Page 18

She stood before me, bold, direct. She’d had a drink or two wherever she had gone, I could tell, but there was no shift in her vision, no slurring her words.

I swallowed. Having her standing there, just a few feet from me, was playing havoc with my ability to concentrate on the problem before me.

The problem of convincing Lady Briar I wasn’t a total rakehell.

I took a deep breath. “Look.”

“I don’t want you to give me a long speech about how you were so clever to steal money from your friends without them noticing, Markham,” Briar said with a warning look. “You might think that’s impressive, but?—”

“Impressive? It’s shameful.” The words had slipped from my lips before I could stop them, and I couldn’t take them back now.

Even if I wanted to. And I didn’t think I wanted to.

It was the truth, and I hadn’t said it for a really long time. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just make a clean start?

Lilah had jokingly called me the black sheep of the family when we’d become in-laws, and in a way, it was true. The ‘good’ response never came as easily to me as it did my friends. And now I was paying the price for never having grown a conscience.

Warmth, on my hand. I glanced down.

Briar had taken my hand. “Shameful?”

I swallowed. Well, there was no turning back now. “Christ, Briar, I made such a stupid mistake. I was a complete ass. I thought—oh, I can’t even tell you this.”

Pulling my hand away, I stepped back from her. I didn’t deserve to be this close to someone who was so good.

But Briar took a step after me. “You can tell me anything.”

“I didn’t even know you a month ago,” I pointed out with a dry laugh, pulling a hand through my hair as my stomach lurched.

God, I didn’t know her then. And now I'm living with her?

As her houseguest. Obviously.

“Well, you know a fair bit about me, things that I don’t usually talk about,” Briar said quietly. “I’d…well. I’d like to think you can talk to me about things you wouldn’t normally talk about.”

I dropped down on the sofa behind me, no longer willing to attempt to remain upright.

It was all such a disaster. I’d done it to myself, which made it even worse. But there was no turning back from it now, no changing the past. All I could do was change the future.

I looked up as Briar sat next to me, her knee just touching mine.

“I want you to tell me,” she said gently.

And something strange happened to me as she said that. Something in my heart twisted, and it hurt, but when the pain was over I felt…lighter. Better. Safer.

I hung my head. “It was all a game, at least to start with.”

With my head like this I couldn’t see Briar any more. Perhaps that was for the best. I heard a short intake of breath.

“A game?”

“A bet,” I said ruefully, wishing to goodness I’d never been pulled into it. “A gentleman I knew—I won’t call him a friend, because he wasn’t. He said I couldn’t take five quid out of the club accounts without someone asking me why.”

I could almost feel her disdain pouring through her.

“So you did.”

I nodded. “It was so easy. They—my friends, they were so trusting, they didn’t even seem to notice I’d done it. It was strange. The thrill of it, the high, I can’t explain.”

“A rush,” came Briar’s soft voice.

I looked up and met her eye, and it was kind, and accepting, and so much more than I deserved. “You do understand.”

“Just because I haven’t done it doesn’t mean I haven’t considered breaking into the trust and taking out a thousand I can do what I want with,” sad Briar quietly with a wry smile.

It was not the image I had of the prim and proper Lady Briar Weatherford, and it only made me want her more.

But I had to get this off my chest, I had to tell her the rest.

Not that there was much to tell.

“Eventually it just became a habit, something I knew I had to stop, but couldn’t,” I said heavily. “Every week I told myself it would be the last time. I didn’t need the money! I was just dumping it back into the business through another?—”

“Wait,” interrupted Briar, putting a hand on my leg to silence me.

It did. My throat went dry as her warm fingers pressed into my thigh. Did she know what she was doing to me?

“Are you in earnest?” Briar said slowly. “You were taking money from the club…but you were putting it back?”

“Into another part of it, of course,” I said with a dry laugh. “No one knows that though, you’d better take that to your grave. It was a huge mistake to do it in the first place, I should never?—”

“Peregrine! Are you honestly telling me your friends don’t know you never actually took the money?” Briar said, eyes wide.

I shrugged. “I did take it.”

“But you didn’t keep it!” she insisted, as though that made any difference. “Peregrine, that means—you’re not a thief!”

My heart warmed to hear her say those words, but I knew it couldn’t be true. “No, I am.”

“You’re not! You gave the money back!”

“I was a complete scoundrel to do it at all,” I said, trying not to just accept the praise she was giving me. If she knew how much I needed it, and from her… “So I'm trying, in a small way—I know it won’t matter—but to make it up to them. To find a way to help. Even if they don’t want it.”

Briar was smiling. I couldn’t understand why. Hadn’t she listened to a word I’d said?

Her hand was still on my leg. “You’re a good person, Peregrine.”

Something darted down my abs to my loins. Sudden heat.

“Not that good,” I admitted quietly, meeting her eyes. “I want to do very bad things to you right now.”

Her eyes widened as I knew they would—but she didn’t take her hand away. “If you want to kiss me?—”

I didn’t even let her finish her sentence. I’d been so restrained, so good for so long. Being around Briar was to want her, and I’d wanted her day in, day out, for almost a week.

Moving into her townhouse had been the single best and worst idea we’d had.

But she wanted it. As I crushed my lips on hers, pressing Briar into the sofa, her arms came around my neck and pulled me closer. Her lips parted, her tongue reached out for mine, and I groaned as she squirmed against me.

Pleasure was roaring through my veins, tingles of sensual delight flickering along my jaw, down my spine, and to my growing hard on.

Damnit, but she was everything I wanted. Almost.

The kiss ended almost as soon as it had begun. And then my sense began to catch up with me.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” I said remorsefully, moving back.

But I couldn’t. Briar’s fingers had caught the neck of my t shirt, and she was pulling me back.

“We’re both adults here,” she said with a shy smile that belied her bravery. “And if I want to sit on my sofa and kiss a scandalous duke who has, to his own surprise and mine a conscience…then I will.”

I smiled as I let myself me pulled back into her arms. Well, who was I to argue?