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“Not too much at all, as a matter of fact,” she retorted. “I usually know where you are.”
He did not like that. “And why is that?”
“Why, so I might call upon you in a pinch, clearly.” She set her carpetbag on a nearby untouched pew and unzipped it. “Would you like to know what I did last week?”
Absolutely not. “What did you do last week?”
“I invented a new kind of explosive.”
What on earth was this woman on about? And why was he unable to ignore her when she was around? “It occurs to me, Lady Imogen, that such a pronouncement might be taken as a confession.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I haven’t done anything with it yet.”
He waited for a moment, then, “Yet.”
“Well, unless you count covering my laboratory with unexpected shiny projectiles.”
He blinked and tilted his head. “Unexpected projectiles.”
“No, the projectiles were expected. Obviously, what with it being an explosive,” she said, waving one hand, gloved in intricate white lace. “It was unexpected that they were so shiny. I knew they would be very small, but this—it was a lovely surprise. Exceedingly difficult to clean up, but beautiful, really. More irritating than dangerous.”
“I cannot imagine what it must be like to encounter such a thing.”
She smiled at him, and he absolutely refused to be dazzled. “I’m very flattered that you would think so.”
“I—” He was about to tell her he hadn’t meant to call her beautiful. Except she was beautiful. In the wild, terrifying way unpredictable storms and lionesses on the hunt were beautiful.
Before he could find the words, she said, “However, you are incorrect. I amfarmore dangerous than I am irritating,” she said happily, supremely out of place here, in Lambeth, on Bully Boys turf.
Why did this woman regularly make him feel as though he’d taken a blow to the head? She was close now, near enough that if he reached for her, he might touch her. Not that he would ever touch her. She might have doused her clothing in poison during some mad experiment. “Lady Imogen... what are you doing here?”
She stopped and looked up at him, her pretty round face framed in a halo of black curls. “I’ve brought you a gift!”
“No.” The last time he’d received a gift from this woman, he’d been standing in the rubble of his jail.
“Really, Detective Inspector,” she chided him. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were being deliberately rude. I should think you would like my gifts by now. Last time, I made you one of London’s most eligible bachelors! Is that not what they called you in theNews?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he lied.
“I’m certain it is,” she said. “I read that the unmarriedwomen of Mayfair dearly love summoning Scotland Yard to their homes in the hopes a certain detective inspector might wander in. It’s a game of some sort. It has a name.”
He looked to the ceiling.Don’t say it.
“A Peek of Peck!”
He clenched his teeth. “I don’t pay attention to the papers.”
“Really,” she asked, a dangerous gleam in her eye. “Thatisa surprise, considering how you’ve been quoted in more than a few interviews about...” She paused, no doubt for mad effect. “What is it you’re calling those ladies? The Hell’s Belles?”
Tommy would wager a year’s salary that this wild woman was one ofthose ladies. “I have given no such interview, Lady Imogen. In fact, I think the name is ridiculous.”
“Oh, I don’t,” she said. “It’s rather perfect. Makes me wish I had a fiery sword.”
“Lucky for you, it’s difficult to set steel aflame.”
“Well, with that attitude, it most certainly is.” Before he could beg the woman not to set fire to the South Bank, she dug into the nonsense carpetbag that she carried everywhere she went, as though she might have to make camp for the night at any moment.
He watched her bend over and rummage through the thing because she might at any point destroy something. Not because he enjoyed watching her ample bottom beneath her skirts. Certainly not because he wondered what that ample bottom would look like without skirts.
