An Unexpected Earl (Lords of the Armory #2) - Anna Harrington Page 0,31
her lashes. How much could she trust Pearce? Twelve years ago, he’d left Birmingham without a fight because he’d wanted to protect her, only to ignore her letters two years later. And ignore her ever since. Until now.
And now, when presented with all the profits that a trust could bring, would he decide to protect her? Or would he, too, take her property and cast her away when she was no longer useful or wanted, the way Aaron had?
Once more she’d been trapped by a man. But this time, it might just end her.
Eight
“This isn’t a good idea,” Merritt Rivers muttered as he jumped onto the narrow bed in one of the upstairs rooms of Le Château Noir and stretched out across the mattress, boots and all.
Pearce pulled back the curtain and gazed down at the street. “I think it’s a grand one.”
Beneath the drizzle of rain that had begun to fall an hour ago when the sun set over London, King Street was surprisingly quiet, yet just enough traffic prowled the street to make their visit to the brothel seem commonplace. The man standing guard at the front door had barely blinked an eye when the two of them arrived and asked to see Madame Noir. Alone. Of course, the coin Pearce had handed over helped to ensure that.
“If we’re seen here, I can most likely forget any chance of taking silk,” Merritt grumbled and reached for the bottle of whiskey and the glass sitting on the bedside table that had been left there for clients, courtesy of Madame.
“Then best not get caught.” Not spotting anything unusual on the street below, Pearce dropped the brocade curtain back into place and leaned against the wall. He couldn’t help but notice that for all of Merritt’s complaints about how dangerous it was for a potential king’s counsel to visit a brothel, he’d been quite eager to help when Pearce dropped by the Armory and told him his plans. “It’s only reconnaissance, after all.”
On cue, a wailing moan of female pleasure echoed down the hall. Pearce rolled his eyes at the unconvinced look Merritt shot him over the rim of his glass.
“Madame Noir owes me a favor,” Pearce explained.
“Oh?”
“Not that kind of favor,” he half growled, then immediately regretted his snap.
But damnation, he was on edge. Had been since this morning when he spoke to Amelia—no, since before then. When he first saw her at the masquerade.
Now he was in a brothel, his frustration not helped by thoughts of Amelia in that red dress and the sounds of wanton pleasure rising around him. She hadn’t been the first girl he’d ever kissed, but he’d been the first man to kiss her. Her first kiss, her first touch… If they hadn’t been caught that night of her sixteenth birthday, he would have been her first everything.
He began to pace, but the room was too small, the distance between the red-velvet-papered walls too short to take more than three decent strides. None of his frustrations were helped by Merritt, who lay on the bed, calmly sipping whiskey and watching him as if he were a lion at the Tower Menagerie stalking in its cage.
“Something’s on your mind,” Merritt called out. “If I had to guess I’d say…a woman.”
“Not a woman.” A girl. The girl to whom he’d once given his love, even when he’d never been good enough to deserve hers.
Orphaned tavern rats like him weren’t meant for beautiful daughters of wealthy industrialists. They might as well have tried to invert the world order as to think they could continue to be together. Even as children, they’d both known that their friendship would eventually have to end, that he would go off to work and she would marry a better man.
Now, though, he was that better man. Fate had turned him into the kind of successful and wealthy gentleman she’d been meant for. Yet, apparently, it still wasn’t enough for her to leave the past behind and trust him again.
The door opened. Madame Noir paused in the doorway, sliding her left arm up the jamb while her right dangled at her side and curving her body sinuously into the frame. But of course she did. The woman had distinguished her brothel from the hundreds of others in greater London by her clever use of the dramatic. Based on the diaphanous gown she wore under her open dressing robe, whose sheer material revealed every secret beneath, she hadn’t yet lost her flair.