“This evidence suggests that my attack was not random violence, but something far more malevolent. Needless to say, I find personal protection necessary until I can secure a husband who’s responsible for my safety. Since Parliament is in session, and my mourning for my parents is considered officially over, I’m expected to take a season. I-I need someone at my side so I can feel… so I am safe. At least until this enemy can be discovered and dealt with.”
Felicity paused. Waiting for him to say something.
Wishing he were closer.
As a nervous sort of creature, she’d become a master at reading expressions, sussing out people’s responses and emotions, if only to predict what their reactions might be at any given point so she could avoid conflict or worse.
Mr. Gareth Severand was not a man easily read, nor was he predictable. Even without her spectacles on, she was categorically certain of that.
“What about your family, Miss Goode?” he asked, still studying the paper in his hand. “Is not your brother-in-law a rather famous chief inspector at Scotland Yard? Has he seen this?”
Felicity glanced away, not for the first time wishing her family had not become so infamous through no fault of their own.
Well… almost.
“Chief Inspector Morley and my sister Prudence are abroad for a few weeks, settling my parents’ final overseas interests. My eldest sister Honoria and her husband live above the Alcott Surgical Specialty Hospital. She’s in her confinement with child, and is over thirty years. I’m told that makes pregnancy exponentially more difficult. I could never visit peril on their household or their patients. What if stress or danger caused Nora— that’s what we call her— to lose the baby? I’d never forgive myself.”
Felicity looked down at her lap, plucking a stray fiber off her dark frock. Tomorrow her new trousseau for the season would arrive, and she could put her mourning clothes away for a good long time.
“My sister Mercy…” Sadness drifted like a cloud over her heart, mingling with the love she felt for her twin. “She’s on an extended honeymoon, and I can’t say exactly where in the world she is at the moment. But I’m fairly certain she couldn’t make it home in time to do any good, and I don’t want to bother her…”
She glanced back in Mr. Severand’s direction, noting that he’d folded the paper back up, but made no move to return it to her. “I-I did show that to a detective,” she informed him. “He’s the one who suggested I should engage personal security… so here you are.”
“Here I am.”
Was it her imagination, or did he sound none too happy about the prospect? Perhaps he didn’t think he’d be a good fit for the job? Or maybe he could not be away from a family for so long?
“May I ask you a question, Miss Goode?” he queried, leaning forward in his chair.
“Certainly.”
“Do you think your assailant meant to… to have his way with you?”
She swallowed and shuddered, but ultimately shook her head in the negative. “I can’t speak to his ultimate designs, but there was nothing suggestive in his manner. Only violent. I know this sounds— well, I haven’t much reference to pull from— but the attack felt personal. That man… he hated me. I didn’t recognize him at all, but he hated me. He liked what he did to me. He enjoyed the fact that he could cause me pain and I was helpless against his strength.”
“Doesn’t seem possible,” Severand murmured, turning his head away from her. “Someone hating you.”
Something about the way he said that evoked a pleasant heat from beneath her collar to climb her neck and spread to her cheeks.
“Some people can hate you for just being born,” she murmured, thinking of her father.
“That’s true enough.”
They shared a companionable silence. A discovery of a common pain, unspoken but already understood.
Felicity had known only a few men of close acquaintance. The first being her father, the Baron. A rotund bear of a man, his voice booming and his manners bombastic. He’d been overbearing, extremely religious, and unrelentingly critical. He’d had two loves in his life, money and power, and only paid his four daughters attention when he could use them to acquire more of one or the other.
To increasingly disastrous effect.
Even in death, the Baron controlled her future. Not with an iron fist, but an ironclad contract.
Her brothers-in-law were each of them good men in their own right. They had power or passion or both. They were protective rather than controlling, and adored her sisters with enviable devotion. Her family was so lively, and when they were together, the men and women spoke with equal fervor. There was laughter and debate, a multitude of opinions, and even more chaos.
Felicity loved it, and simultaneously felt lost in the maelstrom of it. Everyone spoke over each other, their wits firing like a volley of rifles, and their words often strewn about like projectiles.
She was often tempted to duck behind something to protect herself from them.
Though none of her loved ones aimed at her.
Not only because of her adversity to conflict, even harmless debate. But because she never said much in a crowd, preferring to watch the conversation rather than fight to be part of it. She was much more relaxed interacting as she did now, with one or two people, in a place that was comfortable and familiar.
All her own.
With someone who was capable of being silent long enough to let her gather thoughts often scrambled by nerves, like marbles spilled on a parquet floor. She’d spoken more to the man in front of her than to anyone else in a very long time.
And she found herself a little bit bold in his company, which, considering his aura of general menace, was indeed a wonder.
“Mr. Severand,” she inquired. “Would you consider yourself a violent man?”
He was quiet for a moment, shifting in his chair for the first time.
“Yes, Miss Goode. I am a violent man.”
Felicity couldn’t for the life of her understand why the way he said this caused little thrills of electricity to spark in her veins.
“Would—” She cleared something husky from her throat. “Would you go so far as to say that you… excel at violence?”
“I would go so far as to say it is the only thing I excel at.”
“I see.”
With that, she reached for the bell Jane had mentioned, and rang it.
Mr. Bartholomew appeared as if he’d been waiting on the other side of the door. “Do you need me to escort the— gentleman out, Miss Felicity?” He sniffed in the direction of her guest.
“No, Mr. Bartholomew, but, if you don’t very much mind, I do need you to cancel my other appointments for today.”
Small eyes beneath amusingly large eyebrows narrowed to a comical degree. “Are you quite certain, miss?”
“I am,” she said, feeling more certain about this than she had about anything in a long time. “That is, if Mr. Severand accepts the job I am offering him.”
Chapter 2
As Gabriel followed Felicity Goode through the grand manse he’d watched so often, he appreciated the enticing scent left in her wake. It was even better than he remembered, herbs and lilacs and honeysuckle reminiscent of the sun-drenched vines of his homeland in Monaco.