To Tempt a Saint by Kate Moore Page A

March read them, too, a habit of his she’d discovered when he moved into their house following her father’s death.
    Will Jones immediately began to fill a plate. “You’re not coming with me dressed like that,” he said over his shoulder to Xander. He glanced at Cleo. “She’d do better on Bread Street than you. Put a greasy apron around her middle, and she’ll fit right in.”
    “She’s not going near Bread Street,” Xander said.
    “Good morning to you, too,” Cleo said to her brother-in-law. He paused in his plate loading but offered no greeting. The two brothers seemed different because of the contrast in their dress, but now Cleo could see that both had the same hard-edged profile.
    The scrape of Will Jones’s serving spoon filled the ensuing pause.
    “Go naked then, Xan, or come by my place. I’ve got proper rags for you.” Will Jones sat down next to Cleo and dug into the mound of buttered eggs and ham on his plate. Cleo wondered that he could enjoy them with all the smells that emanated from his clothes. Smoke and stale spirits dominated the mix. She shifted to give him room.
    He stiffened and shot her a caustic glance. Then he leaned close, one beery shoulder nudging hers, and said, “It’s not polite to think ill of people.” He righted himself and stabbed a piece of ham. “But”—he winked at her—“it’s very smart.”
    Cleo turned to her husband. “We have a bargain about the bank.”
    “When I go, you go.” He rose and withdrew his pocketbook and put a stack of bank notes on the table. “Amos gives a good haircut. I recommend Mr. Hodge as a grinder. Tomorrow Serena Perez is coming to fit you with some clothes.”
    “Am I restricted to the house then?”
    His level gaze didn’t change. “Go where you wish. Alice will accompany you. Local tradesmen are quite accustomed to calling. Even at this house.”
    The door closed behind him.
    She stared at her plate, her appetite gone. She had intended no insult. She knew that tradesmen would call. She was just out of practice with London ways. Her shoulders slumped. It was a poor start to a campaign of seduction.
    Beside her Will Jones ate steadily. The scrape of his knife and fork against the china filled her ears. After a minute he stood and leaned over her. She could see his empty plate. “Next time, love, choose your ground more carefully. The battle won’t be won over eggs and a rasher of bacon.”
     
     
     
     
     
    X ANDER stood at the foot of Bread Street, choking on its foulness and thinking inconvenient thoughts about his wife. He had dreamed of her naked. She had been under his roof less than a day. He had spent three-quarters of an hour with her in the company of his lawyer, had walked by her closed door, had banished knowledge of her nearness from his conscious mind in the last minutes before sleep, and still she had invaded his dreams, had stepped down the hall on light feet in a white lawn shift to stand beside his dreaming self, reproach and invitation in those green eyes. His unconscious mind had reached for her like a beggar.
    He was long past unprofitable fantasies about gently bred ladies. At seventeen he had fallen in love and proposed marriage to a widow. Newly arrived at Oxford, he had broken his collarbone in a football match. When his friends carried him to the nearest house, Anne Reede had opened her back sitting room and eventually her arms to him.
    In pain, and under the influence of his first and only dose of laudanum, he had been unable to leave the makeshift bed arranged in her sitting room. In that waking daze Anne had passed in and out of his sight, a gentle vision in gray silks, unhurried, unruffled, caring with sweet sternness and ready laughter to her own small boys. She handled his friends’ inquiries with ease and authority, and had procured from them some necessities for his comfort.
    On the third day she had shaved and bathed him, and his sleeplessness had had an entirely new cause. She came to