He looked up, dazed, to see a figure standing in his doorway, draped in white, crowned in white, hand outstretched, looking like a stern Byzantine angel...
Smooth oval face, long nose, firm lips.
A woman.
She swept forward to grip the pistol barrel. “You must not!”
He kept a hand tight on the butt. “What the devil business is it of yours, madam?”
An elegant woman in high fashion, including a turban-style hat with a tall feather. Where the pox had she come from, and what business was he of hers?
Her steady eyes held his. “I need you, Lord Vandeimen. You can kill yourself later.”
He dragged the pistol out of her gloved hands. “I can kill myself anytime I damn well please, and take you with me!”
She straightened, looking down her long nose. “Not with only one pistol ball.”
“There are many ways of killing, and I’ll save the pistol for myself.”
He saw her pale and suck in breath, but when she spoke it was steadily. “Give me a few minutes of your time, my lord. Then, on my word, if you still wish it, I will leave you to your purpose.”
Such scorn. Such judgment in those blue-gray eyes. If the pistol had been working, he might have shot her to wipe away that scorn. He immediately put the weapon down.
She snatched it and retreated a few wise steps, pistol clutched to her creamy gown. Then she looked down at it, shuddered, and placed it on his open desk by the papers he’d carefully prepared.
Curiosity suddenly wiped out anger and urgency.
This woman knew him, but he had no idea who she was. Not surprising, since he hadn’t been moving in fashionable circles.
Her gown was in the height of fashion, as was the long, pale cashmere shawl that looped over both elbows and almost trailedthe ground. He knew enough of women’s furbelows to price that shawl at a sum that would reroof Steynings.
It wouldn’t fix the damaged plaster or the rotting wood, but the roof would be a start.
“Well?” he asked, linking his hands, ready to enjoy this interlude at the gates of hell.
She subsided into the chair that matched his, then jumped when it sagged down beneath her.
“It hasn’t collapsed under anyone yet,” he remarked. “Am I to know your name, or is this all cloaked in hoary mystery?”
Color blossomed in her creamy skin, making her look less like a plaster saint, and much more interesting in a fleshy way. He suddenly wondered what she’d look like far gone in sex, which was another thought he’d not expected to have again.
“My name is Maria Celestin.”
His brows rose. The Golden Lily. The wealthy widow who had just emerged from mourning, causing every red-blooded fortune hunter to seethe with desire. Someone had suggested that he pursue the woman as the solution to his woes.
She’d have to be insane to marry him, however, and he’d no mind to marry a madwoman.
He knew the age of the Golden Lily. Thirty-three. That explained her composure and steady eyes. He knew her bloodlines. She’d been born a Dunpott-Ffyfe and married down to some upstart foreign merchant.
“And your purpose here, Mrs. Celestin? If you are seeking consolation of the flesh, I regret that I am neither in the mood nor the state to oblige.”
“Then it is as well that I am not, my lord.”
She didn’t blush. Perhaps she’d heard the same too often. Distressing to be cliché.
She too had linked her hands in front of her, and now she’d grown accustomed to the chair she was trying to be elegant andcomposed. She wasn’t, though. She was wound tight as a watch spring like a raw recruit on the brink of battle.
Gad, he hoped she wasn’t here to fight for his immortal soul.
