The very devil might have a voice like that.
Mercy had always been a terrible student. She wiggled too much, her brain pinging from one thing to the next until so many of her thoughts threatened to tumble everywhere like a litter of unruly puppies.
But she’d retained a rudimentary understanding of French.
And if she wasn’t mistaken, Gabriel had said something to the effect that they’d rescheduled a meeting at the zoo to the following Wednesday at...three o’clock?
“You’re being unspeakably rude,” she admonished them, hoping to hide that she comprehended their conversation.
Well... sort of comprehended it.
Raphael had the decency to look chagrined. “In this case, I must beg your forgiveness, mon chaton, as my brother speaks very little English.”
“Why do you call her your kitten?” Gabriel asked in French.
“Because I like her claws.” Raphael replied with a look at his brother that ended any further discussion on the subject.
Gabriel freed one hand and went to work on the opposite wrist. “What happened with Mathilde?”
Raphael flicked her a glance and narrowed his eyes as if assessing how much she understood.
A certain level of fluency was expected from educated women of her class.
Mercy found something fascinating on her own manacles, refusing to look up at him.
After a pregnant pause, he said. “We will discuss it later. Where do we meet Marco?”
“By the Loo.”
Mercy searched her French vocabulary for the word loo and found nothing. Did they mean the washrooms? She wrinkled her nose. Did they say that for her benefit? To throw her off maybe? The toilets were not a very fitting location for high-brow clandestine intrigue to take place.
But then, who was she to tell criminals where to convene?
“We have to go, we’re almost to the bridge.” Gabriel freed his brother’s other wrist.
“You go. I’ll lock up.” Raphael motioned for the padlock, which Gabriel tossed to him before sliding out the door just as smoothly and silently as he’d arrived.
The springs depressed just slightly when the cart was alleviated of his weight. The Goliath of a man stepped off the tall carriage with the same grace a dancer would stride away from a curb onto the cobbles.
The ceiling of the cart was too short for Raphael to stand, so he stooped toward her as he reached his long, muscled arms out to the side in the stretch of a free man.
“Here.” Mercy lifted her wrists. “Release me!”
Instead of taking her manacles, he gathered the hands she offered into his large, rough palms, his thumb running over wrists made raw by her struggles.
And just like that, they were no longer in a cage. No longer was she shackled by iron...but instead a velvet rope wound its way around her limbs, cording and knotting her to him.
She felt at once vulnerable and invincible.
Safe and in peril.
The fresh, expensive scent of him overpowered the staler odors of the carriage. His eyes were mesmerizing, taking up the entirety of her vision, forcing everything else to fall away.
Forgotten.
He moved with such swiftness, and yet when his lips sealed to hers, the press of it was astonishing in its gentility. His neck corded with tension, his shoulders bunched, and his grip tightened.
But his mouth. Oh, his mouth. It sampled her with a series of light strokes, restraining his ardent passion with well-practiced skill.
Mercy forever displayed the wrong reactions to stimuli. This time was no different.
Any space in her temper for anger or aggression was overtaken by an abject exhilaration. An undeniable excitement that bordered on impatience.
Though it was increasingly cold, they built their own fire, igniting something between them that had a portent of inevitability.
An inarticulate sound vibrated from somewhere deep within him, quickening her heart and rushing the blood through her veins with an injection of heat.
She surged closer, her fingers gripping his collar as the kiss deepened of its own accord. She couldn’t tell whose mouth opened first, but their tongues met and danced.
Sparred.
In this moment, they had their own language. One that was as lilting and lyrical as any that existed. It was guttural and tonal and it gathered responses from her she never thought herself capable of making.
She knew there was more. More of this wild storm building between them. More of this man she wanted to explore.
More of the world she wanted to see.
Wanted him to show her. To teach her.
Dangerous. A voice warned from somewhere far, far away. Someplace buried so deep in her psyche, she might have forgotten it even existed.
Her reason. Her wit.
He’d interred it beneath the avalanche of desire tumbling through her, tossing her end over end until she couldn’t decide which way was up.
Danger. You’re in danger.
The warning was closer now, more urgent. Enough to draw her back, breaking the seal of their lips.
She only had a moment of gratification at a similar haze unfocusing his stormy eyes before the clouds parted and he blinked down at her with an expression both alert and regretful.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, releasing the lock on her shackles and letting them fall to the floor.
She looked down at them in mute astonishment, not having even noticed he’d been working on them.
By the time she’d registered that he moved, he’d slid out the door and pulled it shut and secured the padlock just as she lunged for him.
“Wait!” she cried, wrapping her fingers around the bars. “You’re going to let me rot in jail while you go free?”
Now that they were in a busier part of the city, she could hear the astonished gasps and exclamations of the passersby.
He hung from the carriage by one hand at the hinges of the door and one foot on the ledge as he grinned into the cart through the barred window.
“I know who your family is, Mercy Goode, you’ll be back home in time for tea.” His eyes were no longer glinting, but ablaze with silver light.
Rage surged inside of her, fueled by the heat still thrumming and throbbing through her.
“You know nothing about my family, you merciless cad,” she hissed. “You’re lucky I’m locked in here or I’d—”
“You’d do something reckless, no doubt, like follow me...” He said this with a confounding sort of fondness. “And that’s too dangerous. Even for you.”
Frustrated. Furious. Mercy shook the iron bars once again, then shoved her hand through them, attempting to claw at his eyes.
He leaned back just in time, the thick locks of his hair fluttering in the draft coming off the roof of the moving coach as he barked out a laugh.
God, he was handsome when he smiled. Especially when his lips were glossed and a bit swollen from kissing.
She could cheerfully murder him.
Swinging back, he brought his face close to the bars, his eyes drilling into hers with that dizzying change they made from mirth to sobriety. “If we see each other again, Mercy Goode...” he warned in a voice made of sex and honey.
“Be ready for me to taste the rest of you.”
Chapter 3
The reasons the jailers took a wide-eyed second glance at Felicity Goode were threefold.
The first being that she was exceptionally lovely today in a lavender gown threaded with violet ribbons and a matching velvet pelisse. The latter, cinched too tightly at the waist, accentuated the dramatic indent of her figure, and created a lovely backdrop for her cascade of flaxen hair beneath her smart hat.