Page 33 of Tempting the Scoundrel
So why, then, didn’t she seem like it?
Nick waded in. The water was cool, but not overly so. It was a balm in such warm weather. “Not afraid of much.”
“Oh? Here, recline against my arm.” She drew closer and slid a hand across his back. A jolt went through him, and—Christ fuck—his cock stirred. He curled his fingertips into his palm.Control. Control.He did as Alex asked.
“Good,” she murmured, and sounded every bit as beautiful as birdsong. “Lean back now. That’s it. And relax.”
He shut his eyes and let her take him farther into the lake. Her breath, the soft splashes of water—these lulled him to relaxation. He had few moments in his life that were this filled with comfortable silence. The East End was never quiet; sounds suffused from so many different sources: traffic along the roads, the populated tenements, tavern song, factory machinery. He had never experienced true stillness until his first night in Stratfield Saye, when he woke in the night and the only noise he heard was his own breath.
Alex’s voice was every bit as soothing as the water that lapped around them. “So what are you afraid of?”
Nick tried not to stiffen. The quiet shattered. Replaced with—
The cold and dark. The dripping of the cellar, and the biting cold and numb limbs. Hunger that gnawed in his gut, the pain of it as sharp as teeth through skin. Failing the men who survived it with him if he didn’t seduce and marry one last mark.
One. Last. Mark.
The reminder forced him to relax once more. Thorne could not afford failure.
“What if it were something silly?” he asked lightly. “Like rats?”Down in the cellar, the scratch of claws against stone. They could smell the lads closest to death.
“Rats?” She sounded amused. “I’d say you’re in the perfect place to avoid them, in the middle of a lake.”
She jostled him with a soft laugh, pushing him farther into the water. Thorne was floating now, but Alex had yet to release him. Not that he minded. He loved the way her hand lingered along his spine, the smooth press of her palm against his skin. How he longed for her to move her hand, touch him everywhere.
“And what about on land?”
“Why, Nicholas Spencer,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “I’ll just have to save you from the rats on land, won’t I? Mice, too, if your fear extends to other rodents.”
Nick opened his eyes. Alex smiled down at him, her golden hair shining in the sun. He wondered if it were a trick of the light, if she were a vision he had dreamed up during hungry nights in Whelan’s cellar. But, no, she was tactile.
He could feel her hands now, the soft stroke of a thumb against his shoulder. How easily she could leave him there, in the middle of the lake, to drown. No wonder she said this required trust. Thorne was learning to trust her.
And she was learning to trust Nicholas Spencer.
In that moment, he hated the schoolmaster. He hated the imaginary passel of Southwoldian children, the house that wasn’t really his, the title that didn’t belong to him, this accent that was as fake as his background. He wanted her to look down and see Nicholas Thorne, and to want him—scars and all.
It wasn’t to be. The day she learned his true name was the day she’d learn to hate him.
“You look so serious all of a sudden,” Alex said with a frown. “Was it something I said?”
“Just thinking that I like you,” he said softly. “Rat catcher that you are.”
She ducked her head, but not before he saw her blush. Nick felt her grip on his bathing costume tighten. “You are trying to distract me with your masculine wiles, I think.”
“Masculine wiles,” he murmured as he leaned back into the water. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of those.”
“Oh, my brothers have them. They give women a certain look and it’s as if they’ve beckoned with a finger. But yours is more effective. I suppose it’s because your eyes are so black.”
Thorne gave a short laugh. “You this candid with everyone?”
“Yes.” She pressed her lips together. “That’s my problem. I say and do all the wrong things, which is why my father banished me here before the end of the season. He considers me an embarrassment. Said I was ruining my marriage prospects.”
She said this last part with a forced smile that gutted him. Thorne longed to tell her the truth: that her father sent her to Stratfield Saye to be seduced by the confidence artist he hired to steal her money.
Thorne had no right to be so angry. She was his mark. But he’d heard the hurt in her voice, and rage coiled inside him. He liked her. She deserved better than this.
Better thanhim.
