Silence fingered the soft velvet lying over her lap, the realization suddenly hitting her that they rode in a small enclosed space together. She tried to keep her breathing even, but the feel of his broad shoulders leaning against her, the sight of his long legs stretched clear across the carriage floor, seemed to make breathing rather difficult.
“This is only my fourth carriage ride,” she said nervously into the heavy quiet that had fallen.
“Oh?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Papa could not afford to keep one, but I once rode in a carriage belonging to a friend of his, Sir Stanley Gilpin, who helped to found the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children. That was when he took us to a fair in Greenwich once. And when Temperance was married, her husband, Lord Caire very kindly provided a carriage for the family to ride in to the church and later the wedding breakfast.” Silence stopped suddenly having run out of breath.
She darted a look at Michael.
His face was shadowed in the dark, but he seemed to be paying close attention to her babbling. “And the fourth time?”
She remembered and had to look down at her hands in her lap. “The fourth time was on the morning after I spent the night in your bedroom. Temperance rented a hack to come search for me. She found me at the end of the street after I’d walked it with my hair undone and…” She trailed away, unable to say the words.
But he was quite able to supply them. “And yer dress unlaced to show yer chemise and the tops o’ yer pretty titties.”
“Yes.” She looked at him. The old anger and pain was in her chest, but it was dimmer now, allowing her to think. “Why did you make me do that? Walk up the street like a whore coming home from a night of sin? Did you want to destroy my marriage?”
“No.” He shook his head sharply. “Had I thought enough to want to destroy yer marriage then me actions might be forgivable.”
She wished she could see his face. It had never occurred to her that he might think what he’d done that day unforgivable—that he might care enough to want forgiveness. The idea was a revelation.
“Then why?” she asked.
“Why not?” he replied and the simple cruelty of his statement sent a jagged shard of pain through her breast. “It was me whim, that and only that. I was bred and birthed in St. Giles. I clawed me way up to become king o’ hell and now me every wish is granted, love.” He shrugged, his expression filled with self-mockery. “If I should have a mind to crush a virtuous woman merely for me own entertainment, then I do it.”
His honest depravity took her breath away, but her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Once she might’ve taken his words as simple fact. Now she knew him better. He might think himself a devil, but he was far more complicated than that.
Far more good.
“So you have no control over your desires?” she prodded skeptically.
“Sure and I have control.” He closed his eyes as if disgusted. “Don’t harbor false illusions about me, Silence, m’love. I chose not to control me desires when I met ye—even if that meant making an innocent walk, disheveled, up a street in St. Giles to fall into her sister’s arms.”
“How do you know I fell into Temperance’s arms?” she asked. “You didn’t escort me to your door—that was Harry’s job.”
He went still. “I watched ye with a spyin’ glass from me windows. I saw yer courage—and I saw ye collapse into her waitin’ arms.”
“Why?” she whispered. “Why should you watch me?”
“Why shouldn’t I share in yer pain?”
She shook her head, looking away from him, staring blindly out the darkened windows. “You say you chose not to control your basest urges that night, yet you did not harm me physically. You could’ve taken me to your bed and destroyed me, yet you did not.” She turned and stared at him seriously. “You cannot tell me that you don’t feel true remorse for the pain you caused me.”
He looked startled for a moment and then he laughed, short and hard. “Ah, Silence, m’love, don’t mistake me for a gentleman. I am a pirate, a thief, and a killer, and nothin’ but.”
“Then you would do it again, if you had the chance?” Silence demanded. “Make that terrible bargain with me? Send me into the street, disheveled and ashamed?”
His hesitation was so slight that had she not been paying careful attention, she might’ve missed it. But she didn’t miss it. It was real.
He looked haunted—confused as if the very earth had shifted under his feet. “D’ye hope to change the stripes on a snake, darlin’? Rub as hard as ye might, they’ll not come off and yer like to be bitten for yer pains.”
“You didn’t answer me,” she whispered.
He turned to face her though she could not make out his expression in the dark. “And yer sure o’ that now?”
She drew in a wavering breath. “You can choose not to do such horrible things in the future, can you not?”
“Can I?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “No matter what you were in the past, what you are now, you can choose to change, choose to indulge only your better desires, not your basest ones.”
He stared at her and she wished that she could see his eyes clearly. Would a devil lurk there—or a militant archangel?
She opened her mouth, but the carriage shuddered to a halt at that moment.
“We’re here,” Michael drawled.
He pushed open the carriage door, revealing blazing torches in the night, and jumped down before setting the step and offering his hand to her for assistance.
Silence took her skirts in one hand and carefully stepped down. She wasn’t used to such an abundance of skirts and she rather feared she’d drag her hems in something awful.
“Come,” Michael said and set her hand upon his arm.
She finally looked up and saw a lovely classical building. Lanterns lined the steps leading to the doors and streams of ladies and gentlemen were entering the building. At the edges of the crowd were hawkers calling their wares: oranges, walnuts, flowers, and sweetmeats. Michael led her up the steps and into the doors.
Silence looked up at the vaulted ceiling, lined with sparkling chandeliers. “Where are we?”
“Ye’ll see,” he said and mounted a curving stair.
The upper level held a corridor with doors along one side. Michael opened one and ushered her inside.
“Oh!” Silence exclaimed. “You’ve brought me to the theater.”
“Not quite,” Michael said from behind her. “This here is an opera house.”
Silence looked about excitedly. She’d never been to either the theater or the opera as Father had rather frowned upon such things as frivolous.
They were in a luxurious box with several plush chairs and a table. Velvet curtains lined the box and could be drawn to give the occupants privacy. But beyond the railing the stage blazed with lights. Below a crowd milled in the pit.
“Let me take yer cloak,” Michael said, lifting it from her shoulders.
Silence hardly noticed. She was busy peering into the pit and across the theater to the boxes on the other side.
“Take care,” Michael warned. He placed his hands on either side of her waist. “Lean too far over and ye’ll tumble out.”
“I won’t,” Silence said, blushing. She must look a rustic country lass in her excitement. She sat on a chair with careful dignity, but then couldn’t help putting a hand on the rail as she hissed, “Isn’t that the king?”
Michael had taken a seat beside her and he casually turned his head to look where she indicated. “That’ll be the king’s son, the Prince o’ Wales. He does bear a fair resemblance to his da, though ’tis said the king hates his son most strongly.”
“The king hates his own son?” Silence felt incredibly naïve. How did Michael know this and she did not?
He shrugged. “The king and the prince are never seen together.”
Silence tried not to stare at the florid man with the protuberant eyes. “Oh! And what about the lady beside him?”
“His wife, I think,” Michael murmured. “ ’Tis rumored that he’s devoted to her.”
“Really?” Silence examined the princess. She wore a very elegant silver and white gown, but she was little more than a girl.
She craned to see who was in the boxes on their side of the opera house. “Do you come here often?”
Michael shrugged. “Once or more a month.”
Silence looked at him then. She’d not thought when she asked the question that he would answer in the affirmative. “You do?”
He smiled, his face in profile to hers. He didn’t lean forward eagerly as she had done, but his attention was most definitely on the crowd, the stage, and the atmosphere of the opera house itself. “Aye, and is it that startlin’ a savage such as m’self can find pleasure in music? Or is it the elegance o’ the music I like that surprises ye?”
“I am surprised,” she admitted. She was fascinated by the beauty of his profile, the severity of the straight lines of his forehead and nose, the sensual curves of his lips, and the arrogance of his chin.
He turned and caught her watching him and the smile left his lips. His eyes grew intent, his eyelids drooping, his eyebrows looking quite satanic and a little frightening.
She found him so tempting that she pressed her hand to her chest without conscious thought.
He followed the movement.
A corner of his mouth kicked up as he stared at her exposed bosom. He reached out and trailed his finger lightly across the upper slopes of her breasts. “Ye have no idea how long I’ve waited to see these.”
She caught his hand in her trembling fingers, uncertain if she was thrilled or mortified.
He didn’t try to pull away. “If I knelt right now at yer feet no one would see.”
“I…” She glanced at the low wall in front of her. It hid her from the waist down to anyone looking at the box. An image of him kneeling at her feet popped into her head and she suddenly stopped breathing. “What?”
“I could kneel there and lift yer skirts,” he murmured. “Ye’d have to be very still, mind. Very quiet. And no matter what I did ye couldn’t let it show on yer face.”
She stared at him, mesmerized by his deep, slightly rasping voice as he told her his wicked thoughts. She blinked, unable to resist asking, “What would you do?”
A corner of his mouth curled and his black eyes were intent. His hand left her lax fingers and trailed over her bosom, down her stomach, to her lap. “Do, love? Why, I’d fold yer skirts up, careful like, a little at a time, until I could see yer sweet cunny, hidin’ there between yer thighs.”
He pressed with his palm on the place that he described and it seemed to burn right through the layers of cloth.
She bit her lip, unable to look away from him.
His nostrils flared as if he could scent her arousal. “I’d part yer sweet thighs and touch ye there, where yer pink and wet. I’d slide me finger through yer softness, up until I touched that little spot at the top.” He tilted his head, watching her. “D’ye know the spot I mean?”
“I…” She swallowed, feeling the heat rising over her throat. She knew, of course.
“Tell me.”
She closed her eyes. “Yes.”
“And have ye touched yerself here?” He spread his fingers wide as if claiming possession of her femininity. “Tell me, Silence me love. Have ye touched yerself and thought o’ me?”
She drew in her breath—to deny or confirm, she didn’t know which—but a squeak came from the orchestra.
Michael lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the palm, his lips warm and intimate.