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. Annes 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 hadnt 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 Devils 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, hed 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.
Nohe 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 anothers. 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 fathers giftsa pearl-handled folding knife, a book of quotationshad 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.
Hed thought himself too cynical, too jaded to feel much beyond his own mercenary desires. He was unaccustomed to feeling gratitude. Yet Annes offer had pierced him like a golden blade.
And she had looked so damned enticing, still rumpled from sleep, her pretty face touched by morning light. That same morning light had revealed the silken shape of her body beneath her nightgown, and he had been struck with the visceral memory of her breast in his hand, its soft, perfect weight. Desire and something else, something that might have been tenderness, flooded him, and he had acted. Kissed her.
The carriage jounced as it turned onto Fleet Street. Traffic thickened as he moved farther into the heart of the city, the core of London. Yet as the carriage was forced to slow, Leos pulse sped.
That kiss ... Before her fear had emerged, Anne had been so responsive, so eager. Her kiss was untried, yet what art it lacked was more than compensated by enthusiasm. Hed suspected that she contained far more passion than she even realized, and he was right. It had taken every ounce of control he possessed not to climb onto the bed, gathering her soft, willing body against him. Show her how to wind her legs around his waist as he undid the buttons on his breeches. Make her fully his. He had never hungered for innocence until that moment.
Only her sound of fright had stopped him. Barely.
He had made a vow to himself. One he would not break. He might not have married for love, like his parents, but by hell, he would not conduct his marriage as the aristos did. When he took Annes maidenhead, no fear would exist between them.
She deserved better than an impersonal, calculated fuck. He discovered he liked her too much to treat her like chattel. So he now rode toward Exchange Alley with a faintly aching cock and the taste of her in his mouth.