Free Tarnished by Karina Cooper

wore no hat, carried no cane and wore red gloves, not white, and a red formal tie.
    But it wasn’t his choice in color that set him apart from the men above the drift.
    The man was a fallen angel in disguise. As he stepped into the light, my stomach clenched as it always did, and my throat dried. His skin was swarthy, not fair, as if he carried Gypsy blood in his veins, and his shoulder-length hair ate up the light in a straight black gleam. Beautiful. The word popped into my head, a mere breath before I remembered that he was as dangerous as he was mouthwateringly devastating.
    That was his skill. His strength. A ringmaster controlled the crowd and the performers, all with inhuman ease. All of my senses had to be on guard when he was near.
    I raised my chin as his unusual dark brown eyes raked over the scene. The blue streak running through the center of his left eye gleamed almost as if the heart of a flame had burned a swath through it, and his full mouth pressed tightly together in annoyance.
    “Let him go, Miss Black.”
    The man whose arm I held grunted as I released him. He scrambled out of my reach, rubbing his elbow with retribution in his scowl, but my gaze leveled on Hawke.
    That smoke-and-velvet voice of his wouldn’t lull me into any sense of complacency. Even if he was the only one to call me that. For my hair, I think, though he’d never said. “They wouldn’t let me in,” I told him.
    “Under my orders.” He towered above me, bracing one hand on his hip, the very picture of barely tamed nobility.
    The knot in my stomach warmed. “Why?”
    He raised one imperious black eyebrow. “Must you cause a scene wherever you go?” he asked, his tone just a shade away from reproach. As if I were an unruly child in need of discipline.
    It took effort to keep my jaw from falling open. What did that mean? Had the gossip already spread—I caught myself as I watched the glint in his mismatched eyes. Hawke was toying with me. As he always did.
    There was no way he could know about the marchioness’s ball, and certainly no way that he knew my identity above the drift. To him, I was simply Miss Black. Just a collector.
    I thrust out my jaw. “You owe me.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    A joke, that was. I couldn’t imagine Hawke begging for anything. And he knew it. “Cummings,” I elaborated. “You owe me his bounty.”
    The other eyebrow joined the first. “There was no delivery made,” he replied, equally as even. “Therefore, there is nothing owed. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
    “Hang on a minute!” I took a step toward him as he made to turn away, which proved to be my mistake as Hawke stopped precisely where he was. I was suddenly much closer to him than I meant to be, my head tipped up to glare into his eyes, my balance shaky.
    I sucked in a breath as one large hand curved over my shoulder. Steadying me.
    I smelled something musky. Foreign and spicy.
    My stomach pitched again, and I felt warmer than I should have in the dark and cold. My heartbeat throbbed almost painfully loud in my chest.
    His lips curved faintly. “Yes, Miss Black? Do you have a problem with the terms of the contract? I thought it rather standard. You deliver the man, and we pay you for his delivery.”
    “I’m well aware of the terms,” I snapped waspishly, seizing for some semblance of internal equilibrium.
    His hand fell away. “Then I fail to see—”
    “Did he escape?” His eyes narrowed. “I left him tied to your front gate,” I pressed on, flinging a hand back the way I came. “With my handkerchief in his pocket. You couldn’t have missed it.”
    Hawke stared at me for a long moment. A breeze wafted across the grounds, bringing relief to my too-warm cheeks and stirring the tails of his coat. His hair was pushed back from his forehead tonight, held in place by a gleaming pomade. Under the lantern flame, his square jaw and high, noble cheekbones threw shadows that painted him in demonic light.
    I swallowed as