Kiss Me Sweetly Read online

  His gaze darted to the fireplace. Perhaps he had thought to burn the book as he’d always wanted. He dropped to his knees and dragged his fingers through the ashes, but they were long cold.

  Maybe Graham had it. But Graham was nowhere to be found, either. Benjamin had already spent half the morning in search of his younger brother to no avail.

  Then, belatedly, the words he had spoken to Bridget a moment before penetrated his brain.

  The other libraries. Where he’d just sent her.

  Of course.

  Bridget ran out of the main library, her heart beating so fast she felt it in her throat. She’d been sure Benjamin had overheard her eavesdropping in the conservatory. Then she’d been certain he would overtake her on the way to the other library, and she’d known, just known, his discovery of her intentions would be imminent. Yet here she was, still undiscovered. It was enough to make her giddy. Her criminal act of investigation merited a feature in a gothic novel. Only now, like any hero, she had a choice to make—his study or the gardener’s cottage.

  The answer came in the form of her younger sister Dinah, who walked down the staircase presenting a fetching picture in a pink Empire-waist gown with pearlescent petals sewn into the hem and sleeves—a dainty, girlish outfit in direct contrast to the no-nonsense tilt of her head.

  “Dinah,” Bridget squealed. “I need you. I am in search of a book.”

  “Is now the best time to be starting a new book?” Dinah’s eyes raked over her, noting her disheveled appearance.

  “Now is the perfect time for this particular book.”

  Dinah gave her a dubious look. “What book?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That doesn’t seem like good timing at all,” Dinah murmured.

  Bridget let out a sigh. Now was not the time for another of Dinah’s exercises in logic. “Would it kill you to be helpful?” Instead of stating the obvious. But she did not say it aloud because she was the elder and it was her duty to guide her sister. “The gardener’s cottage has a library. Would you seek out the volume there?”

  “But how will I know what I am seeking out?”

  “You will know the book,” Bridget said. “Of that I am certain.” Or hopeful. As she had no idea what kind of volume it was, only that it was likely salacious, and that was enough for her to want it.

  “It seems that, given the task is mine, I should be the one who is certain … and I am not.”

  “There will be no mistaking it.” Bridget hustled Dinah towards the main hall quite easily, given her height was superior to that of her pixie-like sister. “It is exactly the kind of book that longs to be read. That demands it.”

  Unwilling to entertain any more of her sister’s protests, Bridget made her way toward the studies.

  The door to the duke’s study was always closed, but the rest of the Abernathys left theirs open, likely because of the works of art contained therein that were sometimes on display to the public when the house was open to visitors.

  Benjamin’s study was, she easily reasoned, the second door down from the duke’s. He had but one shelf but it was rather high, so she dragged a chair over to review the titles. She was midway through when the sound of a throat being cleared distracted her.

  She turned around to see Benjamin looming in the doorway.

  The thought gave her pause. Benjamin wasn’t really one to loom, per se.

  Perhaps she felt this way because she was just caught engaging in altogether illicit activities. Or because he looked rather more attractive than usual in his dark-blue coat and fine boots with white leather trim.

  “Miss Bridget,” he said with an incline of his head. “It appears you are in need of my assistance after all.” He studied her, frowning, waiting for a response, entirely too serious and studious.

  She racked her brain, wondering what a heroine would do. Then the answer struck her: a heroine would demand her prize. A heroine would not meekly hide or run away.

  Heart pounding, she descended from the chair and closed the distance between them in six steps. “It has come to my attention that there is a book, currently missing, that you intend to burn. I object to its destruction and demand to know its contents.” There, she thought, that was quite nicely put. Only the expression of horror on his face was not what she’d imagined next, though she should have.

  His cheeks colored and his breath came short and shallow. “Are you mad?”

  She had begun to mimic him with quick breaths of her own. She felt positively agitated. She loved it.

  With a modicum of struggle, he gained control of himself. A facade of smooth calm imposed itself upon his features. “I’m afraid you are mistaken.”

  “So there isn’t a book?” she asked.

  He swore under his breath and took a step back, running his hand through his hair.

  “There is a book,” she said triumphantly. As a gentleman, he would be reluctant to lie to her. She turned back to the shelves. “Where is it?”

  “There is a book; however, you are not in a position to demand anything.”

  “Am I not?” she said with a raised brow. “Indeed, perhaps I need not … if I find it first.”

  She turned back to search the shelf, but strong hands grabbed her shoulders and turned her around. He stepped close, his face inches away. Her back molded to the wall behind her. In an instant, another image from a gothic novel flashed through her mind, of the hulking hero and the quivering heroine. She grinned.

  He did not. He glanced at his hands on her shoulders and jerked away as if they had been singed. “My apologies, Miss Bridget. I have handled you poorly. Please do not speak of the book again. My father would have my head.” He frowned. “Your father would have my head, too.”

  “I can keep a secret,” Bridget said. She loved secrets. All heroines had at least a dozen.

  “I would rather burn the book than let it fall into your respectable hands.”

  She gasped but stopped short of clutching her collar. “No! You cannot. I can’t bear the thought. Books are meant to be read.”

  “Not this one, and not by any respectable young lady.”

  “Please,” she said. “I would not be able to live with myself if I had somehow been responsible, even in some small way, for the destruction of literature.”

  “It’s hardly literature.”

  “The written word, then,” she said, “and all it represents. It is a sin most unpardonable. Please do not make me a party to it.”

  With a sigh, he relented. “I will not burn it, but you must promise me never to seek it out again.”

  She crossed her fingers behind her back and smiled sweetly.

  Benjamin was supposed to be paying attention to his brother’s wedding. The Woodbury parish church was filled to capacity. Along the aisle, bouquets were tied to the ends of the pews. The bride looked radiant, particularly in comparison to his giant of a brother who towered over her, a quivering mess of happiness and joy. But instead, Benjamin’s gaze strayed to one Bridget Belle, sister of the bride, and current bane of his existence.

  The ceremony was soon over and the ball was in full swing. He should have been dancing attendance upon matrons and ladies, but instead, he kept finding Bridget in the crowd as if to satisfy himself that she was keeping out of trouble and not looking for the book.

  There was no peace for him now that she knew of its existence. His damn friend Damon Savage had been the one to purchase it on a side trip to Paris. Savage had been drawn to its cover, a stained red that “reminded him of a whore’s lips,” Savage had said with a knowing waggle of his brow.

  They’d been young at the time, barely out of school, and the few sketches had sent their fevered imaginations—and purses—straight to ill repute. But worst of all, the book was not merely a book. Its second half was a journal, and he and his friends, brash with youthful idiocy, had felt compelled to fill it.

  It contained detailed descriptions of their personal debauchery. Much too detailed, unfortuna
tely. It did not matter that the days were long past, the people—the women! the wives!—involved were still very much about in Society.

  How could they have been so careless? He rarely drank, but Tom had insisted on toast after toast to his beautiful bride-to-be. The drink had made Benjamin stupid, which was why he hardly ever drank.

  If only it could have been one of the other Belles who had got wind of the book.

  Alice, the Bossy Belle, would have called them juvenile and not given the book another thought.

  Charlotte, the Bovine Belle, horrid nickname, might have asked for the book, but upon seeing his distress, would have apologized for any harm to him, and the matter would have been quietly quashed.

  Dinah, the Blasé Belle, might have some scientific curiosity about such a book, but she could at least be reasoned with, and reason would have demanded that such a book should never fall into the hands of ladies.

  Sera, the Belle Belle … He couldn’t imagine sweet, angelic Sera even touching such a thing.

  But Bridget? The Bookish Belle?

  His preoccupation with her and the book was likely the reason he did not notice his father descending upon him until it was too late. “Benjamin,” his father barked. “What the hell do you think this is? A social event?”

  August Abernathy, Duke of Rivington, was by no means physically imposing. He was a tall, thin man, often in black, and always with a sneer even when he was smiling for joy. Yet nothing made Benjamin quake in his boots like the specter of his father.

  “In fact, Father, most people would believe this event to be social, yes.”

  “I’m disappointed you would agree.” The hand his father clamped upon his shoulder bit into the flesh with surprising tensile strength. “This is a market, my boy. You think you’ve all the time in the world. Just as I did. I waited too long to have children. Now I have one foot in the grave and no heir in sight.”

  “You have four sons.” Four possible heirs. Not a single girl in the lot. If anything, His Grace was too dedicated to his duty.

  “And where are my sons’ sons?” He sighed and rubbed at his temples. “Tom’s not a young man anymore, and his first wife didn’t bear any children. You’re my second, Benjamin.”

  “And young yet,” he said quietly.

  “And prime. Here we are, at a wedding with a bride whose four sisters are equally set to inherit. Can you imagine all the fortunes tied to our title? We’d be richer than the monarch. Than every monarch.”

  Benjamin held his face still and did not betray an ounce of the churning in his gut. His father had always been mercenary. That had been what had driven their youngest brother, Gray, to run away when he was to marry Sera, forcing Tom to step in when Gray abandoned her. Not that anyone felt it a tragedy. Tom was to get an incomparable beauty and Sera to nab a future duke. The trade seemed fair.

  “My boy,” the duke said, “you will marry a Belle. I’m not one to do things by half measures. I don’t care one whit which girl you choose. I’ll let you and Graham decide between the lot that is left.”

  Benjamin had spent the past years of his life following orders and doing what he was told while serving in the military, and although it had been difficult, at least he believed in his cause and respected the men who led him. The orders he was given by his father were far more difficult to stomach. “I doubt any of them would have me.”

  “You’re the bloody second son of one of the oldest titles in England.”

  “And they’re the richest women in the land,” he countered.

  The duke stepped closer. Benjamin could see the spittle forming at the corners of his mouth when he spoke between his clenched teeth. “These women might have more power than most, but they are women still. You are my heir if Tom can’t get the little angel pregnant, and we both know it is a likely eventuality, since his first wife never conceived. He spent too much of his time adoring his wife and less time forcing her to her duty.”

  How Benjamin did not blink, how he did not growl or howl, how he remained perfectly still, he would never know. It was a talent he’d always had. “A face of stone,” the men in his regiment used to say due to his uncanny ability to gaze out on the battlefield, see the rising tide of roaring soldiers, the plumes of smoke and guns firing, and not even blink. Face of stone, heart of coal. Unlike his three brothers, who were emotional beyond reason.

  The duke’s lips stretched into a thin smile. “See that there? Those coal eyes. That chin. The stuff of vapid novels. You’ll have the Belles quivering in their corsets.”

  Benjamin did not grimace, but something winked in the corner of his vision. A flash of yellow. He looked over—he could not help it—to see Bridget making her way down one of the central corridors toward the west wing, where the family bedrooms were.

  “She’s trouble, that one,” his father said, the sneer widening across his face. “Too many ideas in her head and not enough sense. Not like Dinah.”

  “Bridget has sense enough and love enough for her family.” Why was he trying to argue with his father? He should be agreeing with him. She was trouble.

  “If there was one Belle to be wary of…. A girl like that could ruin a family. Could ruin us. I couldn’t let something like that happen to the title, could I, Benjamin?”

  He glanced sharply at his father and felt that shiver again. His father’s eyes were set on Bridget, now disappearing down the hall.

  “That’s the problem with marriages,” his father said, his voice now hoarse. “You become entangled and knotted, and sometimes the easiest way to deal with a knot is to cut it off.”

  A chill ran down his spine. Not that he believed his father would harm Bridget, but he would try to manage her, and he couldn’t imagine Bridget being easily managed.

  “You’re right, Father,” he said by way of distraction. “It is my time to marry and marry well. I will give the matter of finding a suitable bride my utmost attention during this Season.” Bridget had disappeared from sight by then, and he clenched his hands into fists as he fought the urge to chase her. His father must be placated first.

  Rivington grinned broadly. “Excellent, son. It relieves me to no end.” The duke clapped him on the back as he walked away.

  Benjamin strode through the crowd, faster than was advisable. Heads turned to see the reason for his urgency, but he did not stop. He caught up with Bridget halfway up the stairs, taking the steps three at a time to stop in front of her. She halted warily and placed her hands on her hips.

  “You’re in my way,” she said.

  “You gave me your word you would not seek out the book. I gave you my word I would not burn it. If you are not to keep yours, how am I to keep mine?”

  “Oh, please don’t,” she said with a pout. “You can’t really expect me not to look for it. Would you really have obeyed under the same circumstances?”

  “Yes,” he said calmly.

  “Well, a rational person wouldn’t.”

  “A person of your literary stature would surely have read enough dictionaries to know the true definition of the word rational.”

  She had the gall to look affronted. “I wouldn’t be forced into this if you would just let me look at it. You know, I had not taken you and your lot for censors. I’ll have you know that I know my history. This isn’t one of Curll’s volumes, is it? I have been dying to lay eyes on one.”

  He did not ask how Bridget had come to know about the man’s infamous and notorious censored volumes. She’d run across a mention in yet another book, no doubt. “It is not. If you must know, the book is a journal.”

  Her eyes widened, and he could not tell if he had quelled her curiosity or ignited it further.

  “A private journal,” he went on. “Not merely a book. So you see, you ask me to violate a great privacy in sharing it. The kind of privilege only extended to a confidant.”

  “You clearly felt the right to share it last night among friends—unless those friends are the very people whose privacy you share? Very well,
I shall simply ask them.”

  She whirled around, and he moved to block her way. Christian might be a towering steel cage with a prize-winning fist, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t prove squeamish at the thought of not granting a woman’s request.

  When she hardened her glare, he graciously stepped aside and said, “I would not believe a respectable woman such as yourself would want to see good men exposed for the sake of the contents of private missives.”

  A bevy of emotions crossed her face. “I would never judge someone for the truth in their hearts, and such truth should never ruin someone. It’s the concealment of it that is the true evil.”

  She gazed up at him with ferocity brimming in the gray depths of her eyes, so his next words caught in his throat. He forced them out nonetheless. “You’re naive, Miss Bridget.”

  “And you’re cynical, Lord Benjamin. I shall prove you so. I shall find your book.”

  Her words struck him, and he felt a throb under his collar where a fragment of a shell casing had lodged, fortunately missing the artery. Having a war wound, however minor, gave him a distinction among the ranks, but for him, it was a reminder of worse times and, unfortunately, had become a button that was roused whenever he was angry.

  Perhaps that was why he threw his parting shot at her retreating back, a phrase so childish he hadn’t used it since he was but a knee-high boy. “Not if I find it first.”

  Miss B.,

  I hope you are enjoying your travels to the Continent as you accompany your sister on her honeymoon. I assume you were unable to locate the item of interest in your remaining time at my father’s estate, given I have yet to be shunned by king and country for all the contents therein.

  B.A.

  Lord B.,

  Italy is most entertaining! My Italian is in dire need of refreshment, else how will I ever infiltrate the papacy’s collection of texts forbidden to women? I have, however, uncovered stories of vestal virgins whose texts and rituals were forbidden for men to know or study.

  Gross use of sarcasm aside, your missive leads me to believe you too have failed to locate the item in question.