Page 18 of Greed: The Savage
Not another word was spoken. After an infernally painful carriage ride, they reached the Devil’s Den.
Addien made a grab for the handle.
She was several seconds too slow for the speed with which Malric intercepted her.
“We have to report to Dynevor,” he said, his tone as veiled as his gaze.
A tremor went through her, and worse, her pathetically whispered response. “Y-Yes.”
Malric said nothing for a moment and then cursed. “Bloody hell, Addien!” He lambasted her. “You couldn’t simply take off the bloody cloak?”
She opened her mouth to tell him to go to hell, and then caught it.
Shock slammed into her.
Why…he was trying to give her a way to try and save herself.
That humanity, she didn’t expect from him.
Perhaps that was why she lowered her head and, with fingers that shook, unfastened her clasp. Humbled and brought low by having to explain her idiocy to this man, she briefly paused.
His breath caught noisily.
Addien shrugged out of the finest garment she’d ever worn to reveal the second finest garment she’d ever worn.
“Couldn’t do up me laces,” she said, her voice smaller than it’d ever been. “And I don’t need…” Except that wasn’t true. She took in a deep breath. “I don’t want a maid about.”
She couldn’t even look at him. She didn’t need to. She knew precisely what he thought of her and her silly pride. Oh, the fun he was about to have at her expense.
Just say it, she silently screamed.
The marquess sighed. “Turn around.”
Turn…
Befuddled, Addien did as he commanded.
No words were spoken. There was only silence as he, with a deft hand, laced up her dress. His long fingers, hard and strong, moved with effortless grace.
Her heart hammered as he tended to her gown like a devoted lady’s maid.
The knuckles of his left hand briefly grazed her spine and, through her lawn chemise, her skin burned.
His startling beneficence, the tender ministrations of a man so hard and hateful, left her shaken.
Since his hire, Addien had spent so much time trying to get herself out of the icy guard’s company that she’d not truly looked at him until now.
It was as if, in creating the Marquess of Thornwick, the Maker had toiled over a Grecian masterpiece—the bold slashes of sharply chiseled cheeks, the flawless symmetry of a slanted aquiline nose—but finding no man worthy of such beauty, God had offset his face with a jaw a touch too heavily squared, marked by the faintest dimpled cleft, as though to mock the arrogant peer with a fleck of softness he could never be rid of.
In a mocking nod to her notice, the marquess’s icy lips quirked. “Next time, Addien? Employ the maids.”
With a gasp, Addien hurriedly snatched her cloak into place, burying herself within the folds, hiding all over again.
Humiliation, shame, and self-disgust set her face aflame.
And here she’d been worried about facing Dynevor, and now she couldn’t get out of this carriage with Malric quick enough.
When they were inside the club, proprietor and head guard, Lachlan Latimer, were waiting. His harsh, hard countenance was grimmer than usual.
