Chapter Seventeen

H ettie stared up at her sister, who was still gaping at her. "Ernsdale is dead," she repeated, sounding somewhat dazed by it. "The thing I've prayed and hoped for has come to pass and all it's done is make my life more difficult rather than less. And... oh, God... I sound like a horrible person. Praying for his death. Who asks God, quite literally, to strike someone dead?"

"Any woman who has had to bear the brunt of a man's temper and rage when the law is on his side," Honoria answered. "Wishing him dead did not make him dead. If it did, then I'd have been widowed on the very day I became a bride."

Despite the truly terrible position she was currently in, Hettie had to smile at that. Honoria could always manage to make her laugh even in the most dire of situations. "Have I told you how incredibly happy I am that you are my sister? If I have not, I've been terribly remiss."

Honoria stepped deeper into the room and perched on the arm of Hettie's chair, wrapping her arm about her sister's shoulders. "The feeling is quite mutual."

"It may not be for very long," Hettie said. "It's naught but one scandal after another. As if your marriage to a somewhat questionable character, my abduction, my miserly husband, now the murder of that same miserly husband weren't enough... now, I am—" She broke off, not quite able to say the words aloud.

"What is it, Hettie? You know there is nothing you cannot tell me."

"I'm going to have a child... and obviously, Ernsdale was not the one who fathered this child."

Honoria's eyebrows lifted and she blinked rapidly for several seconds. "Well, that was certainly efficient. The first time, Hettie? Really?"

Hettie fixed a baleful stare in her sister's direction. "That is not helpful, Honoria."

"No. No, I don't suppose it is. What will you do? About Mr. Ettinger, that is. Have you told him?"

Hettie looked down at her hands folded primly in her lap. "I did. Yesterday afternoon. It didn't go well. It did not really go poorly either. We're just—he needs time to make sense of it all." Honoria's hands covered hers as her sister knelt down in front of her. Lifting her head, she met Honoria's sympathetic gaze directly. "Do not feel sorry for me. I could not bear it. Pity would surely send me spiraling into fits of melancholy worthy of Bedlam."

"I do not pity you. I worry for you. That is a very different thing," Honoria said gently. "And I think you should not be so quick to dismiss Mr. Ettinger. It is quite a thing to comprehend. You've had more time to acclimate yourself to the notion than he has."

Hettie laughed, a slightly watery sound that bordered on hysterical. "He said much the same thing. And it's true enough, I suppose. It isn't his fault I have such low expectations of the male sex."

Honoria nodded. "That is quite true. Neither of us had much in the way of an example when it comes to what a man should be. Our father, my late husband, your late husband—but there are men who can be trusted. And you may find them in the most unexpected of places."

There was no time for Hettie to consider her response to that. The door opened and Vincent entered—with Joss Ettinger right behind him. Hettie's gaze roamed over his tall, broad-shouldered frame and felt that familiar stirring. Lust. She wouldn't deny it, not to herself at any rate. Even after everything that had passed between them, his cold rejection of her and all the turmoil that had occurred since, she still wanted him. But she wasn't a child who didn't understand consequences. And courtesy of her husband, she understood all too well the potential disasters that lay in making oneself vulnerable to a man. She might want him, but she'd die before she admitted it.

*

The tension between them was so thick no one could miss it. It filled the air of what was, in fact, a quite spacious room. But all Joss could do was look at her. Since she'd arrived at his office the day before, she did seem to have rested somewhat. The sickly pallor of her face had receded to some degree of normalcy, and she looked more herself with rosy cheeks. The deep shadows beneath her eyes were still present, though less glaring.

It was Honoria who broke the awkward silence. "Vincent, I must discuss something with you. It is vitally important. Let's adjourn to the morning room for a few moments." Turning back to Hettie, she added, "I'll have refreshments sent in while you and Mr. Ettinger... become reacquainted."

When the pair of them had departed and Joss found himself alone with Hettie, he couldn't stop the amused chuckle. "Your sister has the subtlety of a cannon."

Hettie did not disagree with him, but she didn't share in the laughter. Based on the set of her shoulders, she was much too tense for that. His amusement quickly faded in the wake of her stoicism.

"Right," he continued. "I'm looking into Ernsdale's murder. It happened outside a gaming hell he frequented. Not one of Vincent's, unfortunately. A less popular one, as most of the fashionable establishments had banned him. No witnesses. No one seems to know a damned thing about it. It's a strange position to be in—trying to solve the murder of a man whose death only gladdens me."

"I'm not glad that he's dead," she replied. "I am happy to no longer have him as my husband, but that is a very different thing from celebrating his death."

Joss nodded. "I suppose it is. Though saying so in front of Maurice Bates will only complicate matters for you. You'd do best, when faced with him, to weep prettily and possibly even pretend to faint. He dislikes women in general, but the stronger the woman appears, the more intense his dislike becomes."

Hettie's lips turned down slightly and her brow furrowed. "So I should lie? Pretend to be something I am not?"

"Men like him do not like to have their beliefs and opinions challenged. By appearing strong and composed, you call into question everything he believes about the fairer sex," he explained. "That makes him uncomfortable, and when he's uncomfortable, he will be more likely to strike out at whomever he sees as a threat... whether that's to his beliefs or to his own small corner of the world."

"Then he had much more in common with my late husband than I could possibly have realized. The question, Mr. Ettinger, is how do you respond when someone threatens your world?"

He shrugged. "It's never happened. I wouldn't let it."

A laugh escaped her, but it wasn't humor. The sound was sharp and hard. "Of course it hasn't. You are impervious to everything, I suppose?"

"No. Not especially. It's simply that I've made it a point in my life to never have any sort of attachment to anything. If there's nothing you can't live without, then there's nothing for others to use against you," he answered. "Or at least that's been the way of it till now... till you."

The air in the room shifted. It changed into something entirely different. The anger was still there. The hurt pride and the rejection wouldn't go away without significant effort. But the heat was present, as well. The sharp, clawing need that had consumed them both on that one fateful night still pulsed between them.

"Don't," she finally managed to whisper. "Do not offer me things now just because..."

"Because you're having my child?"

"Yes," she said. "I've already been with one man who didn't want me for myself. I will not do that again. I will not suffer that again."

Joss didn't hesitate. They were done talking, or at least to his mind they were. Crossing the room in long purposeful strides, he halted before the chair she occupied and leaned down, placing his hands on the chair's arms and caging her there. They were nose to nose when he spoke, his voice low and deep, roughened by emotion and desire. "I don't want you for yourself? I only want you for the child you carry? If that were true, Hettie, you wouldn't have appeared in my dreams every night. I wouldn't have woken up in the wee hours with my cock aching for you. I wouldn't have been tormented by your image every goddamn waking minute! You're not just wanted. You're my obsession... worse than liquor. Worse than bloody opium."

She didn't say a word, though her eyes were wide with shock. But she didn't pull back, nor did she push him away. Instead, she simply stared into his eyes for the longest time. Then her gaze drifted lower, settling on his lips. And the hunger—the same hunger that tortured him—was visible in her gaze.

It was the only sign he needed. For two long and lonely months, he'd dreamed of kissing her again. But the kiss they'd shared the day before had only spiked his need to touch her, to taste her. It was a thirst that he feared would never be quenched.

Joss touched his lips to hers—not with the anger and heat that had consumed him the day before. But with all the tenderness she deserved. He poured things into that kiss that he would never have the words to express. That wasn't him. That wasn't the sort of man he was, to wrap it all up and make it pretty and romantic. But not being able to say it didn't mean he was incapable of feeling it. And she stirred things in him no other woman ever had. It was more than desire. More than just attraction. He didn't know if it was love because that was an emotion he'd never experienced before. Not once in his entire life had he known that sort of softness of the heart. Given how much she moved him, it wasn't an idea he could dismiss out of hand.