On the first attempt, she tied the ribbons too loosely, and the mask gaped and slipped, sliding down over the lenses of the glasses, blocking her view and threatening to fall past her nose and to the floor of the carriage if she moved too quickly.
On the second try, she tied the ribbons with a much firmer hand, wincing as she captured a few stray hairs in the messy knot. The result was not much better, the mask now forced the spectacles against her eyes, warping the thin gold rims until the nose and earpieces dug into her skin, and making her feel decidedly un-Circe-like.
Committed to soldiering on, she slid across the seat to exit to the carriage, where Mr. Cross stood waiting for her. She would not allow a little thing like poor eyesight to ruin the evening. The mask perched haphazardly on her spectacles, she stepped blindly from the carriage, her slipper finding the top step by some miracle other than peripheral vision.
Not so, the second step.
Pippa stumbled, emitting a loud squeak and throwing her arms wide to somehow regain her balance. She failed, toppling to the left, directly into Mr. Cross, who caught her to his chest with a soft grunt.
His warm, firm chest.
With his long, capable arms.
He sucked in a breath, clutching her tightly and for a moment—not even a moment, barely an instant—the length of her was pressed to the length of him, and she was looking directly into his eyes. Well, not precisely directly, as the dratted mask had of course shifted during the journey, and she was left with a fraction of her usual visibility.
But had she full use of her faculties, she was certain she would discover him laughing. And there it was again, embarrassment, hot and unavoidable in the instant before he set her down.
Once on terra firma, Pippa lifted one hand from where it had been desperately clutching his wool coat and attempted to right the mask. She succeeded in upsetting both it and her spectacles, which tumbled from their perch.
He caught the frames in midair.
She looked from the spectacles to his face, its angles stark in the light from the exterior of the carriage. “This was not how I expected the evening to proceed.”
He was not laughing, she would give him that. Instead, he seemed to consider her carefully for a long moment before he stepped back and removed a handkerchief from his pocket. “Nor I, I assure you,” he said, cleaning the glasses carefully before returning them to her.
She put them on quickly and huffed a little sigh. “I cannot wear the mask. It will not fit.” She hated the pout in her voice. She sounded like Olivia.
She wrinkled her nose and met his gaze.
He did not speak, instead reaching out to straighten the glasses on her nose without touching her. They hovered there, in silence, for a long moment before he said, softly, “I should have thought of that.”
She shook her head. “I’m sure you’ve never had such a problem before . . .” A vision of Sally Tasser flashed, the beautiful, perfectly sighted woman who would have no difficulty whatsoever wearing a mask and achieving flawless mystery.
The only thing Pippa achieved flawlessly was peculiarity.
And suddenly, she was keenly aware that this world, this night, this experience was not for her. It was a mistake. Orpheus looking back into Hell.
“I should not be here,” she said, meeting his gaze, expecting to see satisfaction there—relief that she had finally given up.
But she did not see relief. Instead, she saw something else. Something firm and unyielding. “We shall just have to be careful in a different way.” He started for the club, the expectation that she should follow clear.
As they approached the great steel door that marked the rear entrance to the hell, a second carriage came trundling down the alleyway, stopping several yards from the conveyance in which they had arrived. A servant stepped down as the carriage door swung open from within on a collection of feminine laughter.
Pippa stopped at the sound, turning toward it.
Mr. Cross swore, low and wicked and grabbed her by the hand before she could resist, spinning her back against the outer wall of the club and blocking her from view with his looming frame.
She tried to move, and he pressed her to the wall, preventing her from seeing the women who had descended from the carriage and were now giggling and chattering as they made their way to the wall. She craned her neck to see them, curiosity making her careless, but he predicted her movements and shifted closer, crowding her back, making it impossible for her to see anything.
Anything but him.
He was so very tall. She’d never known anyone as tall as him. And when he was so close, it was difficult to think of anything but him. Him, and his warmth, the way his unbuttoned coat fell open around them, bringing her closer to a man in shirtsleeves than she’d ever been before.
Her thoughts were interrupted by another burst of laughter, followed by a hushing sound. “Look!” a woman said loudly. “We’re disturbing the lovers!”
“Someone couldn’t wait until she was inside!” Another feminine voice said.
“Who is it?” a third whispered.
Pippa’s eyes went wide, and she spoke to his chest. “Who are they?”
“None you need worry about.” He crowded closer, grimacing as he lifted one hand and placed it flat on the wall above her head, obscuring her face with his long arm and the lapel of his coat.
She was a hairsbreadth from his chest, and she couldn’t stop herself from inhaling, the scent of clean, fresh sandalwood wrapping around her. Her hands, hanging limp at her sides, itched to touch him. She clenched her fists and looked up at him, meeting his dark eyes.
“I can’t see her,” one of the ladies said, “but I’d know that man anywhere. It’s Cross.” She raised the volume of her voice. “Isn’t it, Cross?”
A thread of heat coursed through Pippa at the woman’s familiarity, at the laughter in her tone—as though she knew precisely what it was like to be here, pressed between the stone wall of London’s most legendary gaming hell and her proud, brilliant owner.
“Go inside, ladies,” he said at full volume, without looking away from Pippa. “You’re missing the fight.”
“It looks like there’s just as much to watch outside, tonight!” one retorted, drawing a chorus of appreciative laughter from the others.
Cross shifted, dropping his head, and Pippa realized how it would appear to the onlookers—as though he was about to kiss her. “Now, ladies,” he said, his voice low and filled with promise, “I don’t gawk at your evening entertainments.”
“You’re welcome to anytime you like, darling.”
“I’ll remember that,” he said, the words lazy and luxurious. “But I’m occupied this evening.”
“Lucky girl!”
Pippa gritted her teeth as a knock sounded on the steel door, and the ladies were admitted to the club.
Leaving them alone in the alleyway once more, in the closest thing she’d ever had to an embrace.
She waited for him to move, to unwrap himself from her.
Except he didn’t.
No, he remained just as he was, pressed close, lips at her ear. “They think you lucky.”
Her heart was pounding like mad. She was sure he could hear it. “I thought you didn’t believe in luck.”
“I don’t.”
Her voice was shaking. “If you did, would you call this lucky?”
“I would call this torture.”
It was at that moment, the words a breath against the sensitive skin beneath her ear, that she realized that he wasn’t touching her. He was so close . . . but even now, pushing her back against the stone façade of this massive building, he was careful not to touch her.
She sighed.
Apparently she was the only female in Christendom whom he had resolved not to touch.
Fleetingly, she wondered what would happen if she were to take matters into her own hands. She turned her head toward him, and he pulled back—not far, but far enough to ensure distance between them. Now they were face-to-face, their lips barely apart, at once millimeter and mile from each other.
A millimeter for him, for all he had to do was close the non-space and she was his. A mile for her, for she knew he would not do it . . . and she could not bring herself to kiss him. Even though, in that moment, there was nothing she wanted to do more.
But he did not wish the same.
This was an evening for intellectual pursuits. Not physical ones.
No matter how much she might wish differently.
So she did the only thing she could do. She took a deep breath, and said, “Cross?”
There was an immense, yawning pause as they both realized she’d dropped the Mister, but somehow, here, in a dark London alleyway, the title seemed too gentlemanly for this tall, wicked man.
“Yes, Pippa?”
“Can we go inside now?”
Chapter Nine
“Hazard is a problematic game—one that appears one way and plays another. For example, one casts two dice, thinking the roll will sum between one and twelve, but a roll of one is completely impossible . . . and rolls of two and twelve nearly so. Why then, when the fallacies of the game are so obvious, does it call so loudly to gamers?
There may be geometry to this game of chance—but there is sacredness to it as well.
It occurs that the sacrosanct rarely makes scientific sense.”
The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury
March 27, 1831; nine days prior to her wedding
There was nothing in the wide world that Cross would have refused her in that moment.
Not when she had spent the last hour tempting him with her big blue eyes and her quick mind and that lovely, lithe body that made him desperate to touch her. When the women had come, he’d thought of nothing but protecting her from discovery, shielding her with his body and hating himself for ever even considering bringing her here to this dark, filthy place that she did not deserve.
That did not deserve her.
As he did not deserve her.
He should tell Bourne everything and let his partner beat him to within an inch of his life for ever even thinking of ruining Philippa Marbury. For even dreaming of being this close to her. Of being tempted by her.
For she was the greatest lesson in temptation there ever was.
When she’d toppled from the carriage straight into his arms, he’d thought he was done for, her lithe lines and soft curves pressed against him, making him ache. He’d been sure that moment was the ultimate test . . . the hardest thing he’d ever have to do, setting her on her feet and stepping back from the precipice.
Reminding himself that she was not for him.
That she never would be.
But that had been easy compared to minutes later when, pressed between him and the stone façade of the club, she’d turned and spoken to him, her breath fanning his jaw, making his mouth dry and his c**k hard. That had been the most difficult thing he’d ever done.
He’d come close to kissing her and putting them both out of their misery.
God help him, for a moment, he thought she would take the decision out of his hands and take matters into her own.
And he’d wanted it.
He wanted it still.
Instead, she’d asked him to continue this madness—to bring her inside the hell and give her the lesson he’d promised. To teach her about temptation.
She thought him safe. Scientific. Without danger.
She was mad.
He should pack her back into that carriage and see her home, without a second thought. He should keep her far from this place filled with peers who would find immense entertainment in her presence here, and in the gossip her presence would fuel.
There were rules on this side of the hell, of course—the ladies allowed membership were expressly forbidden to reveal the secrets to which they were exposed. And as women with secrets of their own who craved their time at the club, they were careful to follow those rules.
But it would not change the threat to Pippa.
And he would not have it.
“I shouldn’t take you inside,” he replied, the words lingering between them.
“You promised.”
“I lied.”
She shook her head. “I don’t care for liars.”
She was teasing him. He heard the soft laughter in the words. But whether there or not, he also heard the truth in them. And he wanted her to care for him.
The thought came like a blow, and he straightened instantly, suddenly eager to be away from her.
It was not her.
It couldn’t be.
It was the special circumstance of her. It was that she was the first woman he’d allowed this close, this frequently, in six years. It was that she smelled of light and spring, and that her skin was impossibly soft, and the way her pretty pink lips curved when she smiled, and that she was smart and strange and everything that he’d missed about women.
It was not her.
It was everything. With Knight and Lavinia and the rest of his world crashing down around him, the last thing he needed was Pippa Marbury in his club. In his life. Causing trouble. Taking over his thoughts.
The madness would go away the moment he was rid of her.
He had to be rid of her. Tonight.
He ignored the thread of irritation that coursed through him at the thought and rapped on the steel door.
“That’s a different rhythm than the one the ladies used.”
Of course, she would notice that. She noticed everything, with her great blue eyes.
“I am not the ladies.” He heard the terseness in his tone, refused to regret it as the door opened.
She did not seem to notice it. “Everyone has a different knock?” She followed him into the entryway, where Asriel sat in his usual place, reading by the dim light of a wall sconce.
The doorman cast his black gaze over first Cross, then Pippa. “She’s not a member.”