“Astronomy has never been my forte, but I find myself considering the scope of the universe today. If our Sun is one of millions of stars, who is to say that Galileo was not right? That there is not another Earth far away on the edge of another Galaxy? And who is to say there is not another Philippa Marbury, ten days before her wedding, waiting for her knowledge to expand?
It’s irrelevant, of course. Even if there were a duplicate Earth in some far-off corner of the universe, I’m still to be married in ten days.
And so is the other Pippa.”
The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury
March 26, 1831; ten days prior to her wedding
The next evening, Pippa sat on a small bench perched just outside a collection of cherry trees in the Dolby House gardens, cloak wrapped tightly about her, Trotula at her feet, stargazing.
Or, at least, attempting to stargaze.
She’d been outside for more than an hour, having finally given up on feigning illness and escaping the house once supper had been officially served, preferring outside to inside, even on this cold March night.
She was too excited.
Tonight, she would learn about seduction.
From Cross.
She took a deep breath and released it, then another, hoping they would calm her racing thoughts. They did not. They were clouded with visions of Mr. Cross, of the way he looked as he glowered at her across the floor of his gaming hell, the way he smiled at her in the darkness, the way he crowded her in his office.
It wasn’t him, of course. She would feel this way if anyone had promised her the lesson he’d promised.
Liar.
She exhaled long and loud.
The breathing was not helping.
She looked over her shoulder at the dim light trickling down from the Dolby House dining room. Yes, it was best that she spend the time leading up to their meeting alone in the cold rather than going mad at a meal with her parents and Olivia, who would no doubt be discussing the particulars of “The Wedding” at that exact moment.
A vision flashed from the previous afternoon, Olivia resplendent in her wedding gown, glowing with the excitement of prenuptial bliss, Pippa’s reflection in the mirror behind, smaller and dimmer in the wake of her younger, more luminous sister.
The Wedding would be remarkable. One for the ages. Or, at least the gossips.
It would be just what the Marchioness of Needham and Dolby had always dreamed—an enormous, formal ceremony designed to showcase the pomp and circumstance befitting the Marbury daughters’ birth. It would erase the memory of the two previous weddings of the generation: Victoria and Valerie’s double wedding to uninspiring mates, performed hastily in the wake of Penelope’s scandalous, broken engagement, and, more recently, Penelope’s wedding, performed by special license in the village chapel near the Needham country estate the day after Bourne had returned from wherever it was he’d gone for a decade.
Of course, they all knew where Bourne had gone.
He’d gone to The Fallen Angel.
With Mr. Cross.
Fascinating, unnerving Mr. Cross, who was beginning to unsettle her even when she was not near him. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, assessing the change that came over her when she was in proximity—either mental or physical—to the tall, ginger-haired man who had begrudgingly agreed to assist her in her quest.
Her heart seemed to race, her breath coming more shallowly. More quickly.
Her muscles tensed and her nerves seemed to hover at attention.
She grew warm . . . or was that cold?
Either way, they were all signs of heightened awareness. Symptoms of excitement. Or nervousness. Or fear.
She was being overly dramatic. There was nothing to fear from this man—he was a man of science. In utter control at all times.
The perfect research associate.
Nothing more.
It did not matter that the research in question was somewhat unorthodox. It was research nonetheless.
She took another breath and withdrew the watch from her reticule, holding it up to read its face in the dim light seeping through the windows of the ground-floor sitting room.
“It’s nine o’clock.” The words were soft, rising out of the darkness, and Trotula leapt to her feet to greet the newcomer, giving Pippa a chance to address the thundering of her heart. Later, she would wonder at the fact that she was breathless, but not startled, instead something different. Something more.
In the moment, however, there was only one thing she could think.
He had come.
She smiled, watching him crouch to greet her hound. “You are very punctual.”
His task completed, he rose and sat next to her, close enough to unsettle, far enough away to avoid contact. Out of the corner of her eye, she realized how long his thighs were—nearly half again the length of her own, pulling the wool of his trousers tight along lean muscle and bone. She should not be considering his thighs.
Femurs.
“And yet, you are waiting for me.”
She turned to him to find him watching the sky, face shadowed in the darkness, leaning back on the bench as though they had been sitting there all night, as though they might sit there still, all night. She followed his gaze. “I’ve been here for more than an hour.”
“In the cold?”
“It’s the best time for stargazing, don’t you think? Cold nights are always so much clearer.”
“There’s a reason for that.”
She turned to face him. “Is there?”
He did not look to her. “There are fewer stars in the winter sky. How is your toe?”
“Right as rain. You are an astronomer as well as a mathematician?”
He turned to face her, finally, half his face cast into shadowy light from the manor beyond. “You are a horticulturalist as well as an anatomist?”
She smiled. “We are surprising, aren’t we?”
His lips twitched. “We are.”
A long moment stretched out between them before he turned away again, returning his attention to the sky. “What were you looking at?”
She pointed to a bright star. “Polaris.”
He shook his head, and pointed to another part of the sky. “That’s Polaris. You were looking at Vega.”
She chuckled. “Ah. No wonder I was finding it unimpressive.”
He leaned back and stretched his long legs out. “It’s the fifth brightest star in the sky.”
She laughed. “You forget I am one of five sisters. In my world, fifth brightest is last. She looked up. “With apologies to the star in question, of course.”
“And are you often last?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes. It is not a pleasant ranking.”
“I assure you, Pippa. You are rarely last.”
He had not moved except to turn his head and look at her, the angles of his face hard and unforgiving in the darkness, sending a shiver of something unfamiliar through her. “Be careful what you say. I shall have to tell Penny that you find her lacking.”
He turned a surprised look on her. “I didn’t say that.”
“She’s the only one of my sisters whom you’ve met. If I am not last, then in your mind, she must trail behind.”
One side of his mouth kicked up. “In that case, let’s not recount this conversation to anyone else.”
“I can agree to that.” She returned her attention to the sky. “Tell me about this magnificent, fifth-best star.”
When he spoke, she could hear the laughter in his deep voice, and she resisted the urge to look at him. “Vega belongs to the constellation Lyra, so named because Ptolemy believed it looked like Orpheus’s lyre.”
She couldn’t resist teasing him, “You’re an expert in the classics, as well, I gather?”
“You mean you are not?” he retorted, drawing a laugh from her before adding, “Orpheus is one of my favorites.”
She looked to him. “Why?”
His gaze was locked on the night sky. “He made a terrible mistake and paid dearly for it.”
With the words, everything grew more serious. “Eurydice,” she whispered. She knew the story of Orpheus and his wife, whom he loved more than anything and lost to the Underworld.
He was quiet for a long moment, and she thought he might not speak. When he did, the words were flat and emotionless. “He convinced Hades to let her go, to return her to the living. All he had to do was lead her out without looking back into Hell.”
“But he couldn’t,” Pippa said, mind racing.
“He grew greedy and looked back. He lost her forever.” He paused, then repeated, “A terrible mistake.”
And there was something there in his tone, something that Pippa might not have noticed at another time, in another man. Loss. Sorrow. Memory flashed—the whispered conversation in this very garden.
You shouldn’t have married him.
I didn’t have a choice. You didn’t leave me with one.
I should have stopped it.
The woman in the garden . . . she was his Eurydice.
Something unpleasant flared in her chest at the thought, and Pippa couldn’t resist reaching out to touch him, to settle her hand on his arm. He jerked at the touch, pulling away as though she’d burned him.
They sat in silence for a long moment. Until she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “You made a mistake.”
He slid his gaze to her fleetingly, then stood. “It’s time to go. Your lesson awaits.”
Except she did not want to go anymore. She wanted to stay. “You lost your love.” He did not look to her, but she could not have looked away if a team of oxen had driven through the gardens of Dolby House in that moment. “The woman in the gardens. Lavinia,” she said, hating that she could not simply keep quiet. Don’t ask, Pippa. Don’t. “You . . . love her?”
The word was strange on her tongue.
It should not surprise her that he had a paramour, after all, there were few men in London with the kind of reputation that Mr. Cross had as both a man and a lover. But she confessed, he did not seem the kind of man who would be drawn to more serious emotions—to something like love. He was, after all, a man of science. As she was a woman of science. And she certainly did not expect for love to ever make an appearance in her own mind.
And yet, in this strange moment, she found she was desperate to hear his answer. And there, in the desperation, she discovered that she was hoping that his answer would be no. That there was no unrequited love lurking deep in his breast.
Or requited love, for that matter.
She started at the thought.
Well.
That was unexpected.
His lips twisted at the question, as he turned his face from the light and into the darkness. But he did not speak. “Curiosity is a dangerous thing, Lady Philippa.”
She rose to face him, keenly aware of how much taller he was than she, keenly aware of him. “I find I cannot help myself.”
“I have noticed that.”
“I only ask because I am intrigued by the idea of your loving someone.” Stop it, Pippa. This is not the path down which intelligent young ladies tread. She changed tack. “Not you, that is. Anyone. Loving someone.”
“You have opposition to love?”
“Not opposition so much as skepticism. I make it a practice not to believe in things I cannot see.”
She’d surprised him. “You are no ordinary female.”
“We have established that. It is why you are here, if you recall.”
“So it is.” He crossed his long arms over his chest, and added, “So you wish to tempt your husband, whom you do not expect to love.”
“Precisely.” When he did not immediately respond, she added, “If it helps, I do not think he expects to love me, either.”
“A sound English marriage.”
She considered the words. “I suppose it is, isn’t it? It’s certainly like any of the marriages to which I am close.”
His brows rose. “You doubt the fact that Bourne cares deeply for your sister?”
“No. But that’s the only one.” She paused, considering. “Maybe Olivia and Tottenham, too. But my other sisters married for much the same reason as I shall.”
“Which is?”
She lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “It is what we are expected to do.” She met his gaze, unable to read it in the darkness. “I suppose that doesn’t make sense to you, seeing as you are not an aristocrat.”
One side of his mouth kicked up. “What does being an aristocrat have to do with it?”
She pushed her spectacles up on her nose. “You may not know this, but aristocrats have a great many rules with which to contend. Marriages are about wealth and station and propriety and position. We cannot simply marry whomever we wish. Well, ladies can’t at least.” She thought for a moment. “Gentlemen can weather more scandal, but so many of them simply flop over and allow themselves to be dragged into uninspired marriages anyway. Why do you think that is?”
“I wouldn’t like to guess.”
“It is amazing what power men have and how poorly they use it. Don’t you think?”
“And if you had the same powers?”
“I don’t.”
“But if you did?”
And because he seemed genuinely intrigued, she said, “I would have gone to university. I would join the Royal Horticultural Society. Or maybe the Royal Astronomical Society—then I would know the difference between Polaris and Vega.”
He laughed.
She continued, enjoying the way she could be free with him. “I would marry someone I liked.” She paused, instantly regretting the way the words sounded on her tongue. “I mean—I don’t dislike Castleton, he is a nice man. Very kind. It’s just . . .” She trailed off, feeling disloyal.
“I understand.”
And for a moment, she thought he might.
“But all that is silly, you see? Natterings of an odd young lady. I was born into certain rules, and I must follow them. Which is why I think it is likely easier for those who live outside of society.”
“There you are, seeing in black and white again.”
“Are you saying it’s not easier for you?”
“I am saying that we all have our crosses to bear.”
There was something in the words—an unexpected bitterness that made her hesitate before she said, “I suppose you speak from experience?”
“I do.”
Her mind spun with the possibilities. He’d said once that he did not think on marriage. That it was not for him. Perhaps at one time, it had been. Had he wanted to marry? Had he been refused? Because of his name, or his reputation, or his career? Title or no, he was an impressive specimen of man—clever and wealthy and powerful and rather handsome when one considered all factors.
What lady would refuse him?
The mystery lady in the garden had.
“Well, either way, I am happy that you are not a peer.”
“If I were?”
You would be like none I have ever met. She smiled. “I would never have asked you to be my research associate. I have compiled a list, by the way. Of my questions.”
“I expected nothing less. But you don’t think it would make everything easier if I were a peer? No skulking about in gaming hells.”
She smiled. “I rather like skulking about in gaming hells.”
“Perhaps.” He stepped closer, blocking out the light from the house. “But perhaps it is also because when you complete your research, you can walk away and forget it ever happened.”
“I would never forget it,” she said, the truth coming quick and free. Pippa flushed at the words, grateful for the shadows that kept the color from him.
But she wouldn’t forget this. In fact, she had no doubt that she would harken back to this night when she was Lady Castleton, rattling around in her country estate with nothing but her hothouse and her dogs to keep her company.
And she certainly would not forget him.
They were quiet for a long moment, and she wondered if she’d said too much. Finally, he said, “I brought you something.” He extended a brown-paper-wrapped package toward her.
Her breath quickened—a strange response to a small box, no doubt—and she took the parcel, pushing away Trotula’s inquisitive wet nose and quickly unwrapping it to discover a domino mask on a bed of fine paper. She lifted the wide swath of black silk, heart pounding.
She looked up at him, unable to read his gaze in the darkness. “Thank you.”
He nodded once. “You will need it.” He turned away from her then, moving quickly across the gardens.
Trotula followed.
Pippa did not wish to be left behind. She hurried to keep up with man and beast.
“Are we . . . we are going somewhere public?”
“Of a sort.”
“I thought . . .” She hesitated. “That is, I was under the impression that the instruction would be in private.” She lifted her reticule. “I cannot ask you about the specifics in public.”
He turned back, and she nearly plowed into him. “Tonight is not about specifics. It is about temptation.”
The word slid through her, and Pippa wondered, fleetingly, if it was possible that language was somehow made more powerful in the absence of light. It was a silly question, of course. Obviously, the senses were heightened when one was removed. She couldn’t see him, so she heard him all the more.
It had nothing to do with the word itself.
Temptation.
He began walking once more, adding, “To understand how to tempt a man, you must first understand temptation yourself.”
She followed, hurrying to catch up. “I understand temptation.”
He slid her a look.
“I do!”
“What tempts you?” They had arrived at a black carriage, and Mr. Cross reached up to open the door and lower the stepping block. The spaniel leapt into the carriage happily, surprising them both into laughter.
She snapped her fingers. “Trotula, out.”
With a sad sigh, the dog did as she was bid.
Pippa pointed to the house. “Go home.”
The hound sat.
Pippa pointed again. “Home.”
The hound refused to move.
Cross smirked. “She’s somewhat unbiddable.”
“Not usually.”
“Perhaps it’s me.”
She cut him a look. “Perhaps so.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re rather unbiddable around me as well.”
She feigned shock. “Sirrah, are you comparing me to a hound?”
He smiled, flashing eyes and white teeth causing a strange little flutter to take up residence in her stomach. “Maybe.” Then, “Now. Let’s return to the task at hand. What tempts you, Pippa?”
“I—” She hesitated. “I care a great deal for meringue.”
He laughed, the sound bigger and bolder than she expected.
“It’s true.”
“No doubt you do. But you may have meringue anytime you like.” He stood back and indicated that she should enter the carriage.
She ignored the silent command, eager to make her point. “Not so. If the cook has not made it, I cannot eat it.”
A smile played on his lips. “Ever-practical Pippa. If you want it, you can find it. That’s my point. Surely, somewhere in London, someone will take pity upon you and satisfy your craving for meringue.”
Her brow furrowed. “Therefore, I am not tempted by it?”
“No. You desire it. But that’s not the same thing. Desire is easy. It’s as simple as you wish to have meringue, and meringue is procured.” He waved a hand toward the interior of the carriage but did not offer to help her up. “In.”
She ascended another step before turning back. The additional height brought them eye to eye. “I don’t understand. What is temptation, then?”
“Temptation . . .” He hesitated, and she found herself leaning forward, eager for this curious, unsettling lesson. “Temptation turns you. It makes you into something you never dreamed, it presses you to give up everything you ever loved, it calls you to sell your soul for one, fleeting moment.”
The words were low and dark and full of truth, and they hovered in the silence for a long moment, an undeniable invitation. He was close, protecting her from toppling off the block, the heat of him wrapping around her despite the cold. “It makes you ache,” he whispered, and she watched the curve of his lips in the darkness. “You’ll make any promise, swear any oath. For one . . . perfect . . . unsoiled taste.”
Oh, my.
Pippa exhaled, long and reedy, nerves screaming, thoughts muddled. She closed her eyes, swallowed, forced herself back, away from him and the way he . . . tempted her.
Why was he so calm and cool and utterly in control?
Why was he not riddled with similar . . . feelings?
He was a very frustrating man.
She sighed. “That must be a tremendous meringue.”
A beat followed the silly, stupid words . . . words she wished she could take back. How ridiculous. And then he chuckled, teeth flashing in the darkness. “Indeed,” he said, the words thicker and more gravelly than before.
Before Pippa could wonder at the sound, he added, “Trotula, go home.”
The dog turned and went as he returned his attention to Pippa, and said, “Get in.”
She did. Without question.
The alley behind the Angel looked different at night. More ominous.
It did not help that he punctuated the slowing of the carriage with, “It is time for the mask,” before he opened the door and leapt down from the conveyance without aid of step or servant.
She did not hesitate to do his bidding, extracting the slip of fabric and lifting it to her face, filled with excitement—she’d never had cause to mask her identity before.
The mask promised equal parts excitement and edification.
Her first foray incognito. Her first moment as more than just the oddest Marbury sister.
In the mask, she imagined herself not odd, but mysterious. Not only scientific, but also scandalous. She would be a veritable Circe in the making.
But now, as she attempted to affix the mask to her head, she realized that imagination was not reality. And that masks were not made for spectacles.
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?”