Kiss of Steel by Bec McMaster Read Free Book Online Page B

skirts and held her there.
    “One day you’ll beg me to take you in,” he whispered.
    “When hell freezes over,” she replied.
    The serving maid arrived. “Sir?” she asked hesitantly.
    “Damn your pride.” He let go of Honoria’s skirts. “What’s the special?” he asked the maid.
    “Mutton stew with bread and dripping.”
    Blade gave Honoria a direct look. “Do you want it?”
    “I don’t want anything from you.” For the first time her facade cracked. He caught a glimpse of tears, and then she looked away, choking them back down as she slumped into the seat again.
    “A bowl of it,” he told the maid. “And two pints. Of ale.”
    “No!”
    He ignored Honoria’s protest and nodded to the serving maid.
    “Damn you.” Honoria started digging in her change purse.
    Blade caught her hand. “Tonight’s on me.”
    “No.”
    “Put the bloody money away.”
    She slapped a handful of shillings on the table between them. “I won’t be your whore. I won’t owe you anything.”
    He growled and caught her hand, holding it flat over the cold metal shillings. “All I want’s for you to talk to me. A bit o’ good conversation for the cost o’ the meal. So I can ’ear ’ow you says things.” He flashed her a smile. “Me first lesson.”
    He pushed her hand and the shillings under them back toward her. Honoria’s gaze dropped first. He knew what she was thinking. She couldn’t afford the meal, but she wouldn’t let him pay for it. By turning it into a transaction, she could keep some semblance of pride.
    The serving maid returned with two foaming mugs of ale. Honoria flushed and dragged her hand away, taking the shillings with her. The heat of her lingered in his fingers as if he’d stolen a touch of it. He rubbed them together, feeling the residue.
    “Well, where you from?” he asked. “You appear six months ago out o’ nowhere. Ain’t no relatives visit. Ain’t no friends. No suitors. Like you sprung from nothin’.”
    A minute thinning of her lips. She was good. A bleedin’ Jack-in-a-box. He took a sip of the ale and forced it down. If he concentrated, he might be able to swill it all, but most of the time he had no need of food or drink. Still, he missed the taste of things sometimes.
    “Oxford,” she replied. “My father was a professor. I taught the local young women their finishing touches.”
    “What ’appened? How’d you end up ’ere in the East End?”
    A flash of something real, something painful, flickered through her eyes. “He passed away. The lease was sold and we were without a roof over our heads. I had a cousin in London, but that didn’t work out. I took a job with Mr. Macy, but the pay wasn’t enough to support a life in the city, and I can’t say I like the idea of being under the Echelon’s thumb.”
    “Why the prejudice against ’em? You ever run afoul o’ the Ech’lon?”
    “No.” A slight hesitation. “Everybody speaks of them, though, and they sound like something I’d prefer to avoid.”
    For a moment she almost relaxed. Then the mutton stew appeared. Blade spread his arms across the back of the seat and watched her stare at it as though she’d never eaten in her life…and had suddenly found a dead fly in her bowl.
    “Try the fork,” he recommended. “It’s much easier than mentally consumin’ the meal.”
    A hot little glare made him smile again. But she picked up the fork and started tearing off delicate pieces of bread. Blade looked away, enjoying the clink of silverware and the heady scent of lamb stew and ale. If he closed his eyes, he could almost smell her, the faint musk of woman lingering beneath the spicier scent of stew like the base notes of an aromatic. There was no scent of his own to add except the touch of oil he used to sharpen his blades and the soap used to launder his clothes.
    A blue blood had no personal scent. No warmth. Sometimes he felt as though he were slowly turning to marble, devoid of any of the touches of