Chapter 3

Andromeda stared at her half-finished correspondence, unable to put her pen back to paper. Every sentence she'd planned to write had floated right out of her head with her brother's announcement just moments before—Mr. Tristan Kingston had come to court Lottie.

He'd warned them a week ago, and now it had begun.

Courtship. She'd hoped they'd have more time to prepare. And now, it seemed Lottie would be the first to face the danger. Their mother's private drawing room felt heavy with silence. No one had said a word since Samuel had left. Their unspoken words crackled in the air about them. A red flush bloomed violently across Lottie's cheeks as she paced between the writing desk on one side of the room to the collection of chairs near the fireplace where Imogen, Isabella, and Prudence gathered. Andromeda knew the exact moment Lottie would speak because her entire face had gone bright red.

"I can't do this," Lottie said. "I cannot let a man seriously court me when there is no hope for him." Lottie had been in love since childhood with Lord Noble, a viscount she seemed, actually, to hate most of the time.

Andromeda put her useless pen aside and approached Lottie as she would a wild animal, calmly, softly, with infinite patience and even more caution. "I know. None of us want this. Think of it as a distraction, something you must do to keep Samuel from discovering what we truly do with our time."

"You be the distraction. I've no taste for it."

"Lottie!" Prudence popped up from her perch on the window seat. "Do not say that. Annie would have to end her engagement to Hubert. Then who would procure books for us?"

"We can figure out something else," Lottie insisted.

"No," Andromeda said firmly. "My situation offers a perfect cover. We should not abandon it." She'd not meant to enter into a fake courtship with a man in Cornwall, but that's what had come to her lips, an impulsive lie when her brother had asked whom she lately and so regularly corresponded with. Somehow a lie about love had seemed less precarious than the truth.

They'd certainly never imagined running a secret erotic lending library. But then they'd been approached after their mother's death in the dark corners of tea rooms or under the shadowed boughs of Hyde Park by older women who did not care about Lottie and Andromeda's unmarried, white-muslin innocence. The women had whispered requests, pleas. They needed their books, and since the Duchess of Clearford could not provide them from beyond the grave, perhaps, they hinted, her daughters could? What? Keep the books themselves? They simply could not, hot coals that they were, all too able of burning their reputations down.

Andromeda had found the tomes in their mother's personal drawing room, locked up in an old wardrobe with ledgers of borrowers and suppliers. She'd held the books like hot bricks, shocked to her core. A numbing buzziness that soon gave way to admiration. Then the consuming need to follow in her footsteps. Doing so had eased the grief of loss. And connected her with Lord Bashton, a rare book collector very much uninterested in marrying Andromeda, a man she was quite uninterested in marrying.

"What are we to do?" Lottie dropped into a chair, covering her eyes with her hand. "We can't do as Samuel demands."

"But we must," Prudence said. "I see no other way around it. Besides, he merely asks us to receive suitors. He is not forcing us into unwanted marriages."

"But receiving suitors means less time for our other activities." Isabella bent her legs up to her chest and propped her chin on her knees.

"We're clever," Imogen said. "We'll figure it out."

"It doesn't matter how clever we are," Prudence said. "These men will prove a nuisance. What if one of them finds us out?"

"Mutiny, then?" Lottie asked. "We refuse to comply with Samuel's demands."

"Huzzah!" three voices answered.

Andromeda carefully retook her seat at the delicate writing desk. She must tread carefully. "I do not see that we have a choice. Unless we mean to tell Samuel why we refuse to meet with his suitors. Do you wish to tell him why? Tell him about mother's books?"

Silence. And during it, Andromeda peered into her sisters' faces, studying them to see where they fit best in this tightly strung moment. Their jaws were rigid, and their lips thinned. In their faces, something like shadows danced with coming tears. She'd seen them like this before. Seen herself in the mirror with just the same expression. Their parents' death had rocked them, ripped them, crushed them into dust. The discovery of their mother's books had brought them back to life once more, pulled them out of their separate tombs of mourning, and showed them the form of family.

She licked her lips, then spoke with a careful cadence. "Samuel has been a good brother to us. Many others would have disregarded a mother's final wish and married us off with each first offer. Like you, I'd like to throw him into the Thames right now, but we must play his game for the moment." Andromeda fiddled with the edge of the paper before her, the weekly letter to Bashton. "If we mutiny, we not only give a good brother more grief than he deserves, but we arouse further suspicion."

Nods from around the room, an understanding hum like a song of hope.

"Imogen and Prudence," Andromeda said, "You must keep our library and our ledgers as organized as usual. Isabella, you must keep your ears open for gossip. We must know all there is to know about our suitors and all they wish to know about us. All three of you—continue to stay hidden. No one must know you're involved. Let Lottie and I be the faces of our little operation. I know you wish otherwise, but for now, secrecy is safest. Lottie"—she squeezed her older sister's hand—"you have the hardest task. You must fend off Mr. Kingston. Samuel will replace him with other suitors, I'm sure, but they cannot be as dangerous as a newspaperman." The absolutely worst possible suitor when you had a secret you wished to keep.

Lottie nodded. "And what about you? What will you do?"

Andromeda stood and smoothed her skirts. "I will do as I've always done. Pretend to be engaged to Lord Bashton."

Lottie stood with a sigh and straightened her shoulders. "Then I had best get to work and meet Mr. Kingston. I will be done with him quickly. I'll tell him I cannot entertain a courtship because my heart is occupied by another." She marched out of the room and toward the stairs.

Andromeda dropped her pen and rushed after her alongside her sisters. "Where are you going?"

"I need armor," Lottie said, marching up the stairs. "This gown is too simple. Makes me appear too sweet. The purple one, I think, will give me a more severe, commanding presence."

The twins and Prudence joined her, and soon only Andromeda remained.

Andromeda stood in the hallway, mouth agape, arms slightly lifted away from her body. "Well." A word exhaled on a sigh as she let her arms plop loosely to her sides. Surely any gown would do.

Across the hall, a man waited for her sister, and who knew how long it would be until Lottie deigned to show herself. Just because she did not wish to marry the man did not mean she should be rude. What little Andromeda knew of Mr. Kingston suggested he deserved better.

Odd that Samuel had approved his suit. He was, after all, illegitimate. But then, they had been friends since their school days, and perhaps Samuel, having seen the legitimate gentlemen of the ton court and fail to win Lottie through the years, had settled on a different approach, a different sort of man.

And he was different. He seemed a steady sort, a mountain of a man. Not of body, though he stood taller than most gentlemen she knew, but of soul. He gave off the feeling of a mountain—strong and steady and everlasting. Reliable. The first time they'd met, at a dinner party her brother had held, she'd been parched, and he'd provided a drink without her saying a word. As if he'd simply known. The second time they'd spoken, during one of her family's weekly strolls in Hyde Park, he'd kept her company in the shade when she'd been tired and hot. Chatting about everything and nothing, she'd felt simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable. He had proved easy to talk to, but… how had he known she needed shade, a rest?

Not a bit of a clue. Possibly the unattractive sweat had beaded on her brow. Newspaper men, apparently, just knew. No matter how he received his information, he'd done her a service twice, and she'd do one now for him.

Andromeda straightened and marched toward her brother's study. The door stood slightly ajar, and she pushed it, just a bit.

Inside, a man looked out the window across the room. Mr. Kingston. Tall and broad with skin more sun-kissed than usual for a resident of London. His brown hair had been bronzed by the sun as well and hung in messy strands across his forehead, flirting with green eyes that glowed with curious intensity. She'd read the accounts of his journeys he'd written in his papers, written so well she could smell the salt and feel the heat of the sun. Power and confidence coursed through his body, though he stood entirely still. His muscles strained the rumpled wool of his jacket and the hopelessly wrinkled linen trousers. Opposite of the always-polished Lottie in every way.

But, hell and chaos, he was magnificent, too. The wrinkled clothing almost disappeared behind the blinding presence of him. He stole the space in the room, stole the air, too. Lottie would be lucky to catch such a man, to trade unrequited love of a rake for courtship to a sun-loved newspaperman.

She shook her head, shaking away as well the flutterings in her belly, and she cleared her throat.

He stiffened, and she pushed farther into the room.

He shook out his hands, smoothed back his hair, and turned. Then froze, blinked, took a halting step forward. "Your brother said… I guess he changed his mind." He bowed, stiff and formal. "Excellent."

She dropped a curtsy, and when she rose, he strode toward her, his gaze intense.

He stopped within reach, and he smelled of paper and ink and coffee. It should not smell good, but it did. Better than cake. Better than roses. Better than… than anything. "You look… lovely." The corner of his lips tipped up, revealed straight, white teeth.

"Oh. Ah… thank you." It had been a long time since a man had complimented her. What did she say? She'd barely said a single word yet. How mortifying. And why did he compliment her? He had not come for her. But her pulse did not know that. It skipped merrily at her wrist, happy to be noticed by a man like him.

"The pink gown," he said, lifting a hand to her jawline, "puts blooms in your cheeks."

His knuckle brushed against her skin briefly before he dropped his arm to his side. "Did your brother tell you why I am here today?"

"Yes." Finally. A word. And she found she had more of them, too. "That is why I've come. I'm here to tell you that—"

"I'm in the market for a respectable wife. And soon. Within the month, if possible, once the bans can be read. Let us not waste time. Do you wish to be courted?"

What an odd question. Not even Samuel had asked them that when he'd summoned them to his office. He'd assumed. He'd ordered. This man asked. She gripped the door handle to steady herself because an answer to his question rocked through her, born on the moment, born of dark midnight dreams she spoke of to no one. He'd asked, and she could not stop her reply.

"Why yes, I do." Her heart thumped like a drum moving a militia forward, like a happy dog's tail on the floor, like a clock ticking back to life after being wound for the first time in four years.

He crossed the short distance between them, took her arm, and ushered her into a small couch near the fireplace, then sat next to her. Why was he touching her? Why did he look at her with such concentration? It was unnerving. It was thrilling.

Sometimes, when she wrote to Bashton requesting more books, she imagined she wrote to the suitor Samuel thought her in love with, an ideal man who lived to receive her letters, who paced his halls in frustration that some unavoidable obligation kept him from her when he'd preferred to have been married ages ago. She'd never given the imaginary man a countenance.

He had one now—tan and green-eyed and looking at her with the intensity of a scholar attempting to figure out the world's mysteries. Her breath caught, and she might never get it back.

He rested his arm along the back of the couch behind her. She felt small and delicate in the slight but powerful embrace. What in heaven's name would Lottie do? This man was too wild for a Mayfair courtship, too wild for Lottie's London elegance.

He leaned closer, his breath a tickle against her cheek. "Your brother had the right of it. A direct approach is best. But perhaps he failed to understand something else."

"Pardon?" He leaned so near, smelling of ink and paper and wind, and she could think of nothing else but ink and paper and wind. "Um, well, Samuel is often wrong."

"I will assume he is about this as well because I am afraid I cannot help myself. God, you make me feel like a brute beside you…" He groaned, and the pad of his thumb found her bottom lip, stroked across it. "And you agreed. Shall we celebrate?"

"Celebrate what?" Her voice wavered, her gaze riveted on his face, and though she knew she should, she did not bolt.

"Our courtship." His voice was a low rumble as he placed the word against her lips in a kiss as soft as the smile that had inspired it. The journey between the back of the couch and the back of her neck proved blessedly short, and her skin in that vulnerable spot melted, trembled at his touch. He pulled her closer, and her hands fluttered between them, grazing his waistcoat. Everywhere he touched her, sparks flew, felt like candles flickering a dark room into light, and the shadowed desires in her chest, long dormant, began to warm, to glow.

He pulled away but did not release her. She could not breathe except in short pants, her gaze glued to his fine lips, her cheeks feeling as if she'd been outside without her bonnet for hours, not under his contemplation for mere minutes. He rubbed a thumb along her cheek, grinning.

And he dipped in for another taste.

Mr. Kingston tasted like salt and chocolate, and though Andromeda had broken her fast with her usual hearty enthusiasm that morning, hunger consumed her. His lips were light on hers but firm and warm. He gave her a hint, nothing more. But a hint seemed just enough to spark her entire body to life, as if the stars had tumbled down from the heavens to rest inside her chest so that the entire universe narrowed down to her and him and how his touch made her feel—restless and needy and perfect.

Courtship. A whisper of a word she batted away like a cat playing with a tassel.

She wanted to touch him but could not quite bring herself to do so. Her hands fluttered between them instead, glancing touches where she wished to lay her palms flat. Would his stomach be as firm as his lips, harder even?

Courtship. Another whisper tugging at her.

She sighed, and her body melted forward, so that her hands, now loose fists, were sandwiched between the hard, muscled planes of his body and the softness of her own. Both hearts beat frantically, in his chest and her own, beating out the rhythm of a whispered word—courtship.

Hell and chaos! He'd said courtship! That the kiss had been to celebrate courtship!

She jumped from the couch and fled to the window. "How utterly mortifying," she groaned, pressing her hands to her cheeks—hot as boiling water. She swung around to face him, hands still to her face. "I am so terribly sorry. There has been a mistake." She winced.

In the darkness, she heard the squeak of the couch and the snap of approaching boots.

"A mistake? In what way?" His voice, gruff and low, sounded near. Quite near. "Is it because I'm a bastard?"

"No!" Indignation drowned out her embarrassment. "I know how others feel, but it's silly, isn't it? You could not control your parents. And Samuel accepts you as a peer. And I've seen myself that you are a kind man. No." She scoffed. "Not that at all."

His deep breath raised his shoulders, and a dark doubt seemed to drop away from him like shadows banished by the rising sun. "Excellent. A perfect answer, actually. If you are not opposed to my parentage, then I see no error. I asked if you wished to be courted, and you said yes. The kiss was certainly no mistake. More like reassurance this is not one."

Hell and chaos. She'd answered him truthfully. She did wish to be courted. She should not have answered his query, but an answer had come out without her consent, filling the air around them with her truth.

The kiss, though, that had been a mistake because—

"You do know I'm not Lady Charlotte, right?"

"Why would I think you were her?" His words were as clipped as his bootsteps had been.

"Because you came to court her, and then you kissed me, and you're a gentleman. I think. And a gentleman would not kiss one lady and court another."

"You do not resemble your sister."

"I'm aware." More indignation to pile upon that left over from earlier. "I'm much plainer. Of course, you realized I'm not her. It merely seemed the most likely explanation."

"Plain?"

How had he made such a word dangerous? She shivered.

"You are not plain, Lady Andromeda. You are ever shifting. Like the sea." His gaze seemed a prying thing, slicing under skin and digging deep, an investigation, a promise of intention to know more, know better, to understand.

She groaned, the room going a bit fuzzy around her, spinning, making her dizzy. She laughed. "Oh, this is too much. I do apologize. I've not often been on the receiving end of purposeful desire. I'm not quite sure what to do with it."

He took yet another step closer, and she stepped backward, a retreat from his advance.

"Your tepid suitor?" he queried. "Your brother spoke of him. I'm glad to see you've decided to throw him over."

She shook her head. "I have not!" She could not. She knew no other man with such direct access to and knowledge of rare and antique erotic books.

"You must. You agreed to let me court you. We sealed the deal with a kiss."

"I meant I wished to be courted in general. Not specifically by you." But the admission had been a misstep, too. Something she had never meant to admit in her mind had somehow made it into the air.

He shoved his fingers through his hair, and it immediately abandoned any pretense to neatness and swung in front of his eyes. "Are you still engaged? Your brother said it was unsure. I thought your appearance here meant otherwise, that you had made a better choice."

A better choice? My, my, my. The man knew his own worth, didn't he? How… vexing.

She picked at the ribbon at her bodice. "As I have already said, I am still engaged. But as for a better choice, I cannot agree. Hubert is quite the most strapping, thoughtful, intelligent, and… perfect suitor I'm likely to encounter." Not a suitor at all. Not any of those things but for intelligent, really. But Kingston had vexed her, and he deserved to be vexed in turn. He would not enjoy, she could tell with very little knowledge of him, hearing a man outdid him on any front.

He took another step forward. "If so"—he lifted his hand to her face in the space between words, pushed her chin up until she met his gaze—"why are you here instead of your sister?"

She stood her ground, not moving an inch, not flinching from his touch. "I merely came to tell you that she will be late. She's changing her gown, freshening up."

The small points of contact between his fingertips and her chin intensified from sun-warmed lake waters to boiling-kettle hot, and he snapped his hand away as he bit out a curse. He strode away from her, shoving his hands through his hair. "I kissed a woman engaged to another man? Hell. Alex can never know." He shook his head. "I am deeply mortified, Lady Andromeda. I have offended you, and—"

The door flew open, and in its frame stood Lottie.

Andromeda bounced off the windowsill and skirted a wide circle around Kingston. "You've arrived, Lottie. Excellent." She nodded at a frowning Kingston. "I'll be going. Thank you for the invigorating… conversation." Kiss. The invigorating kiss. She should regret it. Perhaps she would if Lottie and Mr. Kingston ended up married. But right now, the sensation of gently probing lips still buzzed on her skin, and she wanted to steal away to see how she might keep it longer, keep it to pull out in lonely moments.

She backed into the hallway. Let Lottie take care of Mr. Kingston now. He was fire, but Lottie was stone. He'd get nowhere with her.

Andromeda, however, seemed to be made of ice around him, melting, thawing and new like the hard ground at the start of spring. She banished the sensations and dropped a curtsy at the man who'd flicked a glance only once and briefly at her sister before returning it to her. "I enjoyed our visit. Farewell." She set her quick steps toward the stairs and her apartments above.

Her stomach churned, becoming a quivering mass of… of need. Need to be courted, need to be touched, to be kissed, to be desired. She'd hid it all so well for so long and a single kiss—her first—had pulled it all to the surface. She'd have to push it right back down again. Because to have what she secretly craved, she'd have to abandon her secret, her legacy, her sisters, and that she could never do.

Mr. Kingston was a temptation like she'd never faced before. Thank heavens, Lottie would send him packing. She'd never have to face him or her own raw desiring, again.