Chapter 8

A baddon didn’t have too much of a problem with the nobility.

Yes, he thought they were hoity-toity, self-important snobs, but he also had seen enough of those men and women come through the door of this library to know they were to be pitied more than anything.

Gilded birds, the lot of them, trapped in cages, with their wings clipped, and no hope of flight or escape.

He’d seen enough and had enough experiences with them to also know their world was the last one he wished to belong to.

That those people weren’t the kind he cared to rub shoulders with—aside from his dealings with the ones eager to fill their minds with knowledge or escape in the pages of the books he offered.

That was, with the exception of the Duke of Strathearn, his greatest sponsor, and the latest gentleman to enter his shop.

And now the exception includes a certain lady who kisses like a temptress .

“A quiet day,” the duke remarked. Tugging free his gloves, Strathearn stuffed them inside the front of his fine woolen cloak and cast an interested look out the window. “That is with the exception of…that one.”

He followed the other man’s pointed stare to where Glain, her cheeks red from either her blush or the cold of the winter air, moved with purposeful steps towards the black lacquered carriage waiting across the street.

Abaddon grunted. “You know, winters in London are quieter. To be expected there aren’t as many patrons,” he said, hoping that was enough to throw the other man off wherever this questioning was likely going.

Alas, his attempts proved in vain.

“I don’t recall seeing Lady Diamond here before,” Strathearn remarked.

“You know her?” Abaddon asked, that uncharacteristically impulsive question slipping out before he could call it back, and he silently cursed himself that lapse as his closest and only friend turned that sudden, entirely-too-interested focus back on Abaddon.

“Indeed. Our fathers were close as only two powerful dukes who took themselves and their stations too seriously could be.”

Of course, the duke would know a fellow duke’s daughter. Those two would move in the same circles. And it also meant, Strathearn had known Glain since she’d been a girl.

“Played together as children, did you?” Feigning casualness, Abaddon forced a drollness into his tone, attempting to pull more information from the other man about what Glain had been like as a girl.

The other man scoffed. “Hardly. She was a mere child, and I, a young man. My recollections of her largely include a silent, sullen girl too self-important to speak, even when spoken to. Her aloofness as a child, however, is nothing compared to the glacial woman she’s become. Now she’s Polite Society’s greatest Diamond, just as her Christian name suggests, as glitteringly beautiful as that precious stone, but as cold and unfeeling as it, too.” The other man’s lips tipped up in a derisive smile. “Her reputation as an ice princess precedes her.”

“Ice princess?”

Strathearn nodded. “So much so, the ton even refers to her as such.”

Abaddon’s frown deepened.

The frigid moniker given the lady hardly matched the passionate creature who’d come undone in his arms not once, but twice now. No wonder she’d been cross when he called her princess. A woman who lifted into his kiss and whose hips moved rhythmically while he stroked his tongue against her, and—

Abaddon took a slow, steadying breath, pushing back those desirous musings.

“You seem to have a lot of questions about the lady,” the duke remarked, steepling his fingers, and studying Abaddon over the top of them.

“She’s a new patron.” The fib slipped smoothly from his tongue as only a boy, who’d lived and lied in the streets of East London could manage. Determined to put an end to the discussion, he proceeded to gather up the books Glain’s sister had been reading, stacking them in a neat pile to put them away for when she returned. “It’s my business to know about the people who enter my library.” His arms full, Abaddon headed for the front.

He’d first met Strathearn seven years earlier, when the man had inherited his late father’s title and obscene amounts of wealth. The young duke had come to Abaddon’s circulating library with an offer of some twenty-thousand pounds to renovate the building and update the volumes by some two thousand books. From that moment on, the two had become unlikely friends. That friendship, however, did not mean Abaddon wanted or intended to talk about the desirous Lady Glain.

After he’d set aside Opal’s books, Abaddon returned to where Strathearn, standing precisely as he’d left him, stared at him with a concerned look.

“What?” Abaddon asked impatiently.

“You’d do well to avoid that one, Grimoire.”

“What would you have me do?” he snapped. “Turn her out of my library?” It was a vow he’d made, something he’d sworn never to do. Now, the other man would expect Abaddon do that to Glain?

“You can’t forbid her from entering,” his friend allowed. “No doubt she’d attempt to ruin you. For that slight, she would have her father do so.”

His friend spoke of Glain’s father, that nobleman who’d confiscated her book? Something told Abaddon Strathearn knew even less about the lady than Abaddon himself, did.

“I’ve noted your concerns.”

“Just steer clear of her, as much as you’re able, Grimoire. All of Polite Society does. Ladies and gentlemen alike.”

He drew back in surprise. A duke’s daughter, refined in every way, one who advised on rules of decorum, was shunned?

“There’s such a thing as lords and ladies too aloof for even Polite Society,” the duke explained, following Abaddon’s train of thought. “She is one of them. Gentlemen have courted her, only to be coldly mocked as they did. She is known for having a lofty opinion of herself.”

Annoyance rolled through him. “Perhaps those men are just bitter, attempting to save face.” He’d seen enough gents with inflated heads, who wouldn’t take well to rejection.

“Possibly,” Strathearn allowed. “I thought as much, too, once.”

Something hovered unspoken in his friend’s words but as real as if it had been uttered.

An unpleasant sensation roiled in his gut. “You courted the lady,” he said, his voice, rougher than usual. An image of the regal, basically royal pair together set his teeth on edge.

“Not at all.” A light flush filled the duke’s sharp cheeks. “In my case, I attempted nothing more than a dance with the lady. When I attempted to speak with her through the set, she looked away, appearing bored, and told me if I was searching for shared interests, not to bother, as there was absolutely nothing either of us had in common, except our link to a dukedom and in that, she was right. We are nothing alike.”

The duke dropped an arm around Abaddon’s shoulders. “And you, dear friend, will do well to remember that. A lady as cold and unfeeling and heartless as that one is also one who’d ruin you and your business, for nothing more than the pleasure it would bring her in doing so.”

As if he considered the matter put to rest, Strathearn gave Abaddon a light thump on the back, and headed off to inspect the latest shipment of books he’d personally funded.

Tension rippled through Abaddon’s frame as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. That harsh assessment Strathearn had leveled at Glain, somehow grated as much as the idea of the lady with the other man.

It didn’t matter that he’d been similar in his first and even his second opinion of her. The uncaring, unfeeling, cold woman described by Strathearn was inconsistent with the one who looked after her younger sister and brother with a greater care than even a governess would—or in this, case, had.

Glain had proven to be a woman with protective layers about her, and he found himself wanting to peel each one back, to discover who she really was inside, this lady who desperately longed for the freedom of reading books, but who feared doing so.

Abaddon knew one thing definitively—despite his friend’s warnings, Abaddon had no intention of ending the arrangement he’d made with Glain, and he had every intention of finding out for himself more about the enigmatic beauty.