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Lavinia folded her arms about her for warmth.
“Mr. William Q. White,” she said calmly. “You are a despicable blackguard.”
WILLIAM KNEW HE WAS a despicable blackguard. Only the worst of fellows would have tried to claim a woman he could not marry. But he wanted her enough that he almost didn’t care.
“I suppose you think I should forgive your brother’s debt,” William heard himself say.
“I do.”
“And what would I stand to gain by that?”
She dropped her eyes. “He is not yet twenty-one, you see.”
As if such a fact would have swayed him. Her brother was older than fourteen, and at that age William had first become responsible for his own care. Since then, he’d labored for every scrap of comfort. He’d had nothing handed to him—not a penny, not a kind word, and certainly not a sister who shielded him from every discomfort.
“You will soon learn,” he said, more harshly than he’d intended, “that everything has a cost.” Coal and blankets in grim lodging houses cost pennies. The eye-straining labor of his apprenticeship had cost him his youth. For years, he’d spent his late nights reading business and agriculture by the dim red glow of the fire, not for pleasure or enjoyment, but to keep alive the futile dream that one day he would be asked to take his place managing funds that might have belonged to him. Mr. Sherrod’s will had just stolen that dream from him, too. Oh, yes, William knew everything about cost.
Her color heightened. If he were the sort to engage in self-delusion, he’d imagine that the pink flush on her cheeks was desire. But the breaths that lifted her bosom had to be fear. Fear at his proximity. Fear that a man, intent and closeted alone with her, was looking down at her with such intensity.
But she did not shrink back, not even when he stood and walked toward her. She didn’t falter when he stopped inches from her. She did not quail when he towered over her and peered into the pure blue of her eyes.
Instead, she huffed. “You have not taken my meaning. It is surely in your best interests to collect on the debt owed over time. After all…”
Her voice was husky. Her breath whispered against his lips. He inhaled. Her scent coiled in his veins and joined the throbbing pulse of blood through his body.
“My interest?” His voice was quiet. “I assure you, my only interest is in your body.”
Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. And that long, smooth column of throat contracted in a swallow.
And then, inexplicable woman that she was, Lavinia smiled. “You’re not very good at this, are you? It works better if you give your villainy at least a thin veneer of pleasantry.”
He might have been a blackguard, but he had no intention of being a liar. “Nothing really worth having is free. If the cost of having you is your hatred, I’ll pay it.”
She didn’t shrink from him. Instead, she tilted her head, as if seeing him at an angle would change his requirements. The pulse in her throat beat rapidly—one, two, three, he counted, all the way up to twenty-two, before she raised her chin.
“Am I worth having, then? At this cost to yourself?”
“You’re worth ten pounds.” It was heresy to say those words, heresy to place so low a value on her. It was heresy even to think of someone as low as him touching a woman as incomparable as her. But he was going to be in hell all his life. He wanted one memory, one dream to keep with him in the years of drudgery that would surely follow. He’d have traded his soul to the devil to have her. A little heresy would hardly signify.
She stood. On her feet, she was mere inches from him. “You believe,” she said, her voice unsteady, “that you must purchase the best things in life. With bank notes.”
“I have no other currency to barter with.”
She met his eyes. “Is there anything you want in addition to my body? That is—will once be enough, or will this turn into a…a regular occurrence?”
A regular occurrence. His body tensed at the thought. He wanted everything about her. Her smile, when she saw him; her sudden laughter, breaking like a sunrise in the night of his life. He wanted her, over and over, body and soul and spirit. But that was all well out of his price range. And so he asked for the one thing he thought he might get.
“I want one other thing,” he said. “When I touch you, I want you not to flinch.”
She frowned in puzzlement at this proclamation. As she bit her lip, she reached for the catch of her cloak. She fumbled with the ties, and then removed the wool from her shoulders, folding the cloth into a careful square. The dress underneath was a faded rose, the fabric old enough that it had shaped itself to the curves of her hips. He’d seen her in the gown before, but never while he stood close enough to touch.
She tugged on her left glove, loosening each finger before rolling the material down her arm. He noted, with some distraction, that there was a tiny hole in the index finger. Her fingers seemed impossibly slender.
“Very well,” she said. “I agree.”
He hadn’t really believed it would happen. He had passed last night, after he’d retrieved her brother’s note of promise, in a delirium of dazzled lust. But up until this moment, he’d expected her to walk away, snatched from him like all his other dreams. She removed her second glove, as slowly as she’d taken off the first, and aligned the two precisely before setting them atop her cloak. He swallowed. When she slid the pins from her hair, letting that coiled mass of cinnamon spill down her back, he realized he was really going to have her. Somehow, this impossible plan had worked.
If he were a gentleman, he’d stop now and send her on her way.
She turned her back to him—not, he realized, to hide her face. No, Lavinia didn’t shrink from him. Instead, she lifted the mass of her hair so that he could unlace her dress.
The gesture gave him a perfect view of the back of her neck. It was slim and long. He could make out the delicate swells of her spine. Up until this point, nothing truly untoward had happened, except in William’s mind. But once he touched her—once he unlaced that gown—it would be too late for them both. If he had any strength of character at all, he’d leave her untouched. But all his strength had turned into pounding blood, thundering through his veins. And if he had any will at all, it was directed toward this—this moment of heaven, stolen from the angel who had haunted his dreams for a year.
He would never find forgiveness if he took her, but then he’d been damned for a decade. All he would ever know of paradise was Lavinia. And so he laid his hands on her waist and claimed his damnation.
She was warm against his palms, and oh, it had been so long since he touched another human being. He leaned in and kissed the back of her neck. She tasted of lemon soap. His arms wrapped around her, drawing her against his body. She nestled against his erection, and by God, she did what he’d asked. She didn’t flinch. Instead, she sighed and leaned back into his arms, as if she enjoyed the feel of his touch.
“Miss Spencer,” he murmured in her ear.
“You’d better call me Lavinia.”
His fingers found the ties of her dress and unraveled them carefully. Then he slid the dress off her shoulders. Long muslin sleeves fell away to reveal creamy shoulders, milk-white arms. When the gown hit the floor, she turned in his arms. She was wearing nothing but stays and a chemise. Her skin was warm against his hands and she arched up toward him. Her lips parted. Her eyes shone at him, as if he were her lover instead of the man who’d forced her into this. She’d looked at him that way, just last night in the library. Surely, then, she hadn’t meant to invite a kiss.
He was not such a fool as to turn down that invitation twice. He kissed her, hard, savoring the feel of her lips against his. She tasted as sweet as a glass of water after a hard day’s labor, felt as welcome as sunshine in the darkness of winter. He pulled her into his embrace roughly. She twitched in surprise when his tongue touched her lips, but she opened her mouth with an eagerness that made up for any apparent inexperience.
He had to rem
ind himself that she’d not chosen this, that he’d ordered her not to flinch from his advances. It was not real, the way she nestled in his arms. It was not real, the way her hands pressed against his back, pulling his thighs against hers. It was not real, the way she opened up to him. It was all a fraud, obtained through coercion.
He was impoverished enough that he’d take her caresses anyway.
She pulled away from him, but only to unlace her stays. As she lifted her arms above her head, a stray shaft of light came through the window and illuminated the outline of her legs through her chemise. She let her stays drop to the ground. She didn’t look up—no doubt suddenly ashamed, aware that William could make out the dusky purple of her areolae through her chemise. A shaft of heat rippled through William, and he could wait no longer.
Without thinking, he walked forward. His hands slid up her waist. She was separated from him by the thinnest layer of cloth. She shivered as he drew her toward him. And then he leaned forward and closed his mouth around the dusky tip of her nipple. Even through her chemise, he could feel it contract, pebbling under his tongue.
“Oh!” Her hand clutched his arm spontaneously.
