“What is it you want, Miss Laurent?”

This time when he asked, his gaze was sober, focused and intent as any man entering a business deal. Again, she felt that stab of disappointment. Where was the passion she sought?

“I wish to spend the winter in Spain. Three months, to be exact. I don’t require a house, nothing permanent in nature. Three months. You. Me.” She looked him starkly in the face. “I want adventure. I want passion. And after that …” her voice faded.

Courtland’s face chose that moment to flash in her mind. Blast the man. Who was he to invade her thoughts? She supposed it was his virility, his very maleness. When she thought of passion, his unwelcome image rose in her head.

Lord Sommers’s eyes warmed as he looked at her. “How can I refuse such a request?”

She released a shaky breath, not realizing until then how nervous she had been. “You agree with my requests then, my lord?”

He cocked his head, studying her. “I’m long overdue a holiday, and with Christmas upon us, well, I dread this time of year … all the blasted relations swarming the place. I would much rather escape to sunny Spain. With you, my dear. The notion strikes me as providential, in fact.”

She winced at the description, deciding it either oddly apt or blasphemous.

Lord Sommers moved then, lowering himself down beside her, rearranging his bright blue jacket around him with a fastidiousness to rival any lady. She tried not to flinch when he lifted her hand from her lap and held it in his cold fingers. “How soon shall we do this?”

“I’m ready now. We can leave at once.” Then she remembered she still needed to visit her sisters. She didn’t care that she had vowed to do everything in opposition of Madame Foster’s predictions. She could not not meet them. They were her sisters, the family she had always longed for. One brief meeting would not hurt.

He answered her before she could retract her statement. “I cannot leave until the following week, I’m afraid. I’ll need some days to set my affairs in order and make arrangements for us.” He grinned then, all at once boyish. “Sunny Spain! What a brilliant idea.” His attention fixed on her, his gaze lowering to her lips. “And I cannot think of a better companion. We shall have a grand time of it. You’ll have your passion. That and more, I daresay.”

She smiled. More was what she was counting on. More was precisely what a dying woman craved, needed.

As he leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers, she tried to convince herself that she felt alive, electrified at the touch of his lips—a bit like how she’d felt when that scoundrel from the rookery put his hands to her. A lie, unfortunately.

She felt nothing.

Still, she returned his kiss, determined to feel something. A fraction of the fire that sparked between her and Courtland.

Nothing.

When he ended the kiss and pulled away, she sighed. He apparently mistook the sound for rapture of his mediocre kissing.

“There will be more of that later, love,” he promised.

She nodded and forced a smile. “I’m counting on it.” Counting that next time it would be magic.

That night she dreamed. An uncommon occurrence.

Usually, she slept hard, a dead sleep, with no memory of dreams the following morning. They faded like wisps of smoke. It had been that way since Penwich. Weak and hungry, she’d always fallen into sleep like a rock dropped into deep water. Always waking in the exact position that she touched down, curled on her side, her night rail not even so much as tangled around one calf.

But this night was different. This time, she was alert to her dream. Her senses hummed as she lived it, feeling, tasting as a participant.

She was still in her room. At the boardinghouse. In her same bed, which might lead her to think she wasn’t caught in the throes of a dream, but in all actuality awake. And yet she knew she dreamed. For no other reason would she have been sitting n**ed at the edge of her bed. Sitting, not lying down.

And she wasn’t alone.

Strange, that. The only soul ever to occupy the room with her had been the proprietress, Mrs. Dobbs. Stranger yet, she held herself boldly, proud and comfortable in her skin, in her nudity. Poised at the edge of the bed, sitting still and ready, she pressed her hands against her thighs. And watched.

With her stare fixed straight ahead, she watched the large, shadowed shape by the window. The curtains fluttered behind him, moonlight streaming in pale ribbons, the streaks of light illuminating his dark trouser-clad legs.

Fear didn’t exist at all. Even as she told herself to get up, to move, to rise. To demand that he leave her room. She couldn’t voice the words. She couldn’t budge. She couldn’t even care enough to lift a hand and shield her nudity.

It was as though she gave herself permission to do anything, to do everything. In this dream that didn’t feel like a dream, anything was possible.

He stepped forward with easy, decided steps. He wasn’t even dressed properly. She saw that. No jacket. No vest. The lightness of his lawn-colored shirt matched the moon’s glow. The fabric opened down the middle, leaving a deep vee of shadow. His trousers were dark, lost against the night, as obscured as his shadowed face.

He stopped before her. And yet she didn’t move. Not even when his hands fell to her shoulders, drifting inward to her collarbone, stroking the delicate lines. Her breath escaped in a small gasp.

His broad palms fell to her shoulders again. With a single push, he forced her back down.

Cool air wafted over her br**sts. Her ni**les hardened, chilled and achy as she descended to the mattress.

He came over her so completely, like an enveloping blanket. His mouth closed over one nipple, drawing it deep as his hand gripped her other breast. She moaned, arched, dug her hand into silken hair. Even as her br**sts tingled and throbbed, she looked down, stared at the dark golden head feasting on her breast. Her belly tightened, twisting with heaviness.

He lifted his mouth, blew warm air against the engorged tip, and raised his head to look at her, holding her gaze.

She released a strangled sob at the darkly familiar eyes. Taunting demon eyes. Devilish and seductive.

He shouldn’t be here. It should be Roger, not him. Not him!

But it was just a dream. A mere dream. With that whisper coaxing its way through her head, she relaxed back on the bed again and accepted the magic of his mouth and hands, the delicious weight of his large body bearing her down.

Moaning, she let her head drop to the side, fisting the coverlet. And she saw the other pair of eyes then, watching from the dark still of the corner, a voyeur of her most intimate tryst. A chill chased through her at the flaming white eyes set in a face shadowed beneath a deep hood.

Gasping, she jerked upright, pushing at the warm male chest too muscled to belong to Roger. But not another. Not a certain brutish man of the streets.

“What? What is it?” her lover whispered, his hand skimming down her throat, focused on only her.

“Him.” She pointed a shaking finger at the cloaked figure. So tall and thin, she doubted whether anything thicker than a rail stood beneath the voluminous folds of the cloak.

“Oh, him.” Her lover’s voice was all nonchalance. “He can wait. For now.”

A niggling awareness curled with the rippling heat coursing through her body, distracting her from the full pleasure of her lover.

Her attention strayed back to that watchful figure, so stark, dark and faceless save the glowing eyes. He spoke to her. But not in any tangible way. Not with words. His voice reached inside her, into her mind.

I’m here for you … soon now … soon …

Understanding slammed into her with gale-force power.

She lurched upright, screaming, ready to flee, to run as far from that dark figure as her legs would carry her, even if it meant losing the lover whose mouth and hands worked magic upon her. It wasn’t worth it. Not if it brought Death.

She blinked in the suddenly altered air, the scream still caught in her throat. She looked about her wildly, serrated breath tripping from her lips. She skimmed a hand down, feeling her night rail covering her body. Just a dream.

The curtains at her window fluttered as if a wind had just blown through. With the mullioned glass sealed tight?

Her flesh puckered to gooseflesh. She chafed her arms, running her hands over them, concentrating on steadying her hammering heart.

A swift rap sounded at her door. She jumped, swallowing down another cry.

“Miss Laurent!” Mrs. Dobbs’s disembodied voice drifted through her bedchamber door. “Are you well?”

Marguerite cleared her throat, managing strangled speech. “I am fine, Mrs. Dobbs. Simply a nightmare. Forgive me. I did not mean to disturb your rest.”

“Not at all, dear. Only wanted to assure myself you weren’t being murdered in your bed.”

She bit down on her fist at Mrs. Dobbs’s flippant remark, feeling the words like a barb to her heart.

Not murdered. Not dead. Not yet, at any rate.

“I am well,” she called again.

“Good night then, dear.”

Marguerite fell back on the bed, sighing deeply as her head sank into the pillow. She listened to the heavy tread of the proprietress fade down the corridor. In the distance, a door opened and shut, the sound desolate as it echoed through the night.

Rolling to her side, she burrowed beneath the coverlet, seeking warmth, grasping the fleeting scraps of her resolve to do everything in her power to seize her life and mark it as her own, to avoid a fate like the one Madame Foster had described.

Chapter 6

Ash sat upright in bed and glared down at the large, blinking blue eyes of the tousled female beside him. “What did you just say?”

“Easy there, love.” Mary smoothed a hand over his bare shoulder, her gaze hungrily following the stroke of her hand on his flesh, like she wanted her lips there instead, tasting everything she touched.

He leaned forward, draping his arms loosely upon his propped knees, and stared dazedly ahead as he absorbed her words, his blood simmering to a furious burn in his veins. “Are you certain it’s true?”

“Aye.” Mary fell back on the bed, mindless of her nudity. She and Ash had been lovers off and on for years. Long before Jack made him a partner. Hell, back when he was just one of Jack’s managers. Their long-standing friendship made her someone he could trust. A girl brought up alongside him on the streets, in the days when he picked pockets to survive, would always have his back.

“The great Jack Hadley has gone and gathered his entire flock. All girls. Daughters, can you believe it? It’s almost amusing. For all his procreating, he never fathered a son. Suppose you’re the closest he’ll ever have to that.”

With a growl, he shook his head. Not a son. A son was told things and kept apprised, and Jack had kept him in the dark over the matter of his daughters. Not an oversight, Ash was certain. Everything Jack did was with methodical deliberation.

Not that it shocked Ash to learn that Jack had fathered offspring. He only felt shock over the fact that he was suddenly interested in claiming his progeny—that they suddenly possessed value in his eyes.

Jack was no sentimentalist. He did nothing without benefit to himself. For no other reason had he made Ash his partner. He saw the advantage in it. Claiming his illegitimate offspring had to provide him with something. Ash knew Jack well enough to know that he cared for no one more than himself.

The sounds from his gaming hell floated from below stairs. The buzz of conversation, laughter, the occasional shout from a victor, all acted as a balm to his nerves. Even though he owned a grand townhouse in the City, he stayed at Hellfire, craving the sounds, the smells. His townhouse sat a lonely shell across the river, shrouded in silence. Only solitude and thoughts best left alone awaited him there.

His attention drifted back to Mary. She was talking, he realized. “They’re all supposed to be under his roof together. Grier arrived over a week ago. A nice-enough girl, if not a bit outspoken. Another arrived just yesterday and another is supposed to show up this afternoon. Only that one’s not staying as the other two are … that’s why he’s throwing together a little soiree tonight. He’s hoping to convince the new one to stay for the grand event.”