Page 30 of The Forsaken

Nothing.

Kerr would never, under any circumstances, have believed he’d get this lucky. After knowing Andromena Smith for years, he would have bet his entire fleet against it, happy to take her silence however he could get it. But he’d been wrong. Not that he disliked cheerful women. On the contrary. He preferred them smiling—ideally sated and forgetting their names after he bedded them, or giving him that clear, bold look of invitation.

The dreamy ones donned by young chits confounded him.

Their lack of worldliness terrified him.

Correction. It made him want to find the nearest door.

As they made the journey back from Rat’s Castle, so did this new, disconcerting side of Andromena. The churn of iron ground both gravel and the weight of her unnatural silence. She kept her hooded face towards drawn black curtains.

He discovered his own contrariness; he actually preferred her jabbering to the quiet.

Whatever the reasons for her sullenness or sadness: whatever it was the fortune-teller predicted—or more likely hadn’t—was not his business.

Leave it to Andromena Smith to get pushed against a wall in the Rookeries and receive a tongue-lashing, only to face a drunkard who’d tried to snatch her and then go quiet over the shite lies of some charlatan. Served the obstinate chit right, Kerr told himself. Andromena needed some fear drummed into her, or she was bound to repeat her mistakes—and he would be forced to step in again.

And again.

And again.

That’s what he cared about. He certainly didn’t expect to care either way about whatever disappointment she had been handed this night. He was a rake. He put his own pleasures first. But that didn’t mean he was a dishonorable fellow. Despite her belief to the contrary, he wasn’t some beast who dined on young ladies’ tears.

Not that she was in tears. Good God. He hadn’t even thought about that. Kerr swung his gaze over to her. He wasn’t a heartless bastard. Not completely anyway. The chit was always all-smiles, all the time, for everyone—Kerr’s illustrious self, excluded. And when she wasn’t rattling nonsense, she wielded her tongue like a saber—at least with Kerr. The chit drove him to distraction, but he didn’t want to see her laid low, and that’s precisely what the charlatan of Rat’s Castle had done. Mild panic set in.

He briefly eyed the lacquer panel standing between him and the uneven street. A serious look for a serious moment. He’d survived worse—much worse than a tumble from a moving carriage. But the lady was Culross’s sister-in-law. Kerr let out a low, flat breath.

Having hooked barbels in swift currents and tricked grey mullets into biting, he felt fully prepared for Andromena Smith—he already knew the exact bait to lay.

Kerr looped an arm along the back of his bench. “I’m guessing you overpaid for your fortune, darling?” his voice dripped sardonicism.

A slight rustle of muslin gave away her shoulder shrug.

Frowning, he drummed his fingertips on the ripped broadcloth.

No biting reply? No spirited lecture?

He missed—God help him—the sharp back-and-forth with the exasperated Miss Smith. She always matched him blow for blow. Kerr would cut his tongue out before admitting it.

“Come on, darling, buck up. You had a grand adventure. No other lady could profess to have done what you have done, and survived, with a story to tell.”

The rickety wood hackney caught a sizeable pothole. The foundations of the carriage creaked and groaned and threatened to break. As such, he couldn’t distinguish whether the slight movement of her shoulders was acknowledgment of his spoken words, or an accidental shrug thrust on her by the sway of the hackney.

This was going to take more work.

During the war with America, Kerr made the move from naval captain to privateer. Fortunately, he read and navigated women with the same ease he piloted coastal waters. He didn’t even need to try. Being un-charming came unnaturally, save when it came to the young woman seated across from him. Women of all stations melted for him. The indecent ones vied for a place in his bed. The doe-eyed debutantes batted lashes his way—or they had, before he’d returned, scarred.

Nary a woman with a breath in her body failed to respond to Kerr. Andromena was no exception. That much he’d learned on a snowy Ermine Street; she’d been ready to climb astride his mount and make off from her sister’s wedding.

But seduction wasn’t Kerr’s goal; cheering her up was.

He glided his fingers over the top of that gloved hand behind her current troubles.

It was an innocuous caress—not even intended as a caress.

Andromena’s slender body tensed and trembled.

He felt the sudden, fine tremor run straight through her skin into his own. His fingertips—as did his body—remembered the exact, soft give of her skin, her sleek thighs yielding like sun-warmed wax.