Fortune Favors the Wicked by Theresa Romain

dare you assume that my reasons have anything to do with you at all, Mr. Frost. You and I met yesterday. I was born here. Derbyshire has claims on me you can never imagine.”
    He turned slowly, tilting his head. “I can imagine a great deal, Miss Perry.”
    â€œImagine, then, that it is not your business where I search, or how. Imagine that I am a grown woman, and if I place myself in danger, that is my affair. I shall save myself and be all right, or I shall not, and I will be hurt or killed. And that is my affair, too.”
    As she spoke, her anger grew more powerful rather than dissipating. So long she had wanted to say these words, to so many people. “It is my affair,” she said in a voice so thick with feeling, she almost choked on the words, “where I live, and with whom. It is my affair if I choose to have company or walk out alone.”
    It ought to have been true, all of it. But it was not for any woman, and certainly not for Charlotte Perry, who had never intended to become Charlotte Pearl. She had been born for a plain, everyday life in a Derbyshire vicarage. She had never intended to become notorious or infamous, but chance and fortune had made her both. Known for her caprice and frivolity, for the bare curves immortalized on canvas after canvas.
    Her dress covered her too tightly, cutting at her breath. She had grown used to pale silks and red satins, the colors of elegance and lust. The plain blue serge gown she now wore, that she had worn again and again, was something she was not. But she could never again be what she’d been for so long.
    She couldn’t bear it. And she was afraid she wouldn’t survive it.
    At last, Frost spoke. “You are right. I am sorry. I should not have presumed. Since I lost my sight, I have often been dismissed or underestimated. I must be too ready to perceive a slight where none is intended.”
    â€œI know the feeling of being underestimated,” said Charlotte. “But I do not know if such as we can ever be too ready to perceive a slight. We need our knives about us always.”
    â€œPerhaps we do.” Patting the side of his boot where he’d sheathed the stiletto, he remounted the final step. “Though I’d be a fool to underestimate you, Miss Perry. Since you have kissed me senseless and locked me up, I consider you to be fully master of this situation.”
    â€œMistress,” she murmured.
    â€œRight, yes. Mistress. I shall not impose upon you again. Of course you have the right to go forth without my company. Without any company, if you so choose.” His smile was a rueful twist, somehow faraway even as he stood before her. “I suppose I just want you to be safe.”
    Reaching out, his fingertips brushed Charlotte’s shoulder. He trailed them down from her shoulder to her elbow, where he found the edge of the shawl she had bunched and mangled in her tight-folded arms. “Wrap yourself in this, Miss Perry, and be warm. Though we each seek the same reward, I shan’t be your foe.”
    She turned her head away, unwilling to look at him even though he could not read her expression. And he went downstairs—away—somewhere. Leaving her standing within the doorway of his bedchamber, pulling her bonnet’s veil back over her face with hands that were not quite steady.
    Maybe it was herself she couldn’t quite face. For she knew, as soon as he tucked her shawl about her with sensitive hands, that she was going to take him to bed.
    The only question in her mind now, as she descended the stairs and slipped away on her errand, was how long she would be able to wait.

Chapter Eight
    Eyes like a cat.
    As Charlotte’s steps ate the distance between the vicarage and the stone wall, she could not stop thinking of those four words.
    Eyes like a cat . Nancy Goff had said this as she swanned about the Pig and Blanket’s common room, and she had said “cat eye” as her life