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It had to be one of the guards, tasked with patrolling the property. They had such men at Elvington Manor as well, though theirs did not havedogs. Perhaps an update was in order, assuming Thomas survived the evening.
His first instinct was to panic. To either run back the way he’d come, or take his chances sprinting away the opposite direction.
“Thomas,” whispered a voice through the fence.
He jumped to attention. There, peering through the foliage, was Lady Evelina, her gray eyes cast silver in the moonlight.
“Evelina,” he breathed, her presence sending his heart beating for reasons other than the guards.
A light appeared in the direction Thomas had come from. He glanced over his shoulder to see that a guard carrying a lantern had just rounded the corner, accompanied by a large dog, sniffing at the fence line.
Thomas pressed his back up against the ornamental iron, hoping that the thick foliage draped across the metal was enough to conceal him. Meanwhile, Lady Evelina had begun working at one of the posts. With a final strong twist, the post came loose at the bottom, creating a wide enough gap that Thomas was able to slip through.
In his haste to avoid the guard, however, Thomas managed to trip over the bottom border of the fence, and would have fallen to the ground had Lady Evelina not been there to brace him.
His breath caught. It was an exact reversal of their first contact with one another.If the two of us are ever blessed with children, Thomas thought, mortified,they shall have to be given thorough instruction in simply keeping their balance.
“Are you all right—?” Lady Evelina started to ask, but Thomas gripped her forearms and pulled them both flush against the tree at the edge of the fence line, where hopefully the guard would not see them when he passed.
“Shh,” Thomas hissed, hardly an inch from Lady Evelina’s ear.
They both went completely still as the guard and the dog approached. Thomas could hear heavy, even footsteps against the cobblestone, accompanied by the dog’s eager panting. If they were caught, Thomas was certain Lady Evelina’s presence would prevent either of them from coming to physical harm.
Yet Thomas could not shake the memory of the street mutts that gathered outside the back door of inn where he’d rented his long-term accommodations in India. The cooks would put out rejected or spoiled food at the end of each evening, and from his upstairs window, Thomas always heard the vicious way the dogs tore into the meat, snarling and fighting one another in the process.
He tried to focus instead on where he was now. Not in the Far East, surrounded by untrained pack animals. He was in London, at Alderleaf Manor, with a beautiful woman in his arms.
Perhaps thinking of that wasn’t the best idea, however, as now that Thomas had allowed himself to become aware of how close he and Lady Evelina were, it seemed he could focus on nothing else.
Her body was soft, pressed against his, and her luscious raven hair smelled of lilacs. Were they not in immediate danger of being caught, Thomas very well might have risked pulling Lady Evelina even closer, or even pressing a kiss upon her lush, rosy lips…
The guard’s footsteps stopped.
Thomas quit breathing, and Lady Evelina did as well. They both stood completely still and silent. Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas saw the dog’s sizeable snout poke through the fence posts, sniffing the air inches away from his foot. He sent a silent word of thanks out into the universe that the loose post had swung back into place on its own after Thomas stumbled his way through.
“What is that?” the guard asked the dog softly. “Is someone there?”
Thomas pressed his eyes closed. His lungs, deprived of air for far longer than was natural, protested in his chest. Lady Evelina’s body was rigid with tension against his own.
If we’re caught like this, it’s all over. I cannot even imagine the severity of the social disgrace, not to mention the fallout from whatever went on between Father and the Duke of Alderleaf.
When a squirrel leapt from the tree overhead, Thomas nearly had a heart attack.
The dog went into a flurry of barking, and the guard swore under his breath and struggled to keep him on his leash. Thomas pulled Lady Evelina closer out of some protective instinct as the little rodent dashed across the yard, disappearing into a cluster of dark bushes beyond.
He could feel her body trembling out of fright. He would have given anything to be able to speak up and reassure her that everything would be all right. As they still had to keep silent, Thomas did what he could to convey the same message by tightening his hold just a little.
I’m here. I will protect you.If we are discovered, I will gladly suffer the consequences for us both, Thomas told her inside his head.
“You’re a piece of work, you know that?” the guard said to the dog, who was still having a difficult time overcoming the trauma of the leaping squirrel. “One of these days there’s gonna be a real intruder, and no one’s gonna listen to you, all because you lost your marbles over a squirrel or a rat or a pigeon one too many times—”
The guard pulled the dog away from the fence. The lantern light and the sound of their footsteps grew dimmer as they disappeared once more along the street that lined the fence.
Lady Evelina let out all her breath at once, and her body shuddered against Thomas. “That was too close.”
Thomas wanted to agree, but when he attempted to, he found his mouth had gone so dry, he could scarcely make any sound at all.
Instead, he gently gripped Lady Evelina’s arms and separated their bodies. If it had been up to Thomas, he would have gladly held Lady Evelina close for the rest of his life, yet he could not help but imagine she had to be feeling rather uncomfortable after what had just happened.
Even so, once there was a respectable amount of space between them again, Thomas found himself missing her warmth. It was rather chilly, tonight, wasn’t it? He hadn’t noticed before.
“Well, then,” he made himself say, voice still raw from the freight of being discovered, as well as their close contact, “shall we move forward with our intended discussion?”
Lady Evelina looked almost confused at Thomas’ request. Her hair and dress had been rumpled from the way Thomas had pressed their bodies together, and her usually gray eyes were almost black with what had to be adrenalin. At last, she swallowed and nodded. “This way. There is a gazebo in the center of the gardens—no one will catch sight of us there.”
