When Jenkins reached for his cudgel, the interloper only had to whirl and point a long finger in his direction to cause the lawman anxious hesitation. “If you raise that weapon against me, mon ami, I swear in front of God—and this beautiful woman—that I will take it and deliver the most humiliating beating you’ve ever received.”
His voice like a saber, smooth and wickedly sharp, was tinged with the barest hint of a French accent. It slid into her ear with that same vague sensation of malevolence she’d experienced only moments ago, raising every hair on her body.
Some primitive instinct roared to life in his presence, one that warned her of imminent peril.
“The last man who raised a weapon against me...will never walk again.” He stood with his back to her, squared against the indecisive constable. Lean muscle flexed rigid beneath his exquisitely tailored suit as vibrations of aggression and intimidation rolled off his wide shoulders in waves and stole whatever courage poor Jenkins possessed.
The policeman returned trembling fingers to his sides as he, no doubt, recognized how close he stood to death.
Because the man in front of him was possessed of one of the most identifiable names in the empire.
A notorious libertine.
A flagrant and lawless fortune hunter.
A gangster bequeathed with all the masculine beauty of Eros himself.
He turned back to her, brushing an errant ebony forelock of hair out of his eyes to aid in his unrepentant assessment.
What Mercy read in his gaze stupefied her further.
Where before there had been intellect, charisma, and cunning, only ferocity resided now. Ferocity and...something that looked confoundingly like concern.
His evaluation was a tangible thing. It caressed her in places she’d given no man license to touch.
Least of all him.
His scan of her body started at the hem of her dress and left no part of her untouched until he met her eyes.
And then, right in front of her, the ferocity dissipated, replaced by that signature insouciance he was so famous for.
It was said he’d smile like a Cheshire cat whilst disemboweling his enemies.
Mercy didn’t doubt it in the least.
He lifted his knuckles to brush against her still-smarting cheek, and she flinched away.
Not because she feared him—
But because she wasn’t ready to find out what the sensation of his touch would do to her. When his very presence set her nerves alight with such volatile, visceral thrums of awareness, how could she bear the pressure of his skin?
He obviously misinterpreted her retreat as a muscle flexed in his jaw. “I will relieve him of the hand he struck you with, mademoiselle.”
He said this as if offering to shine her shoe.
A siren broke the moment as the thunder of horse hooves clattered into the cobbled courtyard. Voices shouted and the very rafters shook with the force of a veritable army of police.
The arrival of his comrades injected the sputtering constable with fresh nerve.
“No one will believe this,” Jenkins marveled. “I’ll be the man who arrested the Raphael Sauvageau, Lord of the Fauves, and hanged him for murder.
Chapter 2
Mercy had often been described as fearless.
Indeed, she did little to disavow people of the notion. In her home, fear was used by her authoritarian parents to coerce and control. She witnessed how it plagued Felicity, her twin. How it granted her domineering father power over people he had no right to possess.
And so, she’d decided from a very young age that she would fear as little as possible and therefore maintain as much power as she could.
Oddly enough, an ironic phobia had developed in the wake of her declaration of personal sovereignty.
She couldn’t stand to be caged.
In fact, the confines of the prisoner transport wagon made her fingers curl with the need to claw at the locks, the walls, the very flesh that immured her soul to her body.
The shiver that had previously run through her had now become a quake so intense, her bones threatened to rattle together.
Though the iron and wood interior of their cage was intolerably frigid, a sheen of sweat perceptibly bloomed at her hairline and some of it gathered to trickle between her breasts. The sway of the coach on dubious springs felt to her like a rowboat on the open ocean during a sea gale.
It was making her green at the gills.
Well, if her breakfast were to make a reappearance, she’d be certain to direct it at the shackled man taking up more than his share of space, not to mention entirely too much of the fetid air.
She refused to acknowledge Raphael Sauvageau as she lunged at the door, kicking out at it with all her might. The irons securing her wrists in front of her were attached to a bar above the long bench by a chain that set her teeth on edge with the most grating rattle.
As the carriage lurched over a bump, the chains were the only reason she didn’t end up on the floor in a heap of petticoats and sprawling limbs.
Mercy hadn’t gone easily into confinement. She’d writhed and scratched and spit like an angry tomcat being forced into a bath. It’d taken four constables to subdue her.
Behind her, the damnable gangster had sauntered toward his imprisonment as if he were on a lazy stroll, looking so much like he preferred his hands to be manacled behind him so he didn’t have to hold them there on his own.
His calm was patently infuriating. And if she were speaking to him at the moment, she’d make certain he knew it.
“Let me out, you knob-headed ignoramus!” she shouted through the bars, gripping them and shaking, as if it would do any good. “It shouldn’t be a crime to slap a man for being a discourteous toad, especially when he gave as good as he got!”
She ignored a sound emanating from the man locked inside with her, unable to tell if it was mirth or wrath.
The uniformed officers around Mathilde’s tidy row house disappeared as the conveyance rounded a corner.
In one final fit of pique, Mercy slammed her palm against the door with a satisfying clang before heaving herself onto the bench in a huff.
“I can’t be here,” she said to no one. Particularly not to the only other occupant of the coach. “My father is a baron and a commissioner, and my brother-in-law is the Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard. I’ll never hear the end of it.” She tugged at her tight manacles, twisting her slim wrists this way and that. “Oh, blast and bloody bother!”
This time, the rumble of amusement was unmistakable, drawing her notice.
“Really, I must beg you to refrain from saying such things,” Raphael Sauvageau intoned in a voice that threatened to curl her toes.
He lazed on the bench across from her as if it were as comfortable as a throne, legs sprawled open at the knees and expensive jacket undone. The threads of his trousers molded to long, powerful thighs, calling attention to an indecent bulge at their apex.
“I’ll say what I like, you—you—” If she wasn’t doing her best to avoid looking at it—at him—she would surely have delivered a most clever and scathing remark.
“Do not misunderstand me, mon chaton, I have no wish to censure you. It is only that I find your attempts at profanity relentlessly adorable and distracting. It is torture to be unable to do anything about it.” Beneath his charcoal suit, he lifted a helpless shoulder made no less broad for the captivity of his arms behind his back.