Page 83 of Immortal Rose

Or kiss you. The thought came, wild and unbidden. The heat of my anger felt different from the sweltering air swirling between us, throbbing with some kind of want I couldn’t name. His eyes held a scalding intensity, flashing like silver mirrors.

“You’d like it if I were jealous, wouldn’t you?” he murmured, his gaze dipping to my mouth. A fluttering began low in my belly again, my pulse beating like hummingbird wings.

Not him. Never him.

I couldn’t take another insufferable moment of this. “Stop the coach. I’ll get out and walk.”

“You don’t even know where we’re going,” Foxcourt said.

“I don’t care,” I told him, pushing up on unsteady feet to knock on the window behind him. If Cartwell wouldn’t stop, I’d simply fling myself out the door. “I’ll go anywhere as long as it’s not with you—”

The coach wheels hit a divot in the road, launching me forward with the momentum of a bullet. I gasped, my hands shooting up to avoid crashing headlong into the window and seat.

A firm grip caught me about the waist and held me upright.

Breath shuddered in and out of me. The warmth of his gloved hands seeped through two layers of clothing. My face tipped down toward Foxcourt’s, his brow furrowed in a way that begged to be smoothed by soft fingers. His hands flexed around my waist almost imperceptibly, his arms and broad shoulders tensing as another jarring bump threatened to dislodge me.

“Sit. Down,” he got out between clenched teeth.

“Let. Go,” I said through the same.

We glared at each other. It was impossible to tell who relented first—if I moved back and he released me, or he released me and I moved back. I dropped ungracefully into my seat, my breath as uneven as my pulse. My stomach rioted again as the carriage finally slowed.

Lifting the curtain, I glimpsed the seafoam-green storefront of the original Radcliffe & Sons Apothecary location at the less fashionable end of Royal Park, and the figure that hurried out its door toward the coach. My heart gave a little leap at the sight of him, looking splendid, almost radiant, despite the churning midday heat.

I felt Foxcourt watching me as Cartwell hurried down to open the door for Oliver, imparting a friendly greeting.

The door swung open, and Oliver stood there in his blue brocade jacket and waistcoat, peering into the darkness, his eyes passing right over me—only for his gaze to double back. Widen.

A low, humorless laugh bubbled up in my throat.

He hadn’t recognized me.

“Get in, Radcliffe,” Foxcourt ordered. “Before the sun turns you any pinker.”

“I—yes, good afternoon, my lord,” Oliver said, hugging a leather case to his chest as he scrambled into the carriage. There was a moment of indecision as he looked between us, as if weighing the cost of impropriety against his desire, before he swept into the space I’d made beside me. He set the case down and reached for my hands as Cartwell shut the door behind him.

“You look so very well,” he told me earnestly. A warm glow formed at the center of my chest at the compliment. “You’re all right? Truly?”

His hat cast a shadow over his face, one that only seemed to deepen his expression of relief. My heart wrenched painfully at the sight of it.

“She’s sitting in an earl’s carriage, not a Fairgate Prison cell,” Foxcourt said, rudely intruding on the moment. “So, I would say yes. She is perfectly fine.”

As Oliver’s initial relief gave way, a nutty scent, confusion, wove through the beginnings of something like gunpowder.

“Are you angry with me?” I asked as the coach set off. “I wanted to tell you that I was all right, there just wasn’t time for it.”

“Never,” Oliver said, his hands squeezing mine. “I could never be angry with you.”

“Nominate the man for sainthood,” Foxcourt muttered, plucking another letter up from the pile.

“I was worried,” Oliver continued, ignoring him. “The prison governor apparently left his position, and the new one had no record of you.”

I resisted the urge to glance over at Foxcourt. He’d claimed my record would be expunged only after the creation of the perfume. And why in the world would the prison governor have left the prison?

“Well, my freedom came in advance of a pardon,” I said, “which I’ll receive once I’ve completed this perfume.”

“That’s wonderful.” Oliver’s smile tensed. “You weren’t in need of rescue after all.”