Felicity hadn’t the foggiest idea what Felix suddenly found so humorous, and she wasn’t certain she wanted to know. Some things were best left to the imagination and the inner-workings of Felix’s clever mind was surely one of them.

“The children and I are going to continue on our walk. They want to see the boats sailing on the Serpentine.” She hesitated. “Would you care to accompany us?” After seeing the way Felix had been with Anne – so gentle and kind – she couldn’t help but wonder if there was more to him than she’d first thought. She still did not trust him. How could she? He was a man. But the children seemed taken, and surely there was no harm in extending their time together a little bit more.

“I knew you would come around eventually. Women always do.”

Felicity was sure they did, but if Felix thought she was one of his light-skirts who went all doe-eyed every time he smiled then he was destined for disappointment. “I have not ‘come around’ to anything, Mr. Spencer. Nor do I intend to.” Absently wetting her thumb, she rubbed a spot of dirt off Anne’s cheek before setting the toddler down. “My invitation was born of politeness, nothing more. If you choose to decline it would not bother me in the least.”

“I’d have to be a fool to do that.” His voice lowered as one eyebrow raised. “Do I strike ye as a fool, Miss Atwood?”

Felix Spencer was many things. A thief. A Runner. A rogue. But a fool? No, he wasn’t that. Not that she was about to stroke his ego by telling him as much. The man’s head was already so inflated it was a wonder it did not detach from his body and float up into the clouds.

“Are you coming or not, Mr. Spencer?” she said with a sigh.

“I hope to, love.” His wolfish grin betrayed the double entendre behind his words and Felicity blushed from the roots of her hair to the curve of her collarbone. Had she never been married the sly innuendo would have mostly likely flown right over her head, but courtesy of Ezra’s monthly visits to her bedchamber she knew precisely what Felix was insinuating.

“Mr. Spencer! You are incorrigible.” 

He tapped his chin. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.”

“It was not intended as a compliment.” 

“Well now you’ve hurt my feelings.”

Felicity barely managed to contain a snort. “I highly doubt that. Given how many insults you must receive on a daily basis, I can only assume you whisk them away as easily as water off a duck’s back.”

“Ye are right about that, love.” He flashed her a grin before extending his right arm in a fancy flourish that would have done a duke proud. “Shall we? I promise I won’t bite, Miss Atwood. Very hard,” he added under his breath when she lightly rested her gloved hand on his wrist. 

She shot him a glance of warning as they began walking. The children scampered ahead, eager to get to the Serpentine, the largest man-made lake in all of London. Built at the request of Queen Caroline, it encompassed nearly forty-acres with a bridge that connected directly to Kensington Gardens. “Behave yourself, Mr. Spencer.”

“Or what?” he challenged, lifting a brow.

“Or I shall report your behavior to Captain Steel.” It was a baseless threat. She had no intention of bothering Owen with such an insignificant matter when he had things of far greater importance to deal with – the least of which being his fiery bride – but Felix did not need to know that.

“I never took ye for the tattlin’ type, Miss Atwood. But if you’re going to tell on me…I might as well do something worth telling.” His eyes darkened, her only warning before he spun her towards him and covered her mouth with his.

The kiss was shockingly fast. No more than the span of a heartbeat. But lightening needed only a second to scorch the earth and when Felix released her Felicity staggered away from him feeling as though she’d just stepped out of a storm.

Ripples of electricity coursed through her body, all the way from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. If she had a small mirror inside her reticule she wouldn’t have been surprised to find her bonnet askew and her hair standing on end.

Good heavens. 

Her lips were tingling. Were lips supposed to tingle after a kiss? They never had before. Not with Ezra and certainly not with Rodger Sherwood.

But you no longer think about that, she reminded herself as a cold shard of ice pierced through the heat and jolted her back to her senses. Or him.

She’d learned a long time ago it was far easier to ignore the past than to dwell on it. That was why she kept every memory of Lord Sherwood and that horrible morning tucked away in a deep, dusty corner where no one would think to look, least of all herself.

It certainly helped that Scarlett’s first husband was dead. Killed by her own personal maid in a dramatic twist that belonged on the pages of a Shakespearean play. As she was not a vengeful person by nature, Felicity found no happiness in Rodger’s death. But she was glad she would no longer have to fear seeing the man who had taken something she’d not willingly given.

And who gave me something I will never willingly give up.

As it always did whenever her thoughts turned to Rodger, her gaze flicked to Henry. He was skipping down the path arm in arm with his sister, completely unaware of the dark circumstances surrounding his conception…and the whispers that still lingered when no one thought she was listening.

Somewhere along the way Henry had lost his cap and his blond hair waved in the breeze. He needed a trim, she noted. He always needed a trim. But even if she cut off every last curl she could not change the color of his eyes or the defiant angle of his chin. Those he’d inherited straight from his father. 

Lord Rodger Sherwood.

Pressing a hand flat against her sternum, she forced herself to take a long, measured breath when her lungs began to burn. For three long years after the attack the mere thought of Rodger had sent her into a full-blown panic. She still remembered all too clearly what it felt like to drown in the middle of a room filled with oxygen. The awful, suffocating weight. The paralyzing fear. The burning that slowly turned to numbness. Every episode had been more unbearable than the last and made even worse because she’d had no one to turn to. Ezra had not understood and Scarlett…well, suffice it to say they had not been on speaking terms. Only out of sheer desperation had she finally learned to control her emotions and she would never allow herself to go down that dark path again.

Breathe, she commanded her lungs. Just breathe. In and out. That’s it. 

“What are ye thinking about?” Felix’s hand on her waist made her jump six inches off the ground. She shied to the side, as skittish as a filly feeling the bit between its teeth for the very first time.

“N-nothing.” In her haste to spit the lie out she tripped over her own tongue. Dragging in a mouthful of air, she fought to compose herself. “I was – I was not thinking about anything.”

“You’ve awful sad eyes to be thinking about nothing, love.” A frown replaced Felix’s perpetual grin as he studied her, his tawny gaze so intent that she feared he was going to reach in and pluck her secrets right out of her head.

Nonsense, she thought. A person can only know what you tell them.

And she had no intention of telling Felix about Rodger. The only two people who knew were Ezra and Scarlett. She’d told Ezra the day after it happened and Scarlett had learned the truth only recently, ending a seven-year-long feud between them. As far as she was concerned the past was buried. There was no point in dragging it back into the present. Especially now that Rodger was gone and both her husband and her dearest friend had moved on.

But you haven’t, a tiny voice reminded her. Not really. Not where it–

“Oh do be quiet,” she muttered under her breath.

“What was that?”

Her brows snapped together. What was Felix still doing here? She wanted him to leave. Almost as much as she wanted him to stay. A choked laugh spilled from her lips as she shook her head, bemused by her own conflicting thoughts.

“I said you should not have done that, Mr. Spencer. Kissed me,” she elaborated when he merely canted his head to the side. “It isn’t proper to display affection in a public setting.” A furtive peek over her left shoulder revealed more than one curious onlooker staring in their direction. How many had witnessed the impromptu kiss? Enough to stir up more gossip, she thought with a bitter twist of her lips. Not that it truly mattered as her reputation couldn’t possibly find anyplace lower to sink. But she was tired of seeing her name in the gossip pages. Or, if not her name – the infamous Lady V technically never used names – then a descriptive moniker that allowed everyone to know exactly whom the Duchess of Scandal was writing about.

She scowled at Felix before she shook out her skirts and marched on, not wanting Henry and Anne to get more than a few yards ahead. Their legs may have been short but they were deceptively fast and easily distracted. The last thing she needed on top of everything else was to lose sight of them in the middle of a crowded park.   

Felix caught up to her easily, his large steps dwarfing her smaller ones.

“Consider my invitation to accompany us rescinded,” she said without looking at him. 

“Because of a little peck?” he protested.

“Go away, Mr. Spencer.”

“Ye were right, ye know.”

“I was? Of course I was.” She hesitated. “About what, precisely?”

“I shouldn’t have kissed ye in the park.”

“You are correct.” She pursed her lips together, glad she had finally been able to make him see reason. A person couldn’t go about giving out all willy-nilly. It simply wasn’t done. “You should not have. I am glad you–”

“Best to wait until we’re alone.”

Her stride faltered. “P-pardon me?”

“I don’t want to rush our first time together. When I put my hands on your soft, smooth skin I want all the time in the world to touch ye.” His eyes glinted with roguish pleasure as his gaze skimmed down to her breasts before returning to her flushed face. “And taste ye,” he finished huskily.

Was it suddenly much hotter than it had been a few seconds ago? Yanking her fan out of her reticule, Felicity waved it feverishly in front of her face as she quickened her pace. “That – that is a preposterous thing to say, Mr. Spencer!”

“No, Miss Atwood.” His voice dropped to a raspy growl that sent shivers of dark delight racing down her spine. “That’s a promise.”

 

He’d gotten under her skin again, Felix thought with a self-satisfied smirk when Felicity huffed out a breath and hurried away from him as fast as her dainty little feet could carry her. Slowing his stride, he allowed her to put some distance between them, although he was careful not to let her out of his sight.

It was only a matter of time before he found a way under her skirts. Maybe then he’d get all these buggering thoughts of love out of his head.

Or maybe not.

A man could do a sight worse than Miss Felicity Atwood. If he were the marrying type – which he wasn’t – she was precisely the sort of wife he’d pick. Soft, kind, and considerate, with just enough steel in her spine to intrigue him. And hadn’t he always pursued what intrigued him? 

Whether it was a pretty bauble or a beautiful woman, Felix was not a man to deny himself the pleasure of taking what he wanted. When he’d become a Runner, the Captain had made him vow that his days of robbing the wealthy of their most prized possessions were behind him…but he’d never mentioned anything about stealing hearts.

Felicity desired him. She may not have said as much out loud – in fact, she’d said the exact opposite – but he knew desire when he tasted it. He also knew pain, and the raw flash of it in her expressive violet eyes had filled him with the primal urge to protect and defend. Against what or whom he wasn’t yet certain, but he’d be damned before he allowed anything to happen to the delicate, dark-haired beauty who, against all odds, had somehow found a way under his skin.

He scratched his neck, short nails digging into tanned flesh as he shook his head in silent bemusement. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was the bloody thief. Not Felicity. But bugger him sideways if she wasn’t the one who was threatening to steal his heart.

His eyes narrowed as he watched her bonnet bob and weave its way through the congested park. London was not the place for a well-bred lady to be on her own. A quiet country village would have suited her perfectly, for even the tree-lined streets of Grosvenor Square were not safe once the sun went down.

And the East End was no Grosvenor Square.

She needed protection, whether she wanted it or not. Luckily for her, he knew just the man up to the task…