The Lady Chosen (6 page)

She was screamingly aware of his strength, sheer masculine power close, so close, by her side. There was heat there, too, the beckoning presence of flame. The arm beneath her fingers felt like steel, yet warm, alive. Her fingertips itched, her palm burned. By an effort of will, she forced her wits to work. “So?” She slanted him a glance, as chill as she could make it. “What have you discovered?”

His hazel eyes hardened. “There’s been a curious incident next door. Someone broke in, but carefully. They tried to leave as little as possible to alert anyone, and nothing was taken.” He paused, then added, “Nothing bar an impression of the key to a side door.”

She digested that, felt her eyes widen. “They’re coming back.”

He nodded, his lips a thin line. He looked at Number 12, then glanced at her. “I’ll be keeping watch.”

She halted. “Tonight?”

“Tonight, tomorrow. I doubt they’ll wait long. The house is nearly ready for occupation. Whatever they’re after—”

“It would be best to strike now, before you have servants installed.” She swung to face him, tried to use the movement to slip her hand free of his.

He lowered his arm, but closed his hand more firmly about hers.

She pretended to be oblivious. “You’ll keep me—us—informed of what transpires?”

“Of course.” His voice was subtly lower, more resonant, the sound sliding through her. “Who knows? We might even learn the reason behind…all that’s gone before.”

She kept her eyes wide. “Indeed. That would be a blessing.”

Something—some hint not of laughter, but of wry acceptance—showed in his face. His eyes remained locked with hers. Then, with blatant deliberation, he shifted his fingers and stroked the fine skin over her inner wrist.

Her lungs seized. Hard. She actually felt giddy.

She would never have believed such a simple touch could so affect her. She had to look down and watch the mesmerizing caress. Realized in that instant that this would never do; she forced herself to swallow, to diguise her reaction, to turn her locked attention to good effect.

Continuing to look at his hand holding hers, she stated, “I realize you have only recently returned to society, but this really is not the done thing.”

She’d intended the statement to be coolly distant, calmly censorious; instead, her voice sounded tight, strained, even to her ears.

“I know.”

The tenor of those words jerked her eyes back to his face, to his lips. To his eyes. And the intent therein.

Again moving with that deliberation she found shocking, he held her stunned gaze, and raised her hand.

To his lips.

He brushed them across her knuckles, then, still holding her gaze, turned her hand, now boneless, and placed a kiss—warm and hot—in her palm.

Lifting his head, he hesitated. His nostrils flared slightly, as if he was breathing her scent. Then his eyes flicked to hers. Captured them. Held them as he bent his head again, and set his lips to her wrist.

To the spot where her pulse leapt like a startled hind, then raced.

Heat flared from the contact, streaked up her arm, slid through her veins.

If she’d been a weaker woman, she’d have collapsed at his feet.

The look in his eyes kept her upright, sent reaction rushing through her, stiffening her spine. Had her lifting her head. But she didn’t dare take her eyes from his.

That predatory look didn’t fade, but, eventually, his lashes swept down, hiding his eyes.

His voice when he spoke was deeper, murmurous thunder rolling in, subtly yet definitely menacing. “Tend your garden.” Once again he caught her gaze. “Leave the burglars to me.”

He released her hand. With a nod, he turned and strode away, over the lawn toward the parlor.

Tend your garden.

He hadn’t been speaking of plants. “Tend your hearth” was the more common injunction directing women to focus their energies in the sphere society deemed proper—on their husband and children, their home.

Leonora didn’t have a husband or children, and didn’t appreciate being reminded of the fact. Especially on the heels of Trentham’s practiced caresses and the unprecedented reactions they’d evoked.

Just what had he thought he was doing?

She suspected she knew, which only further fired her ire.

She kept herself busy through the rest of the day, eliminating any chance of dwelling on those moments in the garden. From reacting to the spur she’d felt at Trentham’s words. From giving rein to her irritation and letting it drive her.

Not even when Captain Mark Whorton had asked to be released from their engagement when she’d been expecting him to set their wedding day had she permitted herself to lose control. She’d long ago accepted responsibility for her own life; steering a safe path meant keeping the tiller in her hands.

And not allowing any male, no matter how experienced, to provoke her.

After luncheon with Humphrey and Jeremy, she spent the afternoon on social calls, first to her aunts, who were delighted to see her even though she’d purposely called too early to meet any of the fashionable who would later grace her Aunt Mildred’s drawing room, and subsequently to a number of elderly connections it was her habit to occasionally look in upon. Who knew when the old dears would need help?

She returned at five to oversee dinner, ensuring her uncle and brother remembered to eat. The meal consumed, they retreated to the library.

She retired to the conservatory.

To evaluate Trentham’s revelations and decide how best to act.

Seated in her favorite chair, her elbows on the wrought-iron table, she ignored his edict and turned her mind to burglars.

One point was unarguable. Trentham was an earl. Even though it was February and the ton correspondingly thin on the London streets, he’d no doubt be expected at some dinner or other, invited to some elegant soirée. If not that, then doubtless he’d go to his clubs, to game and enjoy the company of his peers. And if not that, then there were always the haunts of the demimonde; given the aura of predatory sexuality he exuded, she wasn’t so innocent as to believe he wasn’t acquainted with them.

Leave the burglars to him? She stifled a dismissive snort.

It was eight o’clock and pitch-dark beyond the glass. Next door, Number 12 loomed, a black block in the gloom. With no light gleaming in any window or winking between curtains, it was easy to guess it was uninhabited.

She’d been a good neighbor to old Mr. Morrissey;
irascible old scoundrel that he’d been, he’d nevertheless been grateful for her visits. She’d missed him when he’d died. The house had passed to Lord March, a distant connection who, having a perfectly good mansion in Mayfair, had had no use for the Belgravia house. She hadn’t been surprised that he’d sold it.

Trentham, or his friends, were apparently acquainted with his lordship. Like his lordship, Trentham was probably, at that moment, preparing for a night on the town.

Leaning back in the chair, she tugged at the stiff little drawer that clung to the underside of the circular table. Wrestling it open, she considered the large, heavy key that rested within, half-buried by old lists and notes.

She reached in and retrieved the key, laid it on the table.

Had Trentham thought to change the locks?

He couldn’t risk lighting a match to check his watch. Stoically, Tristan settled his shoulders more comfortably against the wall of the porter’s alcove off the front hall. And waited.

About him, the shell of the Bastion Club lay silent. Empty. Outside, a bitter wind blew, sending flurries of sleet raking across the windows. He estimated it was past ten o’clock; in such freezing weather, the burglar was unlikely to dally much beyond midnight.

Waiting like this, silent and still in the dark for a contact, a meeting, or to witness some illicit event had been commonplace until recently; he hadn’t forgotten how to let time slip past. How to free his mind from his body so he remained a statue, senses alert, attuned to all around him, ready to snap back to the moment at the slightest movement, while his mind roamed, keeping him occupied and awake, but elsewhere.

Unfortunately, tonight, he didn’t appreciate the direction in which his mind wanted to go. Leonora Carling was certain distraction; he’d spent most of the day lecturing himself on the unwisdom of pursuing the sensual response
he evoked in her—and she, correspondingly and even more strongly, evoked in him.

He was well aware she didn’t recognize it for what it was. Didn’t see it as a danger despite her susceptibility. Such innocence would normally have dampened his ardor; with her, for some ungodly reason, it only whetted his appetite further.

His attraction to her was a complication he definitely did not need. He had to find a wife, and that quickly; he required a sweet-tempered, biddable, gentle female who would cause him not a moment’s angst, who would run his houses, keep his troop of elderly relatives in line, and otherwise devote herself to bearing and raising his children. He did not expect her to spend much time with him; he had for too long been alone—he now preferred it that way.

With the clock ticking on the outrageous terms of his great-uncle’s will, he couldn’t afford to be distracted by a strong-willed, independent-minded, prickly termagent, one he suspected was a spinster by design, and was, moreover, possessed of a waspish tongue and, when she chose to deploy it, a distinctly chilly hauteur.

There was no purpose in thinking of her.

He couldn’t seem to stop.

He shifted, easing his shoulders, then leaned back again. What with taking up the reins of his inheritance, getting accustomed to having a tribe of old dears under his feet on a daily basis, inhabiting his houses and complicating his life, as well as considering how best to secure a wife, he’d let the small matter of a mistress or any other avenue of sexual release slide to the back of his mind.

In hindsight, not a wise decision.

Leonora had cannoned into him and set spark to tinder. Their subsequent exchanges hadn’t doused the flame.
Her haughty dismissiveness was the equivalent of a blatant challenge, one to which he instinctively reacted.

His morning’s ruse of using their sensual connection to distract her from the burglars, while tactically sound, had been personally unwise. He’d known it at the time, yet had cold-bloodedly reached for the one weapon that had promised the greatest chance of success; his overriding aim had been to ensure her mind was fixed on matters other than the putative burglar.

Outside the wind howled. Again he straightened, silently stretched, then settled against the wall once more.

Fortunately for all concerned, he was too old, too wise, and far too experienced to allow lust to dictate his actions. During the day, he’d formulated a plan for dealing with Leonora. Given he’d stumbled onto this mystery and she was, no matter what her uncle and brother thought, threatened by it, then given his training, given his nature, it was understandable, indeed right and proper, for him to resolve the situation and remove the threat. Thereafter, however, he would leave her alone.

The distant scrape of metal on stone reached him. His senses focused, expanded, straining to catch any further evidence that the burglar was near.

A trifle earlier than he’d expected, but whoever it was was most likely an amateur.

He’d returned to the house at eight o’clock, slipping in via the rear alleyway and the shadows of the back garden. Entering through the kitchen, he’d noted that the builders had left only a few tools gathered in a corner. The side door had been as he’d left it, the key in the lock but not turned, the teeth not engaged. The scene set, he’d retreated to the porter’s alcove, leaving the door at the top of the kitchen stairs propped open with a brick.

The porter’s alcove commanded an uninterrupted view of the ground floor hall, the stairs leading upward, and
the door to the kitchen stairs. No one could enter from the ground or the upper floors and get access to the basement level without him seeing them.

Not that he expected anyone to come that way, but he’d wanted to leave the way clear for the burglar belowstairs. He was willing to wager the “burglar” would head for some area of the basement; he wanted to let the man settle to his task before he intervened. He wanted evidence to confirm his suspicions. And then he intended to interrogate the “burglar.”

It was difficult to imagine what a real burglar would expect to steal from a vacant house.

His ears caught the soft slap of a leather sole on stone. Abruptly, he turned and faced the front door.

Against all the odds, someone was coming in that way.

A wavering outline appeared on the etched-glass panels of the door. He slipped noiselessly out of the porter’s booth and merged with the shadows.

Leonora slid the heavy key into the lock and glanced down at her companion.

She’d retired to her bedchamber supposedly to sleep. The servants had locked up and retired. She’d waited until the clock had struck eleven, reasoning that by then the street would be deserted, then she’d slipped downstairs, avoiding the library where Humphrey and Jeremy were still poring over their tomes. Collecting her cloak, she’d let herself out of the front door.

There was, however, one being she couldn’t so easily avoid.

Henrietta blinked up at her, long jaws agape, ready to follow her wherever she went. If she’d tried to leave her in the front hall and go out alone at this hour, Henrietta would have howled.

Leonora narrowed her eyes at her. “Blackmailer.” Her whisper was lost in the strafing wind. “Just remember,”
she continued, more by way of bolstering her own courage than instructing Henrietta, “we’re only here to watch what he does. You have to be absolutely quiet.”

Henrietta looked at the door, then nudged it with her nose.

Leonora turned the key, pleased when it slid smoothly around. Removing it, she pocketed it, then drew her cloak close. Curling one hand about Henrietta’s collar, she grasped the doorknob and turned it.

The bolt slid back. She opened the door just wide enough for her and Henrietta to squeeze through, then swung around to shut it. The wind gusted; she had to release Henrietta and use both hands to force the door closed—silently.

She managed it. Heaving an inward sigh of relief, she turned.

The front hall was shrouded in stygian gloom. She stood still as her eyes began to adjust, as the sense of emptiness—the strangeness of a remembered place stripped of all its furnishings—sank into her.

She heard a faint click.

Beside her, Henrietta abruptly sat, posture erect, a suppressed whimper, not of pain but excitement escaping her.

Leonora stared at her.

The air around her stirred.

The hair on her nape lifted; her nerves leapt. Instinctively, she dragged in a breath—

A hard palm clamped over her lips.

A steely arm locked about her waist.

Hauled her back against a body like sculpted rock.

Strength engulfed her, trapping her, subduing her.

Effortlessly.

A dark head bent close.

A voice in which fury was barely leashed hissed in her ear,
“What the devil are you doing here?”

*   *   *

Tristan could barely believe his eyes.

Despite the gloom, he could see hers, wide with shock. Could sense the leap and race of her pulse, the panic that gripped her.

Knew absolutely that it was only partially due to surprise. Sensed his own response to that fact.

Ruthlessly reined it in.

Lifting his head, he scanned with his senses but could detect no other movement in the house. But he couldn’t talk to her, even in whispers, in the front hall; devoid of furnishings, its surfaces polished and clean, any sound would echo.

Tightening his arm about her waist, he lifted her off her feet and carried her to the small parlor they’d set aside for interrogating females. Spared a moment to wonder at their farsightedness. He had to take his hand from her face to turn the knob, then they were inside, and he shut the door.

He still had her in his arm, feet off the ground, her back locked to him.

She wriggled, hissed, “Put me down!”

He debated, in the end, grim-faced, complied. Speaking face-to-face would be easier; keeping her wriggling her derriere against him was senseless torture.

The instant her feet touched the floor, she spun around.

And collided with his finger, raised to point at her nose. “I didn’t tell you about the incident here so you could waltz in and put yourself in the middle of it!”

Startled, she blinked; her eyes rose to his face. Quite stunned; she’d never had any man take such a tone with her. He seized the initiative. “I told you to leave this to
me.
” He spoke in a deep but furious whisper, at a level that wouldn’t carry.

Her eyes narrowed. “I recall what you said, but this person, whoever he is, is
my
problem.”

“It’s
my
house he’s going to be breaking into. And anyway—”

“Besides,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard him, chin lifting but like him keeping her voice low, “you’re an
earl.
I naturally assumed you’d be out socializing.”

The jab pricked his frustration. He spoke through his teeth. “I’m not an earl by choice, and I avoid socializing as much as I can.
But
that’s neither here nor there.
You
are a woman. A female. You have no purpose here. Especially given
I’m
here.”

Her mouth fell open as he grabbed her elbow and spun her to face the door.

“I’m not—!”

“Keep your voice down.” He marched her forward. “And you most certainly are. I’m going to see you out of the front door, then you’re going straight home and staying there come what may!”

She dug in her heels. “But what if he’s out there?”

He halted, looked at her. Realized she was staring beyond the hall door toward the dark, tree-shrouded front garden. His thoughts followed hers.

“Damn!” He released her, squelched a more explicit curse.

She looked at him; he looked at her.

He hadn’t checked the front door; the would-be intruder could have taken an impression of that key, too. He couldn’t check now without lighting a match, and that he couldn’t risk. Regardless, it was perfectly possible the “burglar” would check the front of the house before proceeding to the alley behind. Bad enough she’d come in, running the risk of scaring off the burglar or worse, encountering him, but to send her out now would be madness.

The intruder had already proved to be violent.

He drew in a deep breath. Nodded tersely. “You’ll have to stay here until it’s over.”

He sensed she was relieved, in the dimness couldn’t be sure.

She inclined her head haughtily. “As I said, this may be your house, but the burglar’s my problem.”

He couldn’t resist growling, “That’s debatable.” In his lexicon, burglars were not a woman’s problem. She had an uncle
and
a brother—

“It’s my house—at least, my uncle’s—that he’s trying to gain access to. You know that as well as I.”

That
was unarguable.

A faint scratching reached them—from the hall door.

Saying “Damn!” again seemed redundant; with an eloquent glance at her, he opened the door. Shut it behind the shaggy heap that walked in. “Did you have to bring your dog?”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

The dog turned to look at him, then sat, lifting her great head in an innocent pose, as if intimating that he of all people should understand her presence.

He suppressed a disgusted growl. “Sit down.” He waved Leonora to the window seat, the only place to sit in the otherwise empty room; luckily the window was shuttered. As she moved to comply, he continued, “I’m going to leave the door open so we can hear.”

He could forsee problems if he left her alone and returned to his post in the hall. The scenario that most exercised his mind was what might happen when the burglar arrived; would she stay put, or rush out? This way, at least, he would know where she would be—at his back.

Opening the door silently, he set it ajar. The wolfhound slumped to the floor at Leonora’s feet, one eye on the gap in the door. He moved to stand beside the door, shoulders against the wall, head turned to watch the dark emptiness of the hall.

And returned to his earlier thought, the one she’d interrupted. Every instinct he possessed insisted that women,
ladies of Leonora’s ilk especially, should not be exposed to danger, should not take part in any dangerous enterprises. While he acknowledged such instincts arose from the days when a man’s females embodied the future of his line, to his mind those arguments still applied. He felt seriously irritated that she was there, that she’d come there, not defying so much as negating, stepping around, her uncle and her brother and their rightful roles….

Glancing at her, he felt his jaw set. She probably did it all the time.

He had no right to judge—her, Sir Humphrey, or Jeremy. If he read all three arright, neither Sir Humphrey nor Jeremy possessed any ability to control Leonora. Nor did they attempt to. Whether that was because she’d resisted and browbeaten them into acquiescence, or because they simply did not care enough to insist in the first place, or alternatively, were too sensitive to her willful independence to rein her in, he couldn’t tell.