Chapter 9

I n Glain’s nineteen years, she’d been a favored guest of the king, dining in the palace alongside him and some of the greatest dignitaries in the world. She’d attended famed performances given at both Covent Garden Theatre and the Theatre Royal of Drury Lane.

Never once in all Glain’s attendance at those extravagant affairs had she felt the eager thrill of anticipation that she did the following morning as she made the short walk from her carriage to Abaddon’s circulating library.

She’d never met anyone like him in her entire life.

In fact, she’d never known there could be anyone like him.

As she reached the narrow front stoop, she paused, schooling her features and calming her heart.

Or attempting to, anyway.

He was just a man.

A powerful, virile, quixotic man.

No, those reminders meant to steady her didn’t help.

How could they? How, when he’d kissed her with so much passion that her lips and body still burned with the remembrance of the feel of him.

She—

The door opened, jarring her from her desirous musings, and a blush burned up her body as one of Abaddon’s patrons beat a hasty berth around her. Glain came crashing back to the moment.

Enough. You are not some silly, pathetic creature with her head stuck up in the clouds. You are reasonable and rational and unmoved by everything.

She gave her head a slight, clearing shake, and entered the shop.

After she’d drawn the door shut behind her, she pushed the hood of her cloak back just enough so that she might take a look around.

Busier than it had been, all her previous times visiting combined, the circulating library buzzed with patrons, perusing shelves, and sitting at the tables throughout the room. She moved her gaze past all of those lords and ladies, many whose fine dress gave away their station. The men and women were so absorbed in whatever books they read that they didn’t so much as spare her a glance.

And then Glain found him with her gaze.

Her eyes landed and locked on Abaddon. With his arms filled with a piled of books, he moved between the shelves his arms. Stacked against his broad chest as they were, the volumes looked impossibly small.

Just like that, her heart jumped and kept at a dangerously fast pace, and her mind, body, and soul recalled her and Abaddon’s latest embrace.

As if he felt her stare, Abaddon paused, looking her way.

Glain shot a hand up, giving a slight, bold wave that would have scandalized her father, and shocked society.

But she didn’t care. Something in being here and being with him freed her in ways she’d never been in her entire life.

He—

Abaddon inclined his head in return, then casually proceeded with those books he carried. He set them down on a gentleman’s table. The two men, dissimilar in every way: Abaddon, broadly muscled, chiseled of stone, and bearing a look of one cut from the same cloth as the all-powerful god, Zeus. The other tall, but slender to the point of painfully so, and with a crop of black Byron-esque curls, artfully and deliberately arranged.

Abaddon’s presence commanded. He finished up with his patron, and she felt her pulse skitter to a too-fast beat. She held her breath in anticipation.

Now, he’d come see her.

Now, he’d—

Now, he turned on his heel and headed down another aisle.

She wrinkled her nose. Her cheeks warmed by a thousand degrees, and she forced the hand still hanging mid-air back to her side.

It was not a familiar way she found herself—him not looking at her. Him not seeing her.

That’s how the entire world treated her.

But all those other people, she’d sought to dissuade from noticing her or talking to her. For the world, she’d donned that frosty facade so that she might remain unmarried and stay with her younger siblings.

Abaddon on the other hand, for him she’d let her guard down and let herself be as approachable as she could be. That was, as approachable as she could make herself be.

Abaddon who was so very indifferent to Glain.

With all the grace and aplomb, she could muster still, Glain marched through the library, heading for that table tucked in the corner where she’d found Abaddon reading with her sister. Unlike yesterday when there’d been a number of volumes littering that small oak table, today it was empty.

Unlike before, he’d not pulled volumes he thought she might like to read, ones he’d set there to challenge her, and for her to challenge herself. Which was fine. Or really, it should be. She didn’t need him picking books for her. She was more than capable of seeing to the task herself.

Oddly, that left her bereft.

For, she’d found she rather liked knowing he’d thought of her and picked books with her specifically in mind. Because it had meant he’d been thinking about her.

Just as she’d been incapable of thinking about anything other than him and his kiss. Their kiss.

To give herself a purposeful task, Glain unfasted the clasp at her throat, and shrugged out of her cloak. Close to where her table rested, several hooks hung bare upon the wall, and she availed herself of one of them.

Glain headed off in search of a book. Only as she moved along the increasingly familiar aisles, she found her gaze not perusing the many gold-leafed titles but searching instead for him.

Stop it.

Stop it.

Stop it, this instant.

Those commands were a deliberate mantra, she played over and over in her head.

Without seeing the title, Glain tugged out a book positioned at eye-level and peered through the peephole she’d made.

And then promptly wished she hadn’t.

Her gaze locked on Abaddon and a pretty young woman with plump cheeks, and an equally pleasingly plump form—voluptuous in every way that Glain—painfully thin—was not.

He was speaking, giving that lady several books. Only as the young woman collected each one he handed over, her eyes weren’t on the titles but rather the dashing man who’d personally selected them for her.

Glain’s teeth set together hard, clanking so noisily it was a wonder the duo didn’t hear her.

But then, why should they? They would have to be engrossed in anything other than one another and their blasted conversation to have noted the fact that Glain stood watching them, a vicious, insidious poison-filled jealousy channeling through her veins.

Why shouldn’t Abaddon note the petite, full-figured woman? With the lady’s midnight black hair, wide green eyes, and ample curves, she was utterly beautiful.

Unlike Glain who who’d perfected icy, aloof indifference and sharp, disdainful glares, the other woman smiled freely. Damn if a different emotion other than jealousy didn’t form in that wad in her throat. And if she didn’t know better and if she were actually capable of the sentiment, something that felt like tears.

A low rumble: Abaddon’s laugh, filled the aisles.

Something he said, a low murmured response he gave the lady elicited a little giggle and a brighter blush, and Glain could not help it.

She growled.

A low, primal, primitive, raw growl climbed her tight throat and lodged there.

Abaddon’s gaze crashed and clashed with hers, noting her noticing him and Lady Perfection.

Heart thumping, Glain swiftly jammed the book onto the shelf.

Mayhap he’d not seen her. Perhaps he’d merely been searching for another book for his perfectly lovely patron. After all, Glain had arrived this morning, expecting it was going to be entirely different between her and Abaddon. How could it not? There’d been a seismic shift forged by his embraces. He’d shaken her and her world. He’d left her hot and burning, and longing for more—longing to see him.

Abaddon, on the other hand, hadn’t even looked at her. Throughout her time here, patrons had come and then gone, until only a handful remained, and still, he didn’t visit her.

She stared blankly at the books that sat between her and Abaddon. That stack proved a blessed screen that saved her from seeing him and the latest woman he offered his assistance to.

In fact , he’d helped those two other patrons more than Glain, whom he’d hardly noticed, at all.

One a young dandy for whom he’d dropped that stack of books on a table.

The other, a striking beauty who made little attempt to conceal her interest.

Glain compressed her lips into a firm line. Good, let him entertain Lady Beautiful. That meant he wasn’t bothering her.

“Have a good look?”

She gasped and spun about so quickly; her skirts snapped noisily at her ankles. Glain grasped the shelf to keep herself on her feet.

Abaddon stood at the end of the aisle with his arms crossed in that lazy negligent pose that put his heavily muscled chest on full display, only heightening his masculine appeal.

He strode toward her with those languid, panther-like steps that dried up all the moisture in her mouth.

And then his words registered.

The crooked grin on his hard lips indicated he’d noticed her scrutiny.

She gasped. “I most certainly was not looking at you,” she said on a furious whisper the moment he reached her. “Why should I care one way or the other if you were helping the young lady?” She didn’t . “I didn’t,”

His opaque gaze glittered…with amusement? “I meant, did you have a good look at the books,” he drawled.

Glain rocked back on her heels. “At the books,” she repeated dumbly.

Abaddon nodded and pointed to the objects in question. She followed his gesture, and instantly recoiled, drawing her toes tight in her satin slippers.

That was what he’d been talking about.

“Y-Yes,” she said, the words emerging in a high-pitched squeak she didn’t recognize as her own voice. “I…I had a great look. A very good one.” Great was better than good. “Great,” she repeated her earlier clarifier. “Just… great,” she muttered.

That glint in his dark brown eyes gleamed all the brighter.

He leaned down. “Noticing me and one of my patrons, were you?” he murmured, amusement lacing his deep baritone, and her cheeks burned hot with another blush.

“I…was not. At least, not intentionally,” she mumbled.

He grinned.

His smile was that of a cat who swallowed the canary and chased it down with a bowl of fresh cream.

And damned if she didn’t wish she were that ill-fated bird, so she could be free of this exchange, and his knowing eyes.

She’d noticed him.

No, she’d not just noticed him, she’d been watching him with a lady, and by the way she bristled and flushed, she’d not liked it, one bit.

There was a masculine thrill of satisfaction at the fact she’d been…jealous.

“Have a problem seeing me with another woman, is it?” he asked, and the lady’s blush burned several shades brighter.

“Absolutely not. At all.” She slashed her gloved palms down towards the wood floor. “At. All.”

“I believe you already said that, darling,” he drawled.

If possible, she went an even brighter shade of crimson, her cheeks burning bright enough it was a wonder she didn’t catch fire.

“Because it bore repeating. It’s hardly my concern which patrons you spend your time with.”

He schooled his features. “In which case, if you’ll excuse me. The lady still required—”

“No, she doesn’t. She’s leaving,” she exclaimed, pointing at the lady in question, just as the young woman swept outside, along with the last of the library patrons, until he and Glain were alone.

“So, you didn’t care I was assisting a pretty young lady?”

She gritted her teeth loud enough that they clinked noisily together. “ Was she pretty?”

“Oh, I think we’d say she is.”

Glain pursed her lips.

Bringing her shoulders back, the lady donned an indifferent and icy don’t-approach-me look he wagered she used with lords and ladies alike at ton events. “What you do is not my business, Mr. Grimoire,” she said quietly. “The only reason I may have—”

“Did,” he corrected with all the insolence only he could manage.

“Noticed you, was because we entered into an agreement with one another, and as such, it is my expectation that as I am honoring my commitment you will honor yours, and make yourself available to me.”

Abaddon preened. “Noticed me, did you?”

“As I said, it was hard not to notice, as we have an agreement, and you should have been helping me, as our time together is limited.”

The lady spoke the way only a peeress could.

Insolent. Rude. Filled with a knowledge of her own self-importance.

At their first meeting, he had judged her mightily for it.

Since that day, however, a great shift had occurred in how he viewed her.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she demanded, stealing a glance about. “Go,” she ordered. “Find me something to read.”

Her eyes were faintly pleading, directly belying the command of her words.

Abaddon remained rooted there, contemplating her still. “Do you know what I think, Glain?” he murmured quietly.

She tensed, but did not shake her head, so he continued without her invitation to do so.

“I believe you like being here. I believe your being here has only a small thing to do with the agreement we made, and everything to do with the fact you want to be here, Glain.”

Her eyes flew wide, her golden eyebrows shooting to her hairline.

“And I also believe,” he said, leaning in close, “that you like me.”

The long, graceful column of her throat worked, and he expected she’d deny his last claim.

But she didn’t. Instead, her gaze slid away from his, and to a point beyond his shoulder.

Intrigued and filled with more than a little masculine triumph at her unspoken admission, he brushed a finger down the curve of her jaw. “You don’t deny it.”

“Why would I?” she asked tightly as he guided her gaze back to his. She still, however, directed her words to a point above his brow. “I…do like you. I do like being here, that is,” she said on a rush.

“You don’t have to act like that, you know,” he murmured, moving his caress higher, brushing his fingers along her sharp, chiseled cheekbone. “Haughty, cold. Unfeeling.”

She stiffened, and then pulled away. “I am haughty, cold, and unfeeling,” she said on a furious whisper.

“A woman who burns hot like you is anything but.” He stroked the pad of his thumb along her slightly fuller lower lip, and rubbed, setting that pouting flesh a’tremble. “A woman who kisses like you do, Glain, has fire inside, and is far more than the silk-stocking ordering me and everyone about.”

Glain drew back like he’d struck her. Her cheeks paled.

“You don’t know anything of it,” she spoke in hushed tones, laced with fury, and then in a clear indication she intended to say nothing else of it, spun on her heel, and marched, in the opposite direction, to the end of the aisle.

He easily overtook her long strides with his even longer ones.

Catching her gently but firmly by the arm, he steered her through the doorway located at the very end of the row.

He closed the door behind them, shutting them away in his private offices. The click of that door drowned out the lady’s gasp.

“What do you think you are doing?” she demanded on a furious whisper. “This is hardly proper.”

“Well, it’s hard to have a proper conversation in the middle of the library.”

“I’m not looking to have a proper conversation.”

“An improper one, then,” he said, keeping his features deadpan.

“Not an improper one, eith—” Her words abruptly cut off, and she wrinkled her nose in that endearing way of hers. “You’re teasing.”

He also suspected that two days ago she wouldn’t have been able to spot whether a person was teasing her. He suspected even more that no one ever had teased her.

“Do you know what I think, Glain?”

She tensed, and for a long moment said absolutely nothing, and for an even longer one, she didn’t so much as twitch a muscle or blink. And he waited.

Because he also knew she wanted to know…that eventually she’d give him the go-ahead to continue.

And then ever so faintly, but still discernable, she shook her head.

Abaddon continued. “I think you’re the most flawless lady, I’ve ever seen walk into my library. And if I were one who rubbed shoulders with your sort, in ballrooms and dining rooms, then I bet you’d be the most flawless lady I met there, too. But no one is as perfect as you let on that you are. No one is that cold. No one is that icy and unapproachable.”

“I a-m,” Her voice caught slightly.

“You are, but it’s by design, so I’m left with the question of…why?”

“Because I’m some puzzle,” she gritted out. “Some mystery that you’d seek to solve. Well, I’ve told you before, I’m not a mystery to make sense of. Let me spare you once more the disillusion that I’m anything more than precisely what you’ve taken me for.” She made to step around him, but he slid into her path, blocking her way.

“No, that isn’t it, Glain,” he said quietly.

“Then, what is it?” she cried softly, modulated even in frustrated fury, as only she could be.

“Because like I said, I suspect you like me…and I like you, too.”

Her lips parted, and her jaw slackened, and she wore the same look of wonderment as someone who’d first caught glimpse of new, foreign lands. And then, her entire body jerked, as she drew up into herself. “No one likes me.”

“I don’t think anyone really knows you.”

I don’t think anyone really knows you.

She wanted to tell him to shut the hell up, in just that, rude, unrestrained way, too.

She wanted to tell him that he knew absolutely nothing about what he said.

Only…he did.

And he was right.

And she was torn in equal parts, wanting to both flee as fast and far away from him and this place and continue running never to return, and wanting to stay here with him forever, in this moment, where there was truth, and at last a person who saw her, who saw more than the shallow, snobbish lady she let herself be.

“I am precisely what you take me for, Abaddon,” she finally brought herself to say. “I’m nothing more than that.” Her voice sounded tired to her own ears.

And she was.

Tired to her soul of being alone and being cold and she didn’t want to be this way, and yet, she had to, and she also now knew no other way.

He cupped her cheek in a tender touch, his large palm rough and callused, and she leaned into him.

“No, you’re not,” he said, with a conviction he shouldn’t possess, for Glain herself didn’t even have that confidence about herself in those spoken words. “There’s so much more to you. The facade you present to the world, is not who you truly are inside. The question is…why?”

She stood there, so close she was nearly in Abaddon’s embrace, so close, but not close enough. She wanted to be in his arms, because in his arms, she felt…alive. She felt like a real person with warm blood flowing in her veins and believed, in those instances, that he might be right. That she was somehow more.

“I was not always this way.” She hardly recognized her whisper as quiet and small as it was, and she wanted to run from that admission, hide herself away before she spoke freely about herself. For she didn’t speak about herself. She was the Ice Princess, immune from pain and disdain and cold looks.

Only, Abaddon stared at her with a quiet patience, in a way that made her want to open herself to someone.

Nay, she wanted to open herself to him, let him in.

“I was very much like Opal.” Her gaze grew distant and her smile wistful as she recalled herself of long ago. “I was even more wild than my sister. There wasn’t a tree too tall to scale, or a lake too wide I could not swim…and naked, at that.” She closed her eyes briefly, the recollection so vivid, of her sluicing through the chilled waters so swiftly, she’d ceased to feel the cold, and had only been invigorated. “I read everything. Absolutely everything. My mother handpicked my governess…”

“One of those stern sorts who sought to transform you?” he predicted after Glain’s long stretch of silence.

“Anything but,” she said, smiling as she recalled that equally passionate instructor. She had formed the closest of friendship with the woman. Despite the difference in years between them, they’d been kindred souls lashing out at the constraints imposed upon them.

“She encouraged me to think and to do more than just sketch and curtsy. I was never freer than I was with Mrs. Burton.”

A coldness rushed in. Glain interlocked her fingers and stared at the fine leather that encased those digits. “Until my father finally took note. He discovered me and my mother and Mrs. Burton engaged in a snowball fight.” Her chest tightened, the same way it had from racing around that long ago day, in the frigid winter air. “Duke’s daughters did not run, and they did not laugh and smile obscenely. They were proper and polite and prim and groomed for but one purpose, making advantageous marriages,” she repeated each word by rote.

“It was the last snowball I threw,” she said, and sucked in a shuddery breath. “And it was also the last I saw of my mother. After that, he exiled her to one of his country properties, and only he visited her, and then he did so with the express intention of getting more children on her. Periodically, a wet nurse would return with a new babe. Opal and Flint. There was another between their births, but he was sickly and feeble, and died not long after he’d taken his first breath.”

Glain struggled to speak through a pain that would always be there. “My mother died giving birth to Flint.”

“Oh, Glain,” he said softly, and she found comfort in that gentle offering of his support.

“My mother was lionhearted,” she said. “Like my sister.” Unlike the person Glain had shaped herself into. “Eventually, he crushed my mother. But my sister does not realize what can happen, what will happen, if she conducts herself in a way the duke doesn’t approve of,” she said, willing him to understand. “And I…I needed to protect her and Flint.”

His eyes fixed on her face. “What are you saying?” The gentleness in that question threatened to undo her.

Glain hesitated, before turning over that great secret she’d carried. “I know what I am. I know my birthright and dowry and,” she grimaced, “how I look make me an object that many men would seek to possess, and if they did…if they do…then I won’t be there to protect my brother and sister. They will be on their own.”

He stared intently at her. Then understanding dawned in his eyes. “You presented yourself as a woman people feared being around.”

She hesitated, and then slowly nodded. “Sometimes I wonder that it was so easy. I am his daughter, after all. How else to explain how I was able to make myself a woman men wouldn’t consider marrying, and a person other women don’t wish to call friend?”

When she finished, she waited for the rush of discomfort and nervousness that came in revealing the most intimate parts about her life to another.

Only, it didn’t come.

Rather, it felt so very good to share of herself—to let another soul in.