“You should go.”

  “No.”

  “I need you to leave.”

  “Tell me why.”

  His hand came up, and his fingers drifted along the side of her jaw, tangling in her hair. One by one, he pulled the pins from the back of her head, each falling to the floor, allowing her hair to spill over her shoulders. She shivered.

  “You and your damned questions,” he murmured.

  “Tell me why,” she said again. “And tell me the truth. And then I’ll go.”

  “Because you make me weak.” He sounded almost angry, even as his fingers were tracing the top of her ear with exquisite care, dropping down to her lobe and then her neck.

  The absurdity of that statement registered only dimly. Her entire body was a fiery mess of nerves, each stretched taut, yearning to discover where his fingers might go next. “You are not weak, King.”

  “I needed you earlier tonight.” His words were stilted. “I still do.”

  “Good,” she whispered.

  “No.” He shook his head and brushed his thumb over her lips. “Needing people makes one weak. But you…” He trailed off. “I need you. And I can’t stay away from you. I keep trying but—”

  “Then stop trying.” It was a reckless thing to say.

  He groaned softly and dipped his head, his lips finding the spot on her neck just behind her ear. A decadent throb ignited at the junction of her legs.

  “Perhaps I need you just as much,” she managed to gasp.

  He caught her earlobe with his teeth, tugging gently as his hands slid over her shoulders and down her arms. “I am not what you need.”

  Adeline’s head tipped back. “Let me be the judge of that.”

  His hands slipped to her lower back, pulling her against him. Her breasts pressed against his chest, heavy and aching, the friction against her nipples sending currents of pleasure burning through her.

  His lips hovered just over hers, not taking, only asking.

  Adeline slid her hands up his arms, over his shoulders, and cupped his face in her hands. The short stubble on his cheeks was rough beneath her fingers, his skin warm. “Kiss me,” she said.

  Very slowly, he brought his mouth to hers. It started gently at first, her lips tasting his, teasing and exploring the feel of him. One of his hands slid up her back, pulling her more firmly against him as he deepened the kiss. She parted her lips instantly, reveling in the heady feel of his tongue stroking hers, the heat and rhythm of his kiss making the pulsing throb between her legs intensify into an unbearable ache.

  Her hips tipped involuntarily, wanting to feel more of him.

  He groaned deep in his throat, a raw, unguarded sound that made her pulse skip. His unmistakable arousal was thick and hard beneath the fall of his trousers, pressing against her lower abdomen. That he was just as vulnerable to whatever this was between them was electrifying.

  “I’ve wanted to kiss you from the moment you stepped into my study,” he said roughly. He nudged his thigh in between hers, pressing her back up against the cold glass of the window. With smooth motions he pulled her coat from her shoulders and let it drop, tracing the ridges of her collarbones beneath her shirt.

  Adeline closed her eyes, letting the sensation of his touch flood through her. His hands dropped to cup her breasts through the worn linen of her shirt, his thumbs gliding over her nipples. She moaned softly and arched, pushing herself more fully into his hands. His mouth drifted along her jaw, leaving embers over her skin in their wake.

  Adeline dropped her own hands, her fingers yanking the hem of his shirt from his waistband and then pushing the fabric up to explore the planes of his abdomen and chest. His muscles contracted beneath her touch, and his breath hissed in her ear.

  He shifted, and then his hands were cupping her buttocks, lifting her against him. Adeline gasped and wrapped her legs around his waist, the bulge in his trousers now pressed exactly where she needed it most. She twined her arms around his neck as he kissed her savagely, surrendering her mouth to his.

  This time it was King who rocked his hips into her, his tongue and his body once again keeping time.

  “Yes,” she gasped against his mouth. “Don’t stop.”

  There was something incredibly devastating about being wrapped around this man as he slowly took her apart, kiss by kiss, touch by touch. As if there were no real break to determine where he ended and she started.

  He dropped his head, dragging his tongue over the hollow at the base of her throat, and Adeline moaned again. He nuzzled lower, and Adeline tipped her head back, and then his mouth was on her nipple, sucking through the threadbare linen. His teeth grazed the peak, sending a bolt of fire through her, and she bucked against him.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  He did it again, this time paying homage to her other breast as his hips rolled steadily, bringing her to the brink. His hands gripped her hard against him, and that perfect pressure sent her tumbling over the edge.

  Adeline curled her fingers into the back of his hair as white-hot pinwheels of ecstasy exploded behind her eyelids. Her entire body bowed, every muscle clenching as bright, blinding pleasure streaked through her, pulsing and pounding. King held her the entire time, pressed relentlessly to him as she rode out each wave, without giving her quarter.

  Adeline’s head fell to his shoulder, panting. He had just unraveled her fully clothed against a damn window. And holy hell, she wanted to experience that all again, but this time with him buried deep inside her. This time with nothing between their bodies.

  “Take me to bed,” she whispered. “Now.”

  King made a feral noise and spun her away from the window, carrying her over to his bed. He set her down on the coverlet, one knee between her legs, one hand braced at her shoulder. His eyes were blue flames again, his breathing ragged, his arousal undeniable.

  Adeline sprawled on the bed, breathless and aching, her clothing in disarray and her hair jumbled around her. She had never felt so gloriously feminine. So gloriously powerful.

  She lifted her arm and trailed a finger down his chest and abdomen, stopping at the waistband of his trousers. “Let me see you,” she whispered. “All of you.”

  King stared down at her, unmoving, his breath still coming in shallow gasps. He seized her wrist with his other hand. “No.”

  Adeline froze. Her heart stuttered. “No?”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t.” She was dimly aware she was repeating him like a half-wit, but honestly, what the hell was happening here? There was pain and regret in his voice, but Adeline didn’t understand why.

  “I won’t,” he said hoarsely.

  “You won’t what?” Adeline tried to sit up, but he wouldn’t let her. Instead he crawled into the bed beside her, pulling her against him so that her back was pressed to his chest. His arm was like a steel band over her waist, his erection still hard against her buttocks.

  She arched against that hardness, wanting this man with every fiber in her body. Wanting to feel him move inside her, wanted to watch as she took him apart as he had her. “King—”

  “I won’t fuck you simply because I’m weak. Because that would make me no better than the man who tries to obliterate his regrets and woes in women or gin.”

  “That’s not at all what this—”

  “You deserve better, Adeline. A man so much better than I.” His voice was raw, yet he kept his arm tightly around her.

  She tried to turn but he wouldn’t let her. “Let me decide who—”

  “Don’t. Please.”

  Adeline exhaled and closed her eyes in frustration. “You’re not—”

  “Who taught you how to fight?” he whispered raggedly.

  “What?”

  “Will you tell me who taught you how to fight?”

  Adeline shifted her head on the pillow. She didn’t fully understand what was going through King’s mind, but she understood that, at this moment, this man needed something different. Something far more intimate than just her touch.

  “My father.” She found his hand with hers, covering it gently. He didn’t pull away. “Who taught you about art?”

  He drew in a sharp breath. “That’s not how this works.”

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  His fingers grasped hers, and she could almost hear the war being waged in his head. “Yes,” he finally said, making Adeline’s heart expand with something that was almost as painful as it was tender.

  “Good. Because I don’t want to leave. Who taught you about art?”

  He might have chuckled, though it came out as more of a muffled groan. “Very well. Art was Evan’s passion even from a very young age. He taught me what he knew. The combined galleries and palaces of Italy taught me the rest.”

  “You’ve been?”

  “Many times. I highly recommend the Uffizi if you have not had the opportunity to experience it.”

  “I have not. But I’d like to.”

  “Then I’ll take you there one day,” he said in Italian.

  Adeline didn’t react. She hadn’t spoken Italian in years, but she understood what he had said, and she wasn’t sure if it was his unexpected mastery of the language or the vow he made that had her heart skipping.

  And it was far too easy to desperately want to believe that such a journey might one day be possible.

  He cleared his throat. “Your family was titled,” he rushed on, switching back to English.

  “What makes you think that?” She let him change the subject.

  “Your speech suggests an education that extends far beyond what a common pickpocket working the Paris cabarets might have expected.”

  “As does yours.”

  “I never worked the Paris cabarets,” he said. “And aside from your speech, your skill with that rapier suggests that your teacher was also very skilled. Thus, I can only conclude that your father was trained by the best. And the best is expensive. And exclusive. I’m not sure it was your father who taught you to fight with that knife, however. No gentleman learns that.”

  “Mon Dieu, all that from a single alley skirmish.” This time, she spoke in French.

  “Tell me if I’m right,” he replied in the same language.

  Adeline twisted and turned to face him, propping herself up on her elbow. He gazed up at her, one hand behind his head, the other resting easily on her hip. He looked rumpled and devastating and as unguarded as she had ever seen him. Her stomach did a slow flip through a storm of butterflies, and a soft warmth flooded through her. She looked away from his face, afraid that if she didn’t, she would give in to the impulse to kiss him again.

  She reached for his hand at her waist, her fingers tracing the thick band of scar tissue. “Yes,” she said. “My parents were the Comte and Comtesse de Chadonnet. In the absence of a son and anything that resembled a conventional upbringing, my father taught me about rapiers and politics, and my mother taught me about history, languages, and maths. What are these scars from?”

  He tried to yank his hand from hers but she held fast.

  A muscle was flexing in his jaw. “I was imprisoned for nine years.”

  She had heard harrowing stories about London prisons, Newgate in particular. That he had survived nine years in such conditions was as horrifying as it was astounding.

  “What happened to your family?” he asked.

  “They died.” An unwelcome pang of grief stabbed her. “What were you in prison for?”

  King tipped his head back, his eyes sliding from hers. He seemed to be gazing at something only he could see. “For trusting the wrong person,” he said finally.

  Adeline wanted to press him further but stopped herself, afraid that he would shut down completely. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Because there is absolutely nothing in this world that can scare me any longer. I lived through hell and survived.” He cleared his throat. “How did your family die?”

  Her fingers traced the muscle of his forearms up to his elbow. There were other scars there too, pale white lines mixed with darker ones that suggested defensive wounds from blades. Adeline had a few herself. “My parents lost everything in the Revolution. Their Paris home, and the château and vineyards. They fled only with what they could carry. And me.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Italy at first. Spain later. We moved around a great deal over the next decade, staying where we could, pretending to be people we weren’t. But my parents longed to return to Paris. When the nobility was revived with limited privileges in 1805, they immediately returned to reclaim their birthright. I went with them.” She stopped, struggling and unsure why. It had all happened so long ago. “They were killed two days later by a man shrieking, ‘Remember Robespierre, death to aristocrats.’ He shot both my parents in the middle of rue Saint-Honoré while we were walking to the market.”

  “Jesus. I hope he paid—”

  “He was never caught.”

  His forehead creased. “You never got justice.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I never did.”

  “Is that why you do what you do?”

  “Maybe. Probably.” She bit her lip. “Yes,” she decided. She lay back down beside him, staring up at the ceiling. “I know what it feels like to have no one on your side. To feel lost and helpless and angry. I never got justice for my parents, but I could get it for others.”

  “That’s very—”

  “Selfish,” she finished for him. “It was selfish. It was easier to focus on others who were suffering so that grief didn’t consume me whole. It started with small things—writing appeals and petitions on behalf of those who couldn’t in exchange for food or clothing. Later, slightly bigger jobs like recovering a set of molds stolen from a chandler in exchange for payment. My…reputation grew from there, as did the gravity of the injustices I was tasked with addressing.”

  He shifted, moving his arm from behind her head to slide around her shoulders and pull her close. Her head came to rest against his chest.

  “And now?”

  Adeline listened to his heart beating steadily, his voice rumbling low. “Now it’s all I know.”

  “You can’t keep taking on everyone’s pain and making it yours, Adeline. That is too much to ask of one person. You can’t live like that.”

  “Secrets lose their power when they are shared. Grief loses its burden when it is shared.” She hated how defensive she sounded.

  “And whom have you shared your secrets with? Whom have you grieved your losses with?” he asked.

  You, she almost said. She hadn’t shared any of this with anyone outside of this tiny cocoon of candor. A tear slid down her cheek. Horrified, she wiped it away before it could fall.

  “How did you get out of prison?” she asked abruptly.

  His body tensed beside her. “I escaped. How did you come to learn how to survive in Litchfield alleys?”

  “The same way you did,” she said. “The hard way. My education was swift and brutal. I imagine the streets of Paris are not so different from the streets of London.”

  “But surely your parents would have had friends or family who would have—”

  “All dead or scattered in the Terror. At the time, raised on stories of the mobs and given what I witnessed, I believed it safer to simply disappear on the streets.” She paused. “How did you escape?”

  His hand tightened around her shoulder. “I trusted the right person. Still trust him.”

  “Was he a prisoner too?”

  “Yes. He saved my life. And I repaid that debt not so long ago.”

  “And now?”

  King’s chest rose and fell beneath her cheek. “Now he’s a duke.”

  Adeline played with a button of his shirt, her fingers circling the smooth edge. “I’m glad you have this duke.”

  “He’s not my duke.”

  “Will you trust me the way you trust your duke?”

  King reached over her and drew the coverlet across their bodies. “I am trusting you not to kill me in my sleep,” he said. “I’m trusting you not to steal the Rubens from my wall downstairs. And I’m trusting you not to give Smithers another apoplexy by filching his key again.”

  But I don’t trust you with my secrets, Adeline finished for him silently.

  “Will you let me come with you to the churchyard tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Go to sleep, Adeline,” he whispered, pressing a chaste kiss to the top of her head.

  And when Adeline woke the next morning, sunlight pouring through the windows, King was already gone.

  Chapter 10

  The sun was blinding in its brilliance against the snow.

  It wouldn’t last long, King knew, before the newly fallen ground cover surrendered to mangy patches of melted snow and ice. But for now, the churchyard looked a little bit as he imagined heaven might, every surface glistening with an unmarred mantle of dazzling white.

  There were a handful of people in the churchyard, including a small knot of mourners who were just now departing from a newly dug grave. Two men who had been sweeping the gravel paths stepped respectfully out of the way, though none of the mourners spared them a second glance.

  King walked through the rows of headstones, his boots leaving deep imprints. On some of the stones, the snow had obscured the inscriptions, but that didn’t matter. King came here often. He knew where he was going.

  He reached the northwest corner of the churchyard, the collection of Westerleigh headstones arranged in a neat row along the path. At the edge, the familiar stone with its sculpted angel rose from the ground.

  Evan Westerleigh

  Beloved Son

  1785–1798

  King knelt on one knee and set the small posy down atop the headstone, the brilliant yellow burst at the center of each flower ringed by white and then an ever-deepening amethyst. Against the snow, they were like a spray of gems.

  “Those are lovely,” a voice said behind him. “What are they?”

  King rose from where he had knelt, brushing the snow from his trousers. He knew that voice as well as he knew his own. It had delivered him from moments of overwhelming despair and kept hope alive during the nights that would not end.