Foolish, brave woman.
“You ought not to have done that, my lady.” His gut clenched at the mere thought of her lovely face framed in the window as some mad Fenian with a pistol was stalking her carriage as a hunter would a prized stag. “If you had been seen, you likely would have been shot.”
“I refuse to cower.” Her eyes flashed, her stubborn chin pointing upward.
“There is bravery, and then there is stupidity, Lady Violet. Protecting one’s self is not cowering.” Even so, he could not help but feel a spark of admiration for her, along with a burst of kinship. He too preferred to face his enemies, to stare them down and let them see the fire and the fury in his eyes.
It was what made his current predicament so damned frustrating. He did not have a man waving a pistol in his face, or a bomb about to detonate laid before him, or a vicious enemy soldier burning and slicing his skin or plucking his fingernails. He had instead an unseen enemy, plotting in the shadows and planting evidence against him, rather than facing him like a man.
“I want a pistol,” Lady Violet startled him by announcing then, as matter-of-factly as if she were discussing nothing more banal than the lace embellishing the bodice of her dress. Yet another shade of purple, he noted, this time amethyst. “I am not stupid, Strathmore. I do realize no one should face a dangerous man without the means of protecting themselves. It is why I asked Lucien to provide me with a weapon and to teach me how to use it.”
The thought of the prim Lady Violet holding a gun and firing it made his cock hard all over again. “A wise request. It would benefit you if you were at least capable of aiming to hit a man should the situation prove necessary. With the League’s existence common knowledge, and news of the John Mahoney investigation fillingThe Timeseach day, it is my great fear you will continue to find yourself a target of such scurrilous villains.”
“That is precisely what I told Lucien, and he refused me.” Lady Violet’s tone was indignant.
Of course he had, the stubborn arsehole. Griffin frowned down at her, trying not to notice the beckoning invitation of her lips or the light smell of roses clinging to her skin. For a brief, mad moment, he wondered if she would taste as sweet, if he pressed his face to her throat, tongued the hollow at the base. And then he thought about suckling that flesh, kissing it, his fingers finding the line of small buttons lining her bodice and undoing them one by one, as he had longed to do from his first sight of her when she’d stepped over the threshold.
Controlling himself in her presence grew more difficult by the second. He was not a man accustomed to governing his impulses. He believed in living unfettered, unapologetically. He did and said as he pleased, unless orders from the League forbade him.
“I will procure you a weapon and lessons,” he said, before he could stop himself.
Her brows rose. “You will?”
“Yes.” Though he had voluntarily left all his weapons in Arden’s keeping for his forced stay at Lark House, he had his means of getting what he wanted. Lessons would prove far more of a challenge, but he had never allowed a challenge to stop him before, and he certainly was not about to start now.
“Thank you, Strathmore.” The mouth he could not seem to stop imagining kissing curved into a full, beaming smile that took his breath. “I shall feel safer if I am at least able to defend myself if the need arises. Or poor Aunt Hortense, for that matter. She could scarcely rise from the floor of the carriage after our commotion on the return trip from paying a visit to Charles and his mother.”
Her countenance gave away her true feelings for Flowerpot’s sainted mama. Lady Violet had the most expressive face he had ever seen. She hid nothing, and there was no doubt she would make the world’s least effective card player. Bluffing was not a sport he imagined she could ever master. It should render the task ahead of him far easier, but he found the trait strangely endearing.
Christ, the madness must be settling in already, rotting his brain as surely as it had done his father’s. Why else would he find anything at all bloodyendearing?
“You dislike Mama Flowerpot,” he drawled.
Her eyes widened. “Lady Almsley is a loving mother to Charles.”
He squeezed her fingers, reminding her, wordlessly, they were more united than she likely wished to believe. “You hate her.”
She bit the corner of her lower lip. “Hate is too aggressive an emotion. But I will admit to finding little in her ladyship to love.”
“An aspic and a harridan mother.” He did not intend to rub salt in her proverbial wounds, but now she had mentioned it, and she had all but admitted to kissing Flowerpot earlier amidst his oranges and his orchids and his green goddamn bulb fungus. Truly, did not the man put himself to sleep? “What a lovely, winning combination.”
She withdrew from him at last. Perhaps he had missed his mark. Certainly, he had revealed too much about himself to the both of them. One, he was jealous of Flowerpot. Two, there was something about Lady Violet that made him feel deuced possessive, as if she werehis,instead of betrothed to another man. Betrothed to fuckingFlowerpot, he reminded himself. Third, he wanted her to be his.
And not just for revenge.
There was a niggling, irritating, frustrating, humiliating, wholly unwanted and unnecessary emotion running wild and unfettered through him, and he did not like it. Not one bit.
Tenderness.Tender sentiments, what bollocks.
Tender sentiments, to be specific, for the sister to the Duke of Arden.
He was not meant to feel anything for her, damn it all to hell. He was meant to manipulate her. To gain his revenge. To use her as his leverage against Arden. And she was meant to be his ultimate checkmate.
“You are unkind to call Lady Almsley a harridan,” she defended, interrupting his inner battle with himself.
“Is she not one then?” he could not resist asking.
And again, he could not help but to wonder why, when he intended to use her as a pawn and nothing more, he bothered to insert himself. First, he had been counseling her on the wisdom—or to be more precise, thefoolishness—of her wedding a man like Flowerpot, and now he was prying into the way she felt toward her future mother-in-law.
