do anything to turn her to flame. She burned too brightly already.

They reached the exterior door to the hold, and he crouched low, placing the lantern on the ground as he reached for the ring of keys. She came to his side, reaching out for the row of locks, her fingers tracing over one of them as though she could pick it by touch alone. And with the way she’d tackled the Chubb earlier, he half believed she could.

Cold seeped through the steel door, and he hunched his shoulders, sliding the key into the first lock. “Why do you lockpick?”

“Is that relevant?”

He threw her a sidelong look. “I’m sure you can see how it would be of interest.”

She watched as he worked the second lock. “The world is full of doors.” Lord knew that was true. “I like being able to open my own doors.”

“And what do you know of locked doors, Felicity Faircloth?”

“I wish you would stop doing that,” she said. “Treating me as though I have never wanted for anything in my life. As though it has all been mine for the taking.”

“Hasn’t it been?”

“None of the important bits, no. Not love. Not . . . friendship. Barely family.”

“You’re better off without those friends.”

“Are you offering to be a new one?”

Yes.

“No.”

She huffed a little laugh, reaching to take one of the padlocks from the door as he continued his work. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her turning it over and over in her hand. “I pick locks because I can. Because there are very few things in the world I can control, and locks are something I am good at. They are a barrier I can clear. And a secret I can know. And in the end, they bend to my will and . . .” She shrugged. “I like that.”

He could imagine bending to her will. He shouldn’t imagine it. But he could. He opened the first, heavy door, frigid air washing over them as the second door came into view. He set to work on the next row of locks. “It’s not the kind of skill one expects a woman to have.”

“It’s exactly the kind of skill we should have. Our whole world is built by men. For them. And we’re simply here for decoration, brought in at the end of everything important. Well, I grow tired of ends. Locks are beginnings.”

He turned to look at her, consumed with a desire to give her infinite beginnings.

She kept talking, seemingly mesmerized by his keys as he worked. “The point is, I understand what it is to want to be on the other side of the door. I understand what it is to know that the room isn’t mine for the taking. So many doors are closed to all but a fraction of us.” He opened the last lock, and she finished, softly, “Why should others be the ones to decide which doors are for me?”

The question, so honest, so forthright, made him want to break down every door she came to from now until the end of time.

Devil settled on the one in front of them, pushing it open to reveal the ice hold. A wall of cold greeted them, and beyond it, darkness. Unease thundered through him—resistance to the darkness, an all too familiar urge to run.

Felicity Faircloth had no such urge. She stepped right into the room, wrapping her arms about her. “So, ice it is.”

He followed her, holding the lantern high, even as the cavernous space swallowed the light. “You still did not believe me?”

“Not entirely.”

“And what did you think I was planning to show you down here?”

“Your mysterious, underground lair?”

“Underground lairs are highly overvalued.”

“They are?”

“No windows, and they’re hell on the boots.”

Her little laugh was a flicker in the darkness. “I expect I shall have some explaining to do tomorrow when my maid sees the hem of my skirts.”

“What will you tell her?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She sighed. “Late night gardening? It doesn’t matter. No one expects me to do anything like explore the underground caverns of Covent Garden.”

“Why not?”

She paused, and he would have given anything to see her face, but she was too busy peering into the darkness. “Because I’m ordinary,” she said simply, distractedly. “Terribly so.”

“Felicity Faircloth,” he said, “in the few days I’ve known you, I’ve learned one, unimpeachable truth. You are no kind of ordinary.”

She turned back to him at that, fast and unexpected, and in the lantern light he discovered her cheeks pinkening from the cold, which made her rather . . . fetching.

Whit would eat him for supper if he knew Devil had even thought the word fetching. It was a ridiculous word. The kind of word used by fops and dandies. Not by bastards who carried cane swords. And she wasn’t fetching. She was a means to an end. An aging, wallflower, spinster means, in his orbit for a sole purpose—his brother’s end.

And even if she weren’t all those things, she absolutely wouldn’t be for him. Felicity Faircloth was the daughter to a marquess, the sister to an earl, and so far above his station she should have a different climate. Her porcelain skin was too perfect, her hands too clean, and her world too grand. Her wide-eyed delight at his Covent Garden warehouse and her smirking pride at cracking the lock to his criminal life only proved the point. Lady Felicity would never know what it was to be common.

That, alone, should have been enough.

Except she smiled before he could stop this mad game, and the candlelight played tricks, because she went from fetching to fucking beautiful. And that was before she said, breathlessly, “No kind of ordinary; I think that might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Christ.

He had to get her out of there. “Well, now you’ve seen the hold.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“This is all there is to see.”

“It’s dark,” she replied, reaching for the lantern. “May I?”

He relinquished it reluctantly, a thread of unease coiling through him at the idea that he was no longer in control of the light. He took a deep breath when she turned away from him and moved deeper into the hold to discover the stacks of ice within.

The ship’s cargo had been moved carefully, through a long, straight path cut by removing blocks of ice, revealing the center of the hold, which only hours ago was full of casks and crates and barrels and boxes now on their way to myriad locations throughout Britain.

Damned if Felicity Faircloth didn’t head straight for that path, as though she were attending a tea party at the center of a labyrinth. She called back, “I wonder what I shall find inside the ice?”

He followed her.

No. He followed the light. Not the girl.

He didn’t care what happened to the girl. Let her explore the hold all she liked. Let her get frostbite for how she lingered inside it. “More ice,” he said, as she found the center of the space, along with its cold, muddy ground.

“I’m not so sure.” The light disappeared as she turned the corner and it went out of view, darkness crawling over him from the rear. He took a deep breath, keeping his gaze on the hazy shadow of her head and shoulders above the ice . . . until it, too, disappeared, dropping out of sight. She’d no doubt slipped in the wet slop of the hold—a danger of working with ice.

“Be careful,” he cautioned, picking up speed, turning into the empty center of the room to discover her crouched low, holding the lantern in front of her with all the skill of a Thames tide-picker, searching for treasure.

She looked up at him. “There’s nothing here.”

He exhaled. “No.”

“Nothing but footprints of what was here before,” she said with a wry smile. She pointed. “A heavy box, there.” Changed direction. “And there, a barrel of some kind.”

His brows rose. “Bow Street is missing your cunning investigative instincts.”

The smile became a grin. “Perhaps I’ll stop there on my way home. What was it?”

“Ice.”

“Hmm,” she said, “I’m guessing it was something alcoholic. And I shall tell you what else . . .”

He crossed his arms over his chest and replied dryly, “I wish you would.”

She pointed a finger at him triumphantly. “I’m guessing it was something that came into the country untaxed.” She was so proud of herself that he almost told her it had been American bourbon. He almost did a lot of things.

He almost pulled her to her feet and kissed the detective work from her lips.

Almost.

Instead, he rubbed his hands together and blew into them. “Excellent deductions, my lady. But it’s bloody freezing in here, so shall we head back so you might perform a citizen’s arrest for your accusations—for which you haven’t a lick of proof?”

“You should have worn a coat.” She waved him off and went back to the wall of ice blocks. “What do you do with the ice now?”

“We ship it throughout London. Homes and butcher shops and sweet shops and restaurants. And you’re wearing my coat.”

“That’s very kind of you,” she replied. “Did you not have a waistcoat?”

“We turn a profit on the ice, or we wouldn’t deal in it,” he said. “I typically don’t dress for manual labor.”

“I noticed,” she said, and Devil snapped to attention at her low, soft words.

“You noticed.”

“It was virtually indecent,” she said, her voice louder, defensive. “I’m not certain how I was not to notice.”

He approached her, unable to stop himself, and she pressed back, away from him, against the ice. Reaching out, she set a hand to the fabricated wall, instantly removing it when the cold registered.

“Be careful,” he said.

“Are you worried I’ll freeze?”

He told the truth. “I’m worried you’ll melt it.”

She raised a brow at him. “You forget I have not yet learned to be a flame.”

For the life of him, he’d never know why he didn’t stop at that. Why he didn’t snatch up the lantern and take her away. “You and your desire to incinerate us all, Felicity Faircloth; you are terribly dangerous.”

“Not to you,” she said softly as he drew nearer, the quiet words like a siren’s call. “You’ll never get close enough to burn.”

He was already close enough. “You’d best keep your sights on another, then.”

No. Set them on me.

We can burn together.

He was close enough to touch her. “Then you’ll teach me?”

Anything. Anything she asked for.

“You’ll show me how to make men adore me.”

God, it was tempting. She was tempting.

If Ewan adores her, it will hurt him more when you take her away. If he’s impassioned, you’ll punish him more.

But that wasn’t all of it. Now, there was Felicity. And if she allowed herself to feel passionately about Ewan, she wouldn’t only be ruined by the dissolution of their courtship, she’d be devastated by it.

She’d be a casualty of this war, decades in the making, that she’d had nothing to do with. She’d be wounded in the balance; that was never the plan.

Bullshit. That was always the plan.

The plan was to show Ewan that Devil would always be able to pull the strings. That Ewan lived by his bastard brothers’ benevolence and nothing else. That they could end any marriage he thought to begin. That they could end him.

Teaching Felicity Faircloth about passion would be the easiest way for Devil to put his plan into action. He could woo the girl even as she wooed the duke, and then, just as they were to marry, seduce her away and send his clear message—no heirs. No marriage. No free will. Never for you.

That was the arrangement they’d made, was it not? The promise the brothers had sworn in the dark of night as their monstrous father had manipulated and punished, never once thinking of them as anything more than candidates to be the next in a long line of Marwicks.

The three boys had vowed never to give their father what he asked.

But Ewan had won the contest. And after he’d taken the title, the house, the fortune, the world their father had offered . . . he’d broken ranks and tried for even more. An heir to a dukedom that should never have been his to begin with.

An illegitimate son, once willing to kill for legitimacy, now come for it on another path. One he had vowed he would never travel.

And Devil would teach him a lesson.

Which meant Felicity would have to learn it, too.

He lifted the lantern from her hands and set it on the block next to her, the light flickering over the cloudy ice, setting it to a strange, grey-green glow. He could see the pulse racing in her neck as he did it, he was so close to her.

Or maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he only wanted her pulse to race.

Maybe it was his pulse he sensed.

He met her gaze, eager and beautiful, and leaned toward her. “Are you sure you wish this door opened, Lady Lockpick?” he said, hating himself for the words. Knowing that if she agreed, she would be ruined. He would have no choice but to ruin her.

She didn’t know that, though. Or, if she did, she didn’t care. Her eyes sparkled, candlelight flickering in their deep brown depths. “Very sure.”

No man on earth could resist her.

And so he did not try.

He reached for her, his hand coming to her cheek, fingers grazing over the impossibly soft skin of her jaw, tracing the bones of it into her hairline, threading there, catching in the thick mahogany curls, trapped by her hairpins, bent into lockpicks, locking him to her. Her lips fell open at the touch, a soft, stunning intake of air revealing her excitement. Her desire.

Revealing his.

With his free hand, he touched the other side of her face, exploring it. Reveling in the silk of her skin, in the way her cheeks rose and hollowed, in the little crease at the corner of her mouth, where a dimple flashed when she teased him. He leaned toward her, fully, madly intending to put his lips to that crease. To taste it.

“Blindman’s buff,” she whispered. “Your hands . . . It’s like the game.”

A child’s game. A country house whim. One player blindfolded, trying to identify another by touch. As though Devil wouldn’t know Felicity Faircloth by touch for the rest of time. “Close your eyes,” he said.

She shook her head. “That’s not how the game is played.”

“I’m not playing a game.”

Her gaze found his. “Aren’t you?”

Not in that moment. “Close your eyes,” he repeated.

She did, and he moved closer, leaning in, putting his lips at her ear. “You tell me what you feel.”

He could hear the way he impacted her—the breath that caught in her chest, shuddered through the long column of her throat as she exhaled, thin and reedy, as though it were difficult for her to get the air in.

Devil understood the feeling, even more so when one of her hands rose to hover above his shoulder—teasing him without touching him. He spoke again, letting his breath fan the high arc of her cheek, where he wanted to kiss. “Felicity, fairest of them all . . .” he whispered. “What do you feel?”

“I—” she started, and then, “I don’t feel cold.”

No, he didn’t imagine she did. “What do you feel?” he asked again.

“I feel . . .” Her hand lit upon his shoulder, the weight of it like fire. He bit back a groan. Grown men did not groan at the brush of a hand against their shoulder.

Not even if it was a flame, hot and impossible in the frigid room.

“What do you feel?”

“I think it must be . . .”

Say it, he willed, the words a prayer to a God that had forsaken him decades ago if he’d ever been blessed to begin with. Say it, so I may give it all to you.

It was possible he said the words aloud, because she replied to them, her beautiful brown eyes, black in the darkness, finding his, her fingers tightening at his shoulder, her free hand coming to rest high on his chest as she whispered, full of surprise and somehow certainty, “Want.”

“Yes,” he said, leaning close, tightening his grip and pulling her to him, somehow finding the strength to keep his kiss from hers. “I feel it, too.”

Her eyes closed, long dark lashes a sooty slash against her skin, luminous in the ethereal, icy light for half a moment before they opened again, found his. “Unlock me,” she whispered.

The words were strange and perfect and irresistible, and Devil did as she commanded, his fingers sliding into her hair, his thumb stroking over her cheek, sipping at her lips, once, twice, gently, savoring the taste of her—soft and impossibly sweet.

He lifted his head, leaving a minuscule space between them, enough for her to open her eyes. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, tugging at him, to bring him back. “Devil?”

He shook his head, unable to stop himself. “When I was a boy,” he whispered, leaning in for another taste, a little, lingering lick, “I stole into the May Day fair in Hyde Park.” Another kiss, this one longer, ending on her sigh, pretty as sin. He pressed a kiss to her cheek, another to the corner of her lips, where that dimple lay, letting his tongue linger in the space until she turned toward him. He pulled back, suddenly wanting her to hear the story. “There was a stall filled with sticks of spun sugar, white and fluffy as clouds—I’d never seen anything like them.”

She was watching him, and he leaned in to kiss her gently, unable to keep himself from licking at her full, lower lip, loving the way it went slack at the touch, the way she opened to him. “Children clamored for those treats,” he whispered, “and parents, lost in the festivities, were more generous than usual.”

She smiled. “And did someone buy one for you?”

“No one ever bought anything for me.”

Her smile fell.

“I watched as dozens of others received their treat, and I hated them for knowing what those white clouds tasted like.” He paused. “I nearly stole one.”

“Nearly?”

He’d been run off by fairground guards before he could. “For years, I’ve told myself that the idea of that treat was far better than however it might have tasted.”

She nodded. “Tell me the idea of it.”

“It couldn’t possibly taste near what I imagined it to be, you see. It couldn’t be as sweet, or as sinful, or as delicious.” He drew closer to her, his words barely a breath over her lips. “But you—” He let his lips slide over hers, a silken touch. “You, Felicity Faircloth, just might be all those things.” Another slide, the little whimper that escaped from her making him want to do wicked, wonderful things. “You just might be more.”

Her fingers tightened, threatening to shred the linen of his shirt. “Devil.”

“I’m going to steal you, instead,” he said then, knowing she’d hear the words as part of the story and not as she should—as the truth. “I’m going to steal you,” he confessed again. “I’m going to steal you and make you mine.”

“It’s not theft if I allow it,” she whispered.

Silly girl; of course it was. But it wouldn’t stop him.