until now, Deborah wavered. But her failing to take part would not avert the crime. And if their victim was like Jacob most likely he would deserve it anyway, or could easily afford the loss. And Bella needed this, and she needed Bella, and Elliot was waiting for an answer. She would never get another chance. Never!
‘I promise,’ she said. ‘I’ll do exactly as you say.’
‘Then prove it. Kiss me,’ Elliot said audaciously, not thinking for a moment that she would.
But she did. Without giving herself time to think, her heart hammering against her breast, Deborah stood on tiptoe, pulled his head down to hers, and did as she was bid. Right there in Hyde Park, in the middle of the day, she kissed him.
She meant it as a kiss to seal their bargain, but as soon as her lips touched his memories, real and imagined, made the taste of him headily familiar. Elliot’s hands settled on her hips, pulling her closer. Deborah linked her gloved hands around his neck, enjoying the lean length of his body hard against hers, just as before, in the dark of night, when he had landed on top of her.
His lips were warm on hers, every bit as sinfully delicious as she’d imagined, coaxing her mouth to flower open beneath his, teasing her lips into compliance, heating her gently, delicately, until his tongue touched hers. She shuddered, felt rather than heard his sharp intake of breath. The kiss deepened, darkened, and Deborah forgot all about her surroundings as Elliot’s mouth claimed hers, as he pulled her into the hard warmth of his body, so close that she could feel the fob of his watch pressing into her stomach, smell the starch on his neckcloth.
It was a kiss like none she had ever tasted, heated by the bargain it concluded, fired by the very illicitness of their kissing here in a public space, where at any moment they could be discovered. She could not have imagined, could not have dreamed, that kissing—just kissing—could arouse her in this way. She had not thought it possible—had not even attributed such an awakening to Bella Donna.
The clop of a horse passing on the other side of the high hedge penetrated the hazy mists of her desire-fuelled mind. Deborah wrenched herself free even as Elliot released her. They stared at each other, breathing heavily. He tugged at his neckcloth as if it were constricting him. Her gloved hand touched her lips. They felt swollen.
Elliot picked his hat up from the ground where it had fallen, striving for a nonchalance he was far from feeling. The reality of Deborah Napier’s kisses made a poor shadow of his fantasies. It was complete folly, unbelievably risky, but if this intriguing creature wanted to join forces with his alter ego he could not refuse her.
He wanted her. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about that, but he was sure he wanted to do something. Not that that was why he was going to agree to this madness. He was doing it for her. To relieve the darkness behind those beguiling eyes. To release her, if only temporarily, from the emotional embargo she seemed to have placed upon herself. That was the only reason. The main one, certainly.
‘Are you quite sure you want to do this?’ he asked.
Still dazed and confused by the delights of lip on lip, tongue on tongue, struggling to tamp down the shocking and wholly new passion which their kiss had lit, Deborah was not at first sure what he was asking. Then the meaning of his question sank home, and she smiled. It was not the tight, polite smile behind which she usually hid, but a wide, true smile which lit her eyes, wiping the haughty expression from her face and with it several years.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘I’m sure.’
A week went by before she heard from him again. A week when sanity took hold in the light of day and Deborah wondered what on earth had possessed her to suggest this wild escapade.
Housebreaking and stealing—the simple fact that they were illegal should be suffice to prevent her even contemplating them. Her conscience told her so several times a day, her head warned her of the possible consequences, yet her heart would listen to none of it. Whether she accompanied him or not, the Peacock would commit the crime. He was never caught. And even if she was discovered, there was the sad, indisputable fact, that she couldn’t make herself see the difference between the prison she already inhabited and gaol, no matter how often she told herself there was an enormous difference.
Had her doubts been more constant they would have prevailed, but the problem was they were fickle things, dissolving whenever she took up her pen, or played out her encounter with Elliot again, or with the coming of dusk. Excitement took hold of her then. Jagged and dangerous like one of the saw-toothed swords she had seen in an exhibition at Bullock’s Museum in Piccadilly, it was fatally enticing. For the first time in a very long time, she really wanted something.
She knew what she contemplated was reckless beyond belief, but still the logic of this failed to take root. She wanted the visceral thrill. She wanted to feel her blood coursing through her veins. She wanted to feel alive. And besides, she owed it to Bella, whose existence had seen her through the darkest of days, to gild her latest story with as much authenticity as possible.
In truth, when Deborah’s heart quailed at the prospect of aiding and abetting the Peacock, it was Bella’s ruthless courage which bolstered her. It was through Bella’s eyes that she peered out into the dimly lit street from her drawing-room window some eight days after that encounter in the park, her heart fluttering with fear—not of what was to come, but of what she would feel if Elliot did not turn up.
His promise, so reluctantly given, could so easily be reneged upon. She knew nothing of him, after all, and despite his having surrendered his name, she had made no enquiries, having neither trusted friends nor trusted servants. Had he been similarly reticent? It hadn’t occurred to her until now that he might ask about her, though it should have. Jeremy’s title meant nothing to her; the penurious state in which he had left her made it easy for her to fade into the background of a society she had never really been permitted to inhabit even when he was alive, but she was still, unfortunately, the Dowager Countess of Kinsail. And though Jeremy had been gone two years, the scandal of his debts, his premature death, were not so easily buried as his corpse.
Deborah clenched her fists inside the pockets of the greatcoat she wore. Elliot would not judge her. It wasn’t possible—no one knew the murky details of her marriage. He would come. He had given his word and he had not the look of a man who would break a promise. Casting a quick glance out at the empty street, she retrieved the note from behind the clock, scanning the terse content by the light of the single candle.
It is set for tonight. I will call for you at fifteen minutes past midnight. If you have changed your mind, send word with the boy.
No signature. No address. The boy referred to was the street urchin who had delivered the note earlier in the day. Surely, surely, surely, if Elliot Marchmont had reservations about her, he would not have sent such a note? After all, even if she did know where he lived—which she did not—she was hardly likely to come hammering on his door, demanding that he fulfil his promise. It had been a test, this silence, a test of trust, and she had not failed. He would come, she told herself. He cared naught for her past, and why should he? Besides, she thought defiantly, returning to her vigil at the window, it was not Deborah, Dowager Countess of Kinsail, who would be his aider and abettor, any more than it was Elliot Marchmont who would commit the crime. Tonight it was the Peacock and Bella Donna.
She smiled into the darkness and let go the last of her doubts as the clock chimed the hour. Midnight. The witching hour. The hour of transformations and magic. Bella’s hour.
