He couldn’t even trust his own lover. The thought made Mercy desperately melancholy, even as he continued.
“After these spells, she’d sleep for an entire week, as if her very soul was weary.” He blew out a sigh, as if fighting a bit of that weariness himself. “She and Gregoire relocated here from France to escape a scandal there,” he continued. “Though she refused to give me details, I gathered that she was wanted for a theft from the Duchesse de la Cour. I have often wondered if she sought me out because she thought I could protect her. From her enemies...from herself.”
He paused, and she thought she saw a very human emotion soften his chiseled features.
Regret.
“The Duchesse is visiting a cousin here in London, which causes me to wonder if she’s reaped her revenge on Mathilde.” His somber eyes found hers. “That is the lead I intend to follow.”
Mercy tapped her pencil against the pad, biting at her cheek in thought. “Mathilde did say she had to conduct some final business before she left...do you think the Duchesse will be at this masquerade you mentioned?”
“I cannot say. I intend to find out before then.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw, which seemed to be less smooth as the afternoon wore on. “It is your turn to relinquish information.”
“What would you like to know?”
“What was the destination of her escape?”
That was an easy question to answer. “We were taking a train to the coast, and from there she was going to disembark to America.”
Raphael nodded, a bleak smile haunting his lips. “She often spoke of seeing the Brooklyn Bridge. Of taking a train all the way to the Pacific Ocean.” His face hardened and he turned to her. “You will not go after this murderer.”
She bristled. “You cannot issue me orders as if—”
He sliced a hand through the air to cut off her protestations. “Has it occurred to you, Miss Goode, that this killer might think nothing of slaughtering you and degrading your pretty corpse before leaving it in the gutter, should you get in his way?”
“Of course it has,” she sniped, doing her best to seem undeterred by his graphic warning. “I’m not planning on getting in his way, only finding him out. Then I’ll turn the evidence over to the authorities. That is what an intrepid investigator does.”
He shook his head the entire time she spoke, all semblance of charm and charisma replaced by a solemn determination.
“It’s too dangerous,” he insisted, leaning on every syllable for undue emphasis. “Leave it alone, Miss Goode. Leave it to me. You go back to your balls, your books, your seamstresses and your suitors. Live a long and privileged life for those of us who—”
“Ha!” She poked him in the chest and then shook her hand when her finger crumpled against steely muscle. “I’ll thank you to note that I have no suitors at present, nor do I desire one, and I’d rather attend the dentist than a ball. So, do not presume you have the measure of me, sir.”
He regarded her with resolute skepticism. “You mean for me to believe you don’t love dressing in silks and having rich men trip all over themselves to offer for you?” He rolled his eyes. “Do go on, Miss Goode.”
“I’ve plenty of interest and no offers.” She crossed her arms over her chest, daring him to laugh.
Instead, he gave a dry snort. “Next you’ll be telling me about blizzards in the Sahara.”
“Don’t be cruel,” she admonished him. “It’s patently obvious why no man would want me.”
His smirk disappeared when he looked at her, replaced by a start of disbelief. “You’re being serious.”
“Deadly.”
“I rarely find myself at the disadvantage of not knowing what someone in the ton finds patently obvious, as you put it... but I can’t bring myself to imagine to what you are referring. I should think you have to beat the suitors away with a club.”
Mercy squelched a threatening glow of pleasure at his words. His discombobulation seemed genuine, but he was a notorious charmer.
She refused to fall for it.
“It’s not one thing,” she explained, suddenly feeling itchy and defensive. Irate that she had to spell it out for him. “It’s everything. It’s me. I’m incapable of feeding the ego of a man with the insincere laughter or empty compliments they seem to require. I do not easily suffer fools, which means I have not ingratiated myself to many other debutantes or mothers of single noblemen. I read too much. I talk too much, which subsequently reveals that I am possessed of too many opinions.” She began to count the reasons on the fingers of her hand. “I am political. Willful. Argumentative. Self-indulgent. All the things men abhor in a woman.”
“Weak men,” he murmured, a spark igniting in his gaze. “Perhaps you need someone other than the dandies of your class to tame you.”
“Tame me?” His wicked suggestion aroused her, which irritated her in the extreme. “Don’t make me laugh. I cannot abide the whims of any man, be he dandy or dominant. I do not desire to keep a household. I do not want to be known as Lady So-and-so, this man’s wife. I want to be me. My own person.” She paused in her passionate speech, amending it without hesitation. “Except for Felicity, of course. I couldn’t live a life apart from her. We shared a womb. She’s the other half of me. She possesses all the fragility and gentility I do not...and she suffers—”
Suddenly she froze. Realizing she’d revealed more to this man than any other. That she’d been on a tirade that must have dried up any interest he might have had.
And why should that matter?
“Suffers what?” he asked.
“Nothing. You needn’t worry about her.”
“Tell me,” he prodded, and when she looked up into his arrested expression, she could believe that he really wanted to know.
That she hadn’t frightened him away.
“Felicity...she has these conniptions. Spells, you might call them.”
“Like Mathilde?” he queried.
She shook her head. “No. She is easily startled. Constantly trepidatious and worried. She has a hard time breathing, but not in the way of asthmatics. Her heart races and she will sometimes be sick or faint. She does faint an alarming amount. It’s as if she stole all my fear for herself so I could be as I am. Brash and bold. We are a mirror of each other. And her reflection is so fragile. So gentle...” Mercy blinked at a stinging in her eyes. “Well, anyway, I would never leave her alone, and a husband would invariably ask me to. He wouldn’t want for competition of my affections.”
She looked up to find Raphael regarding her with infinite tenderness. His eyes were not opaque or full of secrets. They were open. Challenging.
Burning.
No. He was not mysterious, this man. He wore his darkness. Advertised his sins. Pinned his emotions to his suit like a badge of honor.
“I don’t want to go without ravishing you at least once.”
Comprehension of his words didn’t quite land at first. “Go where? Wait... What?”
He stepped closer, his expression intent. “I desire you like I have no other woman. I would take as many nights as you would offer, but I’ll settle for just one.”