Tabitha pursed her lips. “This is the way of it then?”
Mr. Kirkwood’s mouth tightened, his jaw clenching. “Perhaps you would care to make conversation with Lord Eversley. He appears in need of enlivening companionship, Tabitha.”
Frederica had the distinct impression she was on the outskirts of a conversation about something other than what it appeared on the surface. She did not like it. Not one bit. “Mr. Kirkwood,” she said, finding her tongue without his blazing eyes devouring her. “Tabitha was kind enough to offer me sustenance. I was just about to partake.”
A feline smile curved Tabitha’s lips. “Yes, his lordship was. Perhaps you would care to join us, Mr. Kirkwood? The three of us coulddinetogether. A feast, if you will.”
“That will not be necessary, Tabitha,” he said smoothly, a beautiful smile curving his lips and rendering him even more handsome than he ordinarily was. “His lordship and I shalldinetogether.Alone.”
Tabitha’s mouth fell open for a brief moment before she collected herself and curtseyed. “I daresay it explains a great deal. Of course, my lord, Mr. Kirkwood. If you will excuse me?”
Frederica frowned as the golden goddess walked away, swaying her hips. What a strange creature. She could not shake the impression Tabitha harbored atendrefor Mr. Kirkwood, and she was ashamed to admit the notion sent a pang of jealousy straight through her.
Mr. Kirkwood’s deep, delicious voice interrupted her musings then.
“Shall we, my lord? I for one am ravenous.”
Her attention snapped back to him in a trice. Why, oh why, did the word ‘ravenous’ on his sinful lips incite such a trill of pleasure down her spine? And what, oh what, had she gotten herself into this time?
*
An hour later,Duncan watched Lady Frederica Isling take her first bite ofMonsieur’s famed Charlotte of apples with apricot marmalade, and he knew with a certainty that set his teeth on edge; he was the one who had borrowed trouble. Here she sat opposite him in the small table in his office where he ordinarily preferred to dine alone, beyond the eyes of his patrons, often whilst reading.
Trouble.
He had kissed her. Against the judgment that had never failed him in his life. Against his admittedly malleable sense of honor. Certainly, against his carefully wrought plans, which required her to return unscathed to her papa the duke. All the better to allow Duncan’s threats to permeate the august man’s shroud of arrogance.
And he had not just enjoyed it, but he had reveled in it. The softness of her lips beneath his, the way she had responded to him, and the beauty of her surrender had all undone him. He’d gone mindless with the need to claim her. To kiss her with such ruthless abandon that his mark would forever be upon her memory and her mouth both.
She made a lusty sound of unabashed pleasure, and he gritted his teeth with greater force, trying to ignore the dart of her pink tongue over her full lower lip. Trying not to recall the sweet, tentative tide of that tongue against his.
Beelzebub’s bottom, he had to think of something else. Anything else. To distract himself before he spoilt the perfect opportunity for revenge that had been all but delivered to him on a silver salver.
“I now understand why so many gentlemen flock to your club, Mr. Kirkwood,” she said when she had swallowed the bite of moist, buttery perfection he knew Lavoisier’s Charlotte to be. “The culinary mastery of your chef, despite his penchant for berating your patrons, is unparalleled.”
He seized upon her words as the distraction he required, frowning at her. “My chef does not berate my patrons, madam. Do not put that in your book, else I shall become an object of supreme ridicule.”
Her eyes glittered, a saucy smirk flirting with the corners of the mouth he could not help but want to kiss again. “I cannot fathom you being the object of anyone’s ridicule, Mr. Kirkwood.”
A strange thing happened to him. Warmth—nay, a bloody inferno—blossomed in his chest, in his gut, in his cheeks. He prickled with it. Blazed with it. He, who had for so long been lusted after and chased by females for the power he wielded or the pleasure he could bring them, experienced a novel sensation. He was flattered. He wanted to preen beneath her intelligent gaze. He had impressed a duke’s daughter, and not just any duke’s daughter but one who was lively, witty, intelligent, and beautiful.
Trouble, a voice inside nettled him.She is trouble.
He ought to send her on her way. Two more such evenings were all he had agreed to, and if he had half the wits he’d been born into the rookeries with, he would have sent her home the moment he had learned her identity.
Instead, he found himself falling beneath her spell. In this moment with the din of his club beyond them and no one to interrupt, in the place he loved best, he felt at home. Having her in his zealously guarded space should have made him eager to be rid of her. Instead, his mind was swiftly inventing more reasons to keep her precisely where she was, eating Lavoisier’s damned Charlotte with more pleasure than the most seasoned courtesan showed her lover.
“I have been the object of not just ridicule but scorn, hatred, disgust, and worse more times than I have fingers and toes, my lady,” he told her solemnly, and it was the truth.
Though he may currently preside over the most sought-after club in London, he had been born the bastard son of a Covent Garden whore. He had been beaten. Tossed into prison. Spit upon. He had been derided and scorned and mocked. He had schooled himself on everything he knew. He was not ashamed of his past, but it made him wary. It made him aware how very fleeting everything in life was. Every candle sputtered out at some point.
“I am sorry, Mr. Kirkwood,” Lady Frederica said with genuine feeling. “No one should have to endure such awful treatment.”
He studied her, searching for pity and finding only empathy. His shoulders relaxed. He rolled them once. Twice. “It is the way of this world, Lady Frederica. Some men are born to great privilege, and others to great suffering. I was the latter, but I have fashioned myself into the former. Your Charlotte grows cold.”
In truth, he wanted to watch her enjoy it. He had never supposed the sight of a woman reveling in a sweet would be erotic. Especially not an innocent like Lady Frederica. He had always harbored a fondness for the forbidden, but she was different. She was not just forbidden but wrong. A grievous lapse in judgment for which he could never forgive himself.
One he wanted more with each moment he spent in her presence.
