Page 16 of Immortal Rose

His eyes glittered with cold amusement at my expression, a brow arching as he took in the full, miserable sight of me. Baiting.

My blood simmered as the fuse of my temper lit.

“Branson will be posted outside the door, should you require anything else,” came Pembrooke’s simpering voice.

“The only thing I require,” the man said, not bothering to look at him, “is your absence.”

One of the guards let out a huff of surprise at the dagger-edged words. I barely heard it. Every bruise on my battered skin throbbed in time with blistering memories of the humiliation, the utter degradation, of the past two days. Each sawed at my nerves until, with the sound of the door shutting, that frail thread of control snapped.

One moment I’d been standing near the fire, and the next, I’d lunged over the desk and shoved Sweetie’s sharpened tip to the pale column of his throat, in the tender hollow above his cravat. Ragged breath tore in and out of me as the blinding white cleared from my vision. My hand trembled with the force of my grip, the furious beat of my heart.

His piercing gaze shifted from my face to the weapon in my hand.

“Is that a gentleman’s pipe?” he asked mildly. “My, how . . . resourceful.”

A droplet of blood welled where Sweetie bit into his skin. I startled as his hand covered mine, engulfing it with his hot palm. He left a raised pink welt behind on his skin as he drew my hand and Sweetie’s razor edge to the right side of his neck, just below his jaw. Where I knew his pulse beat. His grip only tightened as I tried to rip my hand away.

“There,” he said. “That’s where you’d cut to kill a man. Though it would be rather unsporting to exsanguinate the one intending to free you from this hell.”

I drew in a sharp breath—but again, there was nothing. Not a hint of an essence or even the finery he wore, let alone a shift in his scent that would indicate he’d spoken a lie. His face, that torturously direct gaze, gave nothing away.

How? The world may as well have inverted itself. I felt as if I were falling, and there was nothing to slow the descent, to orient myself.

“Who are you?” I demanded. What are you?

He smirked, blood trickling down the long line of his neck like the caress of a lover’s finger. “Ask nicely, and perhaps I’ll tell you.”

I tugged back on my arm again, and this time, he released me, watching with a wolfish interest as I retreated over the desk, knocking his hat and gloves from it. My foot slid against the scattered papers that littered the ground. An upended inkpot dripped, dripped, dripped from the edge of the desk onto the fine rug.

“Who,” I asked again through gritted teeth, “are you?”

“The better question, I fear, is who are you?” He leaned back against the chair, picking up a familiar leather-bound black book. The very one I’d been forced to sign my name in. “Miss Viola Elizabeth Lockwood, lately of 18 Crescent Street—a Brickbats girl through and through, I see.”

“I live on the north side of Crescent,” I ground out. Not that the difference would signify to someone of his ilk. My boardinghouse was outside the boundaries of the Brickbats, and I had scrimped and saved for years to afford it, damn him.

“Lately employed by Mr. Stevens, the florist—”

“Congratulations, you can read,” I bit out, slipping Sweetie back into the tear in my dress—for now. “How thrilling for you.”

“Arrested,” he finished, with a tsk and ironic arch of the brow, “for selling wares created with fairyborn magic.”

I opened my mouth to tell him I’d only stolen the basket of them, but he added, with a droll look, “Several witnesses attested to the fact. Their names have been noted here, to be called upon at your future trial.”

I waved my hand dismissively, attempting to mimic his cool demeanor. “It’s hardly my fault they were gullible enough to believe the lie I sold them. They’re too desperate by half to get their hands on Rosebourne’s perfumes—but those are only silly scandal sheet rumors, of course.”

I said the last part too acidly for him not to notice. Drat.

“In fact,” I continued quickly, “I’m rather flattered my perfumes are so finely made that others can’t help but credit the notion they contain magic.”

“Is that so?” he began, reaching into the inner pocket of his superfine jacket. He held a familiar brown bottle up to the firelight. “Shall we test that theory?”

Blooming Beauty. Thank God my own perfumes had no effect on me. He was already terrifyingly attractive without the illusory effects of magic. The Devil himself couldn’t have crafted a face better suited to tempt a woman into sin.

Well. Two could play this terrible game out to its conclusion, whatever that would be.

“Go on, then,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “If you’re brave enough, that is.”

A muscle fluttered in his jaw at some unspoken thought. He twisted a silver signet ring on his left little finger. It was unembellished, save for the flecks of dark rubies embedded in it like drops of blood.