To Taste Temptation

  But here, where people lived cheek by jowl and let their waste pile into corners, where the reek of man seemed to hang like a fog that had to be fought through, here in the city it was more complicated. There were still predators and prey, but their forms had warped, and sometimes it was impossible to tell the two apart. This city was far more dangerous than any frontier with wild animals and raiding Indians.

  His feet carried him to the end of the mews and to an intersection. He dipped across the lane and continued running down the street. A young man was entering the gate of a town house—a servant returning from an assignation? Sam passed him not a foot away, and the man didn’t even turn. But Sam inhaled the smell of ale and pipe smoke as he ran by.

  Lady Emeline smelled of lemon balm. He’d caught the scent again as he’d bent over her white hand this afternoon. It wasn’t right. Such a sophisticated woman should have worn patchouli or musk. He’d often found himself overwhelmed by the smell—the stink—of society ladies. Their perfumes hung about them like a fog until he’d wanted nothing more than to cover his nose and choke. But Lady Emeline wore lemon balm, the scent of his mother’s garden. That dichotomy intrigued him.

  He loped across the entrance of an alley and jumped a foul puddle. Someone lurked here, either for shelter or in ambush, but Sam was past before the form had time to react. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the lurker peering after him. Sam grinned to himself and picked up his pace, his moccasins brushing soundlessly on cobblestones. This was the only time he almost liked the city—when the streets were deserted and a man could move without fear of bumping into another person. When there was space. He felt his leg muscles begin to warm with his exertion.

  He’d deliberately chosen the rented house next to Lady Emeline when they’d come to London. He’d had a need to find out how Reynaud’s sister had fared. It was the least he could do for the officer he’d failed. When he’d discovered that the lady enjoyed introducing young girls into society, asking for her help with Rebecca had seemed like the natural thing to do. Of course, he hadn’t told her the real reason that he was interested in London society, but that hadn’t mattered to him. At least until he’d actually met the lady.

  Because Lady Emeline wasn’t what he’d expected. Somehow, without realizing it, he must’ve imagined her to be tall like her brother and with an equally aristocratic air. The aristocratic air was indeed there, but he was hard-put not to smile when she attempted to look down her nose at him. She couldn’t be more than a couple of inches over five feet. Her shape was nicely rounded, the type that made a man want to cup her arse in his hands just to feel the feminine warmth. Her hair was black and her eyes just as dark. With her rosy cheeks and snappish voice, she might’ve been a saucy Irish maid, ripe for a flirtation.

  Except she wasn’t.

  Sam swore softly and halted. He braced his palms on his knees as he panted, trying to catch his breath. Lady Emeline might look like an Irish maid, but in her elegant clothes and with an accent that could cut ice, no one in his right mind would mistake her for one. Not even an unsophisticated backwoodsman from the frontiers of the New World. His money could buy a lot of things, but a woman from the highest tiers of the English aristocracy wasn’t one of them.

  The moon was beginning to set. Time to go home. Sam looked around. Small shops lined the narrow street, their overhanging upper stories looming above. He’d never been in this part of London before, but that wouldn’t stop him from finding his way back. He started at a slow jog. The return journey was always the hardest, his initial freshness and energy blown away. Now his chest labored to draw breath, and his muscles began to ache at the continued exertion. Then, too, the areas where he’d been wounded made themselves known, throbbing as he ran. Remember, the scars groaned, remember where the tomahawk sawed your flesh, where the ball burrowed next to bone. Remember that you are forever marked, the survivor, the living, the one left to bear witness.

  Sam ran on, despite aches and memories. This was the point that separated those who would continue from those who fell by the wayside. The trick was to acknowledge the pain. To embrace it. Pain kept you awake. Pain meant that you still lived.

  He didn’t know how much longer he ran, but when he again ducked into the mews behind his rented house, the moon had set. He was so weary that he almost didn’t see the watcher in time. A man lurked, big and solid, beside the corner of the stables. It was a measure of Sam’s tiredness that he nearly ran by him. But he didn’t. He stopped and slid into the shadows of his neighbor’s stables. He peered at the watcher. The man was barrel-shaped and wore a scarlet coat and a battered tricorne, fraying gray about the edges. Sam had seen him before. Once today, across the street as he and Rebecca had left Lady Emeline’s house, and yesterday as Sam had entered his rented carriage. The shape and the way the man stood was the same. The man was following him.

  Sam took a few seconds to steady his breath before drawing two lead balls from his waistcoat pocket. They were small things, no bigger than his thumb, but they were useful for a man who enjoyed running the streets of London in the dark. He curled his right fist around the balls.

  Silently, Sam rushed at Scarlet Coat, catching the bigger man’s hair from behind with his left hand. He punched the man swiftly in the side of his head. “Who sent you?”

  Scarlet Coat was fast for a big man. He twisted and tried to elbow Sam in the belly. Sam punched him again, once, twice, his fist connecting each time with the other man’s face.

  “Sod it!” Scarlet Coat gasped. His London accent was so thick, Sam could hardly make out the words.

  The man aimed a fist at his face. Sam leaned to the side, and the blow glanced off his chin. He punched quick and hard at the man’s exposed armpit. Scarlet Coat groaned, bending over his hurt side. When he straightened, he had a wicked blade in his hand. Sam circled, his fists held ready, looking for another opening. Scarlet Coat struck with his knife, but Sam knocked the man’s arm aside. The knife spun to the ground, moonlight gleaming on what looked like a white bone handle. Sam feinted to the left, and when the other man lunged, he caught his right arm and pulled the man in toward himself.

  “Your employer,” Sam hissed as he wrenched the man’s arm.

  The man twisted violently and caught Sam a second blow to his chin. Sam staggered and that was all Scarlet Coat needed. The other man was off, running away down the mews. He ducked and grabbed his knife as he ran past it, and then he disappeared around the end of the mews.

  Sam started after him instinctively—the predator always pursues a fleeing prey—but he stopped before the mews spilled onto the cross street. He’d been running for hours now; his wind was no longer fresh. If he did catch Scarlet Coat, he’d be in no condition to make the other man tell him what he knew. Sam sighed, pocketed the lead balls, and headed back to his own house.

  The dawn was already breaking.

  Chapter Three

  One day as Iron Heart was sweeping the street, a procession rode by. There were running footmen dressed in gilt livery, a brace of guards mounted on snow-white chargers, and finally a gold carriage with two footmen clinging behind. Iron Heart could do naught but gape as the carriage came closer. When it was directly beside him, the curtain shifted and he saw the face of the lady within. And what a face it was! She was perfectly formed, her complexion so white and smooth she might’ve been ivory. Iron Heart stared after her.

  Beside him a voice cackled. “Do you think Princess Solace beautiful?”

  Iron Heart turned and found a wizened old man standing where before there had been no one. He frowned, but he had to admit that the princess was most lovely.

  “Then,” said the old man, leaning so close that Iron Heart could smell the stink of his breath, “would you like to marry her?”

  —from Iron Heart

  Emeline stepped into the afternoon sunshine and gave a sigh of pleasure. “That was a most satisfying shop.”

  “But,” Miss Hartley panted beside her, “do I really need all tho
se frocks? Won’t one or two ball gowns do?”

  “Now, Miss Hartley—”

  “Oh, please, won’t you call me Rebecca?”

  Emeline tempered her stern tone. The girl was terribly sweet. “Yes, of course. Rebecca, then. It is most important that you be properly attired—”

  “In gold leaf, if possible,” a masculine voice cut into Emeline’s homily.

  “Oh, Samuel!” Rebecca exclaimed. “Your chin looks even worse than this morning.”

  Emeline turned, carefully smoothing out her brow. She didn’t want Mr. Hartley to see either her vexation at the interruption or the odd flutter of excitement she felt low in her belly. Surely, such tumult wasn’t altogether becoming in a woman of her age.

  Mr. Hartley’s chin was indeed a darker shade of plum than it’d been since Emeline had last seen him. Apparently, he’d run into a doorway sometime in the night. An oddly clumsy accident for such a graceful man. He was now leaning against a lamppost, his booted feet crossed at the ankle, looking like he’d been there for quite some time. And he had if he’d been waiting in this way since the ladies had entered the dressmaker’s three hours ago. The awful man couldn’t have been standing out here the entire time, could he?

  Emeline felt a twinge of guilt. “Mr. Hartley, you do know that it’s quite acceptable for you to leave us whilst we finish our shopping?”

  He raised his eyebrows, and the sardonic expression in his eyes said that he knew perfectly well the niceties of a ladies’ shopping day. “I wouldn’t dream of abandoning you, my lady. I apologize if my presence is irksome.”

  At her side, Tante Cristelle clicked her tongue. “You talk like a courtier, monsieur. I do not think it becomes you.”

  Mr. Hartley grinned and bowed to her aunt, not at all put out. “I am suitably reprimanded, ma’am.”

  “Yes, well,” Emeline interjected. “I think the glover’s next. Just down here is the most wonderful shop—”

  “Perhaps you ladies would like some refreshment?” Mr. Hartley asked. “I’d never forgive myself if you fainted away from the exertion of your labors.”

  Emeline was forming a suitably regretful reply when Tante Cristelle spoke first. “Some tea would be very welcome.”

  Now Emeline couldn’t decline him without looking churlish, and the dratted man knew it. The corner of his mouth curled as he watched her with warm brown eyes.

  She pursed her lips. “Thank you, Mr. Hartley. You’re very kind.”

  He inclined his head, straightened away from the lamppost, and held out his arm to her. “Shall we?”

  Why did the man only remember the proprieties when it suited him? Emeline smiled stiffly and placed her fingertips on his sleeve, conscious of the muscle beneath the fabric. He glanced at her hand and up at her, cocking an eyebrow. She tilted her chin and began walking, Tante Cristelle and the girl following behind. Her aunt seemed to be lecturing Rebecca on the importance of shoes.

  Around them, the fashionable Mayfair throng ebbed and flowed. Young bucks loitered in doorways, gossiping and eyeing the grandly dressed ladies. A dandy strolled past in a pink-powdered wig, his long walking stick extravagantly employed. Emeline heard a snort from Tante Cristelle. She inclined her head to the Misses Stevens as they passed. The elder girl nodded most properly. The younger, a pretty if vacuous redhead in overwide panniers, giggled into her gloved hand.

  Emeline lowered her brows in disapproval at the girl. “How do you find our capital, Mr. Hartley?”

  “Crowded.” He dipped his head close to hers as he spoke. She caught a pleasing scent on his breath but couldn’t place it.

  “You are used to a smaller city?” She lifted her skirt as they approached a puddle of something noxious. Mr. Hartley drew her closer to him when they skirted it, and for a moment she felt the warmth of his body through wool and linen.

  “Boston is smaller than London,” he replied. They separated and she was chagrined to realize that she missed his warmth. “But it is just as crowded. I’m not used to cities at all.”

  “You were raised in the countryside?”

  “More like the wilderness.”

  She turned in surprise at his answer just as he must’ve leaned toward her again. Suddenly his face was only inches from hers. Fine lines surrounded his coffee-colored eyes, deepening as he smiled at her. She noticed that a thin, pale scar lay under his left eye.

  Then she looked away. “Were you raised by wolves, then, Mr. Hartley?”

  “Not quite.” His voice was amused, despite the sharpness of her words. “My father was a trapper on the Pennsylvania frontier. We lived in a cabin he’d built from logs that still had the bark on them.”

  This sounded very primitive. Actually, she had trouble imagining his home, it was so foreign to what she knew. “How were you educated until you went to the boys school?”

  “My mother taught me reading and writing,” Mr. Hartley said. “I learned about tracking, hunting, and the woods from my father. He was a very good woodsman.”

  They passed a bookshop with a bright red sign hanging so low that it nearly brushed Mr. Hartley’s tricorne. Emeline cleared her throat. “I see.”

  “Do you?” he asked softly. “My world back then is a far cry from this.” He nodded at the noisy London street. “Can you imagine a forest so quiet you can hear the leaves fall? Trees so big a grown man cannot wrap his arms about their girth?”

  She shook her head. “It’s difficult to picture. Your woodlands sound very strange to me. But you left those woods, didn’t you?”

  He was watching the flow of the crowd about them as they walked, but now he glanced down at her.

  She drew in a breath, staring into his dark eyes. “That must have been quite a change, leaving the freedom of the forest for a school.”

  One corner of his mouth tilted up, and he looked away. “It was, but boys are adaptable. I learned how to follow the rules and which boys to stay away from. And I was big, even then. That helped.”

  Emeline shuddered. “They seem so savage, boarding schools.”

  “Boys are savage little beasts, by and large.”

  “What of the teachers?”

  He shrugged. “Most are competent. Some are unhappy men who dislike boys. But there are others who truly love their profession and care for the children.”

  Emeline knit her brows. “What a very different childhood you and your sister must have had. You said she grew up in the city of Boston?”

  “Yes.” For the first time, his voice sounded troubled. “Sometimes I think our childhoods were too different.”

  “Oh?” She watched his face. His expressions were so subtle, so fleeting, that she felt like a diviner when she caught them.

  He nodded, his eyes hooded. “I worry that I don’t give her all that she needs.”

  She stared ahead as she tried to think of a reply. Did any of the men she knew worry about the women in their lives this way? Had her own brother cared about her needs? She thought not.

  But Mr. Hartley took a breath and spoke again. “Your son is a spirited boy.”

  Emeline wrinkled her nose. “Too spirited, some would say.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Eight this summer.”

  “You employ a tutor for him?”

  “Mr. Smythe-Jones. He comes in daily.” She hesitated, then said impulsively, “But Tante Cristelle thinks I should enroll him in a school like the one you attended.”

  He glanced at her. “He seems too young to leave home.”

  “Oh, but many fashionable families send their sons away, some much younger than Daniel.” She realized that she was twisting a bit of ribbon at her throat in her free hand, and she stopped and carefully smoothed the piece of silk. “My aunt worries that I will tie him to my apron strings. Or that he will not learn how to be a man in a house of women.” Why was she telling a near stranger these intimate details? He must think her a ninny.

  But he only nodded thoughtfully. “Your husband is dead.”

  ?
??Yes. Daniel—my son is named for his father—passed away five years ago.”

  “Yet, you have not married again.”

  He leaned closer, and she recognized the scent she smelled on his breath. Parsley. Strange that such a domestic scent would seem so exotic on him.

  He spoke softly. “I don’t understand why a lady of your attraction would be left to languish for so many years alone.”

  Her brow creased. “Actually—”

  “Here is a tea shop,” Tante Cristelle called from behind them. “My bones ache most terrible from this exercise. Shall we rest here?”

  Mr. Hartley turned. “I am sorry, ma’am. Yes, indeed we’ll stop here.”

  “Bon,” Tante said. “Let us compose ourselves for a time, then.”

  Mr. Hartley held open the pretty wood and glass door, and they entered the little shop. Small, circular tables were placed here and there, and the ladies settled themselves while Mr. Hartley went to purchase the tea.

  Tante Cristelle leaned forward to tap Rebecca’s knee. “Your brother is very solicitous of you. Be grateful; not all men are so. And those who are do not often stay in this world overlong.”

  The girl knit her brows at Tante’s last remark, but she chose to reply to the first. “Oh, but I am very grateful. Samuel has always been kind to me when I saw him.”

  Emeline smoothed a lace ruffle on her skirt. “Mr. Hartley said that you were raised by your uncle.”

  Rebecca’s eyes dropped. “Yes. I only saw Samuel once or twice a year, when he came to visit. He always seemed so big, even though he must’ve been younger than I am now. Later, of course, he enlisted and wore a magnificent soldier’s uniform. I was quite in awe of him. He walks like no other man I know. He strides so easily, as if he could keep up his pace for days on end.” The girl looked up and smiled self-consciously. “I describe it badly.”