Jack buttoned up his long, black frock coat. “All right.”
“Why didn’t the wife just tell her husband she’d gone to visit his friend? Why was it such a terrible thing?”
“Because he was a single gentleman and she called upon him at night without a companion.”
She shook her head. “That still makes no sense.”
“Ladies aren’t supposed to call on gentlemen at their homes, and certainly not without a chaperone.”
“Can a gentlemen call on a lady without a chaperone?”
“Yes, but he shouldn’t if he really likes her. People might think ill of her.”
Mila kicked at a pebble with the toe of her shoe. “That’s stupid.”
Jack laughed. “It is.” He shrugged. “But, that’s how it is.”
“But why?” She knew she asked a lot of questions, and Jack had been very good about answering them, but the world was just so bloody confusing. Sometimes she didn’t think she’d ever understand.
“Because a lady’s virtue is her greatest possession, apparently. And a gentleman might lose control of himself and take advantage of her.”
Virtue. That was pureness. It was a synonym for virginity, as well. “Do men usually lose control of themselves?”
He opened the door to his steam carriage for her, so that she might climb in. “I’d like to think that they do not, no.”
She waited until he’d walked around and climbed in the other side. “You have ladies visit you.”
Jack paused, and she knew he was trying to think of a way to lie to her. He did that sometimes. “That’s different.” That was what he always said when he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Do you take advantage of your ladies?”
He made a strangled sound as he ignited the engine. “No.”
“What do you do with them?”
“That’s really none of your business, poppet. Not something you need to know about.”
“Do you have intercourse with them?” She’d read about intercourse in a book she’d found underneath the sofa.
His head turned, and he looked at her with an expression of...surprise? Horror? Bloody hell, she couldn’t tell! “How do you know about that?”
If she told him, he’d take the book away. “That’s really none of your business.”
“It is so my business!” Jack’s eyes were wide and black in the dim light.
Something in his tone made her fold her arms over her chest and glare out the window. “I don’t like how there seems to be separate rules for girls and boys. It’s not fair.”
Jack steered the carriage out into traffic. An old-fashioned carriage pulled by four automaton horses, their brass gleaming, raced past them. “No, it’s not. But it’s the way of the upper class.”
“Then, I don’t want to be part of the upper class.”
“I don’t think you’ll have much choice. That’s the sphere into which His Grace will introduce you.”
“I don’t understand why I can’t stay with you.”
“Because I’m exactly the sort of fellow a girl like you should avoid. Someday you’ll see that.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced at him. “But you said you don’t take advantage of those girls.”
He kept his gaze on the road. A muscle in his jaw flexed. “I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m a good man, poppet.”
“But you’re the best person I know. I love you.”
The carriage swerved. Jack yanked on the steering mechanism to correct it again. “You don’t know what love is.” He didn’t say it meanly, but she resented it all the same. She couldn’t argue, though. Maybe she didn’t know what love was. But Emily had told her that love was when you cared about someone very much, and she did care about Jack. He was her whole world. The idea of being without him scared her.
“Do you know what love is?” she asked.
He shook his head. “And I don’t want to. I’ve seen what love does to people.”
“What?”
Jack sneered—it was an awful expression on his lovely face. “It makes them weak. Makes it easy for other people to hurt them, use them and toss them aside.”
“Did that happen to someone you know?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer her—that meant that a conversation really was over. “My mother. She thought my father loved her, but he didn’t. Unfortunately, she loved him, and it ruined her.”
Mila didn’t quite grasp the depth of his mother’s disappointment, but she knew when Jack was upset, and when he was angry. That his father had been mean to his mother upset him and made him really angry, and that was a bad thing. “I’m sorry.”
He flashed her a slight smile before returning his attention to the street. “You’re sweet, you know that? You’re probably the nicest person I’ve ever met.”
Warmth blossomed inside her. It was like pleasure, but more—as if her heart were being blown up like a balloon. She smiled—and then remembered her manners. “Thank you.”
“That’s why I’m going to make certain you are never in a position to be dependent on a man. You’ll never go hungry. No one will look at you as less than what they are. No one will ever take away your sweetness.”
She looked at him. “Like your father did your mother?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. Why would you even want me to marry someone of the upper class, then?”
“They’re not all awful. His Grace is all right. I want you to be comfortable and taken care of.”
“I can take care of myself,” she said, as the lamps of the carriage illuminated familiar streets. They were almost home.
Jack chuckled. “Physically, yes. But there are still a lot of things you need to learn about the world, poppet.”
“Like what?”
“Like that people lie. They steal. People can hurt you emotionally as well as physically. It’s worse than being hit.”
Mila frowned. “Who hurt you, Jack?”
For a moment, there was an odd vulnerability in his eyes, but then it was gone. “No one.” He reached across the leather seat and took her hand. “I promise you that I will never hurt you—not intentionally. No matter what happens now or in the future, you can always come to me. I will always be here for you. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “I understand.”
But she didn’t, not really. If she had, she would have known that Jack was lying again.
For the first time in the two decades he’d been alive, Jack Dandy couldn’t think.
Jack could always think. Thinking—plotting, playing out every scenario—was what had kept him alive and built him a fortune. He started thinking the moment he woke up and sometimes he even thought in his dreams. Certainly no girl had ever interfered with the process before.
Not even Treasure.
Mila’s lips turned his brain to gruel. No thoughts, only instinct, and instinct told him to enjoy this a little while, even though his conscience screamed in protest. His arms went around her waist, pulling her tight against him. His hands splayed across her back, feeling the movement of her muscles beneath cloth and skin. She was warm and soft and tasted like peppermint.
And he was not a good man.
Her fingers twisted in his shirt, tearing through the soft cotton as if it were nothing more than candy floss. She could easily crush his bones with those hands. The thought vanished as quickly as it had appeared—nothing more than a flicker in his mind. One of his hands came up and fisted in her wild hair—it felt like silk against his skin.
A loud shredding noise filled the silence—she’d torn his shirt completely open. Warm fingers found their way beneath to touch his chest, roam over his stomach and ribs. He shivered. Her hands moved up to his shoulders, shoving the ruined garment down his arms.