Page 53 of The Lady Plays with Fire

“Eh-en-entrusted me?” She struggled to frame the word, then tried to disguise her bewilderment by taking a sip of tea. She gasped as it scalded her throat.

He sat down beside her on the sofa, lifting the saucer from her trembling fingers and returning it to the tray. “Surely you’ve noticed that I didn’t allow Fanshawe or the others to have their way with the script.”

She gnawed on her lower lip, then nodded.

“And how did you explain such unaccountable behavior to yourself?”

“I, uh,” she rasped, then swallowed and squared her shoulders and met his eyes with a steadier gaze. “I assumed at first it was a sort of . . . flirtation. Because you believed I would be flattered and let you have your way with me in turn.”

She wasn’t far wrong. Turning slightly, he stretched his arm along the back of the sofa without touching her. “Why ‘at first’? Do you imagine my motives have changed?”

“Haven’t they?” She jerked her gaze to the far corner of the room. “After the first rehearsal, when I . . . but you didn’t—”

“Kiss you?”

“I decided I had misunderstood.”

He slid his hand down the sofa’s slick back. At the nape of her neck, a single dark curl had sprung from her coiffure, teased loose by the wind perhaps. He twined it around his first finger. “I would no’ have wanted to stop at kisses. And Covent Garden is no place to—”

“Speaking from experience, I suppose.” She spoke over him, turning back to face him even as she tried to slip free from his touch.

But the lock of hair only wound tighter. “Aye,” he agreed with a leering grin.

Her whole body went still, and the spark in her eyes was suddenly cold, ice rather than fire. “So. You’ve brought me all this way because ‘Ransom Blackadder’ wants to make a conquest of me. I take it you’ve decided that ‘The Playwright and the Actress’ will draw bigger audiences than ‘The Poor Lady’s Companion and the Earl.’ ”

“Julia,” he chided, releasing the curl. “I would never—”

“You would,” she countered, her dark brows dipping into a frown. “You have. Perpetua Philpot is modeled after an actual critic of your plays.”

“That’s hardly the same.”

“Is it not?” She jutted out her chin, narrowing the scant distance between them. The posture reminded him of the night they’d met, when what he’d taken for apprehension had been quickly replaced by audacity.

“You take a keen interest in the fate of some anonymous hack.”

“Anonymous hack? That’s rich, coming from—”

He silenced her the best way he knew how, by covering her mouth with his. She gave no sign of resistance to his kiss. But neither did she relent. Her posture remained perfectly straight, her lips pliant but still.

When he pulled back, he met her wounded gaze. “The whole world knows Blackadder is cruel and heartless,” she said flatly. “The more fool I for hoping you might be the better man.”

Those words brought him to his feet. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry for kissing you against your will. Sorry I cannot be the one you need.

Desperate for something to do with himself, he plucked up her outer garments from the chair where she’d casually discarded them and carried them into the kitchen to hang beside his. “I revealed something to you I’ve never told another soul. What more do you want from me, Julia?”

“I told myself I was coming here today because I wanted the satisfaction I’d been promised.” She was staring straight ahead, into the empty hearth, perhaps recalling their exchange in Clearwater’s study. “But the truth is . . . I would be satisfied with a genuine smile. Some hint . . . some proof that the man you really are, the man inside, isn’t colder and harder yet.”

He tipped his forehead against the glass door of a nearby cabinet and found it blessedly cool, a balm to his sudden fever. He’d thought himself prepared to be honest with her.

But his truths weren’t the sort a fellow delivered with a smile on his face—and they certainly didn’t inspire smiles in return.

Pushing away from the wall, he lurched back toward the sitting room, uncertain where else in the little cottage to go. She gave no sign of noticing when he threw himself into the chair closest to the fireplace.

“I wasn’t meant to be Earl of Dunstane.” He hoisted himself more upright, just enough to pour more tea, then dashed the contents of the delicate little cup down his throat, wishing it were whisky. “But if I’d never become the earl, ’tis likely I’d never have become Blackadder, either.”

Her posture stiffened still more. “You presume I care about your sordid past, my lord.”