Page 62 of Devil in Her Details

The curtains were yanked aside, and he stared into her beautiful, apologetic eyes. “Sorry about that.”

“No need for apologies.” His eyes pinned hers. “You trust too easily.”

“You are speaking about yourself, I presume.”

“You know I am.”

“Well, I do understand your concern . . .”

If she understood, she wouldn’t bloody trust him, would she? He didn’t understand how this woman’s mind worked.

“Sometimes, Dagger, the best risk you take is the risk you take on people.”

He scowled. “Don’t take too many of them.”

She smiled at him. “We are bound to fail in our assessments at one time or another. That doesn’t mean we should give up or stop. We simply learn and move on.”

“Is that what you did with Calvington?”

Her small nose scrunched up. “Unfortunately, yes. I took a risk that led to a less than satisfying outcome. Fortunately, I had friends who helped me.”

“The ones here just now.”

She nodded.

“Just what did that fool do?” Dagger asked, unable to hold back any longer. He understood the man believed he had some claim on Lilly, an obsessive, delusional one—irony and all that—but there seemed to be more than met the eye.

“He tried to trap me into marriage.”

Dagger’s rage was instant. “And just how the hell did he do that?”

She shrugged indifferently. “He lured me away at the ball asking for measurements for a shirt.”

What the devil?

His face must have projected his disbelief, for she grimaced. “Yes, well, not my finest moment. He knew I carried a measuring tape on me,” she defended. “I believed him when he said he’d been referred by my brother. Also, I was rather bored at the time.”

Dagger pushed down the rage swirling in his gut at the man’s gall. At her idiocy. He gave her a hard look before striding over to his daggers, sweeping a quick look of inspection over them. None had been touched. “But you found a way out of his trap,” he guessed.

“Yes, Allie, my friend who was here, found us.”

Dagger turned to her. “How did he know about the measuring tape?”

She blinked. “I . . .” Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”

“I doubt your brother would have told him.”

“No, he didn’t.”

Dagger didn’t like this one bit. “But someone did.”

She shook her head, then bit the side of her lip as she turned over his words. “I always thought he guessed.”

“That’s one hell of a guess.”

Her eyes met his. “But I don’t have any enemies, and my circle of confidants is tight. No one who knows about my hobbies would ever speak about them. After all, my brother is a duke.”

So in other words, she didn’t know.