Chapter Thirteen
“So she was at Mattigan’s?”
Matthew sighed and took a sip of his watered-down drink as he looked off into the crowd at the ball. It was Hugh who had asked the question, and his mouth was tight with displeasure as he awaited the answer.
“Yes,” Matthew said. “Yesterday afternoon, when I came to pick up my order. And before you ask me a hundred questions, I don’t know.”
It was Baldwin who tilted his head in question, his dark eyes narrowing. “Don’t know what?”
“Anything,” Matthew breathed. “I’m torn. Part of me doubts everything about this woman because she deceived me.”
Hugh snorted out derision. “Isn’t that all that matters? Liars are liars, and once you unmask them you can never trust them again.” Both Baldwin and Matthew stared at his sharp tone. One Matthew felt wasn’t entirely due to his situation. Their friend shifted. “Has it occurred to you that this woman might have arranged for the meeting at the bookshop? Perhaps she even paid the owner to help her in her schemes.”
Matthew drew back. “You’ve known Mattigan as long as I have. Do you really think he would take money from someone to betray me?”
Hugh folded his arms. “You have no idea what someone would do for money. Isn’t that right, Baldwin?”
Baldwin flinched and the color drained from Hugh’s face immediately. Their friend had not long ago been in dire financial straits. It had led to his nearly losing Helena, nearly losing everything. But in the past year solid investments and help from their circle of friends had inched him back toward solvency.
“Not well played, Hugh,” Matthew said.
Hugh dropped his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“There’s no need to explain yourself,” Baldwin said gently. “I suppose I am the best of our circle to discuss the desperation a person feels when it comes to financial need. But Mattigan does well in his business, I don’t believe he feels that pinch. Even if he did, he makes a great deal more from our little group of friends than the widow of a merchant could afford to pay. Why would he involve himself in something that would cut off his very nose to spite his face? Do you want to tell us why this subject of liars upsets you so much, Hugh?”
Hugh shook his head, his jaw going taut. “No. I’ll get drinks.”
He said nothing more, but stalked off into the crowd, leaving Baldwin and Matthew alone again. Baldwin sighed and faced him. “He might be wrong about some vast conspiracy of your lady and the book man, but he isn’t wrong to be concerned about you. You said you were torn—does that mean that part of you wants to believe in this woman, despite what she did?”
Matthew nodded slowly. “Yes. I saw truth in her shocked and horrified reaction that night at the ball. And the same when I talked to her yesterday. I have a hard time believing she’s a villain. At least not entirely so.”
Baldwin pinched his lips together and looked out over the crowd for a moment of quiet. Then he glanced at Matthew again. “You want to believe the best in those around you because you are decent. But I do want you to be careful. This woman, she clearly woke something in you that has been dormant since you lost Angelica. Don’t confuse that with a deeper connection. Or allow it to put blinders on you to any ulterior motives she may have.”
“You are determined to think the worst of her then?” Matthew asked softly, feeling a wild desire to defend Isabel.
“Not determined. Just wary. And you should be too. She just entered the ballroom.”
Matthew froze, then slowly turned toward the entrance of the chamber. There, across the wide expanse of the hall, was Isabel and her uncle. She was, as always, stunning. Tonight she wore a beautifully cut pink gown with a darker lace overlay that fell over the skirt. Her gaze darted around like a little bird, seeking out shelter in a storm.
For a brief, wild moment, he wished he could provide it. Protect her. Despite the fact that his friends seemed to think he was the one who needed to be guarded.
“I’m going to go find Helena,” Baldwin said. “For it is clear you no longer need me. But please, do be careful. If anyone has earned a long life free of trouble, it’s you. And if you go in that direction, that is not what you might find.”
Baldwin clapped Matthew’s arm and then stepped away into the crowd. Matthew found he could say nothing as he departed. His gaze was too focused on Isabel. Perhaps they were right that to avoid her was the best answer.
But he moved toward her regardless, and pushed away all the consequences he knew he might find when he reached her side.
Isabel clung to her uncle’s arm as they stepped into the crowded ballroom. Her heart pounded and her stomach fluttered with intense nervousness, something that increased every time she thought of Matthew.
She had no idea if he would be here tonight. For years, he had avoided events where her uncle came, and Fenton had done the same. But now the men were on a collision course, whether Matthew knew it or not. And it was up to her to warn him of the dangerous waters ahead.
She glanced at her uncle. He had the strangest little smirk on his face as he looked over the crowd. One that froze her very blood.
“Why don’t you circulate, my dear?” he said as he released her arm. “I have a few friends to talk to, and I’ll bring you a refreshment in a while.”
She nodded as he walked into the crowd. She had no idea if her sense of dread was a dramatic overreaction or a deep warning she had to head.
“Good evening, Isabel.”
She froze at the deep voice that came from just behind her. That voice she knew so well. The one that she wanted to hear and feared in equal measure.
She slowly turned and caught her breath. Matthew. Matthew, so beautiful and fine and perfect as he stared down over her with an impassive expression that she could not read.
“Your Grace,” she murmured.
He reached out a hand and she found herself lifting her own, watching as his gloved fingers slid into hers, how he raised her hand with impossible slowness to those lips that had once touched her in the most intimate ways.
“I should not be so pleased to see you as I am,” he said, she thought more to himself than to her.
Her heart leapt regardless. But then her mind screamed at her, reminding her about Uncle Fenton and his cruel threats. About all that she had to share with the man who was still holding her hand.
She tugged it away and stepped a fraction closer, dizzy from the warmth of his body as it curled around her. “Matthew,” she whispered. “I must talk to you right now.”
He wrinkled his brow in confusion. “Are we not talking?”
She shook her head. “Not here. We must talk in private. Please, won’t you come with me?”
She saw the hesitation. She hated it, for it was well earned by her decisions and actions. But then he seemed to surrender, his expression softening a fraction as he nodded. “Certainly. Come, we’ll find a place to be alone.”
Her body tensed at those words. At the way he said them. It wanted things she should not desire, things she couldn’t have. She followed him from the room, knowing full well she had to get these desires under control. Because once he heard what she had to say, it was very unlikely he’d ever want to be alone with her again.
Matthew watched as Isabel entered the parlor and walked as far away from him as she could. He shut the door behind her and shuddered. They were alone. And the space was so small that she could run all she wanted, but it would only take a few steps to have her in his arms.
Which was where he wanted her when he was honest with himself. All his reactions to that ever more evident fact rose up in him. Guilt. Anger. Self-loathing. And desire more powerful and potent than he’d ever experienced before.
Even with Angelica.
And there it was. The truth that he didn’t want to face.
Isabel turned, and all those emotions faded to the background. Her expression was taut not with desire, but anxiety. She worried her hands before her, fear lining every part of her lovely face.
“What is it?” he asked, stepping toward her.
She jolted, and her cheeks filled with color. At least he was not alone in this madness. This need that should not be.
Somehow that offered little comfort.
“Has something happened?” he asked, gentling his tone slightly.
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” she gasped out. “My uncle…”
She trailed off and he stiffened. Fenton Winter. He tried not to think of him. Had avoided him for years. Isabel’s presence in his life forced him to bring the man back to the corners of his existence. Him and his accusations that cut so close to the bone.
“What about him?” he asked, sharp and harsh because he could be nothing else.
She lifted her gaze to his. “He is…he’s always hated you, Matthew. Blamed you for what happened to Angelica.”
He turned away and paced off to the window, where he looked out at the faint shadows of the garden beneath a sky that contained only a sliver of moon. “This is not news to me, Isabel. Certainly it is not something that requires we leave the ball and come here together.” He faced her, thinking of Hugh’s earlier suggestion that Isabel might be manipulating this situation. He didn’t want to believe that.
But…
“But he has been more driven the past little while, Matthew,” she said, unaware of the conflict in his mind. “I see a desperation in his eyes. A growing danger. He said that he wants to hurt you.”
Matthew shook his head. “He’s told me worse to my face, Isabel. It is bluster, pure hatred vomited out by a man deep in grief and loss.”
“No!” she snapped, that lilting voice finally going sharp as she closed the distance between them and caught his hands with both her own. “No, it’s more than that. I see him on a daily basis, Matthew. I see his deterioration, his descent into something ugly and cruel. At least when it comes to you. You must not take this lightly.”
He stared down into her face, lit with true concern and deep fear. For him. For him. His friends felt that way, certainly. His mother, yes. But Isabel was the first person outside of his inner circle who had looked at him with such true and deep connection since…
Since her cousin. And he realized how much he had missed the feeling that one soul cared so truly and completely about his own.
It was terrifying and compelling all at once. Something he wanted to recoil from and embrace in equal measure.
“Isabel,” he said softly, letting his gaze brush over her lips, meeting her gaze, feeling how she trembled, in part because she believed what she was saying. In part because she was practically in his arms.
“Don’t discount me,” she asked, her voice shaking.
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m certain you believe this is true. But—” He couldn’t help himself. He slid a hand along the curve of her jaw, brushed his thumb against her ear and felt her earring bob against the flesh. He watched as her eyes fluttered shut, and she let out a ragged sigh that spoke volumes about what she wanted.
It echoed what he wanted.
“But?” she asked.
He dropped his head down, closer and closer to hers. He felt her breath against his lips, and it drove him mad. “He can’t hurt me,” he whispered. Then he took her mouth.
She lifted into him at once, her arms coming around his neck as she opened herself to his kiss. And he took. Took like a man starved because he was. He had not kissed her since the ball almost a week before, and then it had been angry and out of control. A punishment rather than a pleasure.
Tonight it was pleasure. It was a memory of steamy nights in that forbidden club when he had lost himself in a stranger. But now she wasn’t a stranger, and if anything he wanted more. He wanted to see her whole face as he took her, wanted to feel her body flutter around him in release and whisper her true name against her skin.
He wanted her. Isabel Hayes. And nothing else mattered in that moment except for that one fact.
“Please,” she whimpered against his lips. He wasn’t certain she meant to say it out loud, or if it was a plea to herself or to him. But it turned his body rock-hard and he found himself backing her toward the wall.
She gasped as her back hit the hard surface, and tilted her head as he started to kiss along her jaw, down her throat, to the low neckline of her pretty gown. She dragged her fingers into his hair, making incoherent sounds of pleasure as he cupped both breasts in his hands, pushing them together, licking the valley that peeked up from her gown.
He ground against her as he did so, hard, circular thrusts of his hips that she met in kind as she gasped and groaned and begged him to keep going. He had no intention of doing anything else. He pushed aside doubt and guilt and recrimination and cupped her backside, lifting her up against him, letting her feel the reminder of what they had shared in secret.
“Yes,” she grunted, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she drove her tongue into his mouth and showed him, in no uncertain terms, how much she wanted what he offered.
It would have happened. He had no doubt that it would have. Except in that moment, the door to the parlor opened. He released her, setting her down before he swiveled to face the intruders.
And there, standing in the doorway was her uncle, and he wasn’t alone. With him was the host of their party, Lord Hasselbreck, Hugh, and at least three others who were leaning all over themselves to see the wicked, heated scene before them.