Sir Howard?
As bad as the thought of Mr. Howard had been, Sir Howard was infinitely worse. My gut seethed liquid hot disgust. Had he cornered her at some point? Lost his reasoning in drink? The general would kill him. There were plenty of guns on the estate.
But something still wasn’t adding up. I wouldn’t tear off again without complete understanding of what had happened to her. I couldn’t imagine the woman standing in front of me, the woman who’d greeted me with a gun in her hand the morning I awoke, being overcome by anyone. “Miss Blackwell?”
She searched my face. So many emotions must be running over it, I had no idea what she saw. “What?” she asked, her voice breathy.
“Are you in any danger?”
“No.” She shook her head as if she wasn’t quite certain. “I don’t think so, no.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Correct.”
“Is someone in this party harassing you?”
She lifted her chin, a strange flicker of defiance in her eyes. “At the moment?”
“At any moment.”
She pulled her lips together, almost as if she were trying not to laugh. “Not in the way you are thinking. Before you dash offin a fit of anger, you’d better tell me who you are suspecting. So I can deny it.”
But I couldn’t say it. It was one thing to suspect Vincent Howard, but his father, a married man three times Miss Blackwell’s age? And something about that ghost of a smile on her face made me question all my cognitive reasoning. “Miss Blackwell, are you ... toying with me?”
She shook her head, the smile she’d been trying so hard to conceal inching its way onto her mouth. “Not by design.”
She was maddening. And to top it all off, I was close enough to catch her scent again. What was it? Lemon? Orange? A mix of the two?
I should simply walk away and leave her to her own devices. She and Mr. Howard had most likely planned this whole stunt in order to vex me—an absolutely absurd stunt, for there was no reason I should be vexed by anything Miss Blackwell had or hadn’t done.
But I couldn’t leave this conversation without knowing whether or not Miss Blackwell needed protection, and if she did, from whom. “You won’t tell me?”
“Trust me, it is better I don’t. Please forget this whole conversation.”
“Some things are impossible to forget.”
Her smile stiffened. Did it falter, even? No sooner had I seen the quiver of uncertainty, she hid it, tipping the corners of her mouth back into place. “I’m well aware.”
And for the briefest of moments, I had a flash of memory—a memory of feeling Miss Blackwell’s face in the palms of my hands, the softness of her cheek against the rough callouses of my fingers. If I’d actually held her face that night, and those images weren’t dreams, had I done even more? My pulse thundered in my ears. I must have, for I could see it in her eyes.
I fell away from her, stumbling back two large steps.
There was really only one plausible suspect after Vincent Howard.
Me.
I was the cad who’d kissed her without her permission. And yes, I was harassing her. She shouldn’t have been so hesitant to answer that question, but should have shoutedyesin response. I’d cornered her, interrogated her, and made a scene that wouldn’t go unnoticed by a single person in this room.
Confound it all. No wonder she didn’t trust me with her cousin.
Those flashes of dreams hadn’t been dreams at all.
She was shaking her head and backing away from me, but I had my answer in the way her breath hitched when she looked at me. And blast it all, her eyes flicked to my mouth for the briefest of moments. I stopped myself from muttering a curse at that glance. What had she thought of that kiss? Was there even the remotest possibility it had been pleasant for her?
I shook my head again, this time harder. She’d been kissed by a stranger, alone during a storm. There was only one way she could have reacted to it.
A chill swept through the darkness of the drawing room. Heaven help me, I’d taken advantage of General Blackwell’s daughter.
