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“Yes!” his cohort countered.
“Well, I would like to assist, if I can.” Isabelle closed the door. “After all, it is I who seems to have roused someone’s ire.”
The Scandalous Mr Cadwalader grinned. “I knew you’d feel that way, Miss Beaujeu, so I was hoping we could use you as…as…”
“Bait?” she queried, before returning her gaze to the pencil-sketched fly of sorts. “I agree it might be the only course of action. Although, I hope that’s not intended to be me?”
“No, no,” assured the Scandalous Mr Cadwalader, hair tousled, cravat hopelessly crooked. “That’s you.” And he pointed to…
“A puddle?”
“It’s honey.” He shook his head. “I told you, Rhys, we should have coloured it in.” With a roll of eyes, he picked up his jacket and strode over. “However, it’s our pig-headed duke here who needs convincing of the plan. I’ll allow him to outline it to you alone and perchance you can…” He nudged her with a gentle elbow. “Use your feminine wiles.”
The door closed and Isabelle worried her lip, feeling rather daunted. Her feminine wiles belonged to last night and the duke’s sensual-soaked gaze. Now he just looked…sinister, those eyes obscure as obsidian.
“Why do you not wish for my assistance? Do you not trust me to do as asked?”
“Of course I do,” he bit out.
“You think me not capable?”
He merely cast a look.
“Or that I could not stay my tongue when faced with the culprit?” she pressed, realising her display of temper at the prison might have undermined her somewhat.
He sighed, shook his head and thrust that lock of hair from his forehead.
“Then…why?”
“It is I that is the problem.” He strode over and placed broad hands to her shoulders. “This malicious wretchframed you for theft, Isabelle. An offence that could have seen you hung. I suspect they manipulated the Pritchards for their own ends, slammed that storeroom door upon you and perhaps fed Gwilym the falsehoods that led him to accost you at the ball.” He breathed deep. “I wish to hunt them down and make them suffer, not deliberately place you in their path. It pains me to even consider it.”
Oh.
And all of a sudden, she did not feel bereft in the slightest.
“But I trust you, Rhys. To protect me,” she murmured. “Do you think the plan a good one?” She twisted her head to frown at the fly and honey.
“It won’t necessarily work at the first attempt but… It has a chance, especially if the culprit believes you frightened and wearied by all that has transpired. But even so, the outcome is uncertain.”
“Well, we can but try,” she stated. “I wish to put an end to all this so tell me of this plan.”
Rhys traileda hand down his beloved’s neck.
For so long he had yearned for a woman with such fortitude, shrewdness and passion, and he’d found it all contained within Miss Isabelle Beaujeu.
Yet love, he was finding, was more problematic than the wistful poets gave to believe, for it entailed not just endless sighs, fervent embraces and yearning glances but understanding and trust, compromise and allowing the other to live unconfined.
Isabelle smoothed the furrow from his brow.
Closing his eyes for a brief moment, he relished the caress. “Did I forget to mention last night, Isabelle, that I love you?” he said in a rather less-than-poetic manner.
“Well…” A brief smile flashed. “Byrne the poet declared it, but not the Duke of Aberdare. And for one of the highest peers of the realm to declare his love for me would be a different matter entirely.” She fiddled with his waistcoat button. “For I’m a governess. Not only that, but a suspected jewel thief. And a fiendish fugitive. There’s a reward of ten shillings for my capture. We haven’t known each other that long. And I still can’t pronounce Glyndyfrdwy.”
No, she couldn’t.
Isabelle wore that deep-slate gown, gaze redolent of silvered, troubled waters. He surveyed her pink lips and fine sooty lashes, her delicate earlobe and a ruddy patch on her throat which he rather thought to be a result of his grazing teeth last night.
Some might say now was not the time for an ardent declaration, but if not now, when?
