What had shebeen thinking? Frederica could not help but wonder the next evening when the unmarked brougham awaiting her opened to reveal another occupant already inside.
A black-clad, impossibly debonair occupant with a smoldering blue gaze and lips she ought not to have imagined kissing the night before when she had been alone in her bed. Lips she could not help staring at now as a flush spread over her cheeks.
Frederica gaped, pressing one hand to her fluttering heart and using the other to tug down her hat in an effort to shade her face. “Mr. Kirkwood!”
In her shock, she forgot the necessity of lowering her voice lest anyone overhear her and question the feminine tone of the gentleman she pretended to be.Blast.She cast a furtive glance around her to make certain she had continued to go undetected. This was, without doubt, the riskiest decision she had ever made in her life.
Nothing seemed more dangerous than entering a confined space with Duncan Kirkwood.
“My lord.” He quirked a brow, an edge of impatience creeping into his tone. “Are you going to get into the bloody brougham, or do you intend to stand on the street? You are already twenty minutes tardy.”
She had not been able to arrive at the appointed time since her mother had returned early from her daily shopping expedition. Mother had even dined with her, being surprisingly solicitous rather than dashing away to add her spoils to her ever-growing collection. Her latest obsession was fans. At last count, she had one hundred and seventy-three of them. Most of them had never been used.
“I was unable to escape without notice,” Frederica explained warily, not wishing to delve too deeply into her mother’s eccentricities. “Forgive me, sir.”
“Damnation, I am regretting my uncharacteristic munificence for at least the hundredth time today,” he snapped, irritation as evident in his tone as it was in his bearing.
Oh, dear.She had a decision to make. She could either step up inside the carriage with the depraved owner of a gaming club—a man who did not blush or flinch at watching his patrons engaged in that amorous occupation which ought to be reserved for husband and wife alone—or she could turn and flee, forgetting she had ever made such a ruinous decision. She truly didn’t have a choice, did she?The Silent Baronneeded this research.
Moreover, whispered an insidious voice inside her,when will you ever again get the chance to ride in an enclosed carriage, utterly alone with Mr. Duncan Kirkwood?
She ignored the voice and her sense of self-preservation both, and mounted the steps. In two breaths, she was within, and there was nowhere to sit but alongside him. She swallowed as she settled herself as near to the window of the conveyance as possible. But he was so large, and his thigh, well-muscled and thick beneath his perfectly tailored breeches, nearly touched her.
His driver shut the door, leaving them in privacy.
“Nothing to say for yourself this evening, my lady?” Mr. Kirkwood asked.
His query jolted her gaze from her inappropriate examination of his thigh and the fit of his breeches to his face. She frowned at him, wishing his delicious scent did not permeate the air. Wishing he was not in such devastating proximity to her. Wishing she had more ability to resist his undeniable allure.
She cleared her throat. “Forgive me for my tardiness, sir. My mother delayed me by spending more time with me this evening than I anticipated. I was forced to wait until the appropriate moment to slip away from Westlake House unnoticed.”
His mouth remained tightened. “I am of half a mind to deduct one of your three visits as punishment. My time is too valuable to be wasted.”
What must it be like to be in complete control of his future? To be the master of his own fate? How glorious it must be to be Mr. Duncan Kirkwood, the man on all London’s tongue, splashed across every gossip page, wealthier than most lords, feared and respected by his patrons and employees alike.
“I am sure your time is of great value, Mr. Kirkwood.” She frowned at him. “I was not aware you would be awaiting me.”
He raised a brow. “You imagined I would leave you unchaperoned? What manner of gentleman do you think me?”
She looked away from him, down at the idle hands in her lap, but then could not resist watching him once more. “You hardly qualify as a chaperone, Mr. Kirkwood. This arrangement is most scandalous. Why, your limb is nearly coming into contact with mine, and the entire carriage smells of amber, musk, and lemon. It is a very agreeable scent, I must admit, but could you not find something more subtle?”
His lips quirked once. Twice. “You find my scent agreeable, Lady Frederica?”
Oh, drat.Why had she mentioned it? Her mind was overtaxed. Burdened by her nightly deceptions and the risk of being caught, surely. “Overbearing is a more apt description, Mr. Kirkwood.”
“Ah.” His lips twitched again, this time developing into a full smirk. “I see.”
“No,” she huffed, “you do not. It was not intended as a compliment, but rather as a reproach. You ought not to be so vulgar, is what I meant to say. Everything about you, from your manner of dress, to your cologne, is intended to attract attention.”
“Do I attract attention?” He stroked his wide jaw with a thumb. His gloves, too, were a deep, true midnight black. “Do I attractyourattention, Lady Frederica?”
Of course he did, and the miscreant knew it.
The low timbre of his voice as he asked her the last question made a strange ache draw up inside her. “Why are you accompanying me, Mr. Kirkwood?” she queried instead, turning the subject to far safer matters. “You cannot have been serious when you claimed to act as my chaperone. Even a man who deals in sin for his bread knows what is proper and what is not.”
“As does a duke’s daughter, and yet it does not stop her from stealing away into the night, donning her brother’s ill-fitting clothes, and worming her way into walls behind which I deal my sin.” His tone had grown cool.A reproach, she thought.
She had displeased him somehow. Perhaps he did not appreciate the reminder of the path he had chosen in life. He was not wrong, however.
