He did not come because Ewan had kissed her.
And if he did come because Ewan had kissed her, it wasn’t because of Felicity. It was because he knew his brother well enough to know that Ewan was trying to prove a point. Trying to send his own message to Devil, that he had his marriage and his heir well within his grasp.
Either way, he didn’t come for Felicity.
At least, that’s what Devil told himself as he crossed the back gardens of Bumble House mere hours after Brixton returned to the rookery with news of the kiss, his subsequent discovery, and the fact that Felicity Faircloth had returned him to deliver a scolding to his employer.
Devil tucked his walking stick beneath his arm and began to climb the rose trellis beneath her window. He was a handful of feet above the earth when she spoke from below.
“I thought you were dead.”
He froze, clinging to the slats and vines for longer than he’d like to admit, loathing the way her voice had his breath catching in his chest and his heart beating slightly faster than it should. It wasn’t because of her, he told himself. It was because he was still on edge from the last time he saw her. From the news that the Bastards’ shipment had been hijacked and their men hurt. From the fact that he’d been with her instead of taking care of his men.
That was all.
He looked down at her.
A mistake.
The sun was setting over the Mayfair rooftops, sending rich rays of copper-tinted light into the gardens, catching her dark hair and setting it aflame, along with the satin of her gown. Pink again, now the color of an inferno thanks to a trick of the light. Not that Devil should have noticed that it was pink. He shouldn’t have. He also shouldn’t have wondered if she was wearing the undergarments he’d purchased her days ago. He certainly shouldn’t have wondered if the undergarments came with pink satin ribbons like he’d asked.
Asking for those was another thing he shouldn’t have done.
Christ. She was magnificent.
He shouldn’t notice that, either, but it was impossible not to, what with how she looked like she’d been forged in fire and sin. She was beautiful and she was dangerous. She made a man want to fly right to her. Not like a moth. Like Icarus.
The only thing he should notice was that this woman was not for him.
“I’m not dead, as you can see.”
“No, you’re quite hale.”
“You needn’t sound so disappointed,” he replied, climbing down a foot or two before letting himself drop to the ground and taking his stick in hand.
“I thought you were dead,” she repeated, as he turned to face her, her velvet brown eyes a wicked temptation.
She was too close, but his back was up against a trellis, and he couldn’t move. “And were you very pleased?”
“Oh, yes, I was over the moon,” she said, pertly. And then, after a moment, “You addlepated cabbagehead.”
His brows shot up. “Excuse me?”
“You sent me away,” she replied, speaking slowly, as though he were a child who could not remember the events of two nights earlier. “You climbed up onto a horse with your idiot weapon—which is no kind of protection from bullets, I might add—and rode off into the darkness without a second thought for me. Standing there. In the courtyard of your warehouse. Certain you would be killed.” Her cheeks were flushed, her nostrils flaring, the pulse in her throat racing. She was more beautiful than she’d ever been. “And then your henchman packed me into a carriage and took me home. As though everything was fine.”
“Everything was fine,” Devil said.
“Yes, but I didn’t know that!” she said, her voice high and urgent. “I thought you were dead!”
He shook his head. “I’m not.”
“No. You’re not. You’re simply a bastard.” With that, she turned on her heel and left him, giving him no choice but to follow her, like a dog on a lead.
He didn’t care for the comparison, nor its aptness, but follow her he did. “Be careful, Felicity Faircloth, or I shall start to think you concerned for my well-being.”
“I’m not,” she said without looking back.
The sulk in the words made him want to smile, which was strange in itself. “Felicity?”
She waved a hand in the air as she crossed into the high, labyrinthine shrubbery at the rear of the garden. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“You summoned me,” he said.
She whirled toward him at that, her earlier frustration tipping over into anger. “I did no such thing!”
“No? Didn’t you send my boy packing to fetch me?”
“No!” she insisted. “I sent Brixton packing because your spies are not welcome in my hedgerow.”
“You sent him with a clear message for me.”
“It wasn’t clear at all if you think I meant to summon you.”
“I think you always mean to summon me.”
“I—” she began, then stopped. “That’s ridiculous.”
He couldn’t stop himself from approaching her, from drawing near enough. “I think you issued a challenge in the yard of my warehouse, looking like a queen, and when I did not rise to it, you thought to bring me to you. You imagined that I’d turn up here, desperate for you.”
“I have never imagined you desperate for me.”
He leaned in. “Then you are not as creative as I thought. Did you not pronounce to all assembled two nights ago that you were not through with me?”
“No, as a matter of fact. I pronounced that I was not through with Covent Garden. That’s quite a different thing altogether.”
“Not when Covent Garden belongs to me.”
She turned away, heading deeper along the hedge path. “I hate to disabuse you of your pompous self-worth, sirrah, but you were not in my thoughts, except to let you know that I was prepared to deliver on my debt to you.”
He stilled, not liking the words. “Your debt.”
“Indeed,” she tossed over her shoulder. “I thought you’d like to know that your lessons worked.”
Of all the things she could have said, those were the words most likely to set Devil off. “Which lessons?”
“Your lessons in passion, of course. The duke was here this morning to discuss the terms of our marriage, and I took matters in hand.”
His grip tightened on his cane sword, instinct making him wish he could unsheathe it and set it to his bastard brother’s neck. “What matters?”
She turned, still moving deeper into the gardens, spreading her hands wide as she walked backward, cheeks flushed. “Kissing, of course.” And then, as though she’d remarked upon the weather, she completed a full circle and continued away from him. “Did Brixton not report back?”
Devil tapped his walking stick in his hand twice. A thread of unease whispered through him. Brixton had reported that Ewan had kissed her, of course. But when Devil had pressed the boy for more information, he’d been told that the caress was short and perfunctory—the very opposite of what had happened with him in the ice hold two nights ago.
There was nothing perfunctory about the way he and Felicity had come together.
So what had happened after Ewan had sent the boy packing? She wasn’t wearing gloves. Had they touched? Skin to skin? Had he kissed her with passion?
Good God. Had she kissed him?
Impossible. And yet . . .
I took matters in hand.
Devil followed her, coming around a corner to see her headed for one end of an enormous, curved stone bench that must have been twenty feet long. “You kissed him.”