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She rested a cheek on her palm. “You, of course.”

“Me?”

“It had to have been you. Or why would we be here together, when we were perfect strangers only hours ago?”

Indeed, what other explanation could there be? They had to have been destined to meet—and to love. “Stay with me, then,” he said. “I will take care of you.”

She smiled a little. “You are too kind.”

She didn’t believe him. She thought it was an impulsive offer he would regret at sunrise. She didn’t know him very well, did she?

“You’ve seen my house. I also have some sheep land in North Yorkshire. Within the next twelve months I should be called to the bar. But for now I’m subsisting mostly on interest, so you’ll have to wait a bit—maybe quite a bit—before splurging on a Worth wardrobe. But whatever else you want, I’ll be happy to supply.”

“A carte blanche from a poor man. Now I’ve heard everything.”

“I never said I was offering a carte blanche.” And he wasn’t exactly a poor man—he had quite a bit in his bank account from the sale of the Somerset town house. But fear of renewed penury ran deep. He would not touch the principal unless he absolutely could not get by otherwise. “I should hope that as my wife, you would wish to manage our household budget wisely. A carte blanche defeats the purpose.”

Her indulgent expression vanished, replaced by an astonishment that bordered on incomprehension. “You are offering
marriage
?”

“Yes.”

“To an absolute stranger?”

Her shock surprised him. There was an intimate connection between them, as if they’d known each other always. They were not strangers; they’d merely never met before. “I know you far better than I do any of the young ladies from whom I’m expected to select a spouse based on the acquaintance of a few dances and half a dozen insipid conversations.”

“At least you know who they are. You don’t even know my name.”

“Certainly not for a lack of trying. So you may not hold it against me.”

She shook her head. “I don’t hold it against you, but against myself. You are a gentleman. But I’m not a lady.”

“By marrying me you’ll
be
a lady.”

“I’m not a virgin either.”

“I believe I’ve noticed that already.”

She shook her head some more. “Why? You’ve everything ahead of you. Why would you wish to burden yourself with someone like me?”

“Are you London’s most celebrated courtesan after all?”

“No, of course not.”

“Do you have a history of crimes and misdemeanors?”

“No.”

“Are you married?”

“God, no.”

“Then you won’t be a burden to me, but an asset.”

He had his cynical observations on marriage. But he had a healthy respect for its institutional power in legitimizing and sanctifying the illegitimate and unsanctified. And as a man, he had a certain leeway in his choice of a wife. A woman who spoke and looked as she did, who had that indefinable essence that separated a spellbinding woman from the merely comely—he had no doubt that after an initial period of cautious reservation on the part of his friends and colleagues, she would be a smashing success.

“I can’t. You can’t. You won’t.” She sighed, a sound of wretched resignation. “It can’t be.”

“Then have the courtesy and compassion to tell me what exactly is the impediment.” He grew a little impatient with her. Why all this mystery and secrecy? What was she afraid of?

Her eyes dimmed. He was instantly contrite. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to be cross with you.”

“No, don’t ask for forgiveness,” she said. “You do me such honor.”

She touched the back of her hand to his cheek. He brought her palm to his lips. For a moment he thought he was kissing the hand of a bricklayer. He turned her hand toward the light to better study it. She yanked. He did not let go.

On her hand was writ a record of ravage and hardship. Scars, faded and thin, marked her index and middle fingers. On the back of her hand and the base of her palm were a half-dozen blemishes, burns severe enough to have permanently discolored her skin—skin as rough as his mother’s had once been.

“My God,” he murmured. So she did work in a kitchen. And he’d been so incinerated by desire he hadn’t even noticed until now.

In his distraction, she managed to snatch her hand away. He reached for it again, but she’d already clenched it: her thumb buried deep in the enclosure of her fingers.

“Let me see your hand.”

“I don’t want you to see it.”

“There’s no need to be ashamed over honest work.”

“More pretty words,” she said.

“Yes, I sense myself in severe danger of becoming a lyrical poet.”

He made a slow, detailed tour of the ridges and dips of her knuckles, traced each finger down to the first joint, and turned her tightly fisted hand over.

The mound of her palm, the edge of it, her fingernails—he caressed everything that was not expressly denied him. Worshipped her as if she were Aphrodite of Milos freshly unearthed and he the humble excavator struck dumb by her beauty.

When she eased the slightest bit, he pounced and unclamped her hand. She sucked in a breath as he ruthlessly exposed every part of her palm and her fingers. She made a move as if to close her hand over his.

“Don’t,” he said. “I want to touch your calluses.”

“Why?” Her voice was low and plaintive. “Why would you want to touch them?”

“Because they are yours.”

She sank her teeth into her lower lip and acquiesced. He raised her hand and pressed a kiss against an old burn mark. He kissed her knuckles, one by one, learning their angularity, savoring the feel of her skin against his lips.

Then he licked a callus. She gasped—a sound that ignited his blood—and tried to close her hand again. He permitted no such thing but ran his tongue over her callus once more.

Her reaction was so acute—and she was so stunned by it—that it all but made him break a piece off the headboard in a surge of lust. Her work-toughened palms were sensitive beyond belief. A simple nibble produced moans; his teeth raked gently across the center of it, shudders.

Her other hand gripped him behind his back. Her body molded into his. He understood what she sought. She wanted him inside her. It made him weak. It made him hard as a mace.

He yanked back the sheet and invaded her fully in one long, hard thrust. He linked their fingers together, so that every part of her hands touched every part of his, and kissed her on the mouth. He did not stop kissing her as he filled her, searing in her heat, buckling under the pleasure, until he had to jerk his head back for breath as his orgasm pummeled and slammed into him, breaking him into pieces again and again.

Verity stared at her hands in wonder. She hadn’t taken care of them in weeks. They were rough as salt, the joints of the fingers knobby, the skin red and splotchy from too much immersion in water—the symbol of all the costly mistakes of her life. If anyone had told her that she could be seduced merely by having these hands fondled and stroked, she would have snickered in derision and replied that her chopping board would sprout leaves first.

But such huge sensations he had invoked, making love to her hands. Such pleasure, downright frightful in its intensity. She wanted to weep for the wonder and joy of it.

From behind her Mr. Somerset held her snugly. “I’d like to do this every night,” he mumbled.

She heard the sleepy smile in his voice. Her heart broke clean in two.

“Promise me you’ll think about it,” he said, as if she could
not
think about it.

“You are mad,” she told him.

“Mad in general, no. Mad for you, granted,” he said, his speech slow with the onset of slumber.

“You are mad,” she repeated.

But no response came from him, other than a squeeze of his arm about her.

“Mad. Mad. Mad. Mad,” she said, to no one in particular.

A monstrous hope threatened to lay waste to her. Already it was telling her to believe Mr. Somerset entirely—in his honor, his sincerity, and his sanity. Here was a man, said the perfidious hope, who was not only persuasive and clever—and handsome, of course—but also wise, judicious, true-seeing, a man whose gaze pierced past her present lowly stature and her past sexual peccadilloes directly into the beauty of her soul.

Marriage. God, marriage. He
was
mad.

What would they tell others about her? Where was she from? Who were her family? What had she done with herself until this point?

And how would she even begin to tell him that he’d proposed marriage to the tarnished cook who’d slept with Bertie and had been deemed not nearly good enough to be
Bertie’s
wife?

He would not want to marry her if he knew. He would not even want to look at her. Worse, he would be livid that she’d strung him along this far, knowing full well who she was, who he was, and all the bad blood between the brothers.

But he loves you,
said the plaintive voice of her romantic idealism, from the frowzy cell that she had dragged it into after Bertie had beaten it comatose.

Would love pacify his anger when he learned her identity—the only identity she had left, now that she could never breathe a word of Lady Vera to anyone again? Would love save him from bitterness and disappointment when he became all England’s laughingstock, and his promising young political career foundered on her notoriety as surely as if he’d chosen to ruin himself over London’s premiere courtesan?

She wanted to believe, believe that his love—their love—was a wonder for the ages, as patient as the humble currents that sculpted deep canyons, as enduring as the pattern of seasons.

Perhaps it was not completely outside the realm of possibility for them to find a measure of happiness together. Perhaps he could practice law in some quiet provincial town. And they could have a small, neat house, with a garden and a sunny nursery for the children they would have—

Her tears spilled again. She wanted the life he promised her—wanted, wanted, and wanted, with the frenzy of a lost caravanist crawling toward a distant mirage.

But she could not deceive herself. Beyond this room, beyond this night, were norms and unspoken rules enough to crush any rebellion in the heart of a sensible man.

He’d fought for respect and respectability all his life. She’d done nothing but destroy her own. She could not in good conscience destroy his, even if he allowed it, even if he encouraged it.

In the morning, when his common sense returned, he’d be grateful to find her gone, to know that he would not be held to words of folly spoken in moments of high passion. That he still had all his future ahead of him.

And she, she would have the memories, and the consolation that he still had all his future ahead of him, because she’d walked away, taking with her only her valise and the last of the cake.

Chapter Ten

November 1892

M
r. Somerset’s house was in the middle of a terrace of identical stucco town houses. A portico, set on Roman Doric columns and supporting a balustraded balcony above, shielded the entrance.