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“We could hardly help it, could we?” He’d gotten her into this. If he hadn’t left her, she would have stayed in the ballroom. She had not deliberately set out to listen to a private conversation. She tilted her face up. She could see nothing of Lynley in the dark, but she sensed he was amused. His flawed mouth would be smiling, exposing that gap between his lips.
“Handy space for escaping, isn’t it?” he said.
Maybe she had misjudged him. Maybe Lynley did not like being stared at any more than Chunee had. “Is that what you were up to?”
“It certainly is what you were doing.” His hands moved up from her waist to cup her shoulders and pull her closer against him. Her head fit just under his jaw, her ear pressed to the white linen at his throat. For a moment she seemed to breathe him in.
“After you left me at the mercy of London’s most cutthroat husband hunters.”
“Were they hard on your black gown?”
She nodded against his chest and his arms tightened around her. “And on my engagement at such an advanced old age to a man with an obscure title.”
“Ouch. Did you defend me at all?”
“I said that you are very rich.”
“Good for you.”
“Are you going to tell me what you are really doing, hiding in here?”
One of his hands moved languidly down her spine. “Besides waiting for you to find me where we might be alone?”
“Yes, besides that.”
The hand moved up again. “Hmmm. Are you going to tell me why you chose your mother’s black gown?”
“A woman wants to know that a man appreciates more than her...beauty.”
“Her wit, for instance?” The hand on her back kept up its lazy drift. Her thoughts narrowed to the path of his fingers along her spine. The movement of his hand seemed almost idle, without intention, and yet her pulse began to race and in a confused moment she pressed more closely against him, as if seeking something from his solid bulk.
She started to pull back, when his hands captured her head and tilted her face up to his, and his mouth came down on hers in the dark. The kiss held her suspended weightless as air, neither breathing nor moving, caught in a swift upward flight of exhilaration. Then, as they had in the dance, they plunged together deeper into the kiss.
Emily could not say how long it went on, or how it ended. His arms were tight around her. He felt as solid and immovable as stone, while she was light-headed and giddy.
“Can you help me?” he was saying.
“What?” Emily tried to yank her wayward thoughts back to the moment. She was lurking in a closet, or nearly a closet, the sort of place where a footman might sneak to steal a kiss from a housemaid.
“I think it’s time to restore marital harmony to the house. Will you help me?” he asked.
He meant Lord and Lady Ravenhurst. Emily thought marital harmony unlikely between the pair they had overheard. “What do you mean to do?”
“We’ve got to stop the search. Will you help me create a distraction?”
We? How had they become we? “How?”
“Can you drop something over the balustrade?”
“Like what?” He still had his arms around her, but it was clear that his mind was somewhere else.
“Something that will need to be mopped up.”
“You’re serious.”
“Give me ten minutes. Are you willing?”
“Yes,” her kiss-disordered brain answered.
