“Had it from a client, aye, but he wasn’t in debt. Needed some quick cash, he said.” He was silent for a moment. “I favor ale, myself. But every year, I open a bottle of madeira. This is my sister’s birthday today. And she favored it.” He lifted his glass. “To Oona.”
She lifted her glass as well. “Will she join us?”
He looked briefly startled. “Oona was Lily’s mother. Lilah’s,” he corrected, with a wry tug of his mouth. “Guess she prefers that name, and now she’s a proper lady, I suppose she can have it. She never told you about her ma? It’s been years since Oona passed. Cholera took her.”
“No.” Catherine paused, troubled that she hadn’t known. “She told me of you, of course, but . . . not much about her childhood.” And I never thought to ask. It spoke ill of her, didn’t it? It was one thing to be professional, another to be callous to those she counted as friends. How selfish she’d become, wrapped up in her concerns about the company. “Was Lilah very young when her mother died?”
“Eight,” he said. “Or—no, nine.” He frowned. “I was . . . sixteen, just. Had been living with them for five years by then. Raising hell.” His smile was faint and fleeting. “It’s a wonder Oona put up with me. I’m sure I did no favors to her marriage. Lily’s da called me the devil’s spawn, said I must have worn out my welcome with Lucifer.”
He sounded amused, but it didn’t seem safe to smile. “That couldn’t have been comfortable, to be so judged by your brother-in-law.”
“Oh, he meant nothing by it. Simply joshing me. He was a good man, Lily’s dad.” He turned his wineglass in his hand, his gaze distant. “Ruled these parts before me—not with any discipline, mind you. Ran a ragtag band of thieves and swindlers, and had no plan for the future, no interest in investing his coin. But he was a good man, and a kind one. Much loved. Much . . . missed, afterward.”
Something dark had roughened his voice, there. She sensed an unhappy history. She could pass by it, turn the conversation to lighter topics—the Sheraton dresser; the tambour-topped writing desk she’d found. But with her ignorance of Lilah’s past still fresh in her mind, she took a deep breath and surrendered to her curiosity. Her desire, God help her, to know more about this man. “How did he die, then?”
“Killed.” The syllable was curt. “Rival gang decided to sink its claws into Whitechapel. Jonathan tried to stop them. Got ambushed one night, by cowards who knifed him from behind.”
“Goodness.” This was the history Lilah had overcome? Catherine felt dizzied. Lilah looked, moved, and spoke like a genteel lady. She had remade herself entirely, and showed no signs of having survived such tragedy. “What happened to his killers? Did the police catch them?”
He lifted his glass, took a long swallow. “I caught them.”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
His smile looked cold. “Police weren’t lifting a finger. They’d got better things to do, they said, than interfere in a street brawl between a pack of rabid dogs.”
He sounded as if he were quoting them. “How unjust,” she whispered.
He gave a single sharp shake of his head. “Justice was done, all right.” He met her eyes. “I told you once: violence is clumsy. But sometimes it’s called for. And when me and mine are at stake, I’ll do what I must. Show no weakness, accept no insult, allow no advantage: that’s the law of the street.”
She stared at him. He looked brutal in this moment, his face dark and lean, stripped of all softness. As though the smiling charm he more often showed was simply a mask, which he had momentarily set aside to allow her to see him clearly.
Perhaps there was a secret blackness in her soul, for as she stared back at him, she felt no repulsion. No distaste. She could respect a man who fought for his own. Who allowed nobody to cross him or his.
Why, respect was the lie here. She envied his own. How differently her life would have developed, had she been able to rely on Peter’s loyalty and aid, rather than always needing to guard against him.
“Good,” she said roughly. She raised her glass again, another toast, before draining it. “I am glad you got justice, whatever it took.”
He blinked, a curious expression on his face. She had surprised him, maybe. As he refilled their glasses, he cut her a look through his lashes, a speculative glance that she did not know how to answer.
Now that she had decided to indulge her curiosity, her brain buzzed with a dozen questions for him. “What’s your aim, then?” she asked as she reclaimed her glass.
“What do you mean?”
“You say Lilah’s father had no plan. But you do, I take it?”
“Ah.” He leaned back, kicking one leg over the other, his ankle atop one thigh. At some point he had unbuttoned his jacket; where it gaped open, she caught a glimpse of his waistcoat, stretched tightly across his lean, flat belly. “Well, I’m a rich man now—so a poor man would say. But I’ve been studying up on your kind. The creamy lot. And I know that what a poor man calls rich, a wealthy man calls middling. What I aim for is wealth that grows itself, without any tending from me.”
“Investments,” she said. “Do you have a man in the City?”
“Acquired a broker a year or two ago.” He shrugged. “I’m on my way now. I’ll give it another couple years. And in the meantime, I’ll keep building the walls.”
“The walls? Are you in property development as well?”
He smiled. “Not real walls. Walls to keep the world out, is what I mean—should I decide that I’m better off apart from it. At present, I’ve got—let’s see.” He held up one finger, sapphire and garnet sparking in the firelight. “Whitechapel.” Another two fingers, the diamond and ruby. “Bethnal Green, St. George’s-in-the-East.” A fourth finger, emerald. “Mile End.” He snapped his fingers into a fist. “Limehouse, soon enough. Docks are mine, but the vestry there’s a bit touchy, I fear.”
She realized what he meant. “You control four vestries?”
He laughed. “Just said so, didn’t I?”
“But that’s . . .” It was a very large swath of eastern London. “If you control so much of the local government . . .” Why, he was more powerful than some London MPs. And he answered to no sponsors, no patrons—which made him more powerful by far. “To what end? Do you mean to go into politics?”
He snorted. “Rich man’s game. No time for that.”
“Then why bother with the vestries?”
“They’re my walls,” he said coolly. “Not a law nor a lawman can operate in four parishes without my approval. You try to put the police on me, you’d best hope they come from the City, because no bobby east of the square mile will cross me. You want to open a shop, a public house, even a church, you’d best hope you ran it by me, or you’ll find no joy from the local authorities.”
“That sounds like a kingship,” she said softly.
“No. I’m no tyrant. I stopped taking graft years ago. I don’t demand a protection fee. All I ask for is respect.”
It sounded very seductive. She resisted the urge to approve. Law had its place; civilization had not been built by men who defied a central authority. “What you ask sounds less like respect than allegiance.”
“Well . . . maybe. I prefer to call it . . . a sense of being at home.” He hesitated, his gaze oddly thoughtful as he looked at her. “A stretch of territory where I don’t need to be looking over my shoulder when I walk down the streets at night. Where nobody needs look, so long as they’re one of mine. That’s a . . . fine thing, for folks raised in these streets.” He gave a tug of his mouth. “For a lad who slept in ’em, when the coin was short.” He reached out, running a finger around the rim of his glass. “Whose ma worked in them,” he said quietly. “Sometimes. When the coin was short. To feed me, she did what she must, I think.”
Her breath caught. She pressed her lips together, terrified of having to loose that breath, for fear that he might interpret the sigh as disgust or contempt.
But . . . to her mild amazement,
she felt only sorrow for him. After what she had seen at the B Meeting, the raggedness and the tales of piteous want, she could imagine that many women in these parts sometimes lacked the coin to feed their children. Of course a mother in dire straits would do anything to prevent her child from starving. Even if it meant selling her body or soul.
“So you want to be . . . immune,” she said hesitantly. “Immune from uncertainty. From danger and risk.”
His gaze lifted to hers. “No,” he said after a moment. “That comes when you’re dead, Kitty.”
“Then . . . what do you want?”
He laid down his glass, a soft click of glass against wood. “I want the freedom to live as I please,” he said quietly. “By my own rules, nobody else’s. How does that sound to you?”
He had not moved off the chair. But the intensity of his look suddenly made her flush, as though he had crossed to stand before her, close enough to touch. Her own reaction confused her, made her stammer. “I think it—it sounds very grand. But surely most people have that privilege. I do.”
“Do you?” He hadn’t looked away. Hadn’t even blinked. “Seems like you could have it. If you paid attention to what you really wanted.”
A frown pulled at her brow. “I don’t know what you mean.” But her mouth felt dry, and her pulse was suddenly thrumming, as though part of her did understand. “I’ve gotten what I want. Thanks—thanks to you. Everleigh’s, safe. The accounts in my hands—”
He did rise off the chair then. Her heart skipped as he prowled toward her. He went down on his knees in front of her, so their eyes were level; he took the wineglass out of her slack hand, then lifted her palm to his mouth, pressing his lips against her racing pulse.
“I’m not talking of your company,” he said. “I’m talking of you. Look at me.”
She had averted her face. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, glaring at him. “I came in here to tell you of what I found in the storeroom, not to be—”
“Business,” he said. “You hide behind it. You hide from yourself. What were you thinking earlier, when you were staring at me? Wasn’t business that made you blush. Be honest with yourself now. I’ll wait. No need to speak it aloud.”
She took a sharp breath through her nose. Was she so transparent? The possibility mortified her. She tried to pull her hand free. His grip tightened.
“What keeps you so afraid?” His words were low, hoarse. “That you’ll like it too much? For if so, you’re right. I’ll make sure of that.”
Her voice wasn’t good for more than a whisper now. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Liar,” he said. “Who are you lying to? The door’s closed. Not a soul in the world to hear you. Nobody to know what happens here. Nobody to judge.”
“There’s you,” she said shakily.
He cupped her face, his thumb soothing the corner of her mouth. “And what of it? You imagine I’ll think less of you, for wanting the same thing I do?”
She bit her lip hard. This wasn’t fair of him. “It’s not you who would stand to pay for it!”
“And if I promised to make sure you didn’t pay,” he said. “If I had that power. What then? What would you do?”
She closed her eyes. That was not a question she dared ask herself. She believed he had the skill to prevent a child. But if she went forward with touching him . . .
She might pay anyway. Suddenly the truth was plain to her: already she was drawn to him. She craved his company. She longed to make him laugh. She felt grateful to him. And she believed him, despite his history and his sins, a good and decent soul.
There was more at risk here than the possibility of a child. At risk was something she could not afford to lose. She could not afford to love him. She could not be a wife.
He spoke, again with that uncanny way of reading her mind. “You’ve got an ironclad ticket to freedom,” he murmured. “I signed that contract. You’ll have your divorce, one day. But what of the meantime? We could enjoy each other. Live, Kitty. I could cut this gown off you. Lick my way from your mouth to your breasts, put my tongue between your legs and kiss you until you screamed. But not unless you admit you want it. What you’ll permit me to do, how far you’ll let me go—it’s up to you, Catherine. Only you.”
With her eyes closed, those torrid images were too vivid. She opened her eyes, and the sight of his dark, wicked face was no easier to bear, no less of an aching temptation.
“You ever really felt free?” he whispered. “Because here it is: here, you’re free. My territory. And yours, if you want it.”
The breath exploded from her in a gasp. He took note. A dangerous smile curved his lips. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, and rose on his knees, coming over her as soundlessly as a thief. His fingers speared through her hair, causing a pinching pain as her pins stabbed her scalp.
She braced herself against the brutality of his grip—and was undone by the gentle touch of his mouth. Small, fleeting touches. His lips on her earlobe. Her cheek, her neck. Light as a whisper, he scattered his kisses, while his hand at her hair plucked out pins, soothing now, his fingers skilled, clever. Her hair came tumbling down, a heavy cool mass, and he smoothed it away from her shoulders as his mouth closed on hers.
The kiss felt familiar. Wildly startling, but also . . . not surprising. She had kissed him too many times now for shock to blind her mind to the details: the slight roughness of his lips. The hot lick of his tongue as he chased hers into her mouth. The firm, steady grip of his hand around her throat—a gesture that might have menaced her, had it not been for the gentle brush of his thumb across her skin, settling at last over the spot where her pulse hammered, pressing there as though to remind her: you want this.
He tilted his head, angling for a deeper intrusion; his mouth searched hers, ravishing. She was being devoured . . . but she was devouring him, too; she did want this. She did.
An odd sob escaped her. He fell still, then started to ease away. She caught his upper arms to hold him to her; to feel for the solid strapping breadth of his shoulders, to prove to herself that she had not embroidered the memory by a single degree. He felt forged of something tougher, finer, and hotter than mere flesh. He was a long, lethal blade of a man, a weapon that she could touch, that she could stroke now without any fear of being injured. Nobody to see; nobody to judge. Freedom, indeed.
He coaxed her to lean back against the chair. His expression was rapt, almost reverent, as he molded his hands down her body, feeling the shape of her breasts through the thick impediments of silk and cotton and corseted canvas. She arched upward, and his hands slid around to her back, disarming with impossible economy all the devices by which a woman was bound up in herself: buttons and hooks, laces and clasps, detestable obstacles, falling away beneath his fingers like vanquished enemies.
He slid her sleeves from her shoulders, then ripped her chemise apart. He parted the layers like the petals of a flower, baring her to the waist before taking her breast in his mouth. The door closed. Nobody to see. Only this man, whose judgments didn’t matter; whose judgments would be sweet, regardless.
She clasped his head and held him to her breast, desire like greed, not satisfied by his suckling, wanting ever more. She fumbled blindly for his hand, gripped it firmly, strongly enough to grind his bones. She wanted this hand employed elsewhere.
He met her eyes, his mouth glistening, his gaze adamant. “Put it where you want it,” he said.
She squeezed her eyes shut. She could not do it. She would die of embarrassment.
He closed his teeth around her nipple very lightly, then blew.
She gasped, then shoved his hand into the depths of her skirts. “There.” The syllable was threadbare. She could not bear to look.
But oh, the sweet sensation of his palm on her ankle—she held her breath, seeing in the darkness behind her lids the path his hand traveled. The tender curve of her calf. The damp cove behind her knee. She choked back a noise as he hooked his fingers beneath h
er drawers, as he flexed his grip on the soft flesh of her inner thigh. And then . . .
“Here,” he whispered, as he found her quim. The delicate touch of his fingers, the unbearable nudging exploration, made her squirm—and then he found where she’d wanted him, after all.
His thumb toyed with the seat of her desire, while his fingers—she gasped. His fingers slowly penetrated her, a slow, stretching pressure that made her feel fuller and heavier and ripe for him. She forgot to keep her eyes shut.
He watched her as he petted her, his gaze slumberous, heavy-lidded, his mouth full and loose. She stared at his mouth, remembering his promise. He would put it there, below. All she need do was ask . . .
The thought magnified her pleasure. She put her fist to her mouth to stop a sound as his fingers quickened their rhythm. He seized her hand, pulling it to his own mouth, running his tongue between her tightly knotted fingers, sucking her fingertips, making low murmurs now, shameless words. “Tell me,” he said. “After you come, what next? How will I make you come, the second time?”
The words shot through her like an electric current. They laid the truth bare: the first time wouldn’t be enough. Perhaps the second wouldn’t be, either.
Women were not meant to enjoy such things—her mother had warned her of the pain of the marriage bed. But it was possible that her desire was like her ambition—limitless, unnatural for a woman. In which case . . . indulging it would only be a torment, once she lost the means to satisfy herself.
Once she lost him.
The pleasure was coming now, like a torrent building, building toward the lip of a dam. It would break—overflow—and she tensed against it. Her lips formed the syllable once—twice. The third time, she managed to say, “Stop.”
He did not pretend to mishear her. His hand stilled. Some low sound came from him—a curse she did not know. She braced herself, still shaking, for his anger. But after a moment, he sank his forehead against her bosom, breathing raggedly against her as his hand slipped away, down her leg. His breath sent a hot whispering pleasure along the tops of her breasts, raising a shiver she could not repress.