This made him smile. Rich gentlemen might mutely provide funds and collect returns, content with the fiction that, if they kept their interaction with actual business to a minimum, they would be less sullied. Leo didnt give a damn. Hed get as filthy as necessary to wring the greatest profits. He had no man of business. He did not deal with brokers or jobbers. Everything that needed doing, he did himself.
The sun had not yet topped the spires of Saint Pauls, yet the frenzy of the Change was at its height, and Leo in the thick of it. Precisely where he wantedneededto be. Within the few hours he had been here, hed invested in a quarry whose slate tiles would be used to roof mill towns in the north, provided capital to ship English wheat to the Caribbean, and sold his shares in a Scottish timber venture. And the day wasnt half over. There was still so much to be done. Fortunes to be madehis.
Oranges, Spanish oranges. A barefoot girl with a basket full of fruit picked her way through the crowd. Her cry could barely be heard above the clamor.
Ill take one, Leo said.
Two for a penny, sir. One for yourself, one for your wife?
God, he was married now, wasnt he?
Two, then, he said, handing the coin to the girl. She passed two oranges to him, like a dirty-footed goddess creating new suns. With the transaction finished, the girl moved on, her cry of Oranges, Spanish oranges soon swallowed by the din.
Leo pocketed the fruit. Though surrounded on all sides by men and chaos and noise, his mind drifted back to his house in Bloomsbury, and the woman who now lived there. Anne had been sleeping when he slipped from bed. In that expanse of white linen, she had looked very small, insubstantial. Yet one of her hands had been curled into a fist, as if ready to swing should she be attacked.
Had she been protecting herself from him? The thought had troubled him, and he had summoned his valet and dressed quietly, careful to keep from waking her. She would arise later to find him gone.
Something edged and acute cut through him. It took several moments for him to recognize the feeling: regret. Or at least, he believed it to be regret, never having felt it before.
Perhaps he ought not to have left her. At the least, he might have woken her or left a note to let her know where he was. Damned strange. Hed been accountable to no one for a very long time. Even his fellow Hellraisers. To feel any sense of obligation, even to a wife, chafed. Yet he couldnt expect to marry and have nothing alter, could he?
Last night had been ... puzzling. Disturbing. To feel her fear shuddering through her body and into his. He had expected some nerves on her part. Hell, there had been nerves on his part, as well. Hed never made love to a virgin before, and hed wondered about the best possible means of doing so. Gentle, slow. That much he knew. Yet Anne had still been afraid.
His desire for herthat he felt even now, in this crowded, noisy alleywas unexpected, and a relief. Despite his ambition to marry a noblemans daughter, he never would have given his name to a woman he could not want in his bed. Annes quiet beauty stirred him; her intelligence and subtle humor intrigued him. As he had touched her and discovered her slim, soft body, he felt her respond. Not just with fear, but with hunger. There was promise, of what could be. He wanted to explore that, see where it led.
It was for these reasons that he had forced himself to wear a nightshirt, to hide his markings. Last night had shown him that what he had begun to learn of Anne, he discovered he actually liked. Which meant he would feel obligated to offer her an explanation for the markingsand that he was not certain he wanted to do.
What he did want was to see her again. He should go back.
To hell with the geminus, he muttered to himself, and the demands of Mr. Holliday.
The Change could do without him for a day, a week. And in that time, he and Anne could come to learn each other, become more than acquaintances. He had decided to wait on the consummation of their marriage until they knew each other
better. He needed to learn more. That couldnt happen with him sequestered in the madness of Exchange Alley.
Though Leos expertise at bedsport could not begin to match Brams, he had a suspicion that, once her fear diminished and she was initiated into the realm of sexual pleasure, Anne would prove herself an eager student. She had a quickness of mind that revealed itself in her ready wit, in the keenness of her gaze. Hed touched and caressed her, discovering a hidden sensuality in his wife, a banked fire that needed a bit of encouragement to blaze to life.
But that fire would remain cool until he brought it forward. Which he could not do from miles away.
Hed return home now. Take Anne for a jaunt in the carriage. Theyd stroll in Saint Jamess Park, perhaps have a mug of fresh milk from the cows that grazed there. Then theyd go back home for supper, and talk, maybe flirt a little over their meal. He knew a bit about flirting. Admittedly, not very much. Courtesans cared less for flirtation and more for generosity, which he had both in bed and out. Flirtation, though, was newer to him. Wordplay seemed to be involved, and compliments. Beyond that ... hed have to think of something.