Page 32 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

What an effort it had taken to draw the Earl of Ryland as if he were not handsome as sin.

In spite of herself, her eyelids drooped. Other senses surged to take the place of sight. The gentle but insistent pressure of his lips against hers. The spice of his cologne and the sweet sharp tang of claret. The heat of his mouth, his touch, as his hand sank to her hip and drew her closer still.

The whisper of a sigh.

Her sigh.

She leaned into his embrace, pressed her lightly clothed form against his chest, then stiffened at the telltale crinkle of the laudanum bottle.

Good God. What was she thinking?

All he would have to do would be to wrap his arms around her, and he would find the purse.

She broke the kiss, took a step backward, opened her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said gravely. As if he had done anything other than what she’d asked of him. As if he’d done something far more scandalous than kiss her back.

She shook her head, denying the apology, and almost immediately became aware of the sensation of the bottle sliding down the front of her nightgown, her bosom entirely inadequate to the task of keeping secrets.

Instinctively she brought up a hand to catch it and heard the muted tinkle of coins spilling onto the carpet around her.

Astonishment, disbelief, something very like hurt flared into his dark eyes. “What’s this, Miss C—?”

Whether he had intended to use the old alias or the new, she couldn’t be certain. She spoke across him before the word took shape.

“Constantia. My name is Constantia.”

She blurted it out in part to divert attention from the unfolding disaster of the spilled purse and all it implied.

Also because over the last few days, an unexpected intimacy had grown between her and Lord Ryland, and the continued ruse of lost memory was now an uncomfortable weight she wanted to shed. This way, she could leave with a clear conscience.

But when he repeated Constantia, shaping the syllables of her name as if speaking in a foreign tongue, she realized her mistake.

Deception was her familiar, well-worn armor. The alternative was a vulnerability that left her lightheaded, her very spirit scraped raw.

She must have wobbled on her feet, for the next thing she knew, he had caught her by the upper arm and steered her backward to the chair in the dressing room, stepping carefully around the pile of spilled coins.

“You know who you are,” he said, stooping so he could look into her face. His dark eyes flitted over her features, his own expression a mixture of confusion, disappointment, and relief. “I suspected as much all along. Yet you were going to”—he glanced toward the money and back again—“to leave without saying anything at all.”

“Yes. I—” She paused to gnaw on her lower lip. “It’s safer for you if I do. And you’ve been kinder than I expected, far kinder than I deserved.”

“Kinder than you expected,” he echoed, irony hollowing out his voice. “Then you—you remember me too.”

Unable to hold his gaze, she nodded. “From the first. But you offered me your protection—”

“Until your memory returned,” he finished for her, his voice heavy with something like disbelief.

He sank to the floor, dropping onto his backside with a soft thud, then propping one forearm on his raised knee. The pose suggested he expected to be seated thus for some time. “Before you go, Constantia,” he said, giving her name a subtle stress, a hint of skepticism, “don’t you think I deserve the truth?”