“You should feel safe in your own home,” he said.
She glanced away. He sighed. He was beginning to tire of her brittle mood tonight. He should go.
Miss Magdalene yawned. “We should sleep, my friends. We have to leave at the virgin’s slit of dawn.” She peeked out at Adam under her extraordinary lashes, as if to check whether he was offended.
She had clearly never cursed with a Scotsman.
He just winked, and she smiled back approvingly.
Cornelia rose. “Sera, give us kisses now so we needn’t wake you in the morning.”
Adam watched them embrace each other long and hard. He was glad that Sera had such friends. He was, in fact, a touch envious.
“How did you become acquainted with Miss Ludgate?” he asked, when they had gone. “Marianne told me she is quite a celebrated artist.”
“Lady Bell introduced all of us. Cornelia is her niece.”
“Oh?” They did not share a family resemblance. Lady Bell was so pale and blonde she might be Swedish, while Miss Ludgate was Black.
“Cornelia’s mother was Demeter Folie, a famous courtesan in her day, from Barbados. Her father was the youngest son of the previous Duke of Rosemere—a painter who made the family crazed with his politics and the company he kept. He painted Demeter and they fell in love, as the story goes, and had Cornelia. But they died when she was just a baby, in a carriage accident. Rosemere’s heir took Cornelia in and raised her. Never had a natural child of his own. But they fell out when she came of age, owing to a scandal over her painting tutor. They don’t speak.”
Adam winced. He was well aware of the silences and secrets that haunted aristocratic families. He could only imagine what Seraphina left unsaid. “And what of Miss Magdalene?”
Sera snorted. “You really haven’t heard of her?”
He shook his head.
“So innocent, our Mr. Anderson,” she chuckled. “She is the most expensive Cyprian in all of London. Never sees a lover more than once, and only entertains one man a month. She entered the trade under quite dreadful circumstances but managed to extricate herself from the bawd who procured her, and made a name for herself on her beauty and cleverness. She came to Lady Bell looking for funding to start a charity for girls like her. And Lady Bell introduced the three of us.”
He could hear her pleasure in recounting her friends’ histories. Her pride in their stories. “And how did you meet Lady Bell?”
She grinned. “Jack. When I left Cornwall, I lived with an aunt in London who was a bit of a Bluestocking. She was friendly with Jack and found me work in his printing shop. Jack was a friend of Cornelia’s father, who introduced him to Elinor. She would visit the shop and encouraged me to take up writing. I don’t know what might have happened to me if it weren’t for her. My aunt died a few years after I moved, and Elinor introduced me to the girls, helped me when I was short of money. She was like a mother, really.”
She yawned, and he realized she had likely gone so soft in her demeanor because she was exhausted. He stood up to leave.
Seraphina caught his hand. “Don’t go.”
He smiled at her apologetically. “I’m tired, lass. And so are you.”
“But I have an inquiry,” she said, as though this was portentous news. He had never seen her display the signs of drink so obviously. It made him uneasy, drunkenness. And she always seemed to be drinking.
“I shall grant you one question,” he allowed.
“Why, if you don’t enjoy your work, do you do it?”
He shrugged. “Same reason anyone does. Money.”
“But if you want to design bridges and aqueducts, why don’t you?”
“Have to be hired first. Competition is fierce for such work. But I’m working on a proposal for a substantial commission now. Hoping it will put Mayhew and I on the map.” He felt a twinge of guilt for not disclosing who the project was for, given the foul things Pendrake had said about Seraphina. He hoped she wouldn’t ask.
“Who is Mayhew?” she asked instead.
He could have sworn they’d already discussed this. Had she forgotten? “My brother-in-law. James. He runs the other side of the business. The connections and charm and whatnot. Proper gentleman. Unlike myself.”
Seraphina gazed at him. “You seem like a proper gentleman to me.”
“I’m a decent mimic—” he began to explain.
“Except in bed,” she interrupted.
His mouth fell open. “Oh. I—”
Fuck. What had he done? Was that the reason for her strange, edgy mood? Had he been too aggressive the previous evening, misjudged her appetite for such games, and—
“That was a compliment, Adam,” she whispered.
He let out a breath. He did not know what to say.
Her lower lip went out. “Oh, poor dear. I didn’t mean to imply you were anything other than exactly what I wanted.” She got up, stretched up her arms in a manner that could only be described as erotic, and walked over to him.
He looked up at her, feeling rather vulnerable. He wanted her affection, after all this tension. He craved it.
But her mood was making him decidedly nervous.
“Have I done something to upset you?” he asked. “I hoped to please you.”
“Oh, Adam,” she sighed, a sad smile on her face. “I know.” She held out her hand. “Come upstairs and I will show you just how much you do.”
He took her hand and kissed it. “Another night. You’re in your cups.”
She laughed wryly. “I’m afraid you will struggle to find a night when I am not in my cups, Mr. Anderson.”
He frowned at her. This assertion did not strike him as the least bit humorous.
Seeing that he was not amused, she stood up straighter. “Just a little joke, Adam. I’m not fuddled. Just a bit tipsy. And do you know what I like to do when I’m a bit tipsy?” She fluttered her eyelashes at him and smiled.
“What?” he asked.
“Fuck,” she said, with an air of mock gravity.
“I see,” he said.
She inclined her head at him, desire glowing in her eyes. “You don’t want to?”
He did want to, damn him.
He knew he shouldn’t, but the night air was soft and her gown clung to her in such a way that he could tell she was not wearing stays beneath it and he was, to use his sister’s word, lonely.
Always lonely.
“It’s not that. I don’t want you to wake up in the morning and reconsider when it’s too late.”
She put her fingers in his hair, and began to rub his head lightly, brushing up the strands, grazing his scalp very delicately with the tips of her nails. “I won’t reconsider. My attraction to you is not confined to a bottle of wine. I’ve been thinking about this all night.”
He closed his eyes. “Me, too, Sera.”
He pulled her toward him, opening his thighs so she could stand inside his legs, and hooked his feet around the backs of hers. He let his arms droop around her waist.
“I want you,” she whispered. “Come upstairs or I shall have to throw you over the balustrade and ravish you.”
“I’m the one who will be doing the ravishing tonight, lass.”
“Then I hope you will get on with it.”