6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Mina stuck fast, her feet as heavy as a laundry copper pot.

‘I have no choice,' she stammered.

‘Always no choice, always doing what you're told.' Enzo moved close so that his chest pressed against hers. ‘Didn't it feel good to tell them to fuck off?'

‘No,' she lied.

His delicious half grin tugged a cheek. ‘Lie to me all you want. Lies are as common as dirt in the rookery. They don't hurt me. But once you start lying to yourself… that's real poverty.'

‘I wasn't lying. It didn't feel good.' And shouting her objections hadn't felt good. It had felt glorious . Like her entire body had been a smouldering stack of tinder in a stove, and one gentle puff had breathed it into incandescence. ‘You talk like I don't know what's going on. Like I don't see how neatly we fit beneath their heels. I do. But it's not so easy for a woman to throw all that off and say they don't care. For most women, the choice is between bending our backs at cleaning or straightening our backs as we spread our legs. What work is there outside of service for a woman like me?'

Enzo inhaled, then coughed a little, like the smog had caught in his chest. When he looked up, he fixed her with a gentler look.

‘I didn't think. I'm sorry.' Enzo tapped his side. ‘Seamus's missus has a cart near here. Come on. I'll buy you a potato.'

Like a few days before, she followed Enzo to the park, but this time, his normally proud head bent, and his shoulders curved into a bracket of apology. He saw her comfortable and disappeared into the crowd.

Mina crooked her body, half coward, half criminal. All her life she had followed rules, yet one small slip and she'd not only caught a reprimand, but she tumbled into a dark abyss of condemnation. Why were men like the duke—both dukes, both His Grace and Enzo—allowed so many chances, and she had to face a dark future because of one transgression?

A cheery whistle split the crowd, and a lamplighter, followed by a small lad, perhaps his son, ambled along the path. He set his ladder against the post beside her bench, clambered up, and then hollered down at his boy, who passed up a lantern. The latch on the glass lamp squeaked as he twisted it open, and he plied a flame to the wick. It flickered, then glowed into life. He closed the little glass door, climbed down his ladder, then swung it back under his arm to make his way toward the next post. The boy scampered along beside him.

Since the first morning when she had realised her condition and that terrible combination of fear and exhilaration had gripped her, Mina hadn't considered the baby as he or she . As the lamplighter and his apprentice paused to set their ladder against the next lamppost, it occurred to her that a son would be an incredibly useful thing to have. Someone who would make his way in the world easier than she could. If she were lucky, he would remember her when he grew, and might make some small effort to care for her.

A daughter would be an extravagance.

Would life give her the chance to have both?

Enzo reemerged from the crowd. He held out a round potato nestled in a small square of newspaper. Creamy golden rivulets of butter curled down its side and pooled in the creases. Mina stripped her gloves and cradled it in her palm. She took a bite. The outside skin had thickened, all nutty and chewy, and the inside flesh had baked so fluffy it dissolved on her tongue.

Enzo leaned against the newly lit lamppost, and the small circle of golden light encased him, like a halo he didn't deserve.

‘On Sunday nights at the house on Grosvenor Square, we'd have potato. The table maids would carry pats of bright yellow butter upstairs, but we'd have ours with drippings from the roast. Sometimes, there'd be a bit of meat in the lard. It made it sweeter.'

Enzo shrugged off his coat and draped it over her shoulders. It fell heavy, like an embrace, and the inside lining smelt of coffee and days spent out of doors.

‘You like to make sport of me, but I didn't dream of being a maid of all work. No one does. I wanted to be a governess. To spend my days with children. But my reading wasn't good enough, and Matron couldn't get me a placement. I miss that. All the children. The way they chatter and play even through cold days with thin mittens. There were no little voices at Morton House, only quiet, because that's what His Grace liked.'

Enzo took up a seat on the bench beside her. She passed him the last of the potato, and in a few short bites, he wolfed it down. Duke Street kids didn't waste a bite.

‘All my life I've lived in basements,' she continued. ‘At the diplomat's, with my mother. Working in the kitchen and laundry at Duke Street. And sure as sin, once I had my first position, I was underground, but not only for work. All the time. I'd get to the end of the day and not even know if the weather had been sunny or rainy or foggy. All I knew was the pale yellow of the lamps in the scullery. If I had been clever enough to become a governess, I'd have had a room on the top floor. A long way to walk, but if the night was clear enough, I might sometimes see the stars.'

‘You like stars?' Enzo fixed his cap. He took her hand and tugged her to her feet. ‘Come with me.'

They cut a trail almost the same as the one she had trekked a few days before, when she had been reeling from her dismissal and heading to the rookery in the hope that the boy who had helped her at the orphanage gates would help her still. Past the shops and businesses, and the paths teeming with the well-dressed who peered into glowing windows with choice in their expression. Then beyond the swept streets and horses with bridles, to the lower reaches where ponies were brought inside for warmth and dogs fought over scraps. To Enzo's domain, to the Wild Court Rookery.

Night crept darker here. It wound around the feet of the children and dimmed the edges of mucky puddles and bent over front steps and curled against lintels. The odd call of ‘evening Duke,' followed them. Sometimes in light greeting, sometimes with a chuckle, and sometimes with a sadness, like they didn't register him at all, only the rhythm of the day, and his arrival was part of its closing. Enzo knocked on the front door of a tall tenement building, and a crouched man with one arm let them in. Up they went, into the stairwell, where each corner led to a crowded hallway and yet another flight of stairs.

Four levels up, Mina paused to catch her breath. Enzo chuckled. ‘Not much further. I share the attic with a coster who works nights. He leaves at sundown and comes back sometime around dawn. Says people don't notice his skin so much in the dark.'

One last trek, and the building ran out of stairs. Enzo pushed the door open.

‘No lock?' she asked as she followed him over the threshold.

‘We ain't got nothing worth the climb,' he replied with a confiding smirk.

An angled ceiling hung over the small confines. Two beds, one stoic iron, the other a wooden pallet on the floor, butted opposite walls. Each was covered with a thin mattress and a heavy grey blanket. Enzo hung his coat on a rail spike that had been driven into a beam, then ran his fingers through his hair. In the low light, she couldn't decide if it was the same colour as soot or merely dusted with it.

The duke of Wild Court Rookery lived in a tower as sparse as the room she had inhabited in the basement at Grosvenor Square. The austere similarities were uncanny. Wooden floorboards. Bare walls. A thin pillow. Even the air had the same gritty texture.

Poor was poor, no matter what the walls were made of.

Mina's vision settled into the gloom, and slowly, she picked out small edges that sang of a different kind of familiarity. The pulled tight blanket. Socks draped over the foot of the bed. A small shelf for a comb, and orange water. He'd likely deny it if asked, but Enzo positioned his few belongings in the same way all of them had been taught. He may have walked out of Duke Street to never return, but he'd carried a little of it with him.

‘I know it's barely nothing.' Enzo slipped off his boots and lined them up at the foot of the bed—another Duke Street rule—then climbed onto the mattress and balanced on the thin window ledge. He held out a guiding hand. Mina took a little longer to unlace her boots, but soon clambered up to join him. He drew her close, positioning her between his thighs, with her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her shoulder. His voice stayed even and confident, like all of this was the most ordinary day in the world. ‘On nights when the wind blows, and the smog thins, and the moon is small, sometimes, you can see stars. Not lots. Not like I've seen in books. Just a few. But still, a few is better than none. It reminds all of us down here, in the slums and the dark, that perhaps we aren't forsaken.'

‘Did you know some stars have names?' she asked.

‘Names? Like what?'

‘I don't know them,' she said with a slight embarrassment as he nudged the edge of her knowledge. ‘I heard once that they do. Some are Greek. Or Latin. Almost none are words people like us might need.'

Enzo nuzzled her neck, and his inhalation sent a steady tingle through her. His cheek pressed against hers, and without seeing, she knew he traced the silhouettes of rooftops and chimney pots, navigated the grey clouds and searched the pockets of black for tiny darts of light.

‘You see that star there?' He pointed, and she followed the motion. Against the night, a tiny white dot strained to be seen. ‘I will call it Mina's lips. I will pluck it from the sky.' He flicked his hand, as fast as he had in the square, as if he could detach the star from the blanket of night. The star winked, as if an accomplice to his trick. He turned her a little, so that she faced him. ‘And I will put it here, where it belongs, and fix it into place.' He pressed the imaginary star to the edge of her mouth, then followed with the promised kiss. ‘And those two stars are Mina's eyes, and they belong here.' She closed her eyes in anticipation, and as certain as smoke, he kissed her on each lid. ‘And because tonight London only gives us four stars, I will place the last one here.' He sunk onto his haunches and eased her onto the mattress with him, so that they faced one another, knee to knee, chest to chest. He bent and kissed the skin at the edge of her shirt, to where her wishes beat into existence each morning.

How did he know that was where her hope rested?

‘Right here,' he said, all tough bravado and chivalry. ‘I give you a star for your heart. And if that is not enough, I will cobble together all the ladders of London. I will lean them against St Pauls, and I will climb each rickety rail until I find heaven, where I will gather all the stars into my arms, and I will bring them all back for you. I will place them in your hair.' He tickled his fingers over her braid, so light and fast she giggled, grateful for the chance to break the intensity of his gaze, and the ferocious sincerity of his words. ‘And I will knit them into lace to adorn your dresses, and I will spread those that remain on a path before you, so that you never have to walk on the grubby pavement again. I will steal all the stars of heaven, and I will give them all to you.'

Too much, he was entirely too much. Too much complex simplicity, too much reality, too much obscurity, and he had no right to be so ambitious, but all she could do was allow her knees to weaken and sink into him.

‘I'm having another man's baby,' she said.

‘So you've mentioned,' he replied, his tone dry.

‘Doesn't that bother you?'

‘Not as much as it seems to bother you.' He grazed his thumb along her jawline. ‘Neither of us had proper fathers, and we turned out. Not well, granted. But we turned out.'

Love felt like a bigger gamble here than the glimmer of it had in the basement at Grosvenor Square. Here, love was the difference between walking to another part of the city for work, or staying in a position that paid a little less because being home early was better for those you cared about. It was the thing that made you turn your back on an opportunity, because that dream was only big enough for you, and you would dream a little lower, but a little wider, because that meant you could bring someone else into the picture.

‘Just one star. Just you.' And she offered up her lips, as if her kisses were enough to pay a tenant's rent for the Duke.

Only a duplicitous man like Enzo could flip his hard edges to softness with barely a shrug. His mouth brushed hers, hesitantly, before pressing firmer and nipping at her bottom lip. Even his stubble against her cheek seemed to have softened.

‘I have a confession,' he whispered into the pocket behind her ear. ‘I haven't done this before.'

‘Please don't tease me. Your kisses are proof you know precisely what you are doing.'

‘I don't mean kissin'. Or… other stuff. But the whole thing. Bodies. Together. I haven't done that.'

Never had Enzo seemed anything but confident, yet in his confession, a burst of vulnerability placed a deprecating curve on his smile, and sprinkled hesitancy in his eyes. From somewhere deep in her belly, a delicious twirl of hunger twisted into life. Enzo, a little weaker, relinquishing a little of his power to her, was a marvellous thing. It was better than eating ices in the sun, or the surety of his touch. She would be his first.

And last?

‘How is it that the great Duke Enzo is still a contrary maid?' she asked, trying to keep the laugh from her voice.

‘Matron's talk! It scared me senseless,' he said, defensive. Now she did laugh, and he joined her with his low, easy chuckle. ‘I figured there were enough bastards in the city, and I didn't need to add more to the misery. Not when there were other ways of scratching the itch.'

‘And I'm not a risk, I suppose, because I'm already—'

‘Oh Mina.' The ache in his voice stilled her heart, and its raw exposure corralled her breath. ‘You are the greatest risk I've ever taken.'

As he claimed her mouth and tightened his hold, Mina let herself slip into his words. He couldn't mean it, not what she thought he was saying. He couldn't, because he was rough and cared for no one, and she was delicate, and far too trusting. He slipped her shirt from her shoulder and skimmed his lips over her skin, inhaling as he burrowed into her neck. Longing radiated out, like rain landing on the Thames and casting circles, ever expanding, ever reaching. As he kissed her ear, he slipped a button, and as he glanced her cheek, he slipped another, and as he teased a nibble on her bottom lip before gently, so gently, fully covering her mouth with his, he adjusted his kneeling stance to ply both hands to the task, and in a whisper, her blouse was undone and untucked and falling from her shoulders.

They exchanged their unravelling. She unclipped his braces, he untied her skirt, she licked his nipple, and he scrunched her hair and bowed into another, and yet another kiss. Everything about his mouth and hands felt famished. When she knelt, stripped and shivering, he wrapped his lone blanket around her shoulders and lowered her onto his bed.

Poised above her, naked, aroused, his body painted with the shadows of night, Enzo appeared more like one of the bronze statues in the gardens than the drawn young man from the rookery. Before, she'd thought him hard with square edges, but now, the curve of his muscles and the firm lines of their indentations cast him as more undulating, like water smoothed stones in a creek, the sort that were shaped by time and gentle consistency.

His gaze darkened as he licked his lips. ‘Fuck you are beautiful.'

‘Really?' The crass compliment snagged her breath. Her body sang with the simple praise, even as she chided herself. She had always thrived on small attentions, and she shouldn't. It had all spun her undone.

‘Beyond beautiful.' Enzo stroked himself. His cock flexed as his chest heaved, and when he exhaled, he gave a satisfied grunt. ‘What do you like?' he asked.

‘Like?'

Enzo half fell. He extended his arms either side of her head and held himself taut above her. Mina shrieked, then despite herself, laughed as the weight of the moment shifted to their old, comfortable lightness.

He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, her lips, her chin, the dip at the base of her neck. His body splayed her thighs wide. ‘Do you like to be kissed here?' He propped himself on one elbow and drew a nipple into his mouth. Mina arced into the deliciousness of it as a little shoot of pleasure took hold, then flourished and blossomed.

‘I do,' she said, and curved to present herself for his feasting.

Did Enzo ever move with anything like hesitancy? His confident arch over her body suggested not as he trailed his tongue across her chest and circled her light pink bud until it firmed, then closed his mouth over it. Her body rippled with delight.

‘Tell me what else you like,' he murmured against her skin. ‘Teach me.'

‘I'm not sure I've liked any of it. I've not disliked, but I've also not…'

A slick flick of his eyes betrayed his emotion as a glimmer of anger sparked, then faded. He lunged forward, planted his lips on hers with the most haphazard possession, then settled back against her chest. ‘You deserve nice things. You deserve to feel good.'

‘I like your kisses,' she stammered, and the craving for more burst in her chest. ‘I like them a lot.'

‘Then I will kiss every inch of your skin. And I will not stop until I have tasted every bit of you.'

He began at her shoulder, traced the furrow made by her collarbone, moved lazily over one breast, then the other. He licked a line down her sternum and scraped his teeth over the thin skin at her hips. At every movement, every slight adjustment of his body, he rubbed against her core. Little sparks of delight and need shot through her, her body throbbing. Lower he moved until he settled between her legs. He nipped her inner thigh, and brushed his lips lightly over her sex, and even though he barely touched her, she thought she might ignite.

‘I love your smell. So wickedly delicious.' He stroked a finger along her slit and over her delicate nub. Mina groaned. He circled, ever so gently, so small a movement, yet it sent a sharp pang of pleasure scorching through her.

‘Sweet mercy, Enzo. That feels so good.'

‘You like that?' He continued to stroke her. Mina's lids fluttered, and through them, she caught his stupid, smug smile, and his cheek resting against her thigh. ‘Let's see what happens if I…'

His silver tongue that had promised her the stars lapped warm against her. Something like a shriek of surprise and a groan of primal bliss burst from her lips. Kissing, nipping, dear heavens, devouring , every little lick and purr sent a tremble of light through her. He nudged her thighs wider, and he moaned as he settled lower. His wicked tongue flicked, and Mina fell into the abandon of it.

He trailed a line of kisses along her thighs, then pressed his face into her most intimate parts, and with a rattling tremor, he breathed her in—a long, deep inhalation like her body had become air—and his exhalation devolved into a rumbling growl that resonated from her core to her toes, to even the tips of her hair. His warm tongue slid into the space that his breath couldn't reach, and with the most languorous precision, he rounded and swept against her like she was a well-worn turn of phrase. His ferocious tongue laved and skittered, and more than a hum, her body began to sing.

‘I've never felt… I've never touched… I've never…' Mina writhed as he slipped a finger inside her and suckled her nub in the same instance. The back of her head rubbed against the iron bed frame as she let out a moan that started where Enzo touched her and ended with her voice reverberating off the ceiling. ‘Fuck, Enzo, you feel so good.'

Cool air replaced his body, and Enzo sat back on his haunches, his eyes sparkling with mischief, and his lips half twisted into a smirk. ‘Not a naughty word from Mina? Where did you learn such language?'

An apology formed on her lips. Enzo raised a brow.

In the basement with her fears, her loneliness and her small blossoming at the slight attention, intercourse had been a messy thing. His Grace had covered her mouth with his hand as the pain of losing her innocence had made her cry out, and in the evenings after, he'd encouraged her to silence as he took his pleasure. Never giving, only taking, every thrust accompanied by a whispered shush .

But tonight, frustrated bliss thrummed though her body, tight and coiled, desperate, like a hand clutching for bread. They stayed fixed, eyes locked, as if daring the other to move first. Did he want her to beg? Or something else? Mina licked her lips. Through the beatific blur, she traced the wicked shine to his mouth, and the satisfied glint in his eyes, and his most prominent cock.

‘Finish me,' she demanded. His grin dinted his dimples into existence. ‘Make me…' She searched for the right words yet had nothing firm to grasp. Before, she'd been expected to be silent. She needed to not be silent. ‘Make me scream. Fuck me visible.'

‘That's my girl,' Enzo rasped, then pressed his mouth between her thighs. He moved with such certainty, his tongue flicking and circling, and when he moaned, the hum made her buck, and he angled himself harder, his neck craning as he pressed firmer. He stroked inside her, deep and delicate. Mina twisted her fingers through his hair. There was a perverse delight in placing her hand over that part of her body and instead of touching herself, finding him. When she pulled him a little closer, he tilted at her direction. His fingertips dug into her thighs as he dragged her into a position that suited him, and Mina, thrumming with delight and abandon, writhed in supplication until her body broke. She howled with the unravelling, as the great thumping fear and the magnificent wave of trembling bliss tore through her. She hooked her knee behind his neck, her body pulsing and jerking as every follicle stood on end and every beat of her heart pounded with pleasure.

Languorously, he dragged his tongue over her torso and dipped into the depression of her belly button. Every nerve blazed, and when he nipped her nipple with his teeth, she jerked at the intensity of his touch.

‘I feel so different,' she panted. ‘Like waking up in a different bed.'

‘Every day, Mina, I'll kiss you like that every day if you wish it. Can I be with you now? I'm near fit to finish.'

Enzo's weight pressed against her chest, his breath heavy and warm against her cheek. He smelt of this moment, of them, together. His cock nudged at her wetness.

‘Wait!' she said with a slight puff.

Enzo sucked air between his teeth. ‘I've been waiting some time for you. I'm not sure I can.'

‘Not for long. You lie down.' Mina scooted to one side. He flopped onto his back. She clambered across his firmness and positioned her body over his. ‘I've heard stories about women riding their men. It will be a first for both of us.'

Mina fumbled a little until she found Enzo's cock, and before her confidence trembled, she settled herself over his tip. He bit his lip, his eyes glinting with desire, and as she slid herself down the length of his shaft, all his control evaporated with a groan of amazement laced with ecstasy. His body embedded in hers, he gripped her hips with his coarse fingers.

Mina splayed her hands against his chest as she rocked. For a few grinding thrusts, her rhythm had no momentum, yet at every little movement, Enzo growled with pleasure.

‘You are heaven.' He grappled for her and with an uncouth grasp of hair, he drew her lips to his, kissed her, his tongue demanding. ‘You are so beautiful. Fuck, you feel so good. Mina, my Mina.'

The iron squeaked, the bedframe thumped against the wall, and Enzo alternated between grunts and whimpering breaths, sprinkled with small compliments and profanities. So wanted, so needed, his desire licked at her years of loneliness until the pain was burnt and brittle, and with each sway, that blissful energy hummed again, starting in her toes before racing over her skin. She braced herself against the curve of the bedframe to leverage herself better, while Enzo, ravenous and greedy, drew a nipple into his mouth and lightly bit her. Mina shrieked with the contrast of pleasure and pain, comfort and abrasion. Her body flowered with each perfect little thrust, and she tipped back, opening herself to him as that tremendous crescendo engulfed her again, and forget the stars—she howled to the moon that peaked through the window.

Enzo drew her close and held her as tight as a vice. ‘I am done for.' He sighed his release into the sticky air between them.

Half a bed, half a room, and all his love. There were worse ways to start over. Against his warmth and the easy rise and fall of his chest, sleep claimed her, and with the steady thump of his heart against her cheek, Mina drifted into sleep with the promise of a new dream.