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Then a little face popped into view. "Stimp?"
"Get off my damn carriage, you worthless rat!" the driver yelled.
Stimp jumped inside, demanding, "And where've you been?"
The box rocked from side to side as the driver began to descend.
"It's fine," Emma called. "This rat is known to me."
Stimp's jaw edged out. "Yer in big trouble."
"Being paid to spy on me again?"
"Oh, not just that. I'm to send for him when I see you. The man's furious."
"Yes, I know."
"And he seemed quite drunk by the time he left off waiting in his shiny carriage. Murder in 'is eyes."
Somehow just knowing made Emma feel bolder. "Drunk and murderous and you mean to scurry off and bring him straight to my door?"
The stubborn chin inched up. "Can you pay me better?"
"Perhaps."
"But you'll pay me once and then not at all. I'm practically on His Grace's payroll." He shrugged, conveying his sympathy but no regret.
Emma turned away to stare again at the sad door that led to her sad little home. Hart was furious. And drunk. And determined to make her pay.
The shivers in Emma's belly intensified until she felt she couldn't breathe. She'd made her decision. She could finally afford to be foolish.
"No need to inform him, Stimp. I'll find him myself."
His little face scrunched up. "I don't believe you."
Emma pulled off her soiled gloves and tossed them onto the opposite seat. "Believe me or not, but I'll not sit here and wait to be cornered. Now out of my carriage. If the man wants a fight, he'll get it."
He could not believe it, even hours later.
Scandalous as she was—defiant and reckless and sensual—Hart could not believe she'd offered up her body in a bet.
He told himself she hadn't meant it and wouldn't have followed through with it. Hell, Hart wouldn't have let her. But that did not change the fact that she'd publicly offered herself to another man as she'd refused Hart even a hint of private affection.
We are not nice, she'd said. "No," Hart growled to the empty library, "we are not nice. Not anymore."
The tenderness he'd begun to feel, the dreaded caring, had been pushed down into his gut, condensed into a burning, writhing knot of hatred. He was doing his best to drown it, but liquor was flammable, after all.
Hart clenched his fingers tighter around the leaded crystal in his hands. The scrapes on his knuckles burned like fire when a little bourbon sloshed over the side of the glass and dribbled over his fingers. That bastard Marsh had had it coming. Hart wished he'd gotten more than two blows in before the other gentlemen had intervened. They'd claimed it wasn't fair to continue beating an unconscious man. Hart had loudly disagreed.
Despite that he was alone, Hart growled several heartfelt curses before he tossed back the last of the bourbon and reached for the bellpull.
He knew he'd only made the whole thing worse by confronting Marsh. He realized now that it would have been a simple thing to imply that he and Emma had severed their friendship long before. Then there would only have been nods of sympathy and a few congratulations at having the wisdom to cut Lady Denmore loose. But there had been no thinking for Hart. There had only been blind, howling fury, prodded on by unexpected pain.
"Your Grace?"
"This bottle's empty."
"Sir." His butler bowed from the room and returned within seconds. Hart was thinking that the man must be a god of anticipation, but then he noticed that his hands were empty.
