Wycliff cast her a mild look of reproach. “Have faith in your champion, my lady.”
“Two.”
“No!” Scarlett grabbed their clasped hands. “Mr Wycliff took a lead ball to the arm three days ago. Do you want him to die on your desk?” She sounded dramatic, she knew, but after her experiences with Lord Steele, she never fared well beneath the clawing fear of helplessness.
She waited for what seemed like an eternity before Dermot slapped his free hand on the desk in a sign of surrender.
Something about his expression told her he had no intention of wrestling with Wycliff, that he had led them down this path purely to pry.
“You were shot at Vauxhall?” Dermot said as he attempted and failed to pull his hand from Wycliff’s grasp.
Wycliff kept a firm hold and stared down his nose. “I’d wager you already knew that.”
“Yer man noted that your shirt was cut, your arm bandaged. Who shot you?”
“It doesn’t matter who shot him.” Scarlett was growing tired of being a silent voice. She knew better than most what it meant to be invisible. To have one’s thoughts and opinions discarded.
Wycliff’s dark eyes glinted with menace. “If I knew who put the ball in my arm, the villain would be dead and buried beneath a hefty mound of soil.”
Dermot chuckled again. “Ah, a fellow after my own heart.”
Scarlett stared at the two men. Now they had played this odd game of intimidation, perhaps they might converse as adults, might unearth some truth from the past in the hope of bringing clarity.
And yet, the hollow emptiness in her chest made it hard to focus. Not since those terrible nights when her husband’s depravity poisoned his mind had she felt so weak, so irrelevant.
Tears pricked her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.
She needed air, at present couldn’t bear the company of either man and so turned on her heel and strode to the door. Their questions chased after her, demanding a response regarding her intention.
“Scarlett! Wait!”
She was at the door leading to the alley when Wycliff came up behind her. He braced both hands on the frame, caging her in a hard, masculine prison.
“I had no choice but to play Flannery’s game,” he whispered, his cool breath breezing over her neck to send shivers down the length of her spine. “Men like him, men like me, we’ve had to fight our whole lives for our positions.”
“I’ve had to fight, too.” Years of untold misery pushed to the surface. Too many times she’d hit back believing she might die.
“I know. And I wish I would have done something to prevent it.”
Scarlett closed her eyes in an attempt to rein in her volatile emotions. It didn’t help having Wycliff’s hard body pressed so close. Part of her knew why people used pleasure to obliterate pain.
“About Flannery,” he continued. “It’s evident he thinks of you as a daughter, that he thought highly of your father, too. We should tell him the truth about the intruder. If his man followed us to Bruton Street, then it stands to reason Flannery might be of assistance to us in our efforts to find the blackguard.”
Perhaps Wycliff knew that refocusing someone’s mind worked to banish painful memories of the past. Perhaps he knew that just hearing the smooth timbre of his voice was akin to consuming a calming elixir.
“Don’t let our efforts to find the villain come between what is happening between us,” he murmured.
Come between them?
Nothing would prevent her from having this man.
Scarlett shuffled around to face him, her body brushing against his in the tight space. “They say the temperature will plummet tonight,” she said, surprised at the depth of desire in her voice. “Body heat is the only way to keep the cold at bay.”
Eyes, dark and dangerously hot, scanned her face, strayed to her hair, lingered on her lips. She wondered if he experienced the same heavy ache in his loins that kept her awake at night, that plagued her now.
Wycliff brushed a stray tendril from her cheek, tucking it with care behind her ear. “Then we should see to this business quickly. The anticipation of warming your sweet body makes it hard to concentrate.”
His mouth hovered achingly close. She wanted to kiss him, tangle tongues, have him plunge deep into her willing mouth, deeper into her starving body. She might have given in to temptation had Dermot Flannery’s voice not disturbed their intimate exchange.