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He followed her.
No. He followed the light. Not the girl.
He didn’t care what happened to the girl. Let her explore the hold all she liked. Let her get frostbite for how she lingered inside it. “More ice,” he said, as she found the center of the space, along with its cold, muddy ground.
“I’m not so sure.” The light disappeared as she turned the corner and it went out of view, darkness crawling over him from the rear. He took a deep breath, keeping his gaze on the hazy shadow of her head and shoulders above the ice . . . until it, too, disappeared, dropping out of sight. She’d no doubt slipped in the wet slop of the hold—a danger of working with ice.
“Be careful,” he cautioned, picking up speed, turning into the empty center of the room to discover her crouched low, holding the lantern in front of her with all the skill of a Thames tide-picker, searching for treasure.
She looked up at him. “There’s nothing here.”
He exhaled. “No.”
“Nothing but footprints of what was here before,” she said with a wry smile. She pointed. “A heavy box, there.” Changed direction. “And there, a barrel of some kind.”
His brows rose. “Bow Street is missing your cunning investigative instincts.”
The smile became a grin. “Perhaps I’ll stop there on my way home. What was it?”
“Ice.”
“Hmm,” she said, “I’m guessing it was something alcoholic. And I shall tell you what else . . .”
He crossed his arms over his chest and replied dryly, “I wish you would.”
She pointed a finger at him triumphantly. “I’m guessing it was something that came into the country untaxed.” She was so proud of herself that he almost told her it had been American bourbon. He almost did a lot of things.
He almost pulled her to her feet and kissed the detective work from her lips.
Almost.
Instead, he rubbed his hands together and blew into them. “Excellent deductions, my lady. But it’s bloody freezing in here, so shall we head back so you might perform a citizen’s arrest for your accusations—for which you haven’t a lick of proof?”
“You should have worn a coat.” She waved him off and went back to the wall of ice blocks. “What do you do with the ice now?”
“We ship it throughout London. Homes and butcher shops and sweet shops and restaurants. And you’re wearing my coat.”
“That’s very kind of you,” she replied. “Did you not have a waistcoat?”
“We turn a profit on the ice, or we wouldn’t deal in it,” he said. “I typically don’t dress for manual labor.”
“I noticed,” she said, and Devil snapped to attention at her low, soft words.
“You noticed.”
“It was virtually indecent,” she said, her voice louder, defensive. “I’m not certain how I was not to notice.”
He approached her, unable to stop himself, and she pressed back, away from him, against the ice. Reaching out, she set a hand to the fabricated wall, instantly removing it when the cold registered.
“Be careful,” he said.
“Are you worried I’ll freeze?”
He told the truth. “I’m worried you’ll melt it.”
She raised a brow at him. “You forget I have not yet learned to be a flame.”
For the life of him, he’d never know why he didn’t stop at that. Why he didn’t snatch up the lantern and take her away. “You and your desire to incinerate us all, Felicity Faircloth; you are terribly dangerous.”
“Not to you,” she said softly as he drew nearer, the quiet words like a siren’s call. “You’ll never get close enough to burn.”
He was already close enough. “You’d best keep your sights on another, then.”
No. Set them on me.
We can burn together.
He was close enough to touch her. “Then you’ll teach me?”
Anything. Anything she asked for.
“You’ll show me how to make men adore me.”
God, it was tempting. She was tempting.
If Ewan adores her, it will hurt him more when you take her away. If he’s impassioned, you’ll punish him more.
But that wasn’t all of it. Now, there was Felicity. And if she allowed herself to feel passionately about Ewan, she wouldn’t only be ruined by the dissolution of their courtship, she’d be devastated by it.
She’d be a casualty of this war, decades in the making, that she’d had nothing to do with. She’d be wounded in the balance; that was never the plan.
Bullshit. That was always the plan.
The plan was to show Ewan that Devil would always be able to pull the strings. That Ewan lived by his bastard brothers’ benevolence and nothing else. That they could end any marriage he thought to begin. That they could end him.
Teaching Felicity Faircloth about passion would be the easiest way for Devil to put his plan into action. He could woo the girl even as she wooed the duke, and then, just as they were to marry, seduce her away and send his clear message—no heirs. No marriage. No free will. Never for you.
That was the arrangement they’d made, was it not? The promise the brothers had sworn in the dark of night as their monstrous father had manipulated and punished, never once thinking of them as anything more than candidates to be the next in a long line of Marwicks.
The three boys had vowed never to give their father what he asked.
But Ewan had won the contest. And after he’d taken the title, the house, the fortune, the world their father had offered . . . he’d broken ranks and tried for even more. An heir to a dukedom that should never have been his to begin with.
An illegitimate son, once willing to kill for legitimacy, now come for it on another path. One he had vowed he would never travel.
And Devil would teach him a lesson.
Which meant Felicity would have to learn it, too.
He lifted the lantern from her hands and set it on the block next to her, the light flickering over the cloudy ice, setting it to a strange, grey-green glow. He could see the pulse racing in her neck as he did it, he was so close to her.
Or maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he only wanted her pulse to race.
Maybe it was his pulse he sensed.
He met her gaze, eager and beautiful, and leaned toward her. “Are you sure you wish this door opened, Lady Lockpick?” he said, hating himself for the words. Knowing that if she agreed, she would be ruined. He would have no choice but to ruin her.
She didn’t know that, though. Or, if she did, she didn’t care. Her eyes sparkled, candlelight flickering in their deep brown depths. “Very sure.”
No man on earth could resist her.
And so he did not try.
He reached for her, his hand coming to her cheek, fingers grazing over the impossibly soft skin of her jaw, tracing the bones of it into her hairline, threading there, catching in the thick mahogany curls, trapped by her hairpins, bent into lockpicks, locking him to her. Her lips fell open at the touch, a soft, stunning intake of air revealing her excitement. Her desire.
Revealing his.
With his free hand, he touched the other side of her face, exploring it. Reveling in the silk of her skin, in the way her cheeks rose and hollowed, in the little crease at the corner of her mouth, where a dimple flashed when she teased him. He leaned toward her, fully, madly intending to put his lips to that crease. To taste it.
“Blindman’s buff,” she whispered. “Your hands . . . It’s like the game.”
A child’s game. A country house whim. One player blindfolded, trying to identify another by touch. As though Devil wouldn’t know Felicity Faircloth by touch for the rest of time. “Close your eyes,” he said.
She shook her head. “That’s not how the game is played.”
“I’m not playing a game.”
Her gaze found his. “Aren’t you?”
Not in that moment. “Close your eyes,” he repeated.
She did, and he moved closer, leanin
g in, putting his lips at her ear. “You tell me what you feel.”
He could hear the way he impacted her—the breath that caught in her chest, shuddered through the long column of her throat as she exhaled, thin and reedy, as though it were difficult for her to get the air in.
Devil understood the feeling, even more so when one of her hands rose to hover above his shoulder—teasing him without touching him. He spoke again, letting his breath fan the high arc of her cheek, where he wanted to kiss. “Felicity, fairest of them all . . .” he whispered. “What do you feel?”
“I—” she started, and then, “I don’t feel cold.”
No, he didn’t imagine she did. “What do you feel?” he asked again.
