The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray - Anna Bradley Page 0,58
her chin higher, and brushed his thumb over her cheek. “You look innocent, with that delicate face and those wide green eyes, but you’re not, are you?”
The eyes in question flashed with temper. “Do you truly believe you know anything about guilt and innocence, Lord Gray? You know Jeremy isn’t guilty of any crime, yet even knowing that, you still believe the courtroom the best arbiter of justice.”
“You’re right, Miss Monmouth. I do believe it. How else do you propose to judge guilt and innocence? With your intuition?” He released her chin, but he didn’t step back, and she refused to back away, either. Her body was nearly flush against his, so close he could sense her trembling, feel the warmth of her through his clothing.
“It truly is that simple for you, isn’t it, Lord Gray? I envy you. How comfortable it must be, to live in a world of absolutes.”
“Is that how you see it? How strange.” He dragged his finger over the hollow of her throat, fighting the urge to close his eyes at the sensation of her warm, soft skin under his rough fingertip. “I would have thought it was far more comfortable to determine guilt and innocence according to whim, as you do.”
Her lips parted at his touch, and God, he was so furious with her, yet at the same time he was desperate to kiss her, to sink his hands into her thick dark hair and still her for his mouth. A low moan of lust and despair threatened to burst from his lips. He shouldn’t want her like this, but he could no longer deny he did want her. That pert, pink mouth drove him to such madness he didn’t know whether to arrest her, or devour her.
Whatever this strange pull was between them, she felt it, too. He knew it by the way the color flooded her cheeks, the flash in her eyes, the wild throb of her pulse under his finger.
She raised balled fists to his chest, but she didn’t push him away. “Did it ever occur to you, my lord, that the laws work best for those who wrote them and enforce them? Do you suppose they work for the men and women in Seven Dials? For the ragged street urchins? The debtors locked up in Newgate?”
Her fingers went to her neck, and Tristan knew instinctively she was grasping for the locket that was no longer there. For reasons he didn’t understand, he found it unbearable to watch the panicked movement of her hands. “Don’t. Stop it, Sophia.” He seized her wrists and dragged them away from her throat.
“You saw Jeremy, Tristan.” Her voice broke on his Christian name. “You saw what they’d done to him. Is the law working for him? Do you fool yourself into thinking he’ll see justice? A man who doesn’t even understand the crime of which he’s accused, condemned and sentenced to die. Is that justice?”
It was true. Every word she said about Jeremy was true. Justice wasn’t perfect. It never would be, yet it was all they had, and it served more people than it hurt. Tristan leaned over her, and let his forehead touch hers. “I don’t fool myself, no, but the answer to an injustice isn’t another crime, Sophia. Would you free every prisoner at Newgate?”
“No! Just one. The one I know to be innocent.”
“If everyone in London did the same, what then?” He released her wrists to cup her face in his hands. “Flawed justice is preferable to no justice, Sophia.”
“For some people, there’s little difference between the two.” Her green eyes were dark with anger, but her lips were soft, and still parted for him, and there was nothing more to say, nothing he could do but cover her mouth with his own.
This wasn’t a soft, tentative exploration. It wasn’t gentle. Tristan took her lips hard, his tongue insistent, demanding she take him into the slick warmth of her mouth. She opened to him at once, meeting him stroke for stroke, the kiss angry and desperate, each demanding the other yield and both of them resisting, their lips clinging together in a battle of wills that threatened to drive Tristan to the edge of his sanity.
He wasn’t a man who allowed his passions to overrule his logic, but he hadn’t counted on Sophia Monmouth, the wild temptation of her. He was on the edge of tumbling into a madness where he dragged her to the settee in the middle of Lady