She was the daughter of a duke. She had been bred to respect propriety and her reputation, her adherence to society’s dictates, as highly as she held the Lord Himself.
“Dom,” she repeated.
One word, a truncated version of his Christian name. It ought not to feel so intimate. And yet, the air surrounding them seemed to change. To thicken.
He smiled, then. A true smile, the sort that made his dark eyes sparkle and fine lines feather from their corners. It meant he had smiled before. Many times.
She had pleased him.
And she liked it.
“Come, angel.” He held out his hand to her.
His gloveless hand, the hand of a ruthless man, large and lethal, long-fingered. Yet elegant too. It startled her to realize how much she wanted to touch him.
She placed hers in his.
For the night, she would go where he led her.
And pray it would not land her deeper in the murk.
* * *
Damnation, her skin was softer than a lily once more. Her fingers, curled tentatively through his, burned him. Lured him. Tempted him. Dom was sure this entire affair was a bad halfpenny.
But there was something about this woman that made him willing to forego his instincts and to instead rely upon the all-consuming force propelling him to act. Lust? Stupidity? Arrogance?
Curse him to hell if he knew. Or if he cared.
There was something different about this woman.
Angel, as he had begun to think of her. It was not just that she was bang up to the mark, the finest set of petticoats which had ever been within his reach. She was…plummy. That’s what she was. Only better than plummy.
Perfection.
Yes, a cove’s word. And she belonged to a cove.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, she washis. All his.
And he was going to show her Dominic Winter’s world. Or, at least, the best of it. Because there was quite a lot of it that was shite. No denying that.
He pulled her through the low-lit halls of his family’s hell. The private halls occupied by his siblings, his servants, and his men. All the way to the dining room they had recently improved. A true sign he had reached heights he had never imagined possible as a bastard fighting for his life in the rookery.
Dom gently tugged her over the threshold, looking back to take in her expressive face as he did so. Her eyes widened. Mayhap she was impressed?
Her gaze settled upon a marble bust of some goddess whose name he had not bothered to learn. “What is this place?”
Could she not see the bloody table? The chairs? And a fine table too, commissioned instead of filched. Polished to shine.
“A dining room, angel,” he told her. “We are going to have dinner.”
“Dinner?” she repeated, as if it were a foreign word, a previously unimagined notion.
He stopped, their hands still linked because he was reluctant to end the tentative connection between them, it was true. She did not seem inclined to escape. Not that he had given her much choice. He banished the twinge of conscience accompanying that thought. He was Dominic Winter,by God. He took what he wanted. He owned this part of London. Even the goddamn rats knew his name.
“Sundenbury feeds you, no?” he asked her.
“Yes.” She shook her head, her dark eyes meeting his. “Yes, of course. But is this not like fattening the Michaelmas goose?”
