Page 32 of The Good Girl's Guide to Rakes
“When we both know that’s the furthest thing from the truth,” he added sardonically.
“Is it?” She arched her brow at him. “I saw what you did at Jenkins’s. What you did for that very young man,” she explained when he looked at her with puzzlement.
At her comment, his expression went carefully blank. “That was nothing.”
“It wasn’t,” she insisted. “You prevented him from being embarrassed in front of his lady, and protected the woman, too.That’swhy you didn’t gamble,” she said with sudden realization. “Because you gave him all your money.”
To her astonishment, Kieran made a dismissive flicking gesture with his fingers as he slouched in his seat. “A fanciful whim, that’s all. Don’t paint me with too kindly a brush. I’m an inveterate rogue, capable only of thinking of myself.”
“Why are you so determined to cast yourself in a negative role?” Curious, frustrated, she found herself leaning forward as if she could somehow physically impel him to accept her praise.
“It’s the role I’ve played my whole life,” he drawled, his expression sardonic. “Careless, thoughtless, theusual assortment of delightful descriptions for a younger son.”
“Younger son,” she repeated. It suddenly became clear to her justwhocalled him those terrible names. “They’re wrong, you know. Your family.”
He jerked as if she’d slapped him. “I said nothing of my family.”
“But I’m correct, aren’t I?” At his obstinate silence, she moved across the cab to wedge herself beside him. “I have a very distinct memory of going to Wingrave House. I was visiting your mother, and you came into the room. She didn’t even greet you—merely accepted the kiss you gave her on her cheek and continued talking as if you weren’t even there. And then Simon came in, and she extended an invitation to him to accompany her to an artist’s atelier. She made no such invitation to you.”
“You’ve a prodigious memory for trivial events,” he muttered.
“It wasn’t trivial,” she insisted, looking intently at his shadowed face. “Not by a league. Because you suggested that you might also accompany her to the atelier, and she said, ‘You won’t find any wine or opera dancers there, Kieran. Hardly the sort of thing that would interest someone like you.’”
He flinched. Minutely, almost imperceptibly. But he did, recoiling from the memory of his mother’s cruelty. Just as he’d flinched that day in the drawing room at Wingrave House.
Celeste’s chest ached, and she took Kieran’s hand in hers. It was much larger than hers, but beautifully made, like the hands of Michelangelo’sDavid. She could have studied it for hours—some other time.
“Ever since my father made his fortune,” she said softly, “I’ve been forced into a box. Celeste the Keeper of the Kilburns’ Honor. Celeste the Respectable. It’s so exhausting, being in that box. No one asking whoIam, whoIwant to be. No one truly seeing me. But,” she went on in a low, urgent voice, “Isee that you’re a kind and generous man. For whatever my opinion’s worth, I see that in you.”
She squeezed his hand tightly. For a moment, he let it lay passively between her palms. But then he very gently squeezed back.
Silence fell, and with it the realization that she sat with her leg pressed tightly to his, his hand snug in hers. His gaze fell to her lips. Her own attention was riveted by the hunger darkening his eyes and tightening his jaw.
It became much more difficult to breathe in the very warm, very small interior of the cab.
His own breathing turned slightly uneven, and he straightened, tension transferring from his limbs into hers.
“I think,” he said, his voice very low, “you’d better get back to your seat.”
“Right. I should. Quite cramped in here.” Awkwardly, she shifted to the other side of the cab, but it didn’t do anything to ease the tension. It continued on, crackling and tight. At last, she could stand the quiet no longer, and said in too loud a voice, “The next time, if you would be so good as to again pick the venue. We’ve already established that my knowledge of London’s seamier side is rather...”
“Pedestrian.” When she scowled at him, he chuckled. “No shame in it, sweetheart. You’ve led a sheltered life.”
“Not always,” she felt obliged to point out. “In some ways, I know the city’s darker corners better than you.”
“Have you ever any desire to see them again?” he asked with what sounded like genuine curiosity.
“I see them with my charity work. But as for Ratcliff itself, I did go back, shortly after Ma died.” Celeste stared out the carriage window. The shadowed streets passed by, but they were West End streets, and the threats they held could never match the riverside slum’s menace. Most of the people of East London were hardworking families, but there were others, more malevolent, more predatory, who also called it their home. When she had returned following her mother’s passing, she had made certain to go at noon, and in her plainest garments. A footman had accompanied her, too, but she’d asked him to wear his own clothing rather than livery.
“Just after I came back from finishing school, I went by our old place,” she continued softly. “We had two minuscule rooms at the very top of a tenement that sweltered in summer and froze in winter. When I visited, another family was living there—a woman and her three babes, and they stared at me like I was daft for wanting a look around. It was like being my own ghost, haunting my memories. I could still see the echo of Ma, bent over her mountain of sewing. It stole her beauty, that life.”
“If you and she bear a resemblance,” he answered quietly, “she must have been beautiful, indeed.”
Heat slipped into Celeste’s face, but Kieran was an unapologetic flirt, and his flattery shouldn’t have meaning. Yet it did.
“I always thought that things would be so much better once we got out of that garret.” She continued to watch the streaks of light from the streetlamps they passed. “But Ma got sick and died in Hans Town. The French lace on her cap, the Irish linen bedsheets, the Ceylon tea, and Royal College of Physicians sawbones—none of them saved her.”
She turned her attention back to Kieran, who watched her intently from the other side of the cab. “When Ma died, I understood something. How fleeting and illusory all of this is. And I vowed that day that if I ever had the chance to seize control of my own life, I’d take it.” She gave a hollow, cold laugh. “I never had the chance, or the nerve. Until now.”
