He narrowed his eyes and fixed them on me in a way he hadn’t been capable of when he’d been so ill. The power of all of his clearheaded focus directly on me was weighty, but I held my ground. “You know exactly why.” His jaw flexed and he finally pulled that thunderous gaze away from me and looked across the lawn. It was clear the moment his eyes landed on her, for they softened in a way they never had when he looked at me. “Harriet.”
His familiarity with her was indecent. They’d known each other for only a few weeks, six years ago. “Miss Pryor,” I hissed at him.
His eyes hardened and settled back on me. “You are going to lecture me on propriety?”
I lifted my chin. “Only when necessary. You cannot speak of her in such familiar terms.”
“And will you accept my lectures in return? Or would you rather I simply told your parents that you locked not only me, but my valet, in my room all for the petty reason of trying to keep me away from your cousin?”
“Do you have proof that I did such a thing?”
“Do I need it? You told me yourself you don’t like to keep secrets from your family. Are you telling me if they confronted you about your behavior you would lie to them?”
I wouldn’t, and I would be quite embarrassed to admit to resorting to locking the captain in his room. But I wasn’t the only one who had something to hide. “And would you lie to Hattie if I told her we spent the night alone together only a week ago?”
He muttered a low curse and ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t make it sound so sordid. I was ill.”
I cocked my head to one side. He underestimated my ability to fight unfairly when necessary, and protecting Hattie was absolutely necessary. “You were in mydressing gown.”
All of his bluster evaporated. He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply. Lowering his face, he pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Exactly what am I supposed to do with you?”
“Right now?” I asked. He didn’t look up. “I told the others we would play shuttlecock and battledore. It seems like a better way to pass the time than arguing over a locked door that very well may have been caused by your own thoughtlessness.”
He didn’t move his head but slid his hand down lower and peered at me over it. “You think I locked the door from the outside while inside of my room?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think anything. I was simply stating the fact that you don’t know exactly what happened to your door and we might as well play a game.”
“And you want that game to be shuttlecock and battledore?” His words were measured.
I smiled broadly as if nothing in the world could make me happier. “Yes.”
I’ve been told by flirtatious men in ballrooms I have a remarkable smile. One gentleman specifically said my smile could light a room even if all the candles burned out. It was an inane compliment and I gave him no credit for it, but regardless, Captain Calder didn’t seem to share that particular gentleman’s opinion.
He let out a huff so low it bordered on growling. “That is acooperativegame.”
“And?”
“You think the pair of us could cooperate and keep the shuttlecock from landing on the ground?”
I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. “Why wouldn’t we?”
He shook his head and let out a heavy sigh. Then he stomped over to the battledores, picked them up, then stomped back and handed me one of them. His hand brushed mine when I grabbed it from him and even though we were gloved, awareness of that touch coursed through my hand and ran up my arm. What was wrong with me? I pulled my hand away from his as if it had been burned.
“I refuse to cooperate with you. We will play, but if you are the one that allows the shuttlecock to hit the ground,” he said with a tone so level he had most certainly not even registered that touch, “you will give me my key so I can release my valet.”
Why would he need his key to release his valet? If he was out of his room, certainly his valet would be too. “Your valet is still in your room?”
“Of course he is.” His voice was rising again. “He wasn’t about to crawl out the blasted window.”
My hand squeezed the handle of the battledore. I took in his disheveled hair and the less-than-crisp state of his cravat. “Your room is on the second story.”
“Trust me, Miss Blackwell.” He leaned forward, leaving only inches between us. “I am well aware.”
He’d crawled out the window and down the side of Blackwell Manor? I tried to picture exactly which window that would have been. We had no trees to aid him in climbing. The house was made from quarried limestone. There was a ridge that ran horizontally just above the windows of the ground floor, but if he’d lowered himself from a second story window, his feet wouldn’t have reached that ledge until he’d climbed down five or six feet with only the mortar joints as hand and footholds.
Without thinking through my actions, I dropped the battledore and grabbed the fingers of one of his gloves and pulled. Certainly enough, the tips of his fingers were raw—not bleeding, thankfully, but scraped and scuffed from obvious physical strain.
He yanked his glove out of my hands and then glanced behind me, no doubt in Harriet’s direction, but I frankly didn’t care who was watching us.
