Chapter 5

T he lady fascinated him. And Abaddon wasn’t fascinated by any ladies of the peerage.

There’d certainly been enough of them coming through the doors of his circulating library. Many had come here slumming, eager to land themselves a spot in the bed of the notorious East Londoner who operated this establishment.

Not a single one of them had been like Glain.

She exuded an air that warned a mere mortal from daring to look at or touch her, and damned if that wasn’t a greater lure than the apple Satan had put before Adam.

The young lady was an interesting conundrum—flawless and perfectly in control one minute, and then the next, there’d be a break in composure as she grew visibly impatient, her motions quick as she muttered to herself, before quick as that lapse came, regaining complete control of her temperament, so that where Abaddon watched the lady, wondered if he’d merely imagined that reaction.

“Ridiculous,” she whispered under her breath, and his lips twitched up at the corners.

No, he’d not imagined any of it. “What’s the problem, darling?”

The lady shrieked as the book went flying up and out from her grip before sailing quickly to the floor.

Thwack.

Muttering to himself, Abaddon rushed to retrieve the forlorn copy, all the while glaring at her. “Have a care. Books are precious,” he said, inspecting the leather volume for injury.

“Then you would be well-advised to not go spying on a lady and sneaking up on her when she is perusing titles.”

She’d a point there. He’d sooner turn the keys of his business over to a stranger and return to his days as a thief in the streets than admit as much.

Wordlessly, he handed the book over to now-gloveless fingers.

She snatched the volume and drew it close to her chest.

Abaddon’s stare however, lingered upon her fingers.

In his years in the streets and in this establishment, he’d learned to tell a lot about a person by their hands.

Hers were soft. Lily white.

That display of her privilege should disgust him.

Strangely, it had the opposite effect.

As if she’d been unnerved, the lady dampened her mouth. “Was there something else you wanted?”

He should let her get back on with her search. For some reason, not wanting to leave her just yet.

“What’s so ridiculous?” he asked.

She puzzled her brow.

“You said—”

“I know what I said,” she said, a familiar blush filling her cheeks. “I barely whispered it.”

“Yea, well, I hear all.” His words were not mocking nor teasing. Rather, he spoke God’s truth. A person who lived on the streets either developed heightened senses or perished.

She gave a toss of her head. “If you must know,”—Strangely, he must.—“I was merely thinking about the fact that the only way to determine if a book is one wishes to read is by—”

“Reading it?” he interrupted, dryly.

Glain nodded. “Precisely. But in a case, such as this,” she held her book up and motioned to the area around them. “When one is surrounded by hundreds—”

“Thousands,” he corrected. He was proud of his collection and didn’t want her downplaying its true size.

“Even better, thousands,” she continued. “How is one to ever determine in a timely manner whether a book simply by looking at its title is in fact what a person wishes to read? It seems like a waste of valuable time.”

Her and her peculiar view on time. “That’s the point of it.” He slid closer. “And that’s also the beauty of a circulating library, Glain,” he murmured, reaching a hand out so close to her heart-shaped face he felt the quick inhale and exhale of her breath, a soft, warm sough upon his skin.

Forcing himself to focus on the lesson at hand and not this keen awareness of the beauty before him, Abaddon fetched a random volume and drew it out. “You can collect any number of books, fill your arms with them and set a stack down on a table…and you can forget time, Glain,” he murmured. Close as he was, he appreciated the bold slashes of her high cheekbones. Her dainty, slightly pointed chin that added an air of interestingness to a face. Her face was a perfect model of those ancient Greek sculptors to have immortalized in stone. “You can just lose yourself.”

Hopeless to help himself, he dusted a finger along that prominent cheekbone, and her long, blonde lashes fluttered wildly. “You can just lose yourself in…” He forced his arm back to his side, and the lady’s eyes flew wide. “Whatever books you’ve discovered. And you can also know that when you’re done, there’s thousands more waiting for you. You can return time and time again.”

And he imagined the tableau he spoke of: her visiting this place, and sitting herself down in one of the cosy, well-used, chairs, and burying herself in whatever books she’d collected. He smiled wistfully. All the while she’d be muttering to herself and whispering quietly about her selection, and whatever it was she read on those pages.

“I thank you.” Glain glanced down briefly at the book in her hands. “But some of us don’t have that luxury, Mr. Grimoire.”

She used his surname when she was cross.

“Ah, yes, forgive me. That’s right,” he said, not bothering to keep the slight mockery from his voice. “You’re entirely too busy to idle away inside my morally decayed library.”

Color exploded on her cheeks. “How dare you?”

“Quite easily. I gather, you’re far too busy seeing to important matters like—let me take a guess? Stitching flowers on some needlepoint.” By the way her blush deepened, he was on the mark. “I bet you’re flawless on a pianoforte.”

Her lips went brittle. “And that is a bad thing?”

So, she was.

He smirked. “I’d wager you also sketch and paint a solid bowl of fruit or country landscape.”

Her color deepened, and if possible, her lips went even harder.

“Yes, those endeavors are far more important for you as a proper lady, aren’t they? Tasks that don’t require you to think or challenge you. Where you read all the books hand-picked by your fine governess about topics that don’t really matt—”

“How dare you?” she cried, her chest heaving, taking him aback with the force of the emotion bleeding from her eyes. “At every turn, you continue to judge me. And yet, you know nothing about me. I sketch and paint, but I hate it. I mastered Latin and French and use it only when I talk to myself in my head, because I don’t have the luxury of traveling the world as you, and all men, do.” She took an angry step closer. “And I don’t visit circulating libraries and sit down reading books for hours upon hours about,” she slashed a hand behind her, “books about happily-ever-afters, and love and romance or magic, and do you know why?” Glain didn’t allow him a word edgewise. “Because there is no place for it. There is no magic in this world.”

She was right. As someone who’d both witnessed and committed any number of sins, he could attest firsthand for those truths she spit out. He passed his gaze over her face, touching his stare upon each plane of her spasming features. “I never knew…”

“That a lady could feel oppressed and miserable?” she asked bitterly. “I assure you, we can. For as impossible as your existence likely was, in ways you still have freedom of yourself and your decisions, and in how you carry yourself that is afforded to no women.” She thumped a fist against her breast. “We, on the other hand, are at the mercy of first our fathers, and then, if we’re lucky, our husbands ,” she spat those words in the clearest indication of just what she thought of the wedded state.

Her every word shamed Abaddon as he rightly deserved, but she wasn’t done, and he deserved that, too.

“You’ve identified me as a self-centered, self-absorbed heiress, no doubt? The killjoy of her livelier sister’s happiness.” Grabbing her skirts, she stalked the handful of steps between them, tilted her chin, and glared fiercely up.

God, she was breathtaking in her fury.

“I am protecting my sister, and my brother, in the only ways I’m able. So don’t you dare presume to judge me when you know absolutely nothing of our circumstances.” With that blistering set-down, she turned on a furious huff.

He caught her lightly, gently, by the wrist. “Please,” he said quietly. “Don’t go.”

Glain should go.

He’d given her every reason to leave.

He’d been rude and condescending. Yet, as coldly mocking as he’d been, hurling all the assumptions he’d made about her, at her, how tender and warm his voice was the next instant.

His baritone, a shade too deep, and slightly gravelly, coarse with street-roughened tones, had gone soft in a way she’d not expected this man to ever be soft.

And yet, she remained equally entranced by his hold upon her, impossibly tender and soft from a man whose fingertips and palms proved so large and callused.

She stood there, stiffly, warring with herself. Reluctantly, Glain nodded.

He released her, and she went cold in the place where he’d touched her.

“We’ll begin again, tomorrow,” he said quietly.

And why did it feel as though they spoke of something entirely different? Why did her heart race and her breath hitch, and her mind think only of new beginnings with this man who loved books and operated his own establishment.

Incapable of anything more than a nod, Glain remained mute.

He, however, may as well have been wholly oblivious to her and her fascination with him and this moment.

Rather, Abaddon perused the shelving beside them, using a finger to skim the titles as he looked. Dropping to his haunches, he stopped his search on one.

He tugged out a volume, and then straightened. “Try this one.”

Fighting the magnetic pull of that penetrating stare, Glain made herself look at the book he’d given her. “I’m not interested in romantic t…” Her words trailed off. “ A Vindication of the Rights of Women .” This is what he’d selected for her? She glanced up.

He nudged his chin. “I think you’ll enjoy that, and…probably agree with her on much.”

Returning her attention to the small bound copy, she fanned the pages, pausing as she went.

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone…”

Glain continued skimming the volume.

“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

Glain’s breath caught for a second time that morn, but for entirely different reasons than the feel of Abaddon’s touch, or the heat of his eyes upon her. But no less entrancing or seductive.

Hopelessly captivated, Glain read and the world ceased to exist beyond anything but the inked black words upon the pages of this seductive text given her by Abaddon Grimoire.

She wanted to keep reading of these philosophies, forever. She—

Glain stopped on a page.

“I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists of. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.”

She snapped it shut and reflexively Glain took several much-needed steps away from him. “I…I can’t read this,” she said, her voice weak and breathless to her own ears. She held the book out toward him in both a plea and demand for him to take it.

“Sure, you can,” he said in that rough murmur. “That’s the beauty of a library and books, themselves. You can read anything you want, and you can feel any way you wish to feel reading them.” He took a step closer, and then another, effectively erasing all distance that she’d previously built between them.

She could feel as she wished, and yet…

In her mind, she replayed those damning words, over and over again.

“…I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt…”

Her throat worked, and she squeezed her eyes shut, in a bid to fend off the great swell of emotion threatening to drag her under.

“It’s rubbish,” she said, her voice tight and brittle to her own ears, and she knew her words were a lie, but God help her, she wanted a fight with him. “You’ve given me rubbish to read.”

He placed his lips close to her ear, and her breath caught for a different reason. “You know I haven’t, darling,” he whispered against that sensitive shell. Delicious little shivers raced down her neck and all the way down her spine, leaving her giddy with a giggle she sought to suppress. “You know you read those words, and saw the value in them, and you know you want more.”

He was right. She wanted…more.

Something in the air shifted, growing somehow more charged, more electric.

She should fight the pull. She should move away from him, and this moment, and yet, she angled her head ever closer towards him.

He edged slowly towards her, in that same way.

Two dissimilar people, moving in a like way, drawn towards one another like those magnets her brother played with. An irresistible pull between them.

Even as Abaddon shifted, lowering his mouth to hers, Glain leaned up, and touched her lips to his.

With a guttural growl better suiting a primal beast, he kissed her. His harsh, beautiful lips were a brand upon hers, as though with each slant he sought to learn the feel and taste of her flesh, imprint upon her, and then memorialize this moment for all time.

Sighing, Glain crept her arms about his thickly muscled neck and turned herself over to this. Nay, to the powerful, completely masculine Abaddon Grimoire.

Somehow, this was safer than their previous heated exchange. This man, and this kiss, safer than that bluntly expressed, so very accurate criticism of all that Glain was—of all that she’d let herself, nay made herself, become.

And there, amidst the bookshelves of a circulating library a stranger might enter at any moment, she gave herself over to the passion of this, her first kiss.

Nay, this wasn’t a kiss.

This was an embrace. An all-consuming, passion-filled embrace.

Abaddon folded her in his powerful arms, and she pressed against him so close, she felt every defined contour and muscle of sinewy strength.

She felt the growl rumble in his chest, but that low-approving sound never made it past his lips, and it was as though even in passion, he possessed a mastery of restraint.

Suddenly, he shifted his lips away from hers and she whimpered at the loss.

He touched a finger warningly against her swollen mouth, silently reminding her of where they were, and what they did, and how imminent discovery was.

That should have been enough.

Enough for her to come to her senses, slap him, and then race from this moment, this library, and this man.

Only, God help her. She did not. She could not.

Instead, as he leaned closer, tempting her with the promise of another kiss, she lifted into it and him.

“Shh,” he breathed against her ear, and she managed nothing more than a jerky nod, acquiescing to his warning and the continuation of his embrace.

He placed a kiss against her lips, and unlike the kiss before, he didn’t devour her. He didn’t kiss of her and taste of her, like a man who wished to consume, but rather, he explored like the most patient explorer, delving into unchartered territories to which he now staked a powerful claim.

He continued his quest, lightly nipping at her slightly fuller lower lip, and then licking at the corners of her mouth.

She clamped her legs together in a bid to alleviate the sudden pressure that had built there.

Her efforts proved in vain.

A liquid heat pooled at her center, and reflexively she moved her hips against him. That slight thrusting brought her flush with the hard ridge of flesh prodding against her belly.

He chuckled, the sound a low, triumphant, all-pleased masculine rumble.

It didn’t grate.

Rather, as he continued to trail his lips down the curve of her neck, lightly nipping and sucking of that flesh, it fueled a heady sense of power that came from his appreciation of her body.

She wasn’t a woman who men desired.

That was, not a woman anyone desired beyond the size of her dowry and her lofty connection to London’s most powerful duke.

But even those lures had never been incentives enough for men to see past the barrier she’d built to keep herself safe and unmarried.

Nay, they all avoided her gaze and her altogether.

Unlike this man.

Abaddon.

He was not repelled by her. Nay, he devoured her, and she went even several shades hotter inside at the realization of the power she had over him. This strong, primal, masculine man wanted her .

Abaddon filled a strong, powerful hand with her right buttock, and pressed her even closer to him.

She whimpered and rubbed like the kitchen cat in heat she’d observed two years earlier, and he swallowed that telltale sound of her yearning with his kiss.

He stroked his tongue against hers—a bold, angry lash—and she matched each glide in a dance more forbidden than the waltz.

Glain didn’t want this moment to end.

She wanted to feel his hands on her. She ached to know what came after the kiss. She wanted—

The tinny bell at the front of the library jingled.

Abaddon yanked his mouth from hers, and it was all she could do to keep from crying out. As she slumped against the shelves, finding support and purchase as her knees trembled, she should be horrified at the prospect of discovery. Instead, an overwhelming urge to weep at the interruption filled her.

His embrace—nay, their embrace—had been the single most beautiful, special, magical moment of her entire existence.

Abaddon—

Her gaze went to him. A completely cool, collected, and wholly unfazed Abaddon Grimoire, who consulted his timepiece.

“Time’s up, darling.” He dropped the chain back into his pocket. “You’re free to go.”

That was what he’d say.

She felt a blush burn up her cheeks.

What in heavens had she done? She was hardly a woman given to lapses in judgement, She’d never, in the whole of her life, lost control of her senses. And in this moment, with this man, she’d done precisely that.

It was a mistake she’d not make again.

With all the aplomb she could muster, Glain straightened on still unsteady legs. “I thank you for your assistance this morning, Mr. Grimoire,” she said loudly for the benefit of whichever patron now wandered the circulating room.

He bowed his head. “My pleasure.” His heated gaze bore into hers. “It was all my pleasure.”

Her heart thumped wildly. Surely, she wasn’t merely imagining the double meaning behind that statement?

Slowly, he shifted closer, and her body of its own volition swayed nearer to him. She didn’t care about the other patron present. Or the imminent discovery. She should. The threat of ruin should itself be enough to send her fleeing.

Only, she was powerless against this steely man’s pull over her.

Abaddon reached out, and with a fluttering in her chest, Glain lifted her mouth to his.

He held a book out.

A book?

The world came crashing, screeching, and sliding to a jarring halt.

He winked, and that wildly beating organ in her chest increased to a frantic double-time.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’ve other patrons to help.”

With that, he turned on his heel, stalked off, and left her there fighting to regain control of her wits.

From somewhere in the room, his voice carried over to her. Whatever words he now spoke to his latest patron were muffled, but matter of fact.

As if not even moments ago, he’d been making love to her mouth, and she’d been rubbing herself against the hard, contoured muscles of his powerful body.

Because it clearly hadn’t meant anything to him. She’d do well to remember that for the next time she saw him.

Even so, the memory of that kiss remained with her as she quit the library and made the journey back to her family’s Mayfair townhouse. As she sailed up the steps a short while later, a dreamy smile played on her lips when the doors were drawn open by the duke’s always dutiful servants.

“Where in blazes have you been?”

That cold, icy greeting brought her whirring, crashing back to reality, as only that frosty welcome could.

Her heartbeat slowed to a sickeningly slow halt. “Your Grace,” she greeted. The duke had insisted he was always to be ‘the duke’ or ‘Your Grace’. Never: Father. Never: Papa.

In fairness, six feet tall, with a hawkish nose, a harsh mouth, and possessed of a close crop of icy white, meticulously clipped hair, he didn’t have the look of any beloved, doting Papa. He exuded power and influence, and in this instance annoyance.

“I’ve been looking for you, Diamond.”

Diamond.

God, how she despised that name. She always had. She’d just not known how very much until Abaddon had laid claim to her given name of Glain.

The duke never sought her out unless he was displeased or unless he required something. Never in her adult life, however, had she given him reason to be disappointed.

Glain gave her maid, a desperate look.

The young woman hastened over.

“I was out,” Glain said, quickly entrusting that book Abaddon had chosen for her, to the loyal servant’s care. “I—”

The duke’s gaze snagged on the title.

Go. Flee. Run. Before he notes—

Only—

The duke frowned, extending a hand that commanded as effective as any words.

Glain’s maid hesitated, and then with an apologetic look for her mistress, handed the damning title over to Glain’s father.

He methodically flipped through the volume. With every page he assessed, his white eyebrows drew closer and closer together until they formed a harsh, angry line.

Through his agonizing scrutiny, Glain stood stiffly at the center of the marble foyer and took care to keep her gaze concentrated beyond her silent father’s shoulder. All the while, mortification spread through her. At having her selected book read. At having it done in this public way, by her father, and with her family servants there to witness.

The duke picked his head up. “What nonsense is this?” He didn’t allow her a word edgewise. “What are you reading?”

Her tongue went heavy in her mouth. Her face burned hot. Oh god. This was so much worse than she could have ever imagined. “I stumbled upon it—”

“Stumbled upon it where ?” he demanded.

And from the point where her gaze remained, just above his shoulder, Glain caught her sister at the top of the stairwell that overlooked the foyer. Opal gripped the railing and pleaded silently with her eyes.

“I…Lady Westmorland.” The lie slipped out easily, and she discreetly crossed her fingers.

The Duke of Wellington’s favored niece and notorious for her political judgment, the lady was afforded the respect of the peerage because of her connections and head for political affairs.

“Lady Westmorland,” he muttered. “I should have expected as much.”

Just as Glain expected, he’d not challenge the powerful peeress.

“Perhaps this is why you’re unwed after two Seasons,” he snapped, waving one of the copies at her.

Glain kept motionless, her gaze forward. She knew precisely why she was unwed after two Seasons. Because she’d wished it that way and done everything in her power to fashion herself as an icy princess too cold to touch or approach.

Her father gave a look to a nearby footman.

The young, crimson-clad servant hastened over. “Dispose of this,” the duke said in clipped, steely tones.

Glain bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out.

The footman collected the book chosen for her by Abaddon, and as he rushed off, she felt the overwhelming urge to weep.

She, however, didn’t cry.

And she certainly didn’t show those signs of weakness the duke so despised in his presence.

Her sister caught her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she mouthed.

Glain managed a small smile.

When the servant had gone, the duke returned his full focus to Glain. “I was looking for you and this is what you were doing? How you occupy your time?” Fury flashed in his eyes. “Do not let it happen again. You have more important matters to see to.”

She flexed her fingertips at her side, and drew them into slight, tight balls attempting to drive the tension from them, fighting for composure, fighting for an icy calm to rival his. “What matters would you have me see to, Your Grace.”

“I want invitations sent for a private dinner with the Prince of Chernihiv.”

“I’ll see to it.” That loftiest of men, still present in London despite the winter, would be one of the few guests the duke would entertain.

Without another word of acknowledgment, the duke stalked off.

Glain remained there, her arms empty of her books, and more miserable than she’d ever been before at the prospect of planning an intimate dinner party for a royal and wishing she could return to a time just twenty minutes earlier with Abaddon Grimoire.