Lem regarded her and then gave a nod.
It was all she needed to sigh and slump back in the chair for a moment, contemplating her unfortunate state of current being.
“You are well-dressed today,” Lem commented, “but a bit of fray about the edges. That is unlike you, my friend.”
She opened her eyes, just a slit, and snapped them to the side to meet his through her periphery.
He was grinning. An unusual sight. Broad and white and glaring.
“Something to say?” she snapped at him.
It made him chuckle again and shake his head. “So,” he began, leaning back in his own chair to meet her in her slumped eye level, “howwasMr. Townsend this morning?”
She did not answer.
She only groaned and brought her hands up to cover the remainder of her vision.
It was a shame she could not do the same over her ears.
She was simply doomed to hear her friend laughing at her, at length, and for very good reason.
Chapter Twenty
She had decidedthat there was no chance of accomplishing anything today if she didn’t change clothes. She had to getthatparticular scent away from her skin and her nose if she was going to focus. If she was going to act. If she was going to do anything atall.
The problem was that it didn’t work.
She had shed the pelisse, changed into a woolen gown of shimmering mushroomy silver and purple, and even rewrapped her hair with a matching ribbon, but she could still smell him. She could stilltastehim.
He was in her hair, she realized.
His wrists had transferred the bloody lust potion to her hair.
And washing her hair was not a matter of whim, nor was adding enough jasmine oil to drown out the scent without also giving her curls too much weight and oil.
She was destined, it seemed, to suffer.
Rehearsal was not for several more hours yet. Harcourt had already pissed off to do whatever mysterious barrister business he’d gotten into his head. Lem and Rhys had both retreated to the ballroom to practice their murder choreography.
She didn’t want to see Ruby. Or Hattie.
They would ask questions she did not care to answer.
She tried and failed to read a novel. And then a stage play. And also that letter from her father. She also briefly consideredgoing and sitting in the damned chicken coop with that bastard rooster and calling herself content.
But then Malcolm came home. And he was not alone.
“Lib!” he called, stomping through the house like a toddler looking for a misplaced toy. “Come out! I’ve got a diversion for you.”
“No, thank you!” she yelled back, which only gave him the correct direction in which to stomp to retrieve her.
Her heart was already in her throat.
She had seen the throng of men he’d brought with him down below her bedroom window. She could see their heads, various shades of brown and blond and gray, with one telltale shock of copper red right in the center.
Malcolm walked in and gave her an easy smile. “Come on,” he said. “I know you don’t have to be at the playhouse until late afternoon. I want to show you something.”
She frowned. “I’ve seen all your toys already, Malcolm.”
