Fortune Favors the Wicked Read online

  “It isn’t. Wasn’t.” She let out a deep breath. “It’s over now. I’ve left that life behind me.”

  “For Maggie?”

  “For many reasons. A life of pleasure is really nothing of the sort.” She slid down his body, the buttons at her bodice abrading the bare skin of his chest. “I can tell you that I never took a protector who had a problem with . . . who had any sort of . . .”

  “Shy girl. Are you reassuring me you don’t have the pox? I don’t either.”

  “Always to be preferred.” She nuzzled at the taut muscle of his abdomen. “You don’t mind that I’ve been with other men?”

  “Charlotte, you are mere inches from my cock. You could stab me in the other arm and I wouldn’t mind.”

  “All right,” she said. “All right, then. I wanted honesty between us.”

  “You have it. Now, could there be fewer clothes between us? You’ve been ogling me for the past half hour and I haven’t so much as touched your breast.”

  “Ogling! Honestly.” He could tell she was smiling. “You probably got yourself slashed just so I’d take off your clothing.”

  “It is a benefit I never foresaw.” And then a thought occurred to him—of something he wanted as much as he craved her intimate touch. “Will you let me feel your face?”

  “Does it matter to you what I look like?”

  “It’s only fair for me to know, is it not? You know what I look like. Think of it as my turn to ogle you.”

  “If you feel my face, I ought to feel out your shortcomings.”

  “Charlotte, your face is as the Creator made it, just as would be my shortcomings—if there were any, which there are not.”

  “None?”

  “Not of the sort that are relevant in a bed.”

  “All right,” she said again. He was beginning to love that phrase.

  She crawled back up his body, arms and knees straddling him, the loosened front of her gown teasing the hairs of his chest. And then she tucked herself against his left side, her face and unbound hair pillowed against his shoulder.

  With the forefinger of his right hand, then, he reached across to touch her. The moment felt trembling and slight, like the first raindrop to fall into a pond—but at the brush of his skin against hers, something much larger rippled between them. And at last, he learned the shape of her.

  There was one of her brows, with a wicked arch, and there was the other. This was the shape of the eyes she had surely rolled at him more than once, the lips that spoke and smiled and had welcomed his kiss. Her nose was—well, it was a nose, straight and seeming a fine size for the rest of her face. He felt the line of her jaw, the column of her neck. Passed a thumb about the curve of her ear. Stroked her cheeks, one of which bore a puckered scar just below the cheekbone.

  “There you are, then, Charlotte,” he murmured. “I knew you were beautiful from the first time you spoke to me.”

  She swallowed heavily. He cupped her cheek, and wet lashes blinked against his rough thumb. “Here I am.”

  Since she was within such easy reach, he found the laces of her stays. No sailor had tied these knots; his fingers had them undone in a moment. “How were you going to get out of these clothes if I hadn’t been so obliging as to remove them?”

  “I’ve slept in my stays before. But I would far rather have them off.”

  “I would prefer that, too.” Keeping her in his embrace, he eased down her sleeves and stays. “If you don’t like what I do, only tell me to stop.”

  “Do not stop,” she said.

  So he kissed her again. Sweetly at first, as light and teasing as the touches on her face. Coaxing her to take her pleasure of him instead of the reverse. Just kisses, to taste and breathe her in. To learn not the shape of her body, but of her will.

  Did she want comfort? He would comfort her. A thrill? Yes, she might have that, too. He would kiss her until her tears were dry, or until desire poured from her like a fine wine uncorked.

  For a few minutes, the world was all hot mouth and gentle tongue. And then her fingers clutched in his hair as she shifted, moving closer on the bed. “We must be perfectly silent,” she murmured. “No one must hear.” Her hips shifted, riding the line of his thigh, and she took his hand to her breast.

  Finally.

  “If you want silence, you will have to work for it.” He helped her to sit so he might further untangle her from her bodice and stays—pushing down the former, pulling away the latter. Then he faced her and explored her body as gently as he had learned her face. Her shoulders, flexing under his warm touch; her arms, about which he had once wrapped a shawl. He trailed light fingertips down her ribs, across her belly. He dipped lower to toy with the hair about her sex, a slight pressure that made her squirm.

  “Silence,” he reminded her. He drew his fingers up her back, holding her steady with his broad palms. Bending his head, he nuzzled at one soft breast. The curve was soap-scented and warm and delicious. He nibbled the skin until her breathing came more quickly and she wrenched his head to her nipple.

  He took it between his lips, drawing on the tenderness until it grew tight. “Yes,” she moaned. “Just like that.” Ah, he could have groaned; he wanted to stroke himself in rhythm with her every passion-caught breath.

  But this was for her. Cupping one breast, he teased the other; then he switched mouth and hands. Again and again, alternating pressure and play, until her legs began to shudder, her hips to twitch and shake the mattress. She was eager; she wanted release. She had come to him for pleasure, and he would see that she got it.

  “Slide down the bed,” he said. “Seat yourself atop my traveling trunk.” He stood, lending her a hand, and helped her to the foot of the bed where his sea chest kept pride of place.

  “You want me to sit on the trunk,” she said, half-amused, half-questioning. “Are you going to tell me a story?”

  “Hmm. Let’s say I’m going to act it out. I think you’ll like it—especially the ending.”

  “All right,” she said yet again, and he grinned.

  When she perched on the flat lid of the chest, he sat before her on the floor. Drawing up her skirts and bundling them at her knees, he spread her legs with his free hand. “May I?”

  She knew what he meant. “Yes,” she said faintly. The bed creaked as she rested her weight against the footboard and opened wider to his touch.

  Whether her skin was rosy or pale, whether her private hair was brown or black, he didn’t care. Sight mattered least at moments like this, when one could breathe in the intimate scent of desire. When he could touch her folds, slick and ready, and slide a finger within her; when he could bend to taste, pulling at her bud of pleasure, and feast his ears on the sound of her gasp, her quickly covered moan. Fingers, lips, tongue, he drew on her until she tightened about him, quaking her pleasure.

  She started to fall from the height, but he would not let her land. “Silence,” he murmured again, just to be wicked. Pressing a kiss to her thigh, he thrust a second finger into her core, then spread them. Somewhere was a mysterious little spot that could send her to the peak. There. He knew he had found it when she went tight about him, muscles clenched, calves bunched, as though she could strain her way to another climax.

  He would help her with that. Fingers still working the inner spot, he again found her bud with a gentle nibble of lips. Then he licked it with force. Come now. She did, shuddering as if caught in a storm—and ha, she cried out, too, clapping a hand over her mouth to cover the sound.

  “How . . . Benedict . . . my God.”

  He withdrew his fingers, kissed each thigh in turn, and sat back as he eased her knees together. “Wicked Charlotte. You weren’t silent.”

  “Not even a saint could have been entirely silent while performing such virtuous works.” She shoved her skirts back into place in a rustling bundle, then flopped from her seat on the trunk right onto him.

  Oof. He hadn’t been prepared for that, and he fell back, rolling prone to the floor
with her atop him.

  At this angle, half-naked and with Charlotte on his lap, the faint remains of a fire kissing him with warmth, he didn’t notice the bare floor. He didn’t remember why he had been hurt, or what existed outside this room. All that mattered was that Charlotte had wanted something of him, and he had given it to her, and she had liked it.

  He felt like a god-damned king.

  * * *

  Later that night, he sat before the trunk again, trailing his fingers over the lock. Charlotte had gone to bed in her chamber, and he was alone, and the fire was out.

  After a few minutes in their puddled embrace on the floor, she had offered to pleasure him. He declined—rather heroically, he thought. “Too much of a risk of being heard,” was his excuse. “I couldn’t possibly be quiet once you put your hands on me.”

  “Oh, no, you misunderstand,” she said with false innocence. “It wouldn’t be my hands on you. It would be my mouth.”

  His will almost collapsed. “Cruel temptress. But I think—best not. For now.”

  Stubborn of him to refuse, maybe, but he had wanted her to receive pleasure with no obligation to return it. She probably hadn’t had such an experience for ten years, if ever.

  She seemed to understand his meaning, for she kissed him, gentle and slow, on the plane of his cheek. “You are kindness itself, Benedict Frost. Another time, then, shall I?”

  “If there is another time of any sort, I should be the luckiest man in existence.”

  When she kissed him farewell for the night, he wondered if she could taste herself on his lips.

  Once he was alone, he brought himself off with a few strokes, spending with a smothered groan. Ever since Charlotte had kissed him ragged that morning and shoved him into the bedchamber, lust had soaked the edge of his every thought.

  With it slaked, at least temporarily, he removed his boots and cleaned his hands.

  And now he sat before the trunk again. Flat-topped and battered, it was constructed of camphorwood, and a faint fresh smell issued from the wood itself. The small lock had long since corroded too much for the key to turn easily, and Benedict was in the habit of opening the chest with his stiletto.

  Not possible right now. Fortunately, he still carried the key about with him, and he eased it into the lock. The iron had grown fragile and stubborn from sea salt and the clumsy cuts of the stiletto blade, but eventually he got it open.

  Within the neat drawers and compartments of this chest were all of his possessions in the world. It seemed a paltry collection: breeches, stockings, linen shirts, a spare waistcoat. A hat. All the money he had from his pension and the sale of the family bookshop, heavy in the form of silver and guinea-gold. Since losing his sight, he had always insisted on being paid in specie. Paper currency meant nothing to a blind man.

  And here, wrapped in brown paper and string, was his manuscript. He hefted it, the weight pleasing in his hands.

  Even more than the chronicle of his travels, it was a record of his mastery of the written word. Throughout his sighted years, letters—whether scribbled with a pen or printed in a book—had wiggled and shifted into incomprehensible jumbles. Every volume in his parents’ bookshop was a silent witness to their disappointment: that they loved this world of words, and that he was too stubborn or imbecilic to join them.

  At sea, literacy was almost irrelevant. All that mattered was doing one’s work well. Following orders. Making up part of a crew that worked together like the beating heart of a ship.

  He sometimes thought the Royal Navy had saved his life.

  Writing was different with the noctograph, though; the stylus seemed to pin words in place. Working with hand and mind, without the trickery of his eyes, sentences came forth in careful order. He felt each letter’s shape and etched it with his pen. Though he could never reread his own work, he knew: he could write. Finally. An unexpected gift granted by blindness.

  And maybe the writing of it was all the good he needed. It had fastened memory in place as well, making him reflect on what he’d done. After years of war, he’d crossed the Channel and freely strode the streets of Paris. He’d been snow-whipped on Mount Blanc, teetered in a gondola through the murky canals of Venice. He had been pleasured by a French widow who could do amazing things with her tongue, and he had passed along his newfound knowledge to a signora of Venice who declared him her finest lover ever.

  Some things were too private to be set to paper, but they made part of the past years’ arc nonetheless.

  He could not publish it as a fiction, as though these things had not truly happened to him. But if it were never to be published at all, and it could not be reread, the manuscript had no value. Why should he bother holding fast to it?

  He hefted the parcel in one hand. It took up the space in his trunk of a pair of dancing pumps, or a few satin waistcoats. Men of fashion needed such things more than they needed a bundle of worthless paper.

  Why should he bother traveling again, for that matter? Often he disliked it—the discomfort, the rootlessness. The absence of anyone to trust as he attempted to exchange money or learn his way about a new city. Always hearing There’s the blind traveler.

  Sometimes it would be nice to walk without smacking his cane at every step to feel his way through the world. To stride, instead, through a town whose streets he knew as well as the angles of his own face. To hear There is my friend, Benedict.

  Or even, since he was dreaming, to hear There is my husband.

  Welcome home, darling.

  Papa! I missed you!

  Sailors didn’t have those dreams. Blind men didn’t either. Naval Knights weren’t permitted to marry. Men who roamed the world never expected to find a home.

  But he was all these things, and more. Benedict’s dreams, like his travel, were a gesture of defiance to a world that looked at him with seeing eyes and said You can’t.

  He could.

  Rising to his knees, he shuffled his possessions about in their tidy stacks and nestled the manuscript into the chest again. Another he could: he could afford to let it lie cocooned a while longer.

  So. What ought he to do next? It was a much larger question than tonight—though for tonight, he would start by wrapping the mysterious dagger in the discarded cloth Charlotte had wrapped around his wounded arm. Tomorrow they would decide what to do with it. Turn it over to the Bow Street Runner, maybe.

  He felt around on the floor until he found it, a trailing pile of fabric.

  Of brocaded fabric, with—he felt the edge—yes, with a tasseled edge. It was her shawl. The shawl he had tucked about her arms, the shawl on which they had sat and talked, when he had pried into her life because he couldn’t seem not to. She had bound his wound with her shawl.

  “Hell,” he muttered, but he might have meant the opposite.

  The theft from the Royal Mint had brought death and danger, but Benedict feared neither. Charlotte Perry, though—she was a hazard of an entirely different sort. Around her, he was in danger of forgetting the royal reward, the quest, the need to care for his sister’s future.

  He was in danger of shutting away the man he had become over laborious years, and of planning a new start.

  Chapter Eleven

  “She won’t get up! She won’t get up!”

  Charlotte jerked awake to the sound of her child’s cry for the first time in more than ten years. The sharp odor of animal urine wrinkled her nose. Blinking bleary eyes, she lifted her head from the pillow. “Maggie? Are you all—”

  “It’s Captain! Aunt Charlotte, she did a puddle and now she won’t get up.” Maggie’s voice teetered between fear and despair.

  Feet tangled in the bedcovers, Charlotte took a moment to extricate herself before stumbling to the tableau before the hearth. On her favorite rug, Captain lay soiled and prone. The labored rise and fall of her side, the blink of her puzzled dark eyes at Maggie, proclaimed her mute distress.

  “She’s never done this before.” Maggie petted the brindled head. “S
he’s such a good dog. She knows to go outside.”

  “She did it plenty of times when she was a puppy.” Rise, fall, rise, fall. Each breath the dog took was a reprieve. “Let me fetch a cloth, all right? We’ll clean her up.”

  “All right.” Maggie’s voice was thick with worry.

  Charlotte tied a wrapper about her shift and opened the bedchamber door—only to walk into her parents and Benedict, all crowded into the corridor. “Good morning . . . everyone in the world. Were you all awoken by Maggie?”

  “Nonsense. It’s quarter to seven. Past time for the household to be awake,” commented Mrs. Perry. “Church in little more than two hours, and here we are a bunch of slugabeds.” Indeed, she was dressed. The vicar and Frost were unshaven, but they, too, had pulled on trousers and shirts.

  “Right,” said Charlotte. “Well, sorry I’m such a slattern. I need some sort of cloth for cleaning up after Captain. She forgot herself a bit during the night.”

  “You can use my shirt,” said Benedict. Charlotte’s parents stared at him. Somehow, he must have felt their gazes, for he added, “The ruined one, I mean. I’ll get it.” He disappeared into his chamber.

  “What ruined shirt?” Mrs. Perry looked suspicious, as though certain Charlotte had been ripping the clothes off their guest.

  Charlotte coughed. “Ah—that is Mr. Frost’s tale to tell.”

  Having experienced the attack firsthand, he’d do a better job than she describing the events of the previous night. Minus, of course, the part about how he’d tongued her to ecstasy. Twice. After she had not ripped off his clothing, but had removed it with great care and concern.

  The stairs creaked as someone climbed them, and Barrett’s white-capped head poked into the corridor next. “Does Mr. Frost’s tale have anything to do with the furniture piled against the doors? Cook is in a fidget about getting the breakfast ready.”

  Benedict reappeared, handing his worn, torn, blood-spattered shirt to Charlotte. “I’m sure it’s a sight, but Captain won’t mind that.”