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Black hair swept up and accentuating a delicate jawline, the pale slash of a scar down one cheek. Wide green eyes round with panic. And a body disturbingly contoured in a snug jacket and a pair of hip-hugging trousers.
“Put the book down and step away from the desk,” he ordered.
Her eyes flicked to the open window.
“Don’t even think it.” Exhaustion edged Aidan’s words. His head hurt from a long day spent sparring with lawyers, bankers, and the occasional family member. And sleep beckoned with the arms of a lover. The only lover he’d had in more months than he could count.
Something he needed to remedy soon if his reaction to this woman leaned more toward lust than rage.
His eye fell upon the book she still clutched. Coincidence she chose this item instead of shinier, more tempting baubles? Aidan had long ago decided there was no such thing as coincidence. Even more disturbing, she’d actually seemed to be reading the impenetrable text, something no bookseller or scholar in Dublin had been able to do. And he should know. He’d been to them all.
The woman stiffened, her gaze falling beyond Aidan’s shoulder to something or someone behind him. Her eyes widened, her mouth rounding into an “O” of astonishment.
An accomplice? Servant?
Aidan turned. A moment only for his concentration to stray, but all it took for chaos to break loose.
A book came hurtling toward Aidan’s head, catching him in the arm; his pistol going off with a report to wake the dead. The recoil jarred his shoulder while smoke stung his eyes.
The woman took that moment to bolt for the window, hitching herself up with a moan of desperation. Scrabbling at the latch with nimble fingers.
Aidan sprang, catching her by the ankle. Dragging her, kicking and flailing, back into the room. “Neat little trick,” he hissed.
“You fell for it, didn’t you?” she snarled. “Just shows what a stupid prat you are.”
A knee caught Aidan in the groin, sending agony curdling along every nerve in his lower half. He resisted the urge to drop into a fetal curl, but the gloves came off. She may have been female, but she was dangerous.
Ignoring the upbringing that taught him not to lay a hand on women, Aidan staggered her with a hard slap to the side of her head. Grabbed her by the arm, ignoring her cry of pain and white-lipped grimace. Twisted her other behind her back, all while avoiding the wriggling kicks and thwarting the clever maneuvers designed to slither out of even the tightest holds.
“Careful how you toss the insults,” Aidan cautioned, guiding his captive toward a chair. Shoving her into it.
“I was being c
areful,” she sulked, clutching her upper arm, lines grooved white in her already pale face.
With no hope of escape, the woman seemed to shrink in on herself, and what features Aidan had been able to distinguish earlier blurred and faded. What he’d taken for green eyes were blue now in this light, but a flicker of the candle and golden hazel might be more accurate. And though at first she had appeared slender, hunched shoulders broadened her frame, her face coarsening so that Aidan questioned his first impression. That or—
He blinked, and the woman’s image settled like sand in a glass.
A fith-fath? Not exactly. This was a more subtle shifting—a clever manipulation of awareness leaving the victim doubting his own observations. An obvious asset in her chosen profession.
Aidan grabbed her roughly by the collar. Dragged her close so they stood nose to nose, trying to avoid her all-too-obvious curves. Her lavender scent so at odds with her boyish costume.
“Who are you? Answer me, or so help me god, I’ll have you in front of a magistrate by dawn.”
She swallowed, eyes wide, bottom lip bit between her teeth as she struggled against Aidan’s grip. “Hired,” she gasped.
“To do what?”
She shook her head in denial.
“I said, hired to do what?”
Still nothing.
“You leave me no choice.” He dragged her toward the door, her heels scrabbling against the carpet. “What I can’t get out of you, perhaps your gaolers will.”
“Wait! Please!”
