Page 31 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
Phoebe gave a delicate sniff. “If you didn’t want to be in this position, perhaps you should have taken off your gloves first.”
“In public?” he asked, in an affected scandalized tone of voice, and she bit back a soft laugh. “I rarely take them off,” he said. “And never in public.”
It seemed a curious line to draw, when he feared not to treadwell beyond so many others. “Why?” she asked.
With a sigh, he cast the rest of the fruit he’d taken from her upon the lawn for Hieronymus to choose what he would, and reclaimed his hand to work the buttons of his opposite glove. He stripped it away and tucked it in his pocket, turning his hand palm up to display an old wound burned into the pad of his thumb. “Got pinched for nicking some gent’s purse when I was a boy,” he said. “The authorities made certain I’d never escape it. Earned myself a branding.”
“That’s dreadful!”
“Could’ve been worse. What I’d stolen was enough to get me hanged. The branding was a mercy. Made no difference the bloke got his purse back.” He withdrew his hand, flexed his fingers. “Still, it makes people uncomfortable to know they’ve got a thief in their midst. So I keep the gloves on.”
“But you were just a child,” she said.
“Once a thief, always a thief.” The breeze tousled his hair, and he stretched out his legs, resting his back against the garden wall. “I came by my deft fingers honestly in my youth. Didn’t steal, didn’t eat. And I’m not above a bit of petty theft, when it suits me. When a bloke has been particularly unpleasant or condescending, sometimes I’ll nick something of his just for the fun of it.”
“Really?” she asked, pursing her lips against a smile. “But that’s so—so juvenile.”
“It’s satisfying,” he said. “I’ve got my pride, you know. Got a whole collection upstairs; a box of trinkets I’ve stolen over the years.”
“I’m not certain whether or not to believe you.”
He laid his hand over hers. “I’ll make you a bargain,” he said. “If I can steal something of yours—say, in the next few minutes—you’ll forgive me for being an arse, and we’ll go back to being friends again. Leastwise until the next time I’m an arse.”
“That’s hardly fair,” she said. “I’ll be watching too closely. I assume some aspect of successful thievery requires that your target not knowthey are about to be robbed.”
“You let me worry about that,” he said with a laugh, releasing her hand. “I’m a good thief. Are we agreed?”
“Agreed,” she said. “But I also want to see your box of trinkets for myself.”
“Done,” he said. And he lifted his hand, holding her wedding ring aloft, the shiny gold glinting in the moonlight.
Phoebe groped for her ring finger, still somehow surprised to find her wedding ring missing from it. He’d snatched it straight off, and she’d been none the wiser. “How did you do that?” she asked, enthralled. “Can you teach me?”
A rueful laugh rumbled in his chest. “Your family already no doubt suspects I’m corrupting you. Might as well make a thief of you and remove all doubt. Yes; I’ll teach you.”
And that, she thought, was a fair enough trade. She could teach him to be a gentleman, and he could teach her to be something less than the lady she had always had to be. Probably there would be a fair bit of frustration on both ends.
“Am I forgiven?” he asked as he slid the ring back onto her finger where it belonged, his fingers so light it seemed it went back on as if by magic, hardly touching her skin at all until it had fit into place once more.
“I suppose so,” she said, and rose to her feet. “Come,” she said. “We’ll leave Hieronymus to his feast. Your knuckles need to be bandaged.”
A chuckle erupted from his mouth. “Brooks isn’t likely to do it,” he said. “He’d much prefer to let gangrene take me. And the rest of the staff might just slip arsenic into my tea in the morning if I rouse them all over again.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m going to do it. I know where the salve is, and the bandages.”
His gold brows lifted in a high arch. “You’re going to bandage my knuckles?”
“Should I not?” It seemed a wifely thing to do. Or at least a friendly one.
“No,” he said. “Or yes. Hell, I don’t know.” He blew out a breath and clutched the handle of his cane, pressing the tip to the ground to brace himself to rise. “Hell,” he said again, with more feeling. “All right, then. Thank you.”
∞∞∞
As the carriage clattered down the street toward Lord and Lady Clarke’s Mayfair townhouse, Phoebe reassured herself that Chris had made significant progress in the week that had passed since that disastrous dinner. Probably he would always be half-civilized at best, but even if he was still predisposed to grumble over minor corrections, he had at least learned to accept them with—well, notgoodgrace, precisely. But with fewer coarse words than she would otherwise have expected.
“Just remember,” she said, smoothing at her rose-hued skirts. “If you aren’t certain which utensil to use, simply wait until someone else has picked up theirs and choose the same. It’s practically cheating; you should enjoy that. And no foul words in mixed company. I’m certain the gentleman do not guard their words quite so closely after dinner, when they converse amongst themselves. But you’ll certainly shock if you use such language at the dinner table when ladies are present.”
“Somehow, I’ve got the feeling that my definition of foul and yours vastly differ,” he said. “It’s not enough to be stuffed into this wretched stiff formal wear. I’ve got to cut out my tongue aswell?”
