“Good girl,” he said, and brushed his lips to the sweat-dampened hair at her temple. “Good girl.” A reward, then; one which would call this conversation to mind whenever she recalled it. Just a few gentle strokes across her slick flesh, a plunge of his fingers and—the once-denied release struck all the more severely. Her back bowed in a perfect arch. A cry ofcompletion sliced through the still air.
No one who mattered would hear it, but for him. He’d pay the driver well enough to forget he’d even had a fare this evening.
By slow inches she went limp, panting with satiation. A beautiful mess, visible in only the tiny snatches of light that filtered through the window as the carriage at last began to slow. Her head found a perfect notch against his shoulder, and she turned her cheek against it as he smoothed out her skirts once more, letting them fall back into place, a bit wrinkled for their rough handling but nothing a good press wouldn’t fix.
He splayed his hand across her cheek to turn her face to his. One kiss; just one. There was time for nothing more. “You’ll remember this,” he said into the sweet recesses of her mouth. “Won’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, in a tremulous little voice. Shaken, he thought, to her very foundation. “Yes, I’ll remember.”
∞∞∞
Mercy stumbled onto the pavement after Thomas, her legs ill-equipped to support her. It wasn’t cold, but she shivered anyway. No; shetrembled—from her fingertips to her toes in her shoes, she trembled in the aftermath of it all.
And Thomas appeared as cool and as unruffled as ever. As if ice would not have melted in his mouth. She might have thought his sole intention had been to manipulate her, to extract that promise from her through fair means or foul, if there wasn’t a visible tightness to his trousers. A distinct bulge behind the fall that would be obvious to anyone who cared to look.
The driver had delivered them near the house, though they had been careful to stick to the shadows. “Did you bring your key?” Thomas inquired.
Mercy winced. “No,” she admitted. “I did remember to put it in my reticule, but—”
Thomas canted his head. “But?”
“I forgot my reticule.”
He smothered a chortle behind one hand, shoved the other into his pocket. “Take this,” he said, extending his own key to her. “Leave the door unlocked behind you, and place the key on the desk in your father’s study when you go upstairs.”
“You are not coming with me?”
“I’ll be two minutes behind you,” he said. “It’s unlikely there’s much of anyone awake at this hour, but still it would not be wise to enter together. You have to get back upstairs and into bed unseen, and I—I have got to dress and meet my mother and sisters at their evening engagement. I’m not meant to know you are supposed to be ill, after all. Should I fail to put in an appearance, someone might wonder why we both have missed this evening’s entertainment.”
Oh. “I hadn’t considered that,” she said, curling her fingers around the key he set into her hand.
“I know,” he said, and there was just the tiniest hint of smug amusement running through his voice. As if to remind her that, of course,hehad. “No billiards this evening.”
“What!” That hardly seemed fair.
“You’re meant to be ill,” he said. “You can’t go sneaking about the house when you’re meant to be recovering from your unexpected illness.”
“But I’m not ill,” she said. “That is to say—for all anyone else knows, I have since recovered.”
“In a few hours?” he scoffed. “Conveniently just in time for my mother and sisters to have returned from their evening out?No; your miraculous recovery shall have to wait until morning. And perhaps next time you’ll consider the consequences before you attempt to pull the wool over my eyes.” In the shadows of the street that shifted and coalesced around them, he cupped her shoulder, turning her toward the door. “Go,” he said. “I’ll be two minutes behind you.”
It was ever so much more than two minutes, she thought as she moved at last to do as he had bid, creeping through the door of the silent house. She had left him behind her years ago, long before she had ever thought, ever even suspected that there might come a time when she would have entertained the idea of letting him catch up to her.
It was far too late to turn back. Even if she were to stop and turn and extend a hand to him, once he had learned that secret she had promised him…he would no longer wish to take it. Was it selfish, then, to enjoy what little she would ever have of him while it lasted? To allow their paths, which had run into one another for so short a time, to continue to do so for just a few more days, perhaps as much as a few weeks, before they would once more diverge?
She would tell him, she assured herself as she slipped up the stairs. She wouldhaveto tell him. Not for nothing had she learned the damage a secret, so unjustly kept, could wreak. But, oh, it would kill off a part of her heart to do it.
She could feel the pain of it already, the ache of that knife poised over her breast, prepared to murder that part of her that had had the audacity to dream a little. She had never been much good at predicting consequences. But this one at least was plain as day; the end of them. An inevitability, and that—that would make it easier to bear, she hoped. Her own choice. Her own folly. Her own broken heart.
She only hoped she would not damage his in the doing of it.
Chapter Eighteen
Ascratch at the study door pulled Thomas’ attention from the papers strewn across the desk, which he had been attempting, for the last half hour or so, to sort into some semblance of order. A difficult and thankless task, but one which he had hoped would prove itself useful, since his trip earlier in the day to the Bank of England had not. Apparently, there were doors that not even a title could open. He’d managed to confirm nothing more than that Fordham did indeed possessan account within the institution.
Which they had already known, he and Mercy. At the very least, it was one more location that he could be certain that Fordham would return to—eventually.
“Enter,” he said distractedly as the scratch came again, and as the door swept open he glanced up at last. “Mother,” he said, his voice gone tight and hoarse. With a renewed sense of urgency, he began to scrape documents off the desk into a neat stack. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
