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“The dear woman’s only wish as she lay suffering with pustules—to see her daughter safe in Dublin with her very proper and platonic cousins.”
A full-fledged giggle escaped her. “She never thinks of herself, does she?”
He smiled. “A martyr to her core, your sweet mother. I’ve often said so.” He drew her up from the sofa, her hand resting in his. Trust replacing her earlier desperation. That and something else. Fellowship? Camaraderie? Would he go so far as calling it friendship?
“Leave it to me, Cat. Barbara Osborne’s no coldhearted ogre. I shall soothe her ruffled feathers, and your honor will be restored.”
She stiffened. Withdrew her hand, stepping back. The moment of solidarity gone. “If only it were that easy.”
Cat closed the book, stretching her arms over her head. Feeling the pop of unkinked muscles down her back.
Daylight had become candlelight as heavier rain moved in, darkening the room. She closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation of being warm and comfortable inside while the booming echo of thunder rolled overhead. It had been long years since she’d been able to take luxuries like these for granted. Long years since she’d been driven from her stepfather’s house, the marks of his rage on her face, his pilfered coins wrapped in a knotted kerchief banging against her side. The first theft in a slippery slope that had landed her here.
Her momentary contentment faded. She’d still had no word concerning Geordie’s fate, despite Aidan’s promise to investigate.
Their lodgings had been ransacked and abandoned. None asked could say whether the dwarf had escaped or been taken. Not even the promise of a reward loosened tongues either too suspicious or too fearful. She’d had to settle for a message entrusted with the publican at the Red Lion on New Street. An especial haunt of Geordie’s and the one place where he might go in a pinch. If he lived, he’d know she hadn’t forgotten him. He’d know she was safe. He’d know she was sorry for making a complete mess of everything.
Kilronan sat in a deep window embrasure. The effects of the ambush in the alley had slowly diminished. His black eye faded to a sort of sickly puce gray. The scratches on his face mostly healed. Unconscious of her scrutiny, he leaned his head back against the wall, eyes raised heavenward, muscles in his jaw jumping. Tension shivered off him. A coiled intensity barely contained.
She’d witnessed the explosion that came upon the release of that taut spring. The effortless transformation from polished aristocrat to hardened fighter as the instinct to survive took hold. It had been beautiful and terrifying and thrilling to watch. And if she hadn’t been scared sick she would have lost herself completely to the fantasy that he’d been fighting to protect her.
He stretched stiffly and rose. Like a sailor’s first tread upon dry ground, his steps came unsteady before his limbs loosened. Yet even then, his gait contained that slight half-halting stride she’d noticed earlier.
Catching her eyes upon him as he rubbed his thigh, he quickly defended himself. “It’s an old injury, so you can stop looking at me as if you want to bundle me back to bed.”
“Are you mad? I’d not even suggest it.”
Grim features brightened to boyish mischief, and he laughed. “Then you’ve already won my eternal gratitude. Between Blake’s whining and Jack’s advice, I’m all suggested out.”
He took a turn around the room, his gaze passing over the portrait above the mantel, an unreadable expression hardening his eyes. “You’d not know it to look at me, but in my day I had the women swooning over my favors. Their husbands gunning for my back.”
He sounded like an octogenarian recalling a faded past, yet he couldn’t be more than thirty, the muscles moving beneath his skin still supple, the razor-keen edges hardening his features still glittering sharp.
“Is that how—” She motioned toward his leg.
“Aye. A lesson for you. A drunken cuckold and a loaded weapon are not a good mix. You should have heard my father. The surgeon’s digging for the ball was a jaunt compared to the haranguing I received from the old man.” Bitterness tinged the dark amusement. “I don’t know whether he was angrier at my dishonorable behavior or at my losing the duel to a mere baronet.” His gaze lengthened into memory. “Ahh, but she was worth it. A grand beauty with—” he caught her derisive look. Quickly changed the subject with a shamefaced smile that suddenly made him seem years younger and far more vulnerable. “And you, Cat? Were you the apple of your father’s eye? Your mother’s little helper?”
Cat thought back to her mother’s convenient blindness when it came to her new husband. The blame. The cajoling. The jealousy. But that scene shifted to her stepfather’s short temper and acid tongue. His seeking hands. His smarmy threats. Jeremy had been as much about running away as running toward. She just hadn’t realized it at the time.
“They weren’t anything special,” she mumbled.
He leaned over her shoulder, examining her progress. She found herself staring as he turned each page. The strong, capable fingers, the heavy bones of his w
rists, the solid chunk of an emerald adorning his pinky. His breath came soft against her bare neck. His sleeve brushed her shoulder.
Was it the cozy snap of the fire? The patter of rain against the windows? The effects of too much claret? Whatever sparked this bewildering fascination, it quickly grew until the smoky warmth of his body lit an unwelcome flame in the inches between them.
She cursed her rotten luck. She couldn’t be marooned with a scrawny, horse-faced clod who picked his nose or wiped his mouth with the tablecloth. Oh no. She had to be trapped with every woman’s most sinful fantasy. A man who radiated enough sexual energy to fell a roomful of females.
She tensed, hoping he didn’t notice the hitch in her breathing, the quiver of nerves trembling her limbs. She fought back with recollections of his disdain when she’d worried over his intentions. The dismissive way he scoured her with his eyes as if she were dirt to be scraped from his heel. Miss Osborne’s prior and very emphasized claims.
It worked.
Her body’s mutiny subsided, leaving behind a dull ache in her chest, pressing against her ribs, and a new realization that she needed to remain vigilant or she might forget the truth of her stay here. Be it within the comfort of Kilronan House or the misery of a Newgate cell, she remained a prisoner.
Night hung thick in the room, cut only by the meager halo of candlelight surrounding his desk, the red gold glow of the fire. Cat had already done so much. Pages and pages in her tidy handwriting lay scattered across his desk. He scanned one as he paced, his hand nervously tapping his thigh, his brows raised in curiosity. “My sister doesn’t write half so legibly.”
She looked up, startled, from where she hunkered in a chair, the diary propped against her knees. “Huh?” she grumbled.
