Luck Be a Lady (22 page)

His laugh was soundless, a soft puff of air. “Maybe I think there's hope for you.”

She looked at him. “Or maybe you're the hypocrite.
You're
the snob.”

A curious look came over his face. “You think so?”

“Yes. Or a coward. I'm not sure which.”

He sat back from her, his expression impenetrable. “Now, there's something I've never been called.”

“I'm sure no one dared to say it. That doesn't make it untrue.”

He made a low, sharp noise that probably wanted to sound like amusement. “You care to explain yourself?”

“Certainly. You're glad to talk of the injustices you see. But rather than doing anything about them, you use them to justify your own abuses of the law—your own enrichment. What would you call that? Certainly not courage.”

His eyes narrowed. Now, at last, she saw true temper in his face. He shoved to his feet. “Politics is for those who think they can make a difference for strangers. I never cared about anything but mine.”

“That's not true,” she said steadily. “Just look what you did for Tulip Patrick, and all those students—”

“For Whitechapel,” he spat. “Whitechapel is mine.”

“Very well. But you
choose
to sell yourself short. Your ambitions, your abilities.”

“No. I simply confine them to what matters.”

“I don't believe you,” she said with a shrug. “I think you're afraid.”

He offered her a disbelieving smile. “Is that right?”

She ignored the scorn in his voice. “You're afraid to aim higher. You call it a rich man's game, but that's only an excuse. You're afraid to try—and fail. And I think you
did
want the passersby to look you in the eye, as a boy. Otherwise, why would you be so angry at me now?”

He stared at her. “That's a fine question. Maybe I'm a fool, after all. Maybe I imagined that marrying you meant something. That we could treat each other like humans, for all that I swept your dad's streets as a boy.”

She clambered to her feet. “Indeed? You mean that you could see me as more than some spoiled doll
from the West End? Tell me. How many of my letters did you ignore before you brought me here? Would you have ever bothered to speak to me, if you thought I couldn't help you save those precious buildings?”

“Two buildings,” he said softly. “If that's all you'll profit me, you're the poorest gamble I ever took.”

“What . . .” She pushed out a sharp laugh. “Come now. Am I— Surely you're not suggesting you wanted something else all along. From me? I won't believe it.”

His smile was brief and dark. “Why not? You think a man can't covet what he's told he doesn't deserve? A boy can look into a window and covet a wood fire. You think a man can't look into your auction rooms and covet a woman?”

Stunned, she fumbled for words. “I . . . You never met me. We barely spoke—”

“I watched you,” he said quietly. “From the moment
Lily first showed up on your doorstep. I always had my eye on you.”

She crossed her arms against a strange feeling, tremulous and unbalancing. “You . . . worried for her, I suppose.”

“I watched
you.
”

“No.” She shook her head, panic bolting through her. She didn't want to hear such things. This was business! This arrangement had not been borne of anything to do with feeling, with curiosity, with . . . desire . . .

But it did. His face showed her so. He didn't look pleased to have made his admission. His expression was stark, the look of a man beholding a fatal mistake.

And suddenly she could not bear to be his mistake. “Why did you watch me?” she whispered. And how foolish was she, to feel this momentary, fragile hope? She'd caught a hundred men gawping at her. Her face . . .
my beau
ty,
her father had called her.
You have your mother's face
.
But she'd always wished to be so much more than that—not only to her father but also, perhaps, to someone else . . .

“I can't say.” He spoke in a low, rough voice. “Maybe because I'd never seen a woman like you. Out of place in that world.
Owning
it, regardless. Maybe I admired that. Or maybe you simply looked like the next rung on the ladder. Or it was even simpler—and you're right; I wanted what I'd never had as a boy. For a woman like you—for
you,
Catherine—to look at me, and see . . . not a crook. Not a gutter rat raised high. But a man.” He stepped toward her. “A man who could do more for you than that bloody auction house ever could. Simple, sure. Simple as what we shared in a bed together. Maybe that's what I wanted all along.”

He called that simple? “I'm . . . I can't give that to you. I've told you, I'm not fit, that way.”

A shadow crossed his face, tightened his mouth, and it stung her like the lash of a whip. She had warned him of this. How
dare
he look disappointed in her! “Bollocks,” he said flatly. “What does that mean?”

“That auction house may seem like nothing to you, but it's all I ever wanted—”

He gripped her cheek. “Now you're lying,” he said softly, “and here I thought we were being so honest. I saw you want it. I
heard
you want it, the other night. If you're afraid, then say so. But don't you bloody lie to me.”

She lifted her chin. He would not bully her. “It has nothing to do with fear—or our stations, either.” As cynicism sharpened his mouth, she cast caution to the wind and spoke in a rush. “It's me. I would disappoint you.” And she could not bear that thought. She, Catherine Everleigh, did not fail. She did nothing by half measures. She would not allow herself to aim for what she could never hope to do well.

“What nonsense is that?” When she shook her head, he turned her face back toward him. “Look at me,” he said. “How are you unfit? Who put that idea into your head? Your goddamned brother?”

“He has nothing to do with it,” she said bitterly. “Some things one knows from a young age. My mother . . .” So unhappy with her life. Squandering her energies on gossip and backbiting, silly feuds among her friends. Taking to her bed at any sign of Papa's wrath. Quarreling, always quarreling with him. She had warned Catherine that a woman's lot was to be dependent on the pleasure of a man.
Marriage, Catherine, is the most perilous risk a
woman ever t
akes. Take care whom you choose. Make sure you can keep him happy.

But the only man whom Catherine had known how to keep happy was her father—for she excelled at her work. And what other man would be content with that?

“I don't want that life,” she said fiercely. “I don't want to be . . . beholden . . . to an ideal I can't achieve. And yes, I enjoy your touch. I
want
it. I will admit that. I . . . think of you, at night, and too often during the day, and I . . . But it means nothing! You said it yourself, once—it happens on street corners!”

“Like hell this does,” he growled, and caught her by the waist.

*    *   *

Had she resisted, he would have let go. But as Nick drew her toward him, something changed. Her face, so taut from her inward struggle, suddenly relaxed. She closed her eyes and took a deep, audible breath, then threw her arms around him, like a child leaping from the edge of a high wall, aiming for the unknown.

He held her tight, gripped her waist as she buried her face against his neck. Some powerful emotion rocked through him, a ferocious need leavened by deep relief. Even as a boy, he had never begged but once. He'd swept streets, blacked boots, ducked the occasional swing of a ganger's fist at the docks—but begging, no. There, he'd drawn the line. And had Catherine pushed him away just now, he might never have reached for her again. For it had come to that, hadn't it? He wouldn't take what she didn't give freely, and by God, he wouldn't beg.

But she had come to him.
Hallelujah.
She stood
pressed against him, her breath warming his throat in unsteady puffs, some lingering effect of the fears that wracked her.

Nick didn't hope to understand those fears. Didn't expect he could reason them away for her, either. That was her battle. But he could sure as hell give her a reason to fight.

He kissed the crown of her hair, soft and silken. The kiss seemed to jar her from her trance. Her hands scrabbled on his waist, tightening as though to keep him against her. He swallowed a ragged laugh. As though, even with a gun at his head, he would step away. Given practice, she'd come to understand that.

He meant to give her a great deal of practice now.

He smoothed a path down her arms, pulling her hands free of their grip on him, lacing his fingers through hers. He eased down to kiss her neck. Her pulse was still drumming. She turned her face away, either from shyness or to give him a better angle.

He tracked his mouth slowly down her throat, right to the edge of her gown, high-necked, unadorned blue wool. Dozens of buttons fastened it closed; he had noticed them as he'd followed her up the stairs earlier.

God help her if she liked the dress. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife. Felt her tense as she saw it.

“Hold still,” he said.

She did better. She turned for him, bowing her head as she presented her back.

Wealth had given him a thousand pleasures he'd never anticipated. But he'd never known any sweeter than this: to cut Catherine free of her clothing, without regard for the cost.

To feel her trust, her unflinching faith, as she held still beneath his knife.

The dress split and fell away easily enough. The corset laces were no trick to cut. But as he threw it across the room, the sight of her underlinens struck a flint deep in his belly, an impatience that made his hand shake. He cast down the knife and used his hands on the rest. The way of a savage, no doubt. He felt so.
Desire
was too pretty a word. She'd held herself away too long. His entire life, she'd been held away. But she was here, now.

Naked, before him.

She turned back, the shredded layers mounded at her feet, God's own glory emerging from the ruins of what had separated them. Straight-spined, every inch of her skin gilded by the candlelight. The slope of her shoulders, like water flowing. Her waist dipping, then swelling into her full hips, like a crescendo of song. He laid his palm along that curve, touched her bare skin, and felt the shock of rightness sing through his bones.

How could she not know? How could she doubt, even for a moment? He looked up into her face for the answer. She was watching him. Not blushing. Not bashful, nor defiant, either. Her eyes were wide and awake to him, her lips trembling at the edge of a smile.

They looked at each other in the silence. Elsewhere, penetrating dimly through the walls, were the sounds of the ordinary world—muffled laughter, gleeful cries from the gaming floor, the rattle of dishes, mundane routine. Here, inside her rooms, as she stood naked before him, an enchanted silence enclosed them, profound and deep, like the hush in a church during prayer.

He trailed his hand up her body, skating over the
weight of her breast, the delicate winged line of her collarbone, the graceful column of her neck.

He touched her face very gently. “How can you know what you might be? Without trying, how can you know?”

A sheen filled her eyes. “I . . . suppose I can't.” And then she stepped forward and kissed him.

His eyes closed. He'd been no virgin when he'd taken her to his bed. But it came to him now, as he kissed her back—as her arms wrapped around him like vines, and she moaned and tilted her head, to encourage him to go deeper—that he'd been innocent all the same. A blessed kind of innocence: he'd not known a kiss could take him like a hard blow to his chest. All the breath went from him as he kissed her. All his ambitions, they seemed to spiral through him, to concentrate into one aim: to make her never let go. For she tasted . . . like all the money in the city. Walls that reached to the heavens. A view that spanned the world.

He picked her up, swung her into his arms, and carried her into the bedroom. Laid her on the bed and stood another moment to look at her, sprawled across the sheets like Christmas morning. Here was the view. He would sear it into his brain, each detail: the sunlight spill of her unraveling braid; the gentle curves of her bent legs; the heavy sway of her breasts; the shadow between her thighs, calling to him, calling . . .

She started to sit up. He put one knee on the mattress, holding her down by the shoulder. “Let me look,” he said.

“Look while you undress,” she said softly.

A faint sound escaped him. Maybe the beginning of a laugh, for he meant to encourage such brazenness. But
the sound broke apart as she reached for his shirt, fumbling with the first button.

“No.” He had no patience for this, either. He stood, quickly shedding his own layers. Dropping them without regard, so he could join her on that bed.

She opened her arms for him. He wanted to go slow. Some distant corner of his mind, canny and conspiring, urged him to take care. To take her so thoroughly, leave her so limp and satisfied, that she would never again question that she belonged beneath him, with nothing to keep them apart.

But for once in his life, his discipline failed him. When her hands—cool, small, rough—touched his bare chest, something snapped.

He fell on her mouth. Drank her in as he swept her body with long, firm strokes. Greedy, he felt greedy; panicked in the old way, the desperation of a boy who didn't know when the next feast would come. If it would ever come again. He'd grown up with want, need, as his main companion. He felt it now, deep in his gut, as he broke from her mouth to suckle her breast.
Take all you can, now. For you may never have this again.