Chapter 22

Fast rang for a servant and once the food had been cleared away, he gestured to the decanters. “Would you care for something to drink? I’m sorry; I should have asked the maid to bring the tea tray. I will ring for one if you—”

“I would have some of that whiskey you gave me before,” Lorelei said, primly smoothing the skirts of her plain gray gown.

Fast wrenched his gaze from her—something that was hard to do even for the few seconds it took to pour the drinks. Christ but he had missed her! It had been torture to stay away.

Even so, you should have stayed away. Instead of returning to The King’s Purse—and the temptation of her—you should have gone to stay at Severn House.

Probably. Already his mind was too curious about those naughty garters he knew held up her prim white stockings.

It isn’t too late…you can still do the decent thing.

He could. And he would.

Liar. You have no intention of going anywhere other than to bed with the woman who has been dominating your thoughts for days. You are going to draw her deeper into your web even knowing that you very well might kill a man next week and have to run for the rest of your life…

Fast scowled at the unwanted voice and shoved the stopper into the decanter with unnecessary before turning around.

“Thank you,” she said when he gave her the whiskey.

Once this conversation was over, he would bid her a firm goodnight and go to Berkeley Square.

He would just have this one drink and then leave.

He lowered himself into the chair opposite her and lifted his glass. “Here is to both of us getting what we want, Lorelei.”

“I can drink to that.”

Fast found the way she pursed her lips after taking a tiny sip enchanting.

That was another thought he quickly thrust away.

He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair; the strain of spending the last week in close proximity with Bevil Norman and not killing him had worn him to a nub.

“You look tired, my lord.”

“My lord? Are we back to that again? Say my name if you want my story.”

Her pale cheeks tinged a delicate pink. “You look tired, Stand Fast. ”

It tickled him to hear his full, ridiculous name on her prim lips. “I am fine,” he assured her.

She cleared her throat. “So, you were saying…”

“Who told you the children were Percy’s and not mine—and I don’t mean Parker’s anonymous source, I mean who confirmed it for you?”

She took a sip of whiskey, her gaze evasive. “I don’t want to get my source in trouble. She only told me because I gave her my word that I wouldn’t write about it.”

“You seem to have done a great deal of that recently.”

She gave a brief, wry laugh. “Yes, I have. I’m not much of a journalist.” Before Fast could argue with her on that subject, she said, “Tell me why you have claimed them as yours.”

Fast stretched out his legs and absently examined the tips of his Hessians, forcing his thoughts back more than two decades to the first time his brother put a child in one of his lovers, when Percy had been only seventeen.

“You have to know what growing up in our family was like to understand why I did what I did. The demands that were piled on Percy from the moment of his birth were crushing. My grandfather—and my mother to a certain degree—expected Percy to make up for my father’s dissipated, wastrel ways. It was to be my brother’s job to not only rescue the family name from the trampling it had endured beneath my father’s boots, but Percy was also supposed to sacrifice himself—his life— on the altar of matrimony to revive the family coffers.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Hell, even my father thought it was Percy’s duty to clean up the mess he’d made.”

“I understand your father had several illegitimate children of his own.”

“Several?” He snorted. “More like a dozen. My father was the very definition of a charming rake. And he was charming—as long as you didn’t have to rely on him for anything. He was a reckless gambler, an inveterate womanizer, a careless steward of the family fortune and reputation, and on and on. To be frank, it is fortunate that my grandfather survived him because the marquessate would not have survived too much more of my father.”

Fast stared at the whiskey in his glass and considered his next words. When he looked up, he saw she was not only patiently waiting, but the expression on her face was one of compassion. She was listening to him not as a journalist, but as a human being. That kindness decided him. “Tell me, do you know how my mother died?”

“I don’t know much about either of your parents.”

“It was the pox.”

She swallowed. “Oh.”

“My father—happy-go-lucky-philanderer that he was—managed to pass the disease along to her but never suffered any ill effects from it himself.” He threw back the rest of his drink, set down the glass with a thump , and said, “You’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with my brother’s by-blows?”

“I’m in no hurry, Fast.”

He sighed and resumed his story, “From a young age Percy was always a bit fragile. If there was an influenza in the neighborhood, he would catch it. And his afflictions were always more severe. When he was seventeen, he developed scarlatina and we thought he was going to die.” Fast still felt an anxious clenching in his belly at the memory—even though it was more than twenty years ago, and his twin was long dead.

“He recovered but he was bedridden for months. He was never robust afterward and the doctors said his heart had been damaged by the long illness. They said he would have a longer life if he lived more carefully.” He snorted. “I’m sure you can imagine how that advice was received by a seventeen-year-old man who carried the expectations of his entire family on his shoulders. Rather than comply with the advice, he rebelled. He was determined to live life to the fullest. I know it’s no excuse for his behavior, but—to be fair to Percy—he never wanted me to assume any of the responsibility for his offspring; I was the one who insisted. By the time the first child was born I had already been thrown out of Eton and refused to go to university. Instead, I was embracing a life of reckless hedonism and getting up to far more trouble than Percy ever would. I was running headlong into disaster as my father had done before me. I refused to listen to anyone and had a head like a brick”—he smiled when she laughed— “that’s not an exaggeration. I was like a wild animal, out of control and heedless of any attempts to rein in my behavior.”

He raised his empty glass. “Would you like another?”

She shook her head.

Once he’d refilled his drink he dropped into his chair with a sigh. “Unlike me, Percy rarely gambled, never outspent his allowance, didn’t engage in public—and scandalous—wagers, and obeyed our grandfather like a good grandson should. The only arena in which he could not seem to exercise any restraint was when it came to women.”

Fast sipped his whiskey, allowing thoughts of his twin to take possession of his mind, not something he permitted very often as it always left him feeling gutted and dispirited.

“My brother loved women, and they loved him right back.” He smiled wryly. “He was the handsome one.”

“Oh,” she said, clearly nonplussed. “I thought you were identical.”

He chuckled. “I was jesting; we were identical, although after he was ill it was easy to tell us apart. When I say he was the handsome one, I mean that he had a sweetness—a gentleness—about him that attracted people.”

He swirled the amber liquid in the glass, his eyes on the past. “Women were mad for him, and because my grandfather kept him close—denying him a university education to keep him swaddled in cotton wool at home—the women he met were those who lived on the family estates.” Fast looked up and met her gaze. “I can see the disapproval in your eyes.”

“It’s not for me to approve or disapprove,” she said, but didn’t deny his accusation. “But I still don’t see why you thought you should take the blame?”

“At first, I did it for our mother. She’d had such a horrid time with my father and her greatest fear was that we’d both turn out to be just like him. Percy was her favorite—and my grandfather’s as well—and it would have killed her to know he’d followed in our father’s footsteps. She was very ill for most of our childhood and died when we were barely sixteen. By that time my reputation as a hell-born babe was fixed and it was just easier to go on as I’d begun.”

“You mean with you taking all the blame because you were the King of the Rakes,” she said, the irony in her voice telling Fast that she had gone from thinking him a complete villain to shifting a large part of the blame to his dead brother.

“Believe me, Lorelei, while I did not father any children, I committed plenty of other sins to justify my reputation.”

She pursed her lips, as if she were holding something in.

“What is it?”

“I’m starting to question your King of the Rakes facade entirely. For days I’ve spoken to the women who work here. I’ve heard horrific things—stories of degradation, exploitation, and tragedy. But not once have you figured into any of those stories as anything other than a port in a storm. In fact, you most often feature as a savior.”

“Keep in mind they are my employees, so they have to say that, or I might decide to sack them.”

“That’s a lie, too. It took me a good deal of time and effort, but I finally got the truth out of Catherine Marlowe. She started off insisting you were the owner here. Only when the holes in her story began to grow did she finally confess that you signed this business over to her, with an agreement that she share any profits with the other employees, regardless of how humble a position they occupy. All you have ever asked for is that this set of rooms be at your disposal while you do whatever it is that you are doing down here at the docks. Which is not smuggling or anything else illegal as far as I can tell. Just what are you doing?”

“I’m disappointed in Catherine,” he said, ignoring her question. “I asked her to keep our business arrangement confidential. And yet you managed to weasel it out of her.”

“Why do you want people to believe the worst about you?”

“I never said I did.”

“You certainly don’t try to set anyone straight.”

“No, that is true.” Fast knew he shouldn’t encourage that admiring glitter in her gaze, but he had to admit that it was far better than the way she’d looked at him before she knew the truth. “I might not be the villain others believed me to be, but my thoughts about you—and the things I’d like to do to you—are less than sterling.”

The ivory column of her throat flexed as she swallowed hard. And then swallowed again. “You mean things like the night before you left?” she asked, her voice amusingly squeaky.

“That was only the beginning of what I want to do to you.”

Her lips parted and Fast could hear the hitch in her breathing even from where he sat.

“Is Lady Mansfield your lover?”

“If you’re asking me whether I engaged in sexual relations with her while I was at her house party, the answer is no. Nor did I visit anyone else’s room. The only woman I want is you, Lorelei.”

***

Lori knew it was only in her mind, but it suddenly felt as though the temperature in the room had soared.

Fast sighed and set down his unfinished glass of whiskey. “I probably should have kept that to myself, but it’s time I share a few truths. I am a hypocrite, Lorelei. I say I’m keeping you here for your safety—which is true—but I’m also doing it to satisfy my own pleasure. I’m falling in love with you, darling.” He smiled at the startled noise she made. “It surprised the hell out of me, too—not because you aren’t exceedingly loveable, but because I wasn’t sure I had it in me to feel this way. The last time I felt anything even remotely similar for a woman was more than sixteen years ago.”

“Do you mean the Earl of Moreland’s wife?” she asked, feeling a twinge of jealousy for at least the third time that night, this time for a dead woman.

He shook his head, an expression of amused exasperation on his face. “You’ve found out everything about me, haven’t you?” Before she could deny it, he asked, “Have you ever been in love, Lorelei?”

“No.”

He laughed. “At least you gave the question some thought before answering.”

“I can answer quickly because I’ve given it thought.” A great deal too much thought, she might have told him. What she’d felt for Dorian had been a desire to belong—and giving her body to him had been the key to belonging. Of course she had believed it was love at the time. It was easy to sneer at her behavior in hindsight, but she’d been seventeen and lonely.

“It’s selfish of me, but I’m glad to hear there had been nobody else,” Fast said, pulling her thoughts from the past.

Lori was glad she’d never felt genuine love for Dorian. It would have made what he did to her even more heinous.

As for what she felt for Fast? Well, that was far more complex. Part of her wanted to embrace the emotions roiling inside her—to revel in the sensuality and excitement of being wanted by such a man.

But a larger part of her couldn’t forget the gulf between them. Especially since he’d been the one to mention the nature of their relationship the last time they’d been together. He might love her, but Lorelei was not the sort of woman an heir to a marquessate would marry.

Not that she wanted to marry, of course.

Yes, keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day, you will actually believe it.

Well, regardless of what she wanted, Fast would not marry her. Even if he could overlook her lack of breeding and connections, he would change his mind quickly enough when he learned the truth about Dorain.

“I’ve been having a lot of selfish thoughts when it comes to you,” he said, once again pulling her from her uncomfortable musing.

“Selfish how?”

Fast’s pale eyes flickered over Lori’s body in a way that only added to the heat in the room, her skin prickling and the bodice of her favorite day dress suddenly tight and uncomfortable.

He held out a hand. “Come here, Lorelei.”

Lori wrenched her gaze from his icy blue eyes and looked at his hand. If she took it, she suspected there would be no turning back. Not because he would force anything on her, but because she wouldn’t want to let go of him.

Until he moves on to some other woman, one who is suitable to be his wife, the relentless voice in her head reminded her.

Yes, until then. I can be his lover until he marries…

She pushed away the painful thought even as she reached out and his warm fingers engulfed her much smaller hand.

“Your hand is shaking,” he said, rubbing his thumb lightly over the thin skin on the back of her hand. “Are you nervous?”

“I’m not shaking,” she lied.

Thankfully, he did not laugh or scoff.

“Come and sit.” His booted feet slid apart, and he patted his thigh with his free hand.

Lori’s emotions warred with each other, the desire to crawl into his lap and take what he was offering vying with the urge to protect her heart and run as far and as fast as she could go. He’d just told her that he loved her; either he was manipulating her for some reason—and she didn’t believe that was the case—or he genuinely cared for her. Was wanting him so very bad? He was an intoxicating blending of danger and mystery and allure, like those places on ancient maps that depicted the frightening unknown: here be monsters .

How could a woman possibly say no ?

She stood and went to him, lowering herself on shaking legs. His thigh was hard and warm beneath the thin muslin of her gown.

His arm slid around her, and he pulled her close. Her leg rubbed against his groin, and she jolted when she realized what she had inadvertently grazed. He was aroused. Very aroused.

“ Shh, it’s all right.” He stroked her lightly, the same way one might gentle a nervous horse.

What are you doing? He might care for you, but he will leave you. You will be crushed far worse than you were with Dorian because this time you—

“Would you like to go back to your room, sweetheart?” he murmured, his breath hot on her shoulder.

It would certainly be safer there.

He cupped her jaw, turning her face until she was forced to look down at him. Viewing him from the slightly raised angle threw shadows across the chiseled planes of his face, making him look like a stranger for a moment. But then he was a stranger, wasn’t he? They hardly knew anything about each other—at least nothing that wasn’t common knowledge.

And yet…for some reason he didn’t seem like a stranger. How odd; when had that happened? When had Fast turned from a notorious rake into somebody Lori didn’t just respect, but also liked a great deal?

“Such serious thoughts,” he murmured, smiling. His thick black lashes were a striking contrast to the pale crystalline blue of his eyes, and she could see the beginning of his night beard prickling his tanned skin.

“I want to make love to you, Lorelei.”

Her lips parted and he gently guided her face to his and lightly kissed her, his lips and breath warm and soft. “Will you come to bed with me?”