“Oh, but this is Raven,” Duncan said with an awed elongation of syllables as if he were describing a mythological god. “He’s never asked me for anything before. I’d love to see his flat and I’m sure it won’t take but a minute. Please, Jane? Just this once? I won’t pester you for anything ever, ever again. I promise.”
She bit down on her bottom lip, worrying the soft tissue between her teeth. Her gaze strayed to the cut on the man’s cheek, then to the tear in his sleeve. And was that . . . blood saturating the fabric?
“Very well,” she said on a tight breath of guilt.
Perhaps the least she could do was to set him back to rights.
But when he gave her cousin the address in Covent Garden then climbed inside the abruptly close confines of the carriage, she felt it necessary to add, “Duncan will come to my defense if I emit the barest squeak of distress. I won’t be held responsible for what he does to you.”
The man she knew only as Raven eased back against the squabs across from her and folded his arms over his chest. “But who will protect me from you?”
Chapter 4
Jane sat stiffly on the cushioned bench as the carriage trundled along the street toward Raven’s dwelling. In all the hours she’d spent formulating a plan to enter the brothel and study the inhabitants, she’d never once fathomed the possibility of leaving with a scoundrel in tow. And certainly not one so grumpy.
It wasn’t her fault that he was pink. Well, not entirely. “Just so we’re clear, I never asked for your assistance.”
“And I never asked you to ruin my life,” he hissed back and she hated that his voice was still so dratted appealing.
“If the sum of your existence revolves around admittance to a brothel, then you have far more to worry about than the color of your skin. In fact, I recently read a medical journal on a certain . . . ailment, shall we say . . . which some men have contracted when visiting houses of ill repute.”
Within the slitted confines of her lace mask, she slid a purposeful glance down his form to the shadowed juncture she’d read about in the journal.
“I don’t have the pox,” he growled, shifting beneath her scrutiny. “I use French letters.”
Taking up her ledger once more, Jane sat forward with interest. She wished the carriage lanterns were brighter. If nothing else, she would use this unexpected opportunity to compile more research.
“I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve read about them. How do they operate, precisely? Is it a difficult contraption to manage?” She licked the tip of her pencil then gestured to the general area. “And do you have one on your person this instant?”
“No, I’m not wearing one now. That isn’t how it works.”
The scientist within her was inordinately disappointed. She slumped back and tucked the ledger away. “I suppose that ought to be a relief. After all, I shouldn’t want to share a carriage with a man who was merely waiting for the next opportunity.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. I prefer my women more worldly. Not little debutantes who go places they don’t belong.”
Jane knew she was plain. And yet . . . she’d never had it confirmed so blatantly by a stranger before. In the very least, he might have had the decency to imagine her a prostitute the way the other man had done.
“You must be exceedingly familiar with all the women who work in that establishment to know instantly that I wasn’t one of them,” she said, trying to keep the slightly bruised portion of her ego from sounding too waspish.
The amused rumble in his throat told her that she’d failed. The blackguard didn’t even bother to confirm or deny her suspicion, which left her without a further understanding of his species.
“So tell me,” he began with a sharp nod and a growling edge to his voice, “what was the other thing that gave me away, aside from my damnable button?”
It likely shouldn’t please her so much to know that her comment had irritated him.
But it did.
She felt a grin tug at the corner of her mouth. “Frankly, I’m surprised that a man your age isn’t more self-aware. I do not know how long you’ve kept to your disguise, but I saw through it the minute I clapped eyes on you.”
Ha. Let him stew on that, she thought, crossing her arms.
Without a word, he stared at her with steady intensity as if fully prepared to either wait for her to divulge the rest, or to bore through her skull, sift through the contents and glean the information for himself.
And, drat it all, she couldn’t leave it alone. It wasn’t in her nature to leave a question unanswered.
“Very well,” she said, resigned. “You possess a certain . . . feral quality that is never seen in a ballroom or at a dinner party. You prowl rather than walk as if you’ve just emerged from a den and are in search of your next meal.”
“And I’d be feasting now if it weren’t for you.”
A weary sigh faded from her lungs. “Are we to return to this topic again and again? I shudder to think what the world would be like if all men were as singularly focused on sexual congress as you are. All my research this evening on the differences between gentlemen and scoundrels would be for naught.”
“So that’s what you were up to with all your note taking.”
She gave a nod that may or may not have been rather smug. “My friends and I are writing a book to aid future generations of our sex.”
“Smart as all that, are you?” His brows flicked upward and his mouth slanted in unmistakable derision.
She didn’t answer.
“Well, professor, I hate to be the one to shatter your illusions but, stripped of all society’s trappings, men are all the same.”
Of course, he made his speech without a modicum of remorse for his attempt to shatter her illusions. Yet it was his cool smirk in the lantern light that tweaked her ire.
“All alike? No, indeed,” she said. “The majority of men aren’t quite so pink, I’m sure.”
He skewered her with a steely glower. Then, in one smooth motion, he moved to the edge of his seat, reached out and lifted her hood in place before she could even gasp at his sudden nearness.
Her lips parted all the same. The scent of him—some enthralling combination of leather and raw earth—invaded her olfactory sense. And those pale irises were impossibly close. So close, it seemed as if she were peering into the depths of a fathomless lake that had frozen into one solid block of ice.
“Word of warning, Jane. It isn’t wise to anger a hungry animal when you’re about to step into his cave.”
In that moment, she realized the carriage had stopped. She peered out the window toward the redbrick facade of a ramshackle terrace in Covent Garden.
Newton’s apple, a scoundrel’s flat! She most definitely hadn’t planned for this.
* * *
Raven crossed the threshold and closed the door, effectively shutting out the light from the streetlamps and immersing them in blackness. He noticed that the soles of Jane’s shoes shifted nervously on the hardwood floor.
Good. She deserved to feel uneasy and uncertain after all the trouble she’d caused him.
“And I thought you were merely goading me when you mentioned a cave,” she said under her breath, her sardonic tone extracting a reluctant rise of amusement within him.