He blinked. “You prefer women?”
“Don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never thought about it. Have you?”
“You with another woman? Can’t say I can think of anything else at the moment.”
She laughed again, and the sound was musical, hypnotic.
He could spend the rest of his short, black life listening to the sound.
“Youarehonest,” she said once she’d caught her breath.
He winked. “To a fault.”
She pursed her lips, but her amusement was evident, as well as the lowered guard in her easy body language.
A timepiece croaked the hour, like a frog with sand in its throat, the tone muffled under the crackpot’s trinkets, where it had no doubt been forgotten.
Like a lifted spell, Miss Forthright’s smile vanished, and that frown returned. “I should go.”
Renard would give his right arm for her to stay, which meant he’d let his own guard drop.
She was too lovely, too lively. Too long in her presence and a monster like him could forget about his debt and his past. Neither would be acceptable.
But still, he hesitated.
“Did I also mention I’m an excellent deterrent for drunkards and pickpockets?” he said.
“Because they steer clear of their own kind?”
“My muscles aren’t just for show.” He puffed out his chest. “I can be intimidating.” It could also be the Remington 95 tucked in the back of his waistband, double barreled.
She sighed. “There’s no way you won’t follow me home, is there?” She didn’t wait for his response. “All right, you may come on one condition.”
Anything.
“Yes?”
She smirked. “Show me your doctor’s scratch.”
Chapter Five
Camille held upthe paper scrap in the moonlight, the shadows of the alley walls unable to hide the worst penmanship she’d ever seen. “Are these numbers or letters?”
Renard winced next to her.
He walked at her side, the heat from his body warding off the night’s chill.
Everything about him was warm—his laughter, his smile, his eyes, all directed at her—and she was horrified to learn she wasn’t immune.
When he’d held her to his chest in the warehouse, she was sure her heart had pounded hard enough to crack a rib. And when she’d turned her head at the engineer’s instruction, she’d been sure he’d been about to kiss her. For one brief lapse in reason, and sanity, she’d wanted him to.
She should have insisted on leaving alone. He would have followed her, she knew, but there’d be no question of the drawn line. She’d had every intention of doing just that when his boyish smile had resurfaced. Huffed resignation aside, she’d as well asinvitedhim to escort her home.
Madness and confusion, that was the trouble with charming men. They used pretty speeches and shallow desires to earn a lady’s trust for their own gain and then threw them to the wolves when they were no longer convenient. She’d known a charming duke once, had let him control her life and her body as a dollon strings, and then he’d cut those strings when she’d lost her usefulness.
She let the space between their bodies grow, embracing the cold, and stuffed the paper with his illegible scratch in her pocket—kindling for the fire.
She led them into another part of town. Here, the walls were cramped, the living quarters more so. It was a nicer part of St. Giles, if nice were possible in the poorest and dirtiest part of the rookery. But the rent was reasonable and her landlord, an older man who’d been eager for company after his wife had died in childbirth along with their newborn son, more so for the kind. Tucked away in the upper rooms of a first-floor walkup, Camille and her mother kept to themselves and remained relatively safe with the older man downstairs.
