I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

Heat collected and hovered over him like an extra blanket in his room that night.

He was awake. He resented it.

And why was he awake? She was the reason he was awake.

Damnher, anyway.

Because when he was awake and not occupied, memories rushed in to fill the space. And then he was held hostage by another kind of unassuageable ache.

He’d seen how swiftly a forest recovered from a fire. How the new, tender green growth moved in with gentle but nearly unseemly speed, until one would never see the burn scar, or the dead trees. But that wasn’t until the rains came. And they wouldn’t come until he was home, and building his new life.

He ought to go to Surrey in search of the Clay family. Apart from his promise to build the stage, there was no reason he ought not go immediately. But that was another reason to resent Lillias: the image of Woodley’s daughter was as elusive now as one of those rainbows thrown about by the crystals dangling from the chandelier in the foyer. He’d been driven by a promise and his own need for answers. His own hope. And it was slipping from his grasp. He felt guilty.

Hugh gave up, sat upright, and began by casting off his nightshirt and hurling it across the room as though it were the cause of every frustration he’d ever known.

He followed this by kicking off the lovingly sewn coverlet.

And finally he lay naked and sweating, but that was hardly better.

Christ.

He rolled out of bed, strode nude across the room, and heaved up the sash window. In came a great gust of fetid air and the unearthly screeches of two cats fucking.

Or perhaps fighting.

Perhaps both.

Was there a difference, really?

“Lucky cat,” he muttered.

He felt feral, standing naked—clearly the word of the day—and perspiring at an open window, irritable and restless, acutely aware of every inch of his skin, or, more accurately, the full contours of his being. As though it had been coiled into a cramped place and newly freed, and now was needling him as the blood flowed again.

Skin was useful for more than being the thing between his viscera and bullets, for instance. It was capable of knowing glories.

And he remembered diving into a swimming hole naked with his brother when he was about ten. The delicious icy shock of the plunge that took the breath out of him, sinking from the gold-green dappled surface into the olive dark depths, sinking, sinking until his toes found the sandy bottom and pushed off to launch back into daylight. That triumph of moving with grace in both worlds, on water, on land. Darting like little silver fish to the rock they called the Whale, their limbs pulling them through the water, pouring over their backs. His brother was faster but when it came to longer races Hugh always got there first. His will was stronger than possibly anyone’s.

And the feel of his skin covering a woman’s rippling body. Her nipples chafing against his chest, her fingers digging into his shoulders as they bucked together, her hot breath in his ear huffing more, faster, the two of them running down the merciful, obliterating blackness of that ultimate, near unholy pleasure. He had a few friendly widows to thank for his sexual education. He gloried in the textures of women and there was almost nothing more gratifying than discovering the kinds of touch that made a particular woman wild, so he could build her desire up like he would a fire started with a flint.

But Christ.

This.

Was this fair?

He didn’t usually think of things in terms of fair or not fair. You played the cards you were dealt as they were flipped your way. But apparently, unlike an angry bear, he couldn’t shake this thing. Nothing ameliorated this restless, clawing want. Nothing ever could.

Because he of course would not be seducing the virgin daughter of an earl.

He pressed his palms against his eyes and took in a long breath, blew it out at length. He imagined her lying naked on his bed, and all of his muscles tensed as if he were about to cover her with his body. He wrapped a hand around his tightening cock and gave it a speculative heft. Then decided, no, it wasn’t a good use of his time to spend the night exercising his elbow and nurturing an obsession.

But he needed to burn some of this off or he’d never sleep.

He’d go have a look at the work remaining to do on the stage. Perhaps sweep up a little.

He poured water from his pitcher into the basin and splashed his face with it. Took a long breath.

Suddenly a slight breeze, tender as an exhale, slipped in the window and curled around his neck. A breeze was never far behind when the ocean was just outside. He said “thank you” to whatever deity might be listening, aloud because he would never not say thank you for the gentle, small graces. Because life was comprised of pretty much nothing but that, between battles.

Beyond that, far beyond the ocean, was home. As soon as he finished building the stage he would go to Surrey.

He seized his shirt and pulled it on over his head, got into his trousers and boots. He hooked his fingers into an unlit lantern, then closed and locked the room behind him.

Even in his sturdiest boots he could walk nearly soundlessly, a habit learned from hunting in the woods. He made his way in the dark, at first. He’d learned which stairs creaked and which patches of floor tended to groan when weight was applied. He passed Gordon the Cat on the prowl for mice and rats and probably just for the sheer pleasure of sniffing about his kingdom, and nodded to him.

Gordon raised his tail in salute and gave a soft chirp.

Another floor down and he grinned when he heard Delacorte snoring like a tree being ravaged by a rusty saw. Delacorte could vibrate paintings from the walls.

And then went down through the quiet kitchen and into the breezeway connecting the inn to the Annex. In there all the Vaughns slept.

He imagined Lillias’s head on a pillow, her coppery brown hair a sweaty tangle thanks to lovemaking.

“Christ,” he whispered.

Only then did he pause to light the lantern as he made his way toward the ballroom.

He’d taken the ladder down from the wall, but someone had pushed it upright again.

He froze, heart in his throat.

And a pale blur had just vanished up it, headed for the roof.

He wasn’t certain if he was afraid of ghosts or even believed in them. He guessed he was about to find out.

Up the ladder he went.

And there, in a night rail, a shawl pinned closely about her and a braid down her back, about to settle on the edge of the roof, was Lillias. She didn’t look as though she was about to jump. She looked, in fact, like a colt who’d just been released from a winter stall to find it was suddenly spring.

She whirled.

“Don’t scream, for God’s sake!” he said. He kept his voice just above a hoarse whisper. “And don’t move or I might scream. Perhaps you should step back from the edge.”

“Good evening, Mr. Cassidy.”

“Good morning, more accurately. The watch just cried half past one.”

It was possible he was dreaming. He looked down swiftly to verify that he was clothed.

“Are screams even noticed much around here?” she wondered dryly. “I’ve heard a couple tonight. I think only a few of them were animals.”

“The heat brings out the best and worst in everyone. And everything. I can only assume the latter is why you’re on the bloody roof.”

She smiled at that. “Oh, now we hear your true colors, Mr. Cassidy, when the epithet jar isn’t standing watch.”

“I think this is an exceptional circumstance. A vote would vindicate me.”

She snorted. “Are those dark creatures moving about rats?” She was peering avidly below.

He perversely liked that she wasn’t screaming. She sounded more curious than anything.

“Gordon takes care of the rats in the boarding house.” He answered her question before she could ask it. “What are you doing on the roof?”

“I’ve noticed he’s rather fat. Gordon.”

“Draw your own conclusions.”

She gave a soft laugh at that.

And like everything about her, that laugh charmed and infuriated and inflamed him.

“I wish I could have a cat. They make Claire sneeze.”

“That is regretful. Lady Lillias, I’ve an honest question. Are you quite mad?”

“No,” she said, after some thought.

“Why. The bloody hell. Are you on the roof?”

There was another silence. They had a half of a moon to light things. Below, not everyone was sleeping. Sounds echoed. Coughs. A laugh. A snatch of an argument, complete with oath.

“It’s your fault.” She said it shortly. Resigned.

“That you couldn’t sleep?”

Because why should he mince words?

She turned to look at him. Whenever their eyes met, neither seemed able to look away. It was some combination of dare and the sort of fascination one experiences stumbling upon an exotic landscape that offered endless vistas. They’d seen each other in all lights now.

Except perhaps firelight, in bed.

He could reach over, draw a finger lightly over her lower lip. He knew he would feel her breath sigh out. The sweet beginnings of surrender.

His head felt tight in solidarity with his groin.

Her gaze dropped, flicked across his torso. A frown flickered. And then she gave a restive head toss and turned away from him. Perhaps she was alarmed by her own directness. She didn’t answer.

Seconds later, he watched her throat move in a swallow.

“I notice you’re also awake rather late,” she said somewhat stiffly.

“Yes. Would you like to guess why?” He said this dryly.

Apparently she hadn’t the nerve to pursue the same line of questioning.

Perhaps she suspected he would tell her the truth about why she kept him awake at night, and guessed rightly that it would be more potent than she was prepared to hear.

“Well, I’ll get to the reason I’m up here. You can’t stay here. It’s self-indulgent and reckless to climb out on the roof in the middle of the night just because you took a notion.”

She ignored this and settled on the edge. “Fancy you having an opinion about what I’m doing. Who would have thought? I take it you’ve never been self-indulgent or reckless in your life.”

“It requires the opportunity to be bored and I can’t say as I’ve often had the pleasure.”

“No? What sorts of pleasures have you had, Mr. Cassidy?”

He drew in a long breath. “Let me put it this way. I’ve never before been alone in the dark with a woman who wasn’t beneath me, begging me to take her faster and harder. That, Lady Lillias, is a singular pleasure. You shouldn’t be alone on a roof in the dark, let alone in a night rail, let alone with me.”

The breath audibly went out of her in a gust. She jerked her head away again.

It was ruthless. He didn’t apologize. He was certain she could take it. And if he could shock her sufficiently, perhaps they’d both be spared wherever this thing between them was headed.

She said nothing for a time.

The sweet breeze that had earlier circled his neck returned, and this time it was cooler. It filled his shirt, and he knew if he closed his eyes he could imagine he was on the porch of his cabin in New York.

“I have an honest question for you, Mr. Cassidy. Is it that you think I’m a weak, naive fool requiring constant shepherding, or do you think all women are?”

He drew in a long breath and blew it out. Resigned, he settled at a safe distance from her on the roof edge, where they perched like the world’s most attractive gargoyles.

It was yet another world, like swimming or sex, the immersion in the night with the stars above them woven into the mist like diamonds in a woman’s hair. He was suddenly glad to be a part of it.

He carefully settled the lamp down between them.

“Lady Lillias . . . my mother could shoot a deer from the front porch of our cabin. She could load a musket as fast as my father could. She could skin any animal, though my father was better at it, and I’m better than both of them—and turn it into a delicious dinner. There wasn’t one thing she was afraid of, unless it was harm befalling any of us.”

He said words like “cabin” and “skin” and “shoot” deliberately. He laid them down like fortifications between her station in life and his.

She remained wordless and watchful.

“The ladies of The Grand Palace on the Thames created all of this”—he gestured to both buildings—“from what was essentially a ruin. That takes guts and wits and resourcefulness to spare, especially when you start out with nothing to begin with. In other words, some of the smartest, bravest people I know are women. But even my mother with a musket would be no match for a man truly intent on harming her. That is just the way of the world. You could shout ‘I’m the daughter of an earl’ all you want in the dark down below but that isn’t going to save you. The dark has a way of equalizing everyone, same as death.”

She shifted and brought her knees up, wrapped her arms around them. And still she didn’t speak.

“So it’s a man’s duty and privilege to keep women safe in every way until or if a day comes when that is no longer necessary. Even when a woman happens to make a special effort to put herself, and therefore maybe others, in harm’s way. I just . . . it just isn’t in me to let it be.”

Her expression was oddly intent now. The breeze caught hold of her shawl and attempted to tug it from her, and she maintained her grip. It was the strangest thing, but she looked right up here. Right and happy. She was clearly reviewing everything he’d just said, and he appreciated it. She was difficult, but she was no fool.

“Lillias,” he said softly.

It was difficult to align the complicated things he felt with the proper words. So he said the truest thing he could, slowly and softly.

“I should hate for any harm to ever come to you.”

She studied him in silence. By lamplight, by moonlight, by any light, she was enthralled.

“All right,” she said gently, finally. “I’m sorry to worry you.”

It surprised him. He released the breath he didn’t know he was holding as though it was a burden.

“Do you mind if we stay a few moments longer?” she asked evenly.

“No.”

She turned her head toward where the spires of ships rose darker than the night, and he got the sense that she was drinking it in, the strangeness, the newness. As if it were nourishment of which she’d been deprived.

The wind found nooks to howl and whistle through, turning the city into its own eerily beautiful orchestra. It rose and fell again, yanking at her shawl, inflating his shirt a little, boring of them, moving on. The half-moon was an opalescent arch above them, like the doorway to another world.

“Mr. Cassidy . . .”

“Mmm?”

“Can your mother still do that? Shoot from the porch?”

“My mother is dead.”

She went still. “I’m so very sorry.”

“Thank you,” he said shortly. “So am I.”

She was thoughtful for a moment. “You tend to use words like bludgeons, Mr. Cassidy. ‘Dead.’ ‘Naked.’ Don’t you think it would be kinder, sometimes, to use a euphemism, to ease people into the blow of the revelation? Because words do conjure.”

“I’d like to point out the irony of someone perched on a roof wishing to be eased into a blow. A stiff wind would make a kite of you.”

To his surprise she laughed. It was the loveliest sound, like bloody spring bursting out all at once. “I’d love to see the city that way, from way up above.” She sounded wistful.

He couldn’t argue with that. “So would I. I imagine it would be extraordinary.”

“What does a gyrfalcon look like?”

“A bit like the daughter of an earl in flight in a night rail.”

She turned to him and smiled, radiantly, unguardedly delighted.

And for just that instant, he knew precisely what it felt like to be soaring high above the city, made of light, utterly free.

“It’s a magnificent creature, the gyrfalcon,” he said, softly. “Rare, beautiful, and more than a little dangerous.”

“Oh, I’m certain he is.” Lightly said, and only a little ironically.

The wind caught the end of her shawl and she reached up. The moonlight shone through her night rail, and briefly, distinctly, the full arc of her breast was delineated in shadow.

His lungs ceased moving.

She captured her shawl again.

It seemed an unnecessarily brutal thing to know precisely how her breast would fit in his hand.

“I think you do it,” she mused, “the blunt words, that is . . . so people won’t ask you more questions about it. It’s a bit like a shield.”

She turned to face him directly.

His mind blanked an instant. Bloody hell.

He eyed her warily. For a moment, he felt like he’d been flushed like prey from the underbrush. Exposed. And yet . . . he could not explain it . . . he also felt safer, somehow, than he’d been just a few moments before. As though one more veil twisted about his spirit had been unwound. He could breathe a little more freely.

He thought she deserved an answer. “You’re not wrong.”

She didn’t gloat. “You’re safe up here with me, Mr. Cassidy,” she teased.

As this was patently untrue and a bit of a goad, he answered that only with an ironic little smile.

The bark of a dog carried to them on the wind. And he thought about his old hound, Tuesday. Damn, he missed that dog.

He could feel weariness setting in, even as his body was but buzzing from the nearness of her.

What on earth was he doing here in London, on a roof with a woman who was discovering the power of her own sensuality and treated it like a plaything? He could not rebuild his life in earnest until he was home again. He was chasing a phantom in the form of Woodley’s daughter. And he could not and would not touch the woman in front of him.

Lillias cleared her throat. “Mr. Cassidy . . . I hope you don’t mind . . . I could not help but notice . . . you’ve a few scars.”

“I’ve scars,” he confirmed.

“You were shot?” she asked carefully.

“I’ve been shot,” he said gently. So as not to bludgeon. But there was really no way to pillow that word.

She was quiet. The hair that escaped from her braid danced all about her face and in the lamplight. She cleared her throat again.

“I find . . .” She turned to face him, her expression unguarded but composed. “I find that I don’t like the idea of harm coming to you.”

All of those words lined up in the order she’d delivered them suddenly seemed more dangerous than the words “naked” or “dead.”

He gave a curt nod.

It suddenly seemed imperative that this interlude end.

“Perhaps you should consider coming down. Your mother and father are decent sorts, and I believe they would mind very much that you were up here.”

“Ah, but I’ve you to protect me,” she said, lightly. Somewhat ironically.

He sighed.

“I want you to know . . . it’s not boredom,” she said suddenly. “The reason I’m up here. And it’s not recklessness. Not really.”

She turned to him, searching his face.

“What is it?”

She seemed to be struggling for words. “I find . . .” She shoved her hair self-consciously away from her face, as though she, too, were dropping a veil. She cleared her throat. “I find that something in me feels lighter if I can see across a vista. I feel more like myself if I can see far as the eye can see.”

Almost nothing else she’d said could have surprised him more in the moment. He had the sense that she had never admitted that to anyone before.

She was watching him cautiously. Afraid, perhaps, of being mocked. “That makes sense,” he assured her.

She was visibly relieved. “I can ride like the wind. I’m a competent climber. I’m afraid of very little, actually. After a fashion nearly everything I do is reasoned, Mr. Cassidy. Even now.”

But what weight did the daughter of an earl carry about? Or was it just that she craved the exhilaration that arises from realizing one is smaller than everything and that the world is vaster than can be imagined?

Or was there a wildness in her that simply had no place to go within the confines of her life?

He didn’t ask. But he thought he knew. The bands of muscle across his stomach tensed, as if the restraints she lived under were suddenly binding him, too.

“Has this . . . predilection for views come upon you recently?”

“Ah,” she said shortly, a little bitterly. “You’ve been talking to my father. You probably laughed when he told you about the church tower.”

“No,” he said. “Nothing about you, or this moment, is a joke.”

She studied him as if to ascertain the truth of this, then turned away, for one last look at the view. “If I may presume . . . but I should like to say that I’m very sorry for your losses, Mr. Cassidy.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t know how I would do without my family. Even St. John.”

He’d thought he’d dreaded those spaces unfilled with work or activity because memories inevitably crowded, and loneliness would corner him. And blunt words usually quite effectively forestalled the need for soul baring. They had indeed been a sort of blind he could take refuge in while his soul stopped ringing from the losses.

It was easier for him, somehow, to talk about it in the dark. He wanted to give her an answer, because it was clear she was thinking about loss. And he didn’t want her to spend a moment suffering over his own suffering.

“For what it’s worth . . . I don’t think anyone you love is ever truly gone. I do very much feel their absence . . . but I also feel their presence all the time, in a new way. In some ways they’re with me now more than ever. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“It does,” she said shortly.

That was enough unexpected soul mining for the night.

“All right,” he said briskly. “Now that you’ve seen the view, I’d be grateful if you’d allow me to see to it that you come safely down off the roof now.”

She didn’t reply to this. But she did knot her shawl snugly about her in preparation for descent, and he plucked up the lamp.

Then she turned to him again. And because he wasn’t about to deny himself the pleasure of it, he drank her in by lamplight and moonlight one last time, the way she’d drunk in that view. He was still amazed that this magical combination of features, animated by this particular maddening person, could cause him to lose his breath.

She knew precisely what he was thinking.

“I’m not naive, Mr. Cassidy,” she said. Deadly earnest. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Not completely,” she added. It was very nearly a plea.

Oh God. It was like a kick in the solar plexus.

It sounded less like a dare than an invitation.

But it was definitely both.

He imagined how he would begin. How her face would feel cradled in his hand. Her delicate, clean-lined jaw, her skin like a petal. The path his lips would follow.

One kiss. What harm could there be?

His breathing went shallow.

Fate was such a bastard. A rush of fury at feeling like its plaything. It had fitted him with an iron-clad sense of honor and presented him with the cruelest of temptations. Even now, a rationalization was forming: she wanted him. It was a torment. He could ease it.

And she might have a good sense of the mechanics of sex—that was easy enough for anyone to learn, even the sheltered daughter of an earl. But he’d wager his life that she didn’t fully understand the rest of it: the complications. The way it could make you lose your reason. He would be damned if he would be her experiment.

He took a subtle breath. “While I don’t doubt that,” he managed evenly, with just enough regret to protect her pride, “I will not be relieving you of the balance of your naivete.”

The effort cost him. And she likely knew. She studied him, her mouth quirked. She did turn sharply away again, taking one last look at the spires from this height.

Then she briskly tucked some of the loose strands of hair behind her ears and stood. He almost smiled. She was made of sterner stuff than anyone would have suspected.

“I’ll go down first to make sure you don’t fall,” he said.

“All right.”

There was really no hope for her modesty or his sanity at this point, but there wasn’t another choice, either. He was going to get a look up her night rail. But as it turned out—and this amused him—she’d put pantaloons on beneath it. And while they were in essence an undergarment, there was nothing particularly erotic about frilly muslin trousers. He hadn’t heard that women were wearing them with any stylistic conviction yet under their dresses.

Oddly, the fact that she’d thought to don them made him think she might actually possess more than a grain or two of sense to go along with the intelligence. He imagined at the planning process: lacing on the sturdy boots, seizing up the sturdy shawl, then tippy-toeing through the dark to the ladder.

He caught that glimpse but he didn’t keep looking. He wouldn’t look when a woman was vulnerable, or when her safety was in his care. His eyes were on her feet.

Rung by rung, they went back the way they came. He watched carefully, breath held, making sure her feet found the rungs, every now and then pausing, hand raised in midair, as it seemed she might need a little assistance to find the next rung. But she never did, and he didn’t know why he should feel proud of that fact, but it somehow was a relief to consider that if she ever took it into her head to do such a thing some other time, when he was back home in America and she was God knows where, perhaps in the library of the duke she was bound to marry, climbing up to the tallest shelves, well, maybe she wouldn’t break her neck.

And together they descended more or less with alacrity. From the world of the roof and sky back into the Annex.

As his foot settled on the last rung it groaned.

And then made an ominous cracking sound.

He yanked his foot back and looked down.

Confronted with a final rung comprised of two jagged, splintered, dangling pieces of wood.

“Lillias, stop,” he said.

She froze midstep and peered back down at him, her face a pale blur, half shadowed.

The jump was about three feet. Easy enough for him.

Potentially perilous to the ankles of a smaller person in a night rail and a shawl.

There was no hope for it.

“I’m going to lift you down.”

He knew at once that touching her would be like Persephone and the pomegranate seeds. There would be no going back.

She paused to study him, gauging the distance over her shoulder.

Then she turned, carefully, and contemplated him, perhaps entertaining an objection and recognizing its absurdity. They both understood she was at his mercy.

He knew a surge of possibly unworthy, purely primal pleasure at this realization.

He reached up for her and she leaned into him, his hands fitting the notch of her waist, her ribs, and he lifted. She was so light in his arms, and so at once trusting he was shocked by a ferocious wave of tenderness.

She sailed lightly, her hair braid brushing against his cheek.

Seconds in duration, a hundred impressions held him fast.

His hands lingered there, lightly. Long enough that he could feel the lift of her rib cage when she drew in a long, shaky breath. Long enough to feel the soft, warm give of her waist.

She slowly raised her eyes to his.

He lifted his hands.

“Go inside, Lillias,” he whispered. He said it almost roughly. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I’ll warrant you’ll spend the rest of the night thinking about me, Mr. Cassidy,” she replied softly. “And that alone proves I know exactly what I’m doing.”

And then, like one of the eleven or twelve ghosts Angelique had teased about, she turned and vanished swiftly through the door the way she’d come.