“I could probably lift Diana high enough to look through that window. She could sit on my shoulders…”
A suggestion that sent Giles into an apoplexy. “If anybody will be liftingMiss Merriwell, it will be me! You can keep your filthy hands to yourself!”
She almost intervened in favor of Dalton because the thought of Giles’s hands on her body instantly reminded her of the last time they had been there, and she did not trust it to behave at the contact. Thankfully, she found another solution. The metal remnants of an old crane hoist protruded from the brickwork a few feet away from the window that she could perch herself upon while she peered inside. She pointed at it in relief. “Could somebody give me a boost?”
It was Giles who cupped his hands together, forcing her to have to brace hers on his distracting shoulders before he hoisted her into the air.
Of all the views Giles did not need in his current mood, the greatest was the sight of Diana’s delectable bottom hovering above his head. He also did not need to feel the womanly turn of her long legs. As she lunged sideways, to lock one foot on another rusty piece of tangled metalwork, Providence decided to send a different view to torture him thanks to the way her skirts simultaneouslyruched up and billowed. Now, where there had once been the reassuring barrier of unflattering, patched wool and petticoats between her calves and his eyeballs, there was instead the tantalizing column of her silk-clad leg.
Trust bloody Diana to dress like a washerwoman and still insist on the luxury of silk against her skin. Worse, if indeed his predicament could be worse, if he moved those eyeballs an inch, he would see a lot more than her seductive stockings and the saucy rosebud garters beneath her knees. He would see flesh.
Thigh flesh.
Creamy thigh flesh that joined with smooth, pert bottom flesh. Bottom flesh that his greedy hands had only experienced over her clothes, and just that had been enough to fuel his wildest fantasies ever since.
Sorely tempted and ashamed of the direction his wayward thoughts were going, he did the gentlemanly thing and closed his eyes while he held her ankles to stop her plunging to the floor and sending dangerous smugglers spilling into the yard.
“See anything interesting?” Dalton’s whispered question made him want to groan because while he wasn’t looking with his eyes, his imagination was keen to fill in the blanks.
“Yes!” Diana sounded excited. He could hear her smile. Picture the way her green eyes sparkled. The almost naked leg flexed some more, and the silk whispered against his fingertips like a siren’s song. “We’ve got him, Dalton!”
Being naturally difficult, the woman on the ledge wasn’t satisfied with that victory. She needed to watch the goings-on for several more minutes before she concluded she had seen enough. All the while Giles gritted his teeth and tried to think of all manner ofunpleasant things to stop his mind wandering to the carnal. None worked and it wandered there with impunity, and that, inevitably, made his body behave with equal inappropriateness. Before he surrendered for the sake of the tenuous grip he still had on his sanity and left her bewitching ankles to Dalton to secure, she finally hauled herself vertical and began to dismount.
A task that proved infinitely more complicated than the climbing up because she couldn’t turn around—but at least her skirts had returned to their proper place. The same could not be said for his vivid imagination.
After half a minute of painful fumbling for a suitable foothold, Giles had had enough. “Just fall backward and I’ll catch you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Trust me, I will catch you and then we can be gone!”
The suspicious minx narrowed her eyes before she ignored him, then proceeded to twist herself awkwardly on the crane bracket. Her triumph at facing outward was short-lived as she now had to let go of the metalwork behind her to climb down. Left with no other option, Giles held out his arms and she eyed them warily until she, too, concluded there was no other way.
With obvious reluctance she took his hands, wobbled, then lunged for his shoulders. The obtuse angle pushed him backward so that she toppled against him, leaving Giles smothered by her bosom because she had wrapped her flailing arms tight around his neck as she fell the last foot.
What happened next was destined to haunt his dreams for days, possibly months, maybe even years to come as he stared glumly through the bars of his tiny cell in Newgate.
The slow, firm press of her lush body plastered against his asshe, and her magnificent curves, slithered to the floor in the cage of his arms and left nothing to his imagination. His hands on her waist. Her flattened breasts trailing down his face, neck, and chest until they were abdomen to abdomen. Thigh to thigh. Her womanhood to his manhood. The old chap only too delighted to be enticed into action. Much too intimately entwined for comfort, they blinked at each other for a split second until her feet touched the earth and she briskly stepped away. Thankfully, a mere moment before his randy friend stood to full attention against her person.
“Let’s go before somebody sees us!”
They made a run for it but only got a few feet before they heard voices. Giles grabbed Diana and yanked her behind a haphazard mountain of ropes and tarpaulin, causing her to slam against him again before they dropped to the muddy ground out of sight. More exposed in the center of the alleyway and the stark whites of his eye wide, Dalton pivoted and dived behind a stinking pile of rubbish, somehow dislodging his leg in the process. The pale scrimshaw appendage seemed to glow in the weak moonlight as the back door to the warehouse creaked open.
Two men emerged, lighting pipes. One pulled up a nearby box to sit upon while the other seemed content to stand. A dim lamp dangled from his hand. Thankfully, both stared toward the river.
“I bet they are waiting for a boat.” He could tell by the way her neck craned that she was keen to spy some more despite the obvious danger and the fetid, chilled water that was seeping between all their seams thanks to the puddle they were sat in. “That must be how they distribute the opium.”
“Why else would they have a warehouse by the river? It doesn’t take a genius to work that out, so the authorities will, too, without the need for us to witness it.”
That earned him a stern glare. “Will you stop distracting me while I am trying to concentrate!”
Giles bit his tongue for all of five seconds then nudged Diana and gestured to the yard. “We’ve seen enough. If you keep your back to the wall, you should be able to sneak out to safety while they are occupied.”
“You expect me to leave a job half done to save myself!” Her outraged hiss tickled his earlobe. “Never mind that I will not abandon Dalton to those ruffians!”
“Dalton is a big boy and can save himself.” Giles suspected that, even legless, his wily servant had emerged unscathed from worse scrapes with less. “And as a drunken sailor facedown in the docks is a nightly occurrence, I doubt our two new friends would blink an eye if they saw him. You, on the other hand, stick out like a sore thumb. Once you are clear, wait for me beyond the yard and I will escort you home.”
“I knew bringing you was a mistake.” But she darted across the alleyway and flattened her back to the wall of the warehouse anyway. However, being ornery and stubborn in the extreme, she began to edge not toward the yard as he had instructed but toward the ruffians on the riverbank.
