Page 17 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match

Thomas should have been pleased. They had learned something, the two of them. More than he had expected, even if it had not yet delivered Fordham to him. To all accounts the man had not yet left the country. He’d said he’d be back in a week. That was an entire week’s rest from his thus far fruitless hunt, a week in which he would not have to scurry about the city in search of a man who had become as good as a ghost. A week to gather all of his evidence, to compile every one of his documents, to tally accounts and amounts.

A week, and then—it would all be over. He ought to have been pleased. And perhaps he would be, later. Much later.

The only thing that mattered at present was the feel of Mercy’s hand in his own, the way she stayed so close to his side as they walked the streets waiting to chance upon an unengaged hack. He resented each step as one closer to their destination, one less second they would spend alone together, and the only consolation was that they would soon be hidden away from the prying eyes of the city within a darkened carriage.

I was never going to marry, she had said. Was. Had she begun to reconsider that notion? He hoped the seed had at least been planted. And if not—well, then he would give her something to consider until it had begun to germinate.

There, as they rounded a corner, came the whicker of a horse in the distance. The murky grey shape of a hack formed in the darkness that pooled between street lamps. He urged Mercy onward, his hand at the small of her back. The driver dozed in his seat, huddled into the folds of his cloak. Thomas cleared his throat to gain the man’s attention and waved Mercy into the carriage as he communicated the address.

Moments later he stepped into the carriage himself and slid straight onto the seat beside her. His thigh brushed hers as he closed up the carriage behind him, plunging the interior into darkness.

Mercy gave a little hum of agitation, awkwardly shifting in her seat as the carriage lurched into motion. “How long is the journey back?”

she asked, her voice softened, muted, as if the darkness itself had swallowed it up.

“This time of night? Fifteen minutes or so,”

he said. The night had not yet deepened enough for those events scheduled for this evening to begin letting out, congesting the streets with the traffic of carriages waiting to deliver people back to their homes from an evening’s entertainment.

“Is that long enough for a lecture? You do tend to go on, Thomas.”

Another restless little shift, as if she had sensed the tension strung between them. “I promised myself I would listen this time. I shouldn’t like to find my mind wandering away.”

“Long enough for the sort of lecture I had in mind. Come closer,”

he said, and patted his thigh. In the brief flickers of light that intruded between the drawn curtains, a quizzical, nearly incredulous expression flitted across her face, drawing her brows down into a frown as her gaze fell upon his hand there upon his thigh.

“What, like a child?”

she asked. “I am a few years too old for that, I think.”

“No, Mercy. Not like a child.”

He reached across the scant space between them, found her hand fisted in the skirt of her dress, fingernails curled into the fabric like claws. “This makes twice now you’ve gone out the window,”

he said. That he knew of, at least.

“I had it well enough it hand,”

she said instantly, defensive.

“Yes. Right up until you fell.”

One by one he extricated her fingers from the fabric. “Do you know what I felt, when that bit of wood snapped in your hand? When you fell?”

“I couldn’t begin to speculate.”

“Sheer terror,”

he said. “That this time you would certainly break your neck, and there would be nothing I could do for it.”

That all of the light would have gone out of the world with her. That she would leave him, alone, abandoned, to be consumed once more by the darkness from which she had all too recently plucked him. That she would, too suddenly, be so very far beyond his reach. That there would be no more dancing, no more billiards, no more quiet conversation, no more Mercy to poke and prod at him, to laugh at him, to tease him, to plague him, to menace him, to—to make his miserable life one worth living.

Of their own accord, her fingers curled around his. Almost apologetically, as if she had sensed that he needed—viscerally, desperately—the comfort of them threaded through his own. And he brought them to his mouth, those long, elegant fingers, so warm and vital. Turned her hand in his to place his lips upon the inside of her wrist, where her pulse beat strong and steady.

“I’m sorry,”

she said, a hint of breathlessness within her voice. “I suppose I don’t always…stop to consider the potential consequences of my actions.”

Thomas managed a rough facsimile of a laugh. “Mercy,”

he said, “you don’t even pause to consider them most times.”

And he—he was just going to have to accustom himself to it. To be the one to rein her in when necessary. Before she got in over her head. “I can’t stop you,”

he said. “You’re relentless when you’ve got an idea in your head.”

Stubborn. Determined. Traits which had once annoyed him, and which he had since grown to admire.

Her head listed toward his shoulder, her warm breath feathering across his throat. Close enough to kiss. He splayed his fingers over her cheek, turning her face to his. “You are what you are,”

he said, “just as I am what I am. Steady; reliable. Too severe most days. Starchy and boring and without much predilection for spontaneity.”

His lips brushed hers, a light, teasing caress. “Not much fun at the best of times.”

A counterbalance to the chaos.

“I wouldn’t say that,”

she murmured.

“You have before,”

he chuckled. “And it’s true. I’m not offended. There’s a time and a place for starchy and boring.”

Hopefully before she took any further ill-advised climbs down trellises. “Just occasionally, I think I could benefit from a little more spontaneity. Do you want to learn what can be done in a carriage in”—he flicked his gaze out the window, judging their approximate location—“ten minutes?”

“I thought I was being lectured.”

“You are. I’m rather adept at accomplishing two tasks at the same time. And this way”—he slid his arm beneath her knees, and she shifted, winding one arm about his neck to brace herself—“I know you will pay close attention and remember. This lecture is going to take.”

The carriage rattled along the street and Thomas splayed his legs and settled Mercy between them to keep her steady through the jostling. He braced one foot upon the opposite seat and wrapped one arm about her middle. She startled when the fingers of his free hand fell upon her thigh, grasping a fistful of the material and a pinch of the petticoats beneath, slowly dragging them upward.

“You are going to make me a promise,”

he said, and rubbed his chin against the soft flesh above the neckline of her gown.

A tiny shiver slipped down her spine, which curved toward him as if she had entirely forgotten how to keep it straight. “What promise is that?”

Another fistful of her gown, and he fancied he could hear the kick of her heart beating just a little faster as the cool night air swirled about her ankles and up her calves. “You are going to promise me you will never again undertake any action that might prove dangerous.”

Her shoulders lifted, pinched. “Thomas, I—”

She didn’t want to make a promise to him which she was not certain she could keep, he realized. “Without first speaking with me,”

he clarified. She jolted again as his fingers grasped her bare knee and began to slide up the soft flesh of her thigh. And sighed when he touched his lips to the delicate skin beneath her ear. “I expect never again to catch you sneaking out of the house from a goddamned trellis. What were you thinking, Mercy?”

he chided.

Her thighs flexed as his fingers slipped between them; her fingers clutched the edges of the seat on either side of his legs, and he heard her nails catch at the underside of the upholstery with a scratching sound that was startlingly loud. “I—ah—better to ask forgiveness than permission?”

Despite himself, he laughed. It vibrated against the skin of her throat, and her head fell back against his shoulder. The spicy cinnamon scent of her hair assailed him. “Never again,”

he said, pressing the words with a kiss against her cheek. “And you didn’t even ask for forgiveness, did you?”

“No. But I am sorry,”

she said, and her lashes fluttered as her eyes drifted closed.

“But for what, I wonder?”

he murmured. The soft, curly hair between her thighs slid through his fingers like silk.

“For frightening you?”

she ventured, and it sounded too much like a guess. He had been so far beyond frightened that the word hardly scratched the surface. His fingertips breached petal-soft flesh, already damp and dewy. Her hips lifted toward that tender touch, and one hand peeled itself from the upholstery, fingers trembling as she clutched at his nape. She whispered his name through tiny, panting breaths, fogging the lenses of his spectacles as she turned her face toward his.

“I don’t want to own you,”

he murmured in her ear as he stroked her, and that—that was a lie. He wanted to own every magnificent inch of her. Presently he could lay claim to only stolen bits of her time; a dance, a game of billiards, a drink. He wanted all of it, every damned moment. From rising to sleep, and all those thereafter and in between. He wanted her to wear his ring and to have his name, and to be his in every way a woman could belong to a man.

He wanted to be hers.

“I don’t want to control you,”

he amended, and that sounded more honest. “I don’t want to be your jailer. I don’t want to clip your wings.”

Because she had been made to soar, his Mercy, and it would have been a particular kind of cruelty to deprive her of the skies. But she had the distressing tendency, like Icarus before her, to fly too close to the sun.

Her nails raked through the fine hair at his nape as he found the entrance to her body, sank his longest finger inside her, felt the clutch of her inner muscles. Her lungs expanded with each frenetic breath she took. “You are going—to have to be—a bit more specific.”

“I need you not to put yourself in danger,”

he said. “I need you to talk to me before you go off half-cocked. Let me think through the consequences you don’t often consider. I don’t want to keep you from flying. I want you to let me be there to catch you if you fall. Do you understand?”

Her back arched as his thumb rubbed the little bud at the apex of her thighs. “I—I—”

An anxious little cry, half-smothered in his throat. “There is just…one thing I can’t—”

That persistent little secret, which she had thought she had kept so closely. C. Nightingale. “Do you intend to tell me?”

he asked. “Eventually?”

“Yes,”

she breathed, and he felt the first tiny flutters of release. She said in a fierce rush, “But don’t ask it of me now. Please, Thomas.”

He hadn’t asked yet, any more than in passing. Despite his disapproval, she was still her own woman, above the age of majority, capable of making her own decisions. With some minor modifications, perhaps they could find terms acceptable to both of them. “If you go out again,”

he said, and slowed the careful manipulation of his fingers until she made a plaintive little sound, “You will not sneak about to do it. You will take the carriage. You will tell me where you are going and when. I will trust your judgment of it—for now. So long as you intend to trust me with it, eventually. Will you promise me that much?”

Her breath hitched. He heard the warble of uncertainty in her voice. “Thomas—”

“Two minutes, Mercy, and we’ll be home. Do you want to come?”

“Yes. Yes.”

She trembled, poised upon the precipice of release.

“Then make me the promise I asked of you. You will talk to me.”

The tiniest stroke, and her whole body shuddered with unrelieved tension.

Her fingers clenched in his hair. “I will,”

she gasped. “I will! I promise.”

“Good girl,”

he said, and brushed his lips to the sweat-dampened hair at her temple. “Good girl.”

A reward, then; one which would call this conversation to mind whenever she recalled it. Just a few gentle strokes across her slick flesh, a plunge of his fingers and—the once-denied release struck all the more severely. Her back bowed in a perfect arch. A cry of completion sliced through the still air.

No one who mattered would hear it, but for him. He’d pay the driver well enough to forget he’d even had a fare this evening.

By slow inches she went limp, panting with satiation. A beautiful mess, visible in only the tiny snatches of light that filtered through the window as the carriage at last began to slow. Her head found a perfect notch against his shoulder, and she turned her cheek against it as he smoothed out her skirts once more, letting them fall back into place, a bit wrinkled for their rough handling but nothing a good press wouldn’t fix.

He splayed his hand across her cheek to turn her face to his. One kiss; just one. There was time for nothing more. “You’ll remember this,”

he said into the sweet recesses of her mouth. “Won’t you?”

“Yes,”

she said, in a tremulous little voice. Shaken, he thought, to her very foundation. “Yes, I’ll remember.”

∞∞∞

Mercy stumbled onto the pavement after Thomas, her legs ill-equipped to support her. It wasn’t cold, but she shivered anyway. No; she trembled—from her fingertips to her toes in her shoes, she trembled in the aftermath of it all.

And Thomas appeared as cool and as unruffled as ever. As if ice would not have melted in his mouth. She might have thought his sole intention had been to manipulate her, to extract that promise from her through fair means or foul, if there wasn’t a visible tightness to his trousers. A distinct bulge behind the fall that would be obvious to anyone who cared to look.

The driver had delivered them near the house, though they had been careful to stick to the shadows. “Did you bring your key?”

Thomas inquired.

Mercy winced. “No,”

she admitted. “I did remember to put it in my reticule, but—”

Thomas canted his head. “But?”

“I forgot my reticule.”

He smothered a chortle behind one hand, shoved the other into his pocket. “Take this,”

he said, extending his own key to her. “Leave the door unlocked behind you, and place the key on the desk in your father’s study when you go upstairs.”

“You are not coming with me?”

“I’ll be two minutes behind you,”

he said. “It’s unlikely there’s much of anyone awake at this hour, but still it would not be wise to enter together. You have to get back upstairs and into bed unseen, and I—I have got to dress and meet my mother and sisters at their evening engagement. I’m not meant to know you are supposed to be ill, after all. Should I fail to put in an appearance, someone might wonder why we both have missed this evening’s entertainment.”

Oh. “I hadn’t considered that,”

she said, curling her fingers around the key he set into her hand.

“I know,”

he said, and there was just the tiniest hint of smug amusement running through his voice. As if to remind her that, of course, he had. “No billiards this evening.”

“What!”

That hardly seemed fair.

“You’re meant to be ill,”

he said. “You can’t go sneaking about the house when you’re meant to be recovering from your unexpected illness.”

“But I’m not ill,”

she said. “That is to say—for all anyone else knows, I have since recovered.”

“In a few hours?”

he scoffed. “Conveniently just in time for my mother and sisters to have returned from their evening out? No; your miraculous recovery shall have to wait until morning. And perhaps next time you’ll consider the consequences before you attempt to pull the wool over my eyes.”

In the shadows of the street that shifted and coalesced around them, he cupped her shoulder, turning her toward the door. “Go,”

he said. “I’ll be two minutes behind you.”

It was ever so much more than two minutes, she thought as she moved at last to do as he had bid, creeping through the door of the silent house. She had left him behind her years ago, long before she had ever thought, ever even suspected that there might come a time when she would have entertained the idea of letting him catch up to her.

It was far too late to turn back. Even if she were to stop and turn and extend a hand to him, once he had learned that secret she had promised him…he would no longer wish to take it. Was it selfish, then, to enjoy what little she would ever have of him while it lasted? To allow their paths, which had run into one another for so short a time, to continue to do so for just a few more days, perhaps as much as a few weeks, before they would once more diverge?

She would tell him, she assured herself as she slipped up the stairs. She would have to tell him. Not for nothing had she learned the damage a secret, so unjustly kept, could wreak. But, oh, it would kill off a part of her heart to do it.

She could feel the pain of it already, the ache of that knife poised over her breast, prepared to murder that part of her that had had the audacity to dream a little. She had never been much good at predicting consequences. But this one at least was plain as day; the end of them. An inevitability, and that—that would make it easier to bear, she hoped. Her own choice. Her own folly. Her own broken heart.

She only hoped she would not damage his in the doing of it.