“I know what that feels like,” Jem said softly.
“You said you weren’t raised as a marquess’s heir,” Lucasta observed. She rubbed a corner of the silk brocade against her cheek.
“I wasn’t. I was raised here.” He pointed to the ceiling, indicating the room above their heads. “Well, nothere. The original shop run by my mother’s family is in Holborn, and has been there since medieval times. I grew up there, and runningwild in the storehouse in Cheapside, where most of our fabrics are kept.”
“It must have been a shock,” she murmured as he took the ochre silk back. “On top of the losses to your family, that is. To find your station so changed.”
“It was,” Jem confirmed, rewrapping the bolt of fine fabric. “My father is the third son. The eldest and heir, my uncle— He clearly enjoyed his bachelorhood, but the family always assumed he would at some point marry a proper girl and provide the requisite heirs. He got carried away by malaria on his travels before he could.”
“And Bertie’s father became the heir. Earl Payne,” Lucasta said.
He turned away from her, not wanting to let too much of his emotion show. “And Cadmus, her older brother, was Viscount Rudyard. The succession was assured. But then Cad fell ill with typhus, and?—”
He stopped, his throat choked with grief. Cadmus had been his truest friend, the one member of his father’s family who never cared that Jem was a draper’s son. When his father died and Cad gained his courtesy title, he had kept Jem and Judith close despite his mother’s feelings.
After Cadmus died, it was only the rage of his grandfather the marquess that could induce Jem to take up his cousin’s title. Rudyard was Cadmus’s name, a dead man’s name. Every time he heard Rudyard he felt as if the ghost of Cadmus—like the restless ghost of the unlucky Thomas Cromwell—stood near his shoulder, flinching at every reminder of what had been taken from him.
“What I don’t understand,” Lucasta said, “is how you became Smart Jeremy.”
Her scent drifted past his nose as she let him swath her in another silk brocade, a green background this time. It was themost expensive fabric yet, green being a difficult color to achieve as it required first several baths in yellow dye, then blue. Lucasta stroked the silk threads of the design, and Jem’s groin tightened merely watching the caress. He was going to embarrass himself in a moment.
“That is Clara Bellwether’s doing. She came in here fresh out of mourning and wanting to wear colors again. I advised her, and within a month the dashing widow had thetonat her feet.” He rolled his shoulders, shrugging off memory. “She suggested I could advertise my shop if I showed myself about town in some of my own fine wares. She made it a fashion to consult my taste, as if I am some sort of oracle.”
He pinched the edges of the fabric close beneath her chin, feeling the feathery heat of her breath over his fingers. “I suppose you think me unforgivably mercenary.”
“Strategic, rather, if it enlarges your income,” she murmured. “I shall be a tradeswoman too, or so I hope, when I open my music school. And you have a family to support.”
Her eyes were extraordinary, a shadowy gray green, like a forest veiled in mist. He shuddered at the impact of her gaze, the understanding in it. She didn’t revile him for being a grasping tradesman masquerading as a marquess’s heir.
Jem’s fingers tightened. She took a small step toward him and he realized he was pulling on the fabric, drawing her near. The way he had tried to draw her to him the night of their first dance together.
As if he wanted her in his arms. As if he knew she was meant to be there.
He had to break the moment before he did something ungentlemanly. “Sometimes I think I did better catering to thebourgeoisie,” he said, gazing down into her face. “Aristocrats are terrible about paying their bills.”
Her glowing expression, full of laughter, made heat coil in his gut. “Thebourgeoisieseem to be better behaved in many respects. It is why I preferred being plain Lucasta Lithwick. But no, someone insisted on making meau courant.”
The heat twisted and moved downward. He needed to confess. To admit he had meant to make a demonstration of his power, to see how much Smart Jeremy’s pronouncements could do. And win her—and her possible share in the Frotheringale fortune—into patronizing his shop.
He wanted to be real to her, to put aside the façade of Smart Jeremy. But she could do naught but hate him when she learned how truly mercenary he was.
He should step away. But when she swayed toward him, he lifted a hand and pressed a finger to her delicate chin.
Her lips parted. She wanted him to kiss her.
Desire slammed through him. He wanted to kiss her as well. His scruples vanished in smoke, overcome by the spell she cast. He had dreamed of this night after night, Lucasta Lithwick in his arms. But the reality of her, her scent, her softness, was so much more potent than his mind could have conjured.
“You needed no making. Only for people to take a proper look.” His voice scratched from his throat. He traced her soft, full lower lip with his thumb. “I don’t suppose…you would permit me…”
“I might,” she breathed, leaning toward him, and Jem was lost.
He intended a courtly kiss. A chivalrous kiss. A chaste meeting of lips. But when her lips parted beneath his, the sensation drove all thoughts of courtliness from his head.
He slipped his tongue into her mouth. She tasted divine, like tea and sugar and a hint of chocolate. She gave a small whimper, relaxing against him, and Jem caught her with a groan, hauling her up against his body as if she could quench the flames. Thebrocade rustled, and she made another noise deep in her throat that made him kiss her harder, more deeply, tipping her head back and twining his tongue around hers.
He ought not devour an innocent woman. He’d never devoured a woman in his life. But Lucasta Lithwick kissed him back, pressing her mouth against his, tasting him with her tongue. She lifted a hand to the back of his neck, sliding her fingers into his hair, and that welcome, that reaching out, was his undoing. He locked her to his chest and ran a hand down the silk encasing her, molding her body to his, cradling her to him, relishing her softness and warmth. She fit him perfectly. He’d have to tell her?—
“Gracious, these stairs are steep.” Bertie’s voice floated from the back rooms, her voice unusually loud. “I shall have to go slowly so I don’t fall down and break my crown like the boy in the nursery rhyme.”
