It Happened One Midnight (PG8) (20 page)

“Why are you smiling?” he said irritably.

“Do this.” She smoothed her hair with both hands.

His hands flew up to his head. He began patting. “Thank you,” he muttered. “Damned Byronic
nonsense . . .
I ought to have it shaved down to a nub.”

“Don’t!” The words were out of her before she could stop herself.

He lowered his hands slowly. He eyed her speculatively.

She stared back at him. Lips pressed together.

“Like the curls, do you, Tommy?” he asked after a pause. His tone was neutral. And yet there was a waiting, cautious quality to his stance.

He probably thinks I’m going to cling and swoon over him now.
Like the rest of the women in the ton.

Little chance of
that,
since she wanted nothing more than to bolt at the moment.

And yet she hadn’t a rejoinder. Her wits had been kissed into a stupor and clearly hadn’t recovered all the way.

“You’ll need these.”
One! Two!
He whipped her slippers at her.

She shrieked and ducked and threw her arms over her head. The shoes thumped harmlessly to the ground just shy of where she stood.

The bastard was laughing softly.

“
That
was for nearly taking out my eye when you kicked them off on your way over the . . . side of the bridge.” He repeated to himself, incredulously, as though just remembering how they’d gotten here. “Over the side of the bridge. When you tore off your clothes and leaped into the
water
over the side of the bridge. For the love of
God,
” he muttered.

“We’ve been over this,” she said easily. “And honestly, Jonathan, an eye for an eye is childish.”

“If I wanted to take out your eyes with the slippers I
would
have,” he said idly. “Believe me.”

She did.

She shoved her feet into them, smoothed her dress, patted her hair, squared her shoulders. “Well?” She swept her arms down her person.

The stillness of his face as he studied her was deliberate. He was hiding his thoughts.

“You’ll do,” he said gruffly.

Another awkward little silence ensued.

We’ve forgotten how to talk to each other.
The notion panicked her.

“Come on, then. You can’t climb very well in those shoes. I’ll need to tow you up the embankment like a barge.” He thrust out his hand.

She looked at it.

Her hand moved toward his like a mouse trying to steal cheese from a trap.

She expected him to smile or tease. He didn’t. He simply waited.

And once her hand was in his he closed his fingers over hers deliberately, so that she could feel every single one of them. He gripped her for a second with something that felt like irrevocability. That felt peculiarly like a vow.

Then he gave a short nod, and tugged.

She trailed him like a child, allowing herself to be led. A strange feeling. She could not have said what he was thinking as he climbed up the embankment, capturing and holding back shrubbery so it wouldn’t lash her in the face, speaking only to point out the best foothold.
She
didn’t think or speak at all. The world had narrowed to that place where their hands entwined. She wondered if he could feel her pulse kicking away in there. She wondered why she wanted to pull away at the same time she would have been willingly led anywhere by him at that moment.

But soon they were on the road again, and he freed her hand as though releasing a bird he’d nursed back to health. He didn’t look at her while he did it.

“How did you get that scar on your wrist, Tommy?”

She stared at him, her mind blank with surprise.

His voice was even. But he wasn’t blinking. And he wasn’t looking at her.

“Childhood mishap.” Her voice was faint.

“Ah,” he said. “Onward then.”

It was the last word either of them spoke for a while. The sun was lowering and tinting the edges of leaves gold, spreading big cognac-colored pools of light on the ground, and everything was too beautiful and strange for speaking, and Tommy was weary. Too weary to wonder what made Jonathan quiet.

The medal was safely in her possession once again, gripped tightly in her hand.

“About what happened today . . .” she said as they made ready to part.

“The bridge dive, the revelations about your parentage, how
blindingly
pale you truly are— ”

“Don’t be obtuse.”

“Very well. ‘About what happened today . . .’ ”

“Well, it won’t happen again, of course.” She said it lightly but firmly. Searching his face for their usual concord.

He didn’t speak for a moment. He seemed to go rather still. She cursed the lowering light, for she couldn’t quite read his expression.

“Oh, Tommy,” he said at last. “You are stupider than you look.”

She jerked backward. And then indignation sent her voice out at whistle-pitch. “
I
—”

He winced. “Don’t squeak.”

“Then don’t be enigmatic! It doesn’t suit you.”

“Very well, then. I’m afraid it’s like this. Picture, if you will, Tommy, the fuse of a cannon. Now, when one touches a flame to a fuse, what happens? It’s consumed bit . . .” He stepped toward her, so close that his boot toes nearly touched the toes of her slippers.

She sucked in a breath. But she stood her ground when his knees brushed hers.

“. . . by bit . . .”

His voice had gone perilously soft. “. . . by bit. Until . . .”

His breath fluttered her hair.

His mouth was next to her ear now. “Boom.”

It was really more of an exhale than a word. Still, it made her jump a little.

He slowly stepped back and looked down at her. She could see herself in the big dark mirror of his pupils. She imagined her own pupils were just as huge, and that in that moment they reflected back to each other infinitely, without giving anything in particular away.

“But of course it won’t happen again.” He was suddenly jarringly crisp. He said it with faint mockery and a hint of something strangely like anger.

It made her want to kick him.

He didn’t wait for a reply.

“Enjoy your trip back to London, Miss de Ballesteros.”

He touched his hat to her and strode off, whistling something that may have been “The Ballad of Colin Eversea.”

Chapter 16

K
LAUS WAS TINKERING WITH
his press when the bell of the shop jangled. He glanced up idly.

Then shot to an upright position immediately.

An angel was standing in the doorway.

He gawked momentarily, basking in the flawless, serene English Rose beauty: the golden hair, the round blue eyes, the complexion of cream.

His beleaguered first few months in England suddenly seemed worth it. Jonathan Redmond was surely a genius.

He bowed, low and elegant and deferential.

“Good afternoon, madam, and welcome to my humble establishment. I would be delighted to be of some service to you today, if I may.”

“I am Lady Grace Worthington, Mr. Liebman. And . . . I received a message . . .

She had indeed received a message, on Klaus Liebman & Co. stationery:

Your name was submitted to us privately by more than one gentleman as an example of all that a Diamond of the First Water should be. We would be honored if you would accept our invitation to pose for a very special edition deck of fine playing cards paying homage to the loveliest young ladies in London. An appointment will be set for you at two o’clock Wednesday next, should you wish to be immortalized thusly.

She paused and blushed, fidgeting with her reticule.

But this first arrival was bold, despite her blush. She was apparently unaccompanied, and she kept glancing over her shoulder.

“Ah, Lady Grace. Say no more. It is obvious to any man with eyes why you are here. You honor Klaus Liebman & Co. by accepting our humble invitation. It will not take our skilled portraitist very long to capture the purity of your beauty, if that is what you wish. A sketch will be all that is necessary. If you will please have a seat in the window, like so, where the light will make the most of your complexion, and our Mr. Wyndham will join you presently. May I bring you a cup of tea?”

“Tea would be lovely, thank you.”

Lady Grace Worthington settled into the chair by the window and folded her hands demurely, while Klaus ducked into the back room, and via a series of eyebrow wags and chin nudges communicated her arrival to Mr. Wyndham, who had agreed to sketch for a percentage of the profits.

He peered out, looked back at Klaus and mimed a whistle, and Klaus grinned.

At half past the hour, Miss Marianne Linley strolled by in the company of her brother, Mr. Harry Linley. The two of them had been invited by Lord Argosy to meet in a tea house just next door to the printer at precisely that hour.

Marianne Linley’s brother came to an abrupt halt at the vision that was Lady Grace Worthington rising from chair in the window to admire what appeared to be a sketch held by a man who had the eyes of a rogue, the hair of a fox, and the shirt of a painter—splashed profligately with color.

“Oh, this must be the printer Argosy mentioned! The Diamonds of the First Water decks.”

Marianne, a petite brunette with snapping dark eyes, was immediately alert. She fancied
herself
precisely that. Certainly she had cause for it, since any number of men had lavishly complimented her this season.

“What you do mean by that?” she demanded. “Diamonds of the First Water decks?”

“Liebman will be printing decks of cards featuring all the most beautiful girls in the ton as the suits. You know, say . . . Lady Gra—er, you, as the Queen of Spades.”

Her eyes narrowed.

The most beautiful girls!

“Why is
Lady Grace Worthington
sitting in that chair?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps she was invited? Rumor has it Jonathan Redmond will be drawing a bride from the deck before the year is out.” He gave a short laugh and shook his head. “Redmond.”

Marianne gasped. “Does he really mean to do that?”

Marianne fancied herself in love with Jonathan Redmond, and had suffered greatly when it became clear he hadn’t fallen in love with her. Primarily she was in love with the
idea
of Jonathan Redmond, since he’d been so unattainable and everyone else wanted him. Yearning and competition made her suffer, and certainly suffering meant she was in love.

Her brother, who hadn’t any idea of this, shrugged. “Who knows? But he has devilish luck with Five-Card Loo, so why wouldn’t he have luck with
this
game, whatever it—where are you
going?
We’re supposed to meet Argosy in minutes.”

Marianne had pushed open the door to Klaus Liebman & Co. “Fetch me later, Harry. I intend to have
my
portrait done.”

And Lady Grace Worthington and Marianne Linley assiduously avoided each other’s eyes as they passed, one going into the shop, the other leaving.

H
E WASN’T PRECISELY
avoiding her, Jonathan told himself.

It was just that invitations continued to avalanche the Redmond town house; he accepted them, relieved and reveling, for a time, anyway, in familiar pastimes in which he was relatively certain he would not be shot at or arrested or required to dive into a river, and conversations that were so predictable he could have held them entirely on his own rather than with lovely, interchangeable blond women. There honestly was no time to go to the salon that week.

And yet nights were a different story.

“Mein freund! You look as though you have not slept,” Klaus exclaimed as they pored over the books.

That would be because he hadn’t, not really.

Something about being alone in a bed at night—for that’s precisely what he’d been, alone—well, the moment he closed his eyes all he saw was Tommy’s face after he’d kissed her: soft, stunned, vulnerable. The feel of her arcing beneath him, lithe as a flame, and her hands skimming his body, and her mouth.

Oh, her mouth. The wonder of it.

Kissing her had been rather like coming to know her: layers upon layers of revelation. He’d never dreamed a mere kiss could be like a punch to the head. In the best possible way.

He’d seen stars.

And never had it been like that before. Like a torch to straw, just that fast. A lust so consuming and raw-edged it both shook him bodily and rattled him into stopping, because, despite what anyone else might think, Jonathan Redmond was sensible. And he knew more than a little about control. But he would have taken her, right there on the riverbank, swiftly and hard. He could imagine it all too well.

He sucked in a breath.

No. He’d been sensible to stop. Not
afraid
—sensible.

It was just . . . it was just that he hadn’t touched nearly enough of her.

Perhaps just a little more would take the edge off the need.

He suspected this was the sort of mental conversation future opium addicts had with themselves after that very first taste.