Ever a fool, it seemed.
“Who dared to scorn you?” she asked instead of taking another bite of the delicacy before her.
A frown furrowed her brows, and despite her gentleman’s attire, he could picture her as an avenging goddess, bearing down upon the ghosts of his past.What the devil?When had he become so fanciful?
“I am the bastard son of a duke, my lady, and my mother was a Covent Garden whore before her death.” He forced himself to state the undeniable facts with a coolness he did not feel. He had loved his mother. She alone, in turn, had loved him.
Her loss had devastated him, and that, too, he laid at the door of the Duke of Amberly. Yet another sin among a myriad of them. “Everyonedared to scorn me, for I was nothing and no one. I was an urchin, a pickpocket, a thief. I stole for my supper. My mother lifted her skirts for the right amount of coin. The man who sired me will not speak to me or look upon me to this day, not even when I begged him as a motherless lad with an empty belly. Trust me, my lady, when I say I committed sins that would make you scorn me as well.”
She did not appear shocked or disgusted as he had imagined she may. Instead, her frown deepened, her lustrous eyes intent upon him. “You love your mother.”
Of all the observations she could have made, this one struck him like a physical blow as no other could. His mother’s memory was the one part of him that remained untarnished and true. He swallowed hard, recalling her end, how she had died as she’d lived, with a man’s hands around her throat. Duncan had found her, silent and still and cold, so cold to the touch, her eyes open wide. He had been just a lad then, not yet nine years of age, and he had been desperate for her to blink. To prove a sign of life.
Blink, Mama.
Please, Mama.
Blink.
Long after that horrible day, he could still hear the echoes of his childish screams, could still feel the panic swelling in his chest, making his heart heavy. Rendering it difficult to breathe. No child should have to see his mother’s corpse. But he had. And he would not forget.
He would gain his vengeance upon the Duke of Amberly. Retribution was all he had left.
“I…loved her,” he admitted thickly, uncertain why he would unburden himself to this troublesome interloper. “She was a good woman. Flawed and imperfect but nonetheless good. She deserved better than the life she was given.”
Better than the life she had been left to suffer, begging for coin from men who would abuse her so she could fill Duncan’s belly with bread. Meanwhile, the man who’d sired him had possessed enough gold to buy and sell half of London, and yet he had not offered Duncan’s mother a single ha’penny. Instead, the bastard had wasted his fortune at the tables, so greedy he had been convinced another flipped card, another wager, another roll of the dice would make him richer still.
His avarice had led him to penury where he belonged.
Until the Duke of Westlake had bought Amberly’s debts.
But that was where Westlake’s daughter, seated so trustingly opposite Duncan in her foolish attempt at masquerading as a gentleman, came into the scene, fortuitously enough. It all rather had the makings of a Shakespearean tragedy, even he had to admit. For she did not realize she was a plump hen dining in the company of a fox.
And she was looking upon him now with…Christ, what had he been thinking, kissing her as he had? She was looking at him now as if he were someone dear to her. As if she cared.
Impossible.
Ladies of the quality did not care for men like him. They used him. They allowed him to pleasure their bodies because it suited their need for the forbidden, much in the same way his use of them sated his desire for that which would forever remain beyond his reach.
“I am sorry, Mr. Kirkwood,” she said softly. “It was not my intention to cause you distress.”
How easily she could read him. He, who had bluffed his way through a thousand card games. What was it about this maddening woman that undid him? He was not a soft man, not given to sentiment or emotion. Indeed, he had fashioned himself into the man he was today a long time ago, a man incapable of feeling. A man who wore black, who forged his own way, who knew no weakness. “No need to apologize, my lady. Distress is for those capable of feeling emotion. Fortunately, I am not so cursed.”
“Or so you would have yourself believe.”
Her soft castigation nettled him. He stood. The moment was over. Their interlude was at an end. He had not felt so disturbed in a long time, and he did not like the way she shifted everything inside him, like an earthquake and then a hundred tiny tremors, reminding him his life could be upended at any moment. That he was not the one in control.
“Have you finished with your dessert, madam?” he asked coolly, careful to keep his expression and his tone equally neutral. He did not wish to show her how deeply she affected him.
What was it about Lady Frederica Isling that so undid him? She was his means for revenge, the final brushstroke in his masterpiece of vengeance, and yet he could not stop making one foolish decision after the next. He had given in to her demands to conduct research at his club, had even gone out of his way to ascertain her safety and wellbeing, and then he had thoroughly ruined it by compromising her. How could he make demands of Westlake, knowing how thoroughly he had kissed and touched the man’s innocent daughter? Knowing he had introduced her to pleasures of the flesh, to sins the likes of which her carefully cultivated mind would never have even dreamt, let alone known.
“You are eager to be rid of me now,” she observed in that uncanny manner she possessed, not rising from her seat.
He had never seen anything like it. “You must be delivered safely home before you are discovered to be missing from your chamber,” he said calmly, as if he was driven by common sense alone and not by his mad need to remove himself from her bewitching presence.
“I have made you uncomfortable.” She stood at last.
How odd it suddenly seemed to see her fully dressed in her gentleman’s clothes when he knew she was as female as could be. For some inexplicable reason, he longed to see her in a dress. To see her as herself, stripped of all her disguises. To see Lady Frederica Isling.Lord God, he had no doubt she would be an incomparable if he ever chanced to see her in a gown. Her beauty was undeniable. Even through her silly adornments, he could still seeher.
