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Emily stood and took a last reluctant look at her eggs. “Of course, I don’t know where Lynley lodges, so I may be obliged to wander about London with the appropriate vase for some time. I was thinking of the two-handled, Sphinx-headed blue pot in the second drawing room. It’s time for Mama to redecorate, don’t you think?”
The newspaper came down a bit. She could see her father’s brown hair, wrinkled brow, and puzzled blue eyes. “Your mother has decorating plans?”
Emily smiled. It occurred to her where she could go to find Lynley. Phil would know. “As soon as she comes home.”
Her father lowered his paper to the table. “Are you off then, Em?”
“I’m going to look in on Roz.”
Her father nodded, and the paper came back up.
* * * *
A footman admitted Emily to the house, explaining that Mr. Gittings was not available. Tugging at her bonnet strings, Emily assured him that she knew her way to the morning room.
“No one’s about, miss,” the footman said. “Breakfast has been put back on account of the master’s guest.”
“Guest?” Emily removed her gloves and cloak.
“In the drawing room, miss.”
“Thank you. I’ll see myself up.” Emily smiled and handed her gloves and cloak to the footman as if she were paying an ordinary morning call. She could think of only one guest who would make himself free with Roz’s drawing room.
The room lay hushed, cool, and dark and apparently deserted, no fire yet lit in the hearth. A single shaft of light where the drapery panels did not meet made a bright path across the pale blue carpet. Emily closed the door behind her and stood listening. From behind the curved back of the large green sofa came the faint rumble of a mild snore.
She crossed the room and peeked over the sofa back. There was her fiancé, lying just where he’d been hiding the day they met. Her stomach dropped the way it did when she and Circe took a jump. She clenched her fists to keep from reaching down to touch him.
The oversized sofa was made to hold him. He lay on his back in his black evening trousers and white shirt, his cloak over him, one arm across the cloak. He was shoeless, and the black silk stockings on his long, elegant feet were shredded and streaked with dirt and blood. Spatters of blood dotted the linen of his shirt at the open collar.
A night’s growth of beard shadowed his jaw, and a purple bruise the size of a thrush egg swelled there. He had plainly been in a fight, though where and how he’d lost his shoes in the fray, Emily could not imagine. He was deeply asleep. When he woke, she suspected he’d be in need of a saline draft for the aches.
She pulled up a chair. She meant to get answers to her questions about his sudden appearance in London, his hasty engagement to her, his interest in Lady Ravenhurst, and his habit of provoking chaos. But first she could really look at him without the cool front he showed to her or the imbecilic pose he wore in society.
He moaned, stretched, and opened one eye briefly.
“Good morning. I imagine your aches and pains are making themselves known.”
His eyes opened. “You.” The word was a dry croak. He swallowed. “How...”
“Roz and Phil are my family, you know.” Emily stood and crossed the room to ring the bell. “Tell me what you need.”
He groaned.
“Something cold and wet?” she asked.
She heard a vaguely affirmative mumble and sent the wide-eyed footman who answered the bell for a few items she thought would be helpful.
She settled beside him again. He opened his eyes. “I missed our ride.”
“And sent no message.”
“My apologies.”
“I’m curious to know how you lost your shoes.” She did not ask him if he’d won the fight.
His crooked mouth quirked slightly in what might have been a smile. “You’re curious about more than that.”
“Well yes, I am. As your fiancée, a position which, by the way, seems to require a lot of looking the other way while you do whatever it is you really came to London to do, I’d like to know what, besides a spectacular bosom and an idiot husband, draws you to Lady Ravenhurst.”
