Scandalous Desires (Maiden Lane #3)(60)

“I see.”

Silence fingered the soft velvet lying over her lap, the realization suddenly hitting her that they rode in a small enclosed space together. She tried to keep her breathing even, but the feel of his broad shoulders leaning against her, the sight of his long legs stretched clear across the carriage floor, seemed to make breathing rather difficult.

“This is only my fourth carriage ride,” she said nervously into the heavy quiet that had fallen.

“Oh?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Papa could not afford to keep one, but I once rode in a carriage belonging to a friend of his, Sir Stanley Gilpin, who helped to found the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children. That was when he took us to a fair in Greenwich once. And when Temperance was married, her husband, Lord Caire very kindly provided a carriage for the family to ride in to the church and later the wedding breakfast.” Silence stopped suddenly having run out of breath.

She darted a look at Michael.

His face was shadowed in the dark, but he seemed to be paying close attention to her babbling. “And the fourth time?”

She remembered and had to look down at her hands in her lap. “The fourth time was on the morning after I spent the night in your bedroom. Temperance rented a hack to come search for me. She found me at the end of the street after I’d walked it with my hair undone and…” She trailed away, unable to say the words.

But he was quite able to supply them. “And yer dress unlaced to show yer chemise and the tops o’ yer pretty titties.”

“Yes.” She looked at him. The old anger and pain was in her chest, but it was dimmer now, allowing her to think. “Why did you make me do that? Walk up the street like a whore coming home from a night of sin? Did you want to destroy my marriage?”

“No.” He shook his head sharply. “Had I thought enough to want to destroy yer marriage then me actions might be forgivable.”

She wished she could see his face. It had never occurred to her that he might think what he’d done that day unforgivable—that he might care enough to want forgiveness. The idea was a revelation.

“Then why?” she asked.

“Why not?” he replied and the simple cruelty of his statement sent a jagged shard of pain through her breast. “It was me whim, that and only that. I was bred and birthed in St. Giles. I clawed me way up to become king o’ hell and now me every wish is granted, love.” He shrugged, his expression filled with self-mockery. “If I should have a mind to crush a virtuous woman merely for me own entertainment, then I do it.”

His honest depravity took her breath away, but her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Once she might’ve taken his words as simple fact. Now she knew him better. He might think himself a devil, but he was far more complicated than that.

Far more good.

“So you have no control over your desires?” she prodded skeptically.

“Sure and I have control.” He closed his eyes as if disgusted. “Don’t harbor false illusions about me, Silence, m’love. I chose not to control me desires when I met ye—even if that meant making an innocent walk, disheveled, up a street in St. Giles to fall into her sister’s arms.”

“How do you know I fell into Temperance’s arms?” she asked. “You didn’t escort me to your door—that was Harry’s job.”

He went still. “I watched ye with a spyin’ glass from me windows. I saw yer courage—and I saw ye collapse into her waitin’ arms.”

“Why?” she whispered. “Why should you watch me?”

“Why shouldn’t I share in yer pain?”

She shook her head, looking away from him, staring blindly out the darkened windows. “You say you chose not to control your basest urges that night, yet you did not harm me physically. You could’ve taken me to your bed and destroyed me, yet you did not.” She turned and stared at him seriously. “You cannot tell me that you don’t feel true remorse for the pain you caused me.”

He looked startled for a moment and then he laughed, short and hard. “Ah, Silence, m’love, don’t mistake me for a gentleman. I am a pirate, a thief, and a killer, and nothin’ but.”

“Then you would do it again, if you had the chance?” Silence demanded. “Make that terrible bargain with me? Send me into the street, disheveled and ashamed?”

His hesitation was so slight that had she not been paying careful attention, she might’ve missed it. But she didn’t miss it. It was real.

He looked haunted—confused as if the very earth had shifted under his feet. “D’ye hope to change the stripes on a snake, darlin’? Rub as hard as ye might, they’ll not come off and yer like to be bitten for yer pains.”

“You didn’t answer me,” she whispered.

He turned to face her though she could not make out his expression in the dark. “And yer sure o’ that now?”

She drew in a wavering breath. “You can choose not to do such horrible things in the future, can you not?”

“Can I?”

“Yes,” she said firmly. “No matter what you were in the past, what you are now, you can choose to change, choose to indulge only your better desires, not your basest ones.”

He stared at her and she wished that she could see his eyes clearly. Would a devil lurk there—or a militant archangel?