“But ... why?”
He shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. I suppose having something that was once so difficult to obtain is part of it. Now I have coin in profusion, but I like owning something that belonged to one of the gentry. Something so mundane, but important.” Leo gave a wry smile. “Now I sound like I should be in Bedlam.”
“No, it makes sense.” And it did, in a peculiar way. “Both you and these gentlemen having use of coins. Despite everything that they say, all their prejudice, the need for coins makes you equals. It confirms what they might never acknowledge.”
His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Something in an aristocratic girl’s education must make them astute. Yet,” he added thoughtfully, “I suspect it isn’t the education, but the girl that makes the difference.”
“Living one’s life dependent on others’ goodwill, one learns to make a close study of one’s environment.” She had seen hardly anything of the larger world, but that which she knew, she understood very well.
“I congratulate myself for making such a wise decision in my choice of a bride.”
“By all means,” she replied, “take credit for my perspicacity.”
He chuckled, but his gaze drifted from her face back down to the coins. And then she understood.
“You would like me to collect some coins for you,” she deduced.
“There are certain men whose coins I want.”
At first, Anne thought to refuse. She could not fault Leo for his idiosyncrasies. Almost everyone had them, including herself. Yet his was a mania altogether private, something between himself and his desires.
Still, it was such a small thing. And if it helped forge a stronger bond between her and Leo, she knew her directive.
“If you write their names down for me,” she said after a pause, “and if they’re married, I’ll gather coins for you.” She was not particularly adept at making idle, pleasant conversation, and had not the slightest understanding how she might obtain these coins, but she had faith in her wits. A solution might present itself.
“The coins must come from the men themselves. Not their wives or children or servants.”
Here was an added complication, and frankly, one even more eccentric than she had anticipated. “If that’s what you wish.”
He seemed surprised that she agreed. “Truly? You’ll do this?”
“It might be an enjoyable challenge.”
He moved so quickly, Anne had no chance to react. One moment he stood beside the bed, and the next, he leaned over her, his large hands cupping her head, tilting it back. He kissed her. Not the tentative exploration of the wedding night, but a full, sumptuous kiss, demanding and carnal. His lips were ravenous on hers.
For a moment, she could do nothing but let it happen, stunned into immobility. Then instinct and need guided her. She slid her hands up his arms, to hold tight to his hard shoulders. Her lips parted, inviting him in, and he took the kiss deeper.
This was ... extraordinary. Beyond any kiss she had ever received, the few times she had gotten them. Not just two mouths meeting, but a complete submersion into sensation. Only his hands and his lips touched her, yet she felt him, felt him everywhere. In the rush of her blood and softness of her flesh. Most especially between her legs and the tips of her breasts, now achingly sensitive. Leo kissed as he lived: without compromise, without quarter.
His tongue swept into her mouth. She touched it with her own, and Leo groaned.
She could not stop her response, the primal surge of desire. But fear sharpened the edge of that desire. It was too much. She was overwhelmed. He’d devour her, and she would not only be powerless to prevent it, she would present herself on a silver charger, the willing animal eager to be feasted upon until only bones remained. She already sat in bed. It would be easy, very easy, for him to pull her down and put his weight atop hers. Claim her fully.
A sound escaped her, a moan partway between arousal and terror.
At once, he pulled his mouth away.
His gaze, bright and hot, held hers. He looked as stunned as she felt. As though neither of them could comprehend what had just happened.
For a moment, he seemed on the verge of taking her mouth again. His fingers tightened in her hair. Abruptly, he let go, yet she felt the strength in him it took to do so. He stepped back, until a respectable distance of several feet separated them.
“I’ll write that list up for you.” His voice had hoarsened, and she caught the trace of a rough accent. The saddler’s son emerging from beneath a carefully cultivated luster.
He turned and strode to the door and opened it. There, one hand braced on the frame, he paused. He did not turn around. “Expect me home for dinner.”
Then he was gone, closing the door behind him. Anne’s only company was the coins, their blank metallic faces staring up at her, offering not a single answer.
The carriage waited for him outside, and he leapt into it. At his nod, the footman closed the door and called up to the coachman, “Drive on.”
They clattered their way east toward Exchange Alley, but Leo did not see the familiar streets of High Holborn, Chancery Lane, nor any of the others. His mind was with Anne in Bloomsbury, and his body wanted to be there, as well.
Hell, what had come over him? His intentions to take things slowly with her had burned away. He hadn’t even planned on kissing her mouth at all, for it had been enough to kiss her hand. Yet impulse and need had taken over. Once unleashed, it became a battle to rein it in again.
She had thrown him. He prepared himself always for eventualities, outcomes, options. The Devil’s gift showed him the future, and there he often dwelt. Even without this gift, Leo could chart what was, what would be. Yet Anne continued to defy his expectations.
At first, he’d regretted telling his wife about his past, his father, fearing it made him vulnerable. But it had drawn them closer together, revealing unexpected similarities, as if the tide ebbed to uncover a hidden house beneath the waves.
Yet he knew that if he revealed his magic to her, everything they had been building together would crumble. There would be no warm acceptance, no understanding. Only fear. Perhaps even disgust.
No—he must keep his secrets.
He planned to use their strengthening connection by slowly building toward physical intimacy. It seemed the best, soundest plan.
Had she been anyone other than herself, that plan would have unfolded just as he desired. Yet what she had said this morning, what she offered ... no one had ever given him as much. He knew she did not want to pay calls and try to ingratiate herself with the wives of the highest elite. It was more than her overcoming natural shyness. It meant forcibly pulling herself from the shadows into the glare of artificial suns, suns that burned more often than warmed.
Logically, he saw how she might benefit herself by Leo gaining alliances with rich, powerful men. As his status increased, so would hers. But he knew her motivations were different. Her help was for him, and no one else.
And she would get coins for him. Coins that would show him future disasters. She had no idea what the coins revealed to him, how he used them to advance his own fortunes whilst ruining another’s. Yet she would get the coins for him because she thought it would make him ... happy. He tried to remember the last time anyone had done anything for him without an ulterior purpose, or simply because it would bring him joy. Even his father’s gifts—a pearl-handled folding knife, a book of quotations—had been to advance Leo within the eyes of the world. And the Hellraisers were a bunch of selfish bastards, just like him, offering companionship but gobbling down experiences as fast as they could be devoured.