Not for you.
Never to be hers.
He was the lock she would never pick.
It didn’t matter that he seemed to know a dozen ways to open her.
“You asked me for something true,” he said, gruff edge in his voice. “Earlier.”
She stood, wanting to be free of the bench that would never be hers again, because it would always be his. “Yes. And you lied.”
“I didn’t,” he said. “I told you I wanted you.”
For a moment, not forever. She didn’t say it, and she was proud of herself.
“And I didn’t lie when I told you that my name wasn’t for you, either.”
He didn’t have to say it twice. It didn’t have to sting twice. “Yes, Devil. I am not addlebrained. I understand your birth name is too precious to share with me.”
He looked away again. Cursed again. “For Christ’s sake, Felicity. When I say it isn’t for you, it’s because it’s not precious at all. Because it defiles you to speak it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t—”
“It’s not my birth name; I don’t have a birth name. I was found, days old, wrapped in swaddling clothes and screaming on the banks of the River Culm, a note pinned to me, with instructions that I was to be sent to my father.”
Dear God.
Her chest tightened at the words. At the vision of him, a child. A babe. Left. “Who would do such a thing?”
“My mother,” he said without emotion. “Before she filled her pockets and walked into the water, thinking me better off without her.” Felicity felt ill. What must that poor woman have been facing? What fear must she have carried? What sadness?
And then he added, “She thought he would accept me.”
Of course she’d thought that. Who wouldn’t accept him, this pillar of a man, proud and strong and brilliant and bold? How could any man not love such a son?
How could anyone not love such a man?
How could anyone leave him?
The thought rioted through her on a flood of recognition. She loved him. Somehow, she’d fallen in love with him. What was she going to do?
She stepped toward him, reaching for him, wanting to show him. Wanting to love him. “Devil.”
He shook his head at the whispered name and stepped back, refusing her touch, his words unfeeling. Miraculously so. “He did not come for me. And no one in town wanted a bastard castoff—so they sent me to an orphanage. I had no name, so they named me Devon Culm—for the county from whence I came and the river where my mother died.”
She reached for him again, only to have him pull away again. “Your father . . . he must not have known . . . the letter must not have found him . . . he would never have left you.”
“You will make a lovely mother someday,” he said. “I told you that once before, but I want you to know I mean it. There will come a time when you will have beautiful, mahogany-haired daughters, Felicity, and I want you to remember that you will be a remarkable mother.”
Her eyes stung with tears at the words—at the invocation of those children that she did not want if they were not shared with a man she loved. With this man, whom she loved.
“You wanted the truth, Felicity Faircloth, and there it is. I am so far beneath you that I soil you with my very thoughts.”
She lifted her chin. “That’s not true.” Did he not see he was magnificent? Did he not understand that he was ten men? Stronger and wiser and smarter than anyone she’d ever known?
He reached for her then, his fingers trailing over her cheek in a caress that felt too much like a farewell. She reached up to capture his hand. “Devil,” she repeated. “It’s not true.”
“I made a mistake,” he said, so softly it was almost carried away on the wind. The words made Felicity ache with sadness.
“This isn’t a mistake,” she said. “This is the best thing I have ever known.”
He shook his head. “You’ll never forgive me,” he said, looking at her. “Not if I take you from the life you deserve. Don’t seek me out again.”
He dropped his hand and turned away. She watched him go, willing him to turn back. Telling herself that if he turned back, it would mean something. If he turned back, he cared for her.
He didn’t.
And her frustration and irritation simmered over.
“Why?” she called after him, getting angrier by the moment. Hating the way he had stripped her bare and made her believe that she mattered—and then left her as though she were nothing but an afternoon distraction. As though she were nothing at all.
He stopped, but did not look at her.
She did not move, refusing to chase him. Even a wallflower had pride. But she let her frustration ring out. “Why me? Why give me a taste of this? Of you? Of your world? Why let me have it and then snatch it away?”
It was becoming more difficult to see him in the dimming light, and she wondered if he would answer her. When he did, it was soft enough that she wondered if he meant her to hear it. If he realized that the breeze would carry the words to her just as the bench had done earlier.
“Because you are too important.”
And he was gone, into the darkness.
Chapter Twenty
Felicity had heeded his instructions.
She had not sought him out, nor had she broken into his offices or his warehouse, nor had any of his watches seen her in Covent Garden. In fact, Brixton, returned to his post outside Bumble House, had reported virtually no activity from Felicity at all since Devil had left her in her gardens.
She had not even resorted to sending him a note.
It had been three days, and Felicity had left him in peace, and Devil found he was more and more consumed with her with every passing second.
Perhaps he could have avoided it if he hadn’t answered the summons she’d sent via Brixton. Perhaps he might have been able to ignore her if he hadn’t kissed her in the gardens. If he didn’t remember the sound of her voice carried along that whispering bench. If he didn’t know she laughed when she came.
She laughed when she came.
He’d never known a woman to give herself over to pleasure like that. So fully, so completely that her pleasure poured from her in pure, unadulterated joy. For the rest of his life, he would remember the sound of her laughter in that garden, shared with him and the setting sun and the trees and nothing else.
For the rest of his life, he would dream of the taste of her pleasure and the sound of it. He was ruined by her.
He’d spent three days pretending to ignore the memory of her pleasure, of her glorious, rolling laughter, and finally, in failure, had left his offices to meet the latest ice shipment on the Thames. The sun had barely set—sending gold and purple streaks across the sky above London—and it was high tide.
Devil crossed over Fleet Street, toward the docks, checking his watch as he walked—ten past nine. He noted the quiet of the taverns frequented by London’s dockworkers, most of whom would have found work that evening, seeing ships in and out of the moorings on the river while tide was high and the boats could be controlled. Once tide ebbed, it would be twelve hours before the ships could be moved—and time in shipping was funds.
Crossing down to the river’s edge, walking stick in hand, he followed the docks for a few hundred yards to the large berth the Bastards leased on evenings when they received shipments. A massive ship loomed ink black against the grey sky, just docked, half-sunken in the high water because of its cargo—one hundred and fifty tons of ice, a good portion of it melted inside the hold.