Without thinking, she turned her face and bit down on his finger.

He hissed and pulled his hand back, shaking it. She held her breath, waiting, certain he would strike her. Certain he would turn the savagery she had witnessed in him on her.

Instead, he merely glared at her, his glittering gaze furious. And something else. Something that made her belly fill with dancing butterflies.

She thrust out her chin. “Remove yourself from me!”

The driver shouted down. “Eh, we going anywhere or you just going to shag the wench in there, guv’nor? Whatever yer business, I need coin for time in my hack!”

“If you know what’s good for you, you won’t come back to St. Giles. A pretty bit of muslin like you, with that saucy mouth …” He shook his head, frowning. “You’ll only meet with trouble. Run into the sort of man you so gallantly saved from my fists this day.”

“How considerate,” she sneered, certain she would never come face-to-face with a greater threat to her person than he. “I thank you kindly for the advice.”

He rose up, hovering, looming within the narrow carriage door, overfilling it, blocking out all light. His eyes gleamed from within his shadowed features. She loathed that she couldn’t make herself move, that she lay on the floor of the carriage like a quivering mouse.

“Just do as I say. If you know what’s good for you, stay out of St. Giles.”

All her wrath bubbled to the surface at his terse command. How dare he speak to her like she was his to command? Words she’d never spoken before, dared not think—except perhaps when she was enduring one of Master Brocklehurst’s unjustified beatings—rose on her lips. “Go to hell.”

For a moment he did not move. Did not speak. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “Perhaps the lady isn’t such a lady, after all.” She felt his gaze then, raking her, traveling over her with familiar insolence. “But then I don’t find that such a surprise.”

Sputtering, she clambered to the carriage seat.

“You beast!”

His laughter scraped the air, dragged across her stinging nerves. “Never fear. I’m certain I shall find my way to those fiery pits someday. Just do me a favor, sweetheart, and don’t wish me there before my time. And in case you didn’t notice”—he waved a hand about them and her gaze drifted to an ugly lodging house with broken, gaping windows. Stained rags were stuffed into the cracks in a weak attempt to ward off the cold—”this is fairly close to hell.”

He vanished from the hack then, his laughter receding, a drifting curl of sound, strangely provocative, winding itself around her where she shivered on the stiff squabs.

A sound, she would later learn, that would follow her to bed that night and haunt her dreams.

Chapter 5

Ash Courtland strode down the streets that stank of rot and acrid smoke from the nearby factory. The odor was as familiar to him as his own shape and form, and yet he smelled only the chit he left behind. The whiff of honey lingered in his nostrils.

Stepping over a gutter, he cursed low beneath his breath. He shouldn’t have let her go, he realized with an uncustomary pang of regret. He shook his head at the irrational thought. She was not a puppy one discovered on the streets, to be kept and coddled.

Still, he could not shake the feeling that he left something behind as he strode along the uneven sidewalk. Rarely had he met a female to stand toe to toe to him. She brought out the primitive in him—perhaps the chief reason he let her go. His primitive, savage nature was a thing of the past. He was a man of property now. Wealth. A respected businessman.

He and his partner owned two of London’s most popular gaming hells. Not to mention a mine in Wales and a factory in the north, the latter two only acquired at his insistence. Jack would just as soon have kept their business to gaming. His partner did little these days aside of letting Ash run affairs and increase their wealth, something at which he was proving vastly superior. Jack’s lack of involvement didn’t trouble him. Without the older man taking him under his wing, Ash would never have gotten off the streets.

After all he had accomplished, Ash didn’t need a female hanging about who looked at him as if he were still the lowest of street vermin—who, in fact made him behave that way.

He’d come far from the boy that skulked in the shadows committing all manner of vice and crime in order to survive. He possessed wealth and power that most men never knew. The only thing lacking was gentility, breeding. He vowed to have that, too. With a grimace, he acknowledged that snatching a female off the streets and mauling her in a hack like a caveman of old did not serve to that end. And yet those whiskey-hued eyes burned an imprint on his mind.

He sent a lingering glance over his shoulder, as if he would still find the hack sitting there. Feeling a stab of regret yet again, he cursed himself. So she was a pretty piece, with her black hair and flashing eyes. Pretty women were no rarity, he reminded himself. Beautiful women were common enough within the walls of his gaming hells. One interfering, hot-tempered virago didn’t bear notice.

Go to hell.

He laughed. Again. Those ugly words had sounded absurd in her soft, cultured voice. He’d bet that she’d never uttered them before.

But the sound of that voice, whispering a much different variety of words, words that enticed with naughty, wicked suggestions, filled his imagination.

A sound, he would later learn, that would follow him to bed that night and haunt his dreams.

The grand façade of Hellfire appeared ahead, a porticoed palace amid the squalid dwellings. A steady stream of people passed through the grand double doors even at this time of day. Vowing to think of her no more and put his mind to more important matters of business, he entered the hell. The whirring of roulette wheels filled his ears as he stepped within the marble-floored interior. This, he mused, was all he needed. All he had left in the world.

“Miss Laurent! What a lovely surprise. Dear me, how long has it been?”

Lord Sommers swept inside the salon with a grace borne from years of aristocratic upbringing. His grandmother—may she rest in peace—had been a dowager marchioness and the most exalted patient Marguerite had ever served.

“Lord Sommers,” she greeted.

He proved every inch of his breeding as he politely bowed before her. Not even in the deep brown of his gaze did he betray the awkwardness of their last meeting, that uncomfortable encounter when he dropped to bended knee and begged her to become his paramour. Indeed not. To stare into his eyes, one would never recognize what must be his undoubted surprise at finding the woman who so coolly rebuffed his advances and declined his proposition calling upon him in his drawing room.

Marguerite assessed him, trying to judge whether he could be the fine specimen Madame Foster described. His jacket required no padding. He was fit and fair of face, but possessed a somewhat weak chin and thinning hair.

The seer’s affected accents rolled through her head. A fine specimen, to be sure, mad over you. Yes, you’ll have a grand time. Romance, adventure, and marriage. You will definitely wed.

A frisson of alarm coursed through her, which she quickly dismissed. Certainly that fellow could not be Lord Roger Sommers. The nobleman would never offer marriage to the likes of her—even if he did once upon a time harbor a tendre for her. She was safe on that score. He could not be the one. She drew a deep, relieved breath, filling her lungs. Already she was averting the fate that would lead to her death … according to Madame Foster, at any rate.

As she surveyed him, an image of the brute from St. Giles rose in her mind. Now he had been a fine specimen. She gave herself a swift mental kick. Roger scarcely—thankfully—did not look the sort capable of beating a man senseless in the streets, deservedly or not. Nor would he manhandle a woman and accuse her of enjoying it, wanting it. He wasn’t that coarse, that brutish … that raw.

She pressed her fingers to her throat, noting the jumpy thread to her pulse there. Her body betrayed her, tightening at the core with the memory of being in the close confines of the hack with that scoundrel.

Shaking all thoughts of the stranger free of her thoughts, she answered Roger’s original question with more bluntness than intended. “We’ve not seen each other since you visited my room in the dead of night a week after your grandmother’s passing and requested that I become your mistress …” She paused to lick her lips, adding a courtesy: “My lord.”

The young man’s face burned brightly at her candid speech. He tugged at his cravat. “Ah, yes. I recall now …”

It had been over a year. She’d found the situation entirely embarrassing. Unprecedented for her. Such occurrences had been commonplace for Fallon. With her striking presence, men flocked to her like bees to the honey pot. But not Marguerite. She did not inspire those types of urges in the opposite sex. At least she had believed so until Lord Sommers.

His infatuation and subsequent proposition had taken her unawares. She had not even shared the details with Fallon and Evie, simply wishing to put the incident from her mind.

“As it turns out, I’ve reconsidered your offer and should like to accept, if you’re still agreeable to an arrangement.” Chin held high, she marveled that injecting passion into her life should sound like such a negotiation. So officious and formal. Was this how it was usually done?

“Er.” The viscount blinked owlishly and looked her up and down. “Can you be serious, Miss Laurent? I felt certain I had offended you with my proposition.”

She had been offended at the time. Naturally. But that Marguerite seemed quite different from who she was now. The new Marguerite lived each day as if it might be her last.

She nodded briskly. “I am quite serious, my lord.”

“I … see.” Not the ardent response she had been anticipating.

“Have I changed so much then?” She spread her hands out before her, glancing down as if she might see something offensive. “Am I no longer appealing to you?”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that.” He tugged at his cravat again and swept her a look of longing that made her feel once again certain of herself. “I’ve always had a penchant for dark-haired females. Sweet, biddable, and mild-mannered girls such as yourself … You quite fit my tastes.” He frowned, and she shoved aside the sensation that he was describing his preferences of horseflesh.

She stared down at her hands, unliking the notion. His next words snapped her attention back to him.

“Forgive me for saying, but I can’t seem to recall you being this forthright.”

“Well, yes, on that score, I have changed.” Not that she would have termed herself as mild-mannered before, but she would not dispute the point. If that’s what he thought of her, then let him think it. “I’ve simply decided to make certain things happen in my life before—” She caught herself. The word die had almost slipped past.

“Before?” he prompted.

She wet her lips and adjusted herself on the settee. “Before I miss any opportunities.”

He nodded, apparently satisfied with her vague reply. “I see. Well, I am quite taken with you. That has not changed.” His gaze skimmed her. “Should we have a contract drawn up? I’ve a nice house in Daventry Square. Modest but quite above the cut.”

She shook her head. “No. That won’t do.”

He blinked. “No?”

“I have requirements, my lord, and should you agree, I’ll take you at your word. No contract necessary.” She would rather not leave a written record of her moral descent. If she lived out the year—when—she would not continue on as a rich man’s mistress. Marguerite would prefer the world know nothing of her adventure. The life of a paramour had been her mother’s life-long vocation. Not hers. No, the handsome lord would do for her purposes for a while. For now.