She watched the candle flame until it steadied again, as if she took instruction from its discipline. When she spoke, the words were plain.
“The stories are not true,” she began. “At least not in the way that pleases gossips. I wrote them. I set them to whispering, with help from Arabella and Eleanor. We scattered them like seeds and watered them until they took root.”
She lowered her gaze, embarrassed by how foolish it all sounded when spoken aloud to a man who looked at her as if she were not a ruined girl at all, but someone worth deciphering.
His first response was a quiet respect for the workmanship. His second was a slower heat at the thought of a young woman driven so far that she must sell shadows of herself in order to purchase space.
He kept both reactions from his face.
“Why?” he probed. “Most women labor to polish their reputations until they shine.”
“Shiny things attract buyers,” she said. “I did not wish to be bought.”
“You did not wish to marry?”
“No.” Her hands tightened on her skirt. “I did not wish to be given to a man who would admire my docility while he bruised my mother. I did not wish to enter a house like this one, but poorer and more cruel, where my sisters would be daughters to a temper. I wished to stay precisely where I could guard what little I had.”
“Which is your mother,” he concluded.
“And my brother,” she whispered. “William is at school. He writes brave letters and sends them as if paper could hold off every fear.” She took a breath and set the subject by, not with indifference but with the caution of someone moving a delicate figurine to a safer shelf. “My father died when I was young. He left us care, but not caution. My mother remarried. The newViscount has a way of speaking and getting quick to anger that can turn the air into a wall. People call it authority. I call itvileness.”
Victor remembered hearing once over port that the new Viscount Fenwick had made himself noticed by losing patience with a waiter who did not pour fast enough. He tracked the lower-ranked lords so little that the memory surprised him. It stuck because he disliked loud men who pretended that volume was force.
He felt the old contempt rise, and with it something colder—the wish to prevent a recurrence of forms he knew too well.
“Society grows fat on rumors,” he stated flatly. “It likes a simple story. A ruined girl. A wicked man. A virtuous rescue. Your inventions gave it all three to play with and left you in the middle with a scrap of autonomy.”
“I had hoped for more than a scrap,” she said, a little wryly. “But yes.”
She paused then, not because she had run out of words, but because she had found the place where words would betray more than she could safely give.
Victor did not press. He did the opposite and crossed the small distance between them, very plain in his movements, very visible in his intentions. He cupped her face in his hands as a man would take a priceless thing that belonged to someone else, then bent his head and kissed her.
The kiss was not theft. He took nothing she did not give. He had not planned to touch her. He only meant to chase the pain in her voice, the shadows in her eyes. But the urge to protect her rose swift and undeniable, eclipsing the curiosity that had started all of this.
He gave her a line that she could either follow or refuse. She followed.
The first moment tasted of winter air and guarded breath. The second tasted of something warmer, like spice kept behind a shut door and freed at last.
He could feel the exact moment when caution eased into consent. He withdrew with care equal to the care with which he had started the kiss and resumed his seat to give her space.
Her eyes stayed closed for a count of three. When she opened them, they were very clear.
“You have a talent for interrupting,” she huffed.
“I prefer to call it reproof,” he replied. “Against despair.”
“You kiss like a man who keeps lists.”
“I keep everything,” he quipped. “Especially promises.”
That brought a small smile to her mouth. He liked it, but did not show the extent of his pleasure.
“I am curious about your logistics,” he said after a moment. “You arrive promptly and vanish without a trace. Do you disguise yourself as a footman and jump across rooftops for sport?”
She laughed properly then. The sound touched him in a place he did not often allow to be touched.
“There is a passage that the servants use to carry coal and linen. It runs behind the smaller houses and joins the mews near the lane. Martha has a cousin who keeps a key to the outer gate. If I put on a plain cloak and keep my head down, I can move like a shadow. No one looks at shadows when the kitchens are busy.”
