Percy took note of his trembling hands with interest. He didn’t remember the last time he’d displayed so much as a tick with a knife at someone’s throat.
First, he’d dropped his guard, and now this? Masquerading as the Duke of Camine’s bodyguard and runner had made him soft.
Percy released her as if burned, dropping the knife atop the flagstones with a flash of sparks, and stepped back. “Run, my lady.” His voice was robotic, his body a maelstrom of confusion. “Run back to the lights and sparkle of polite society, where you belong.”
She watched him, her fingers pressed to her neck where his hand had been, but she made no attempt to flee. “You’re letting me go?”
Was there a note of regret in her tone? He was the one imagining things now. “There’s no need to hurt you, Lady Daniella.” He said her name slowly, sounding out the syllables inan unspoken threat so the woman would know he’d not forget. “Not when you’ll never see me again.”
He turned away, needing her out of view to keep from reaching for her and the forbidden fruit she represented. His excuse was paper thin, and he knew it.
The truth was, he didn’t want her hurt. For a terrifying moment, staring down at those sharp eyes and smart mouth, the black heart in his chest had risen from the shadows and given a red-blooded thump of approval.
“What if I don’t want you to go?”
Percy closed his eyes at her words, whispered and husky, as if she asked in self-consciousness.Definitely imagining things.
“What would you ask of me if I stayed?” He kept his back to her. The lady was bluffing, like before. Did she expect him to turn himself in? How he wished she’d ask something else of him, something far less likely and appropriate. It was his imagination that ran rampant, conjuring scenes of wanton embraces and mutual pleasure.
“I won’t say a word,” she said.
He huffed. “If?”
His ears strained too hard not to hear her next words clearly.
“A kiss.”
He froze. His mind repeated her request over and over until the meaning sank in.
“Fuck.” He spun around and sealed his mouth over hers, pressing her against the pillar and running his hands down her arms before interlacing their fingers. Silk and fire. Percy never imagined sparks could ignite against something so smooth, but the friction did more than catch. It blazed.
He needed to leave. Needed to set this woman aside. Even if he didn’t have a pressing engagement with the end of a knife, this woman was nothing but a danger.
He knew everyone and, more importantly, knew their secrets. It was his business to know. And when it dictated a gentleman’s ruin, it was a true pleasure, but he didn’t knowher. Alarming was an understatement. She could have been an opposing agent. Some of the more progressive foreign offices employed women and children. Lady Daniella Deime could be as she seemed, and still be just as dangerous.
It was her spirit that had snared him. The way she challenged him, questioned him, the way her lips and tongue pressed unsurely against his own. The essence of her was in everything she did and said, and Percy was defenseless against such blatant honesty.
She could go straight to the authorities with his description. Not that it mattered. He changed clothes and demeanor as often as socks as it suited him.
Her tongue flicked against his, her confidence growing.
He could teach her everything.
He broke the kiss and a piece of his soul broke hearing the strangled sound that emerged from her. Years of honed cruelty and coldness were the only things that kept his gaze and voice steady as he looked into those heavy-lidded eyes and told the greatest lie of his life.
“Now keep your mouth closed about me, or I’ll kill you.”
He fled into the dark, leaving her alone and flushed and God above hopefully as aching as himself.
This had never happened. He’d strike the memory from his mind like so many others. He wouldn’t form intimate attachments, so he’d have no regrets and no concerns over what the lady might do.
She’d never recognize him again because she wouldneversee him again. No one sawhim. Lady Daniella may have thought she wanted to play with the shadows and live off the thrill ofescaping a blade’s edge, but no one stared into the darkness after facing a monster and wanted more.
He’d done her a favor.
Percy ducked into an adjoining room off the library and listened to the sounds of male voices through the wall. He tore off his wig and unbuttoned his coat for easier movement and prayed his friend, the Duke of Camine, wouldn’t resemble a pin cushion when he jumped into the fray.
Easing out of the room, he pressed an ear to the door and waited for the sounds of raised voices, knowing there was a fifty-fifty chance he wouldn’t walk away from the fight to come. Nor would anyone be the less over his corpse. He cared for nothing and no one.
Lady Daniella’s face flashed in his mind, along with an asinine vision of a warm home in the country and her waiting arms.
Hands clenching into fists at his sides, Percy shredded the image with the edges of reality. He was not a gentleman, not a wealthy merchant, certainly not a blasted coconut farmer. He’d never be welcomed in polite society, nor would he have anything save for shadows and death to offer a woman of any station.
He preferred the shadows and lies. No amount of leisure or fantasies of a quiet life in the country would change who and what he was.
Even if some traitorous inner voice whispered for a woman of silk and fire.
Sounds of a scuffle on the other side of the door had Percy pulling a knife from his waist, thoughts of being in the same room as Lady Daniella as he was now laughable.
In what world would the starched and pressed fools of thetonever accept Percy Cole, humble thief and murderer?
