This Wicked Gift (Carhart 0.5)(7)

It took her a second to unravel his meaning. He wasn’t hoping for a kiss given out of gratitude. He wasn’t even going to attempt a somewhat awkward seduction. Instead, he was trying to coerce her. There had been something magical about the looks he’d given her, occluded as they’d been with his two-word greetings. She’d felt as if they were uncovering a mutual secret—a world where Lavinia could forget the strain of trying to hold her family together. She could pretend for just one instant that nothing mattered but that she was a young woman, desired by an attractive young man.

But her own wishes were of no importance to him. If he was trying to force her in this ridiculous fashion, he saw nothing mutual at all about their desire. She had the sudden feeling of vertigo, as if the room were spinning about her, the floor very far away. As if she’d added all the lines in the ledger between them, and found that her tally did not match his coins.

Lavinia folded her arms about her for warmth.

“Mr. William Q. White,” she said calmly. “You are a despicable blackguard.”

WILLIAM KNEW HE WAS a despicable blackguard. Only the worst of fellows would have tried to claim a woman he could not marry. But he wanted her enough that he almost didn’t care.

“I suppose you think I should forgive your brother’s debt,” William heard himself say.

“I do.”

“And what would I stand to gain by that?”

She dropped her eyes. “He is not yet twenty-one, you see.”

As if such a fact would have swayed him. Her brother was older than fourteen, and at that age William had first become responsible for his own care. Since then, he’d labored for every scrap of comfort. He’d had nothing handed to him—not a penny, not a kind word and certainly not a sister who shielded him from every discomfort.

“You will soon learn,” he said, more harshly than he’d intended, “that everything has a cost.” Coal and blankets in grim lodging houses cost pennies. The eye-straining labor of his apprenticeship had cost him his youth. For years, he’d spent his late nights reading business and agriculture by the dim red glow of the fire, not for pleasure or enjoyment, but to keep alive the futile dream that one day he would be asked to take his place managing funds that might have belonged to him. Mr. Sherrod’s will had just stolen that dream from him, too. Oh, yes, William knew everything about cost.

Her color heightened. If he were the sort to engage in self-delusion, he’d imagine that the pink flush on her cheeks was desire. But the breaths that lifted her bosom had to be fear. Fear at his proximity. Fear that a man, intent and closeted alone with her, was looking down at her with such intensity.

But she did not shrink back, not even when he stood and walked toward her. She didn’t falter when he stopped inches from her. She did not quail when he towered over her and peered into the pure blue of her eyes.

Instead, she huffed. “You have not taken my meaning. It is surely in your best interests to collect on the debt owed over time. After all…”

Her voice was husky. Her breath whispered against his lips. He inhaled. Her scent coiled in his veins and joined the throbbing pulse of blood through his body.

“My interest?” His voice was quiet. “I assure you, my only interest is in your body.”

Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. And that long, smooth column of throat contracted in a swallow.

And then, inexplicable woman that she was, Lavinia smiled. “You’re not very good at this, are you? It works better if you give your villainy at least a thin veneer of pleasantry.”

He might have been a blackguard, but he had no intention of being a liar. “Nothing really worth having is free. If the cost of having you is your hatred, I’ll pay it.”

She didn’t shrink from him. Instead, she tilted her head, as if seeing him at an angle would change his requirements. The pulse in her throat beat rapidly—one, two, three, he counted, all the way up to twenty-two, before she raised her chin.

“Am I worth having, then? At this cost to yourself?”

“You’re worth ten pounds.” It was heresy to say those words, heresy to place so low a value on her. It was heresy even to think of someone as low as him touching a woman as incomparable as her. But he was going to be in hell all his life. He wanted one memory, one dream to keep with him in the years of drudgery that would surely follow. He’d have traded his soul to the devil to have her. A little heresy would hardly signify.

She stood. On her feet, she was mere inches from him. “You believe,” she said, her voice unsteady, “that you must purchase the best things in life. With bank notes.”

“I have no other currency to barter with.”

She met his eyes. “Is there anything you want in addition to my body? That is—will once be enough, or will this turn into a…a regular occurrence?”

A regular occurrence. His body tensed at the thought. He wanted everything about her. Her smile, when she saw him; her sudden laughter, breaking like a sunrise in the night of his life. He wanted her, over and over, body and soul and spirit. But that was all well out of his price range. And so he asked for the one thing he thought he might get.

“I want one other thing,” he said. “When I touch you, I want you not to flinch.”

She frowned in puzzlement at this proclamation. As she bit her lip, she reached for the catch of her cloak. She fumbled with the ties, and then removed the wool from her shoulders, folding the cloth into a careful square. The dress underneath was a faded rose, the fabric old enough that it had shaped itself to the curves of her hips. He’d seen her in the gown before, but never while he stood close enough to touch.