Page 28 of Undercover with the Heiress
‘We have many types. At least three different blends. All lovely.’ Felix crossed to the other end of the stair, then descended a few steps. ‘Are you staying home instead of going to your club? I can send something up if you aren’t dining with Mrs Babbage.’
‘Yes. And whisky.’
‘Problem, sir,’ Felix replied. ’You tipped it all out. Remember?’
Blast it. ‘Soda. With syrup. The one Viscountess Dalton sends over. And toast. With unspoilt jam.’
Phineas trudged the last few stairs to the landing before he clicked the lock on the door open. Once inside the fourth-floor front bedroom—the one with the coveted extra windows—he half closed the door and readied his key. Then he stopped. It was a ridiculous habit, keeping these rooms locked. It had seemed essential when he’d first moved into the townhouse, in a city where he knew not a soul and trusted even fewer people. That was before he’d hired Felix. He’d been caught in a flurry of sleepless anxiety, then. He’d spent his days wandering between the rooms in the front corner of the townhouse, peering through their windows into the park, watching out for a sign that he’d been followed, and waiting for Pennington and his men to find him. All the while he’d wracked his memory for some hint of what might have happened to Imogen. A desk in the corner, high with loose leaf, scraps of paper, and dust, was a pathetic relic to his failures. He’d promised to keep her safe. He’d failed.
He’d known he’d failed for so long, and yet he’d stayed. Stayed on this street with its mishmash of neighbours who fought and loved and asked each other for help. It had all started withdamn Petunia Hartright, who’d convinced him to join her choir. Saying no would have been rude, and two sentences into his first conversation with her, he’d known she’d be a persistent woman. Part of his cover, he’d told himself, essential to blending in. He’d made every excuse to no one but himself, and like a fool, he’d believed his own lies. Helping Iris, helping Arley, feeding that cat… The mess of them had drawn him in, as if he might be able to line them up like numbers in a tally, wrest with the equations of their problems, and set them straight into a solution.
If he hadn’t stumbled upon Rosanna, if he hadn’t fashioned himself into her saviour, would he have left?
Or would he have skulked the street and found some other reason to stay, some other cause, as he had done so many times before? For seven ridiculous years.
Night chased his brooding. The park turned silver as the greens desaturated to grey. A light scratch sounded at the door. ‘Phineas?’
‘Mmm?’ he hummed, forcing himself to stay focused on the world outside.
‘Why won’t you bed me?’
Because I don’t deserve you. I will only taint you. I will darken your light. And I fear one breath of you, and you will become my oxygen.
Every sense, every nerve in his body, every fizzle of energy under his skin told him not to turn, but still, he did. He sat forwards in his old armchair, in its puddle of moonlight, to regard his wife. Framed by the doorway, she wore a dressing gown of practical, warm flannel, tied at the waist but still revealing a white triangle of nightgown. She held a flickering candle stub before her, and its light danced across her cheeks, her full rose lips. It placed a delicate glimmer in her eyes, eyes that had seen so little, that were so innocent and so warm, so ready to see the potency of the world, of life. The spoilt littlerich girl who was selfish and self-flattering… Yet, somewhere amongst all that self-assuredness, she could also be kind and find joy in a raincloud and forever in a sunbeam.
‘You know why,’ he grumbled. ‘This is not a real marriage.’
‘I know you will leave.’ She crossed the room with barely a huff of slipper on the carpet. She paid attention. Even through all that prattling, she listened. ‘It will be years before I can marry, if ever. How can I trust any man? Might I be independent for a short time?’
‘And fucking makes you independent?’ He meant it to sound crass, a barb, and from the way she flinched, she took it as one. ‘I won’t leave you with a child.’
‘There are other things, aren’t there? That a man and a woman might do? I am not completely naïve. If you are to make me a widow or an abandoned wife, I’d like to not be a fool. And I would like to think that I was not so hideous to you as to be unbedable.’
‘That’s not a word,’ he said.
‘It is now.’ She lifted a handful of gown and swung one leg over his thigh to straddle his lap. The candlelight jiggered with the movement before stilling. She settled against him, her knees resting on the chair seat until the inside of her thighs ran the length of the outside of his. The faintest hint of her scent—woman, roses, and sex—tinged the air.
Phineas breathed slowly, as if he could taste her fragrance on his tongue. ‘You are too brash, Hempel. It will do you no favours. This is not a world that rewards confident women.’ He ran a finger along the soft angle of her nape and stroked the dip at the base of her neck. ‘You would be best served to be more demure. And less curious.’ And he kissed the hollow, slow and measured and indulgent, like he had not been dreaming of the taste of her skin for days, like the thought had just occurred to him. She was sweetness and tang, like strawberries warmed by the sun.
She exhaled into him, her tension almost palpable as it rippled from her body into his, rolling through him and settling there before evaporating.
‘Show me the candle,’ he said as he leant back.
She frowned a little as she raised it into the space between them. Its amber luminescence made her skin shine. Her eyes glimmered almost black in the shadows, and her lips glowed copper, which meant they were blood red and ripe.
‘Blow it out,’ he said.
‘You don’t want to look at me?’ she asked. Beneath all that bravado, how could she be so fragile?
‘More than anything.’ He trailed a finger along her bottom lip. ‘If this were for me, I would turn up every lamp and light every flame, even burn the house down if it meant I could see you with perfect clarity. I would strip you and spread you and feast on you with my eyes and my mouth.’ He kissed her shoulder, then nipped her gently with his teeth. ‘But this isn’t for me, it’s for you. And I work better in the dark. So quit arguing with me and blow the damn candle out.’
Chapter Twelve
As she exhaled, he caught her breath. She heard it, felt it. It rippled the air.
The acrid whiff from the extinguished wick lingered before it dissolved. Grey smoke caught the moonlight before it, too, disintegrated.
Rosanna let her arms go limp by her sides. She dropped the candle holder. The carpet smothered its brassy echo as it landed.
