“How is that?” Had he moved closer? Or was it the darkness playing tricks? “From what you’ve said, it sounds like your duke is won. What was it you said? He dances like a dream? What more would you like?”

“You didn’t promise me a duke,” she insisted.

“That is precisely what I promised you,” he said as he climbed several rungs of the ladder and pulled the door to the hold closed behind them, throwing them into darkness.

She blinked. “Is it necessary to shut us in?”

“The door stays closed at all times. It prevents melt, and the curiosity of anyone who might be interested in what we do inside the warehouse.”

“No, you promised me a moth,” she said, not knowing where the bravery came from. Not caring. “You promised me singed wings and passion.”

His eyes glittered with his attention. “And?”

“The duke is under no risk of bursting into flames, you see,” she replied. “And I thought it only right that I inform you that if you are not careful, you are at risk of finding yourself in my debt.”

“Hmm,” he said, as though she’d made an important business point. “And how do you suggest I change that?”

“It’s quite simple,” she whispered. He was closer. Or maybe it was that she wanted him closer. “You must teach me to lure him.”

“To lure him.”

She took a deep breath, his warmth around her, tobacco flower and juniper drugging her with power. With desire. “Precisely. I should like you to teach me to make him want me. Beyond reason.”






Chapter Fifteen

The idea that any human male would not want Felicity Faircloth beyond reason surpassed understanding. Not that Devil intended to tell her that.

It was important to note, however, that when the thought crashed around him in the dark hold beneath the Bareknuckle Bastards’ Covent Garden warehouse, Devil did not count himself in that particular group of human males.

Obviously, he had plenty of reason when it came to Felicity Faircloth. He wasn’t near beyond it. Not even when she stood mere inches from him, wearing his coat, and speaking of burning men to cinders.

He was immune to the lady’s charms.

Remember the plan. The words echoed through him as his hands itched for her, fingers flexing, wanting nothing more than to reach for the lapels of his coat and pull her to him, close enough to touch, until she couldn’t remember the Duke of Marwick’s name, let alone the way the man danced.

Like a dream, my ass.

He cleared his throat at the thought. “You want a love match. With Marwick.” He scoffed. “You’re too old and too wise for simpering, Felicity Faircloth.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t say anything about a love match; I want him to want me. I want passion.”

It should be illegal for a woman like Felicity Faircloth to say the word passion. It conjured images of wide expanses of skin and beautiful, mahogany locks across white sheets. It made a man wonder how she would arch her back to his touch, how she might ask for it. How she might direct it. How her hand would feel on his, moving his fingers to the precise location she wanted them. How her fingers would feel against his scalp as she moved his mouth to the precise location she wanted it.

Thank God they were standing fifteen feet from a hold full of ice.

In fact . . . “This way.” He raised the lantern and moved down the long, dark corridor, toward the ice hold, forgetting, for the first time, ever, that he didn’t care for the dark. Grateful for the distraction, he spoke as they walked. “You wish for passion.”

Remember the plan.

“I do.”

“From Marwick.”

“He is my future husband, is he not?”

“It’s only a matter of time,” he said, knowing he should be more committed to the endeavor, considering that Ewan and Felicity had to be engaged before Devil could steal her away from the engagement. The engagement was part of the plan. A part of Ewan’s lesson. Of course Devil wanted it.

“He asked me last night.”

He just hadn’t wanted it so quickly, it seemed.

He turned to her. “He asked you to do what?”

Her hair glittered copper in the candlelight as she smiled up at him. “To marry him. It was really quite simple. He introduced himself, told me he was happy to marry me. That he was in the market for a wife, and I had . . . how did he put it? Oh, it was terribly romantic.” Devil’s teeth clenched as she searched for the words and then found them, dry as sand. “Oh, yes. I had turned up just at the right time.”

Good Lord. Ewan had never been a brilliant wordsmith, but that was particularly bad. And proof that the duke, too, had a plan. Which meant that perhaps Felicity Faircloth’s request was not such a terrible idea after all. “Terribly romantic, indeed,” he said.

She shrugged. “But he is very handsome and dances like a dream, as I said.”

It didn’t seem possible that she was teasing him. How could she possibly know how the words would grate? “And that is a thing all women look for in their husbands.”

She grinned. “However did you know?”

She was teasing him. She was teasing him, and he liked it. And he shouldn’t. “You want the man mad for you.”

“Well, I remain unconvinced that he is not mad in general, but yes,” she said. “Doesn’t every wife want that from her husband?”

“Not in my experience, no.”

“Do you have a great deal of experience with wives?”

He ignored the question. “You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he said, turning back down the corridor.

She followed him. “What does that mean?”

“Only that passion isn’t a thing one toys with—once the wings are singed, the moth is yours to deal with.”

“As the moth shall be my husband, I imagine I will have to deal with him anyway.”

But he won’t be your husband. Devil resisted the urge to say it. Resisted, too, the emotion clawing at him as he thought the words. The guilt.

“You promised me, Devil,” she said softly. “You made me a deal. You said you’d make me flame.”

He didn’t have to do anything to turn her to flame. She burned too brightly already.

They reached the exterior door to the hold, and he crouched low, placing the lantern on the ground as he reached for the ring of keys. She came to his side, reaching out for the row of locks, her fingers tracing over one of them as though she could pick it by touch alone. And with the way she’d tackled the Chubb earlier, he half believed she could.

Cold seeped through the steel door, and he hunched his shoulders, sliding the key into the first lock. “Why do you lockpick?”

“Is that relevant?”

He threw her a sidelong look. “I’m sure you can see how it would be of interest.”

She watched as he worked the second lock. “The world is full of doors.” Lord knew that was true. “I like being able to open my own doors.”

“And what do you know of locked doors, Felicity Faircloth?”

“I wish you would stop doing that,” she said. “Treating me as though I have never wanted for anything in my life. As though it has all been mine for the taking.”

“Hasn’t it been?”

“None of the important bits, no. Not love. Not . . . friendship. Barely family.”

“You’re better off without those friends.”

“Are you offering to be a new one?”

Yes.

“No.”

She huffed a little laugh, reaching to take one of the padlocks from the door as he continued his work. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her turning it over and over in her hand. “I pick locks because I can. Because there are very few things in the world I can control, and locks are something I am good at. They are a barrier I can clear. And a secret I can know. And in the end, they bend to my will and . . .” She shrugged. “I like that.”

He could imagine bending to her will. He shouldn’t imagine it. But he could. He opened the first, heavy door, frigid air washing over them as the second door came into view. He set to work on the next row of locks. “It’s not the kind of skill one expects a woman to have.”

“It’s exactly the kind of skill we should have. Our whole world is built by men. For them. And we’re simply here for decoration, brought in at the end of everything important. Well, I grow tired of ends. Locks are beginnings.”

He turned to look at her, consumed with a desire to give her infinite beginnings.

She kept talking, seemingly mesmerized by his keys as he worked. “The point is, I understand what it is to want to be on the other side of the door. I understand what it is to know that the room isn’t mine for the taking. So many doors are closed to all but a fraction of us.” He opened the last lock, and she finished, softly, “Why should others be the ones to decide which doors are for me?”

The question, so honest, so forthright, made him want to break down every door she came to from now until the end of time.

Devil settled on the one in front of them, pushing it open to reveal the ice hold. A wall of cold greeted them, and beyond it, darkness. Unease thundered through him—resistance to the darkness, an all too familiar urge to run.

Felicity Faircloth had no such urge. She stepped right into the room, wrapping her arms about her. “So, ice it is.”

He followed her, holding the lantern high, even as the cavernous space swallowed the light. “You still did not believe me?”