Chapter 20
The roast beef was delicious, and I did not regret my decision to join the dinner table.
Mrs. Rawlings was decidedly quiet, no doubt reevaluating everything she knew about me.
I leaned on all the skills Mother’s careful tutelage had driven into me and managed the conversation gracefully, avoiding anything sensitive.
I was not desperate for Mrs. Rawlings’s good opinion, but neither did I want to give her any additional reasons to find me wanting.
After dinner, we retired to the drawing room, where Mrs. Rawlings seemed to regain some of her spirit.
She berated Alexander for his “drab” wardrobe unfitting of someone of his station, and he fought her off with every reason why a Bow Street officer would wish to avoid frippery and showiness.
It seemed a well-worn, comfortable argument, one they took out and dusted off every now and again, and seemed to help reestablish their normal repartee.
I stayed quiet, amused by their antics. When Mrs. Rawlings declared his jacket for the gutter, Alexander sent me such a look of amused long-suffering that I laughed. This was a new side of him, and one I liked very much. But then, I was discovering I liked every side of him, for different reasons.
Heavens, how much I wanted to see Ginny and tell her everything that had happened. Keeping my feelings for Alexander to myself was almost painful. They would surely burst from my chest if I did not talk to her—or someone—soon.
Thankfully, I slept well that night, and the dove-gray dawn woke me gently. I lay there dozing, wishing I had the motivation many seemed to possess to rise and be immediately productive, when I heard a noise.
The sound of a horse’s hooves on the pebbled drive below my window.
I blinked, staring blearily at the clock across my room.
It was only six o’clock in the morning. My ears must be deceiving me.
Who would be here at this hour of the day?
Falling back against my pillow, I turned on my side and gathered my blankets up to my chin, trying to keep the chill air at bay.
I closed my eyes, intending to find sleep again for another hour or two.
But then a horse whinnied outside. I sat up. I had not imagined that.
I slipped from my bed and padded to the window, parting the curtains with one hand. A groom led a horse up the lane from the stables, saddled and prepared to ride. Alexander’s horse. I recognized it from the time I’d seen him ride out to visit a tenant a few days ago.
What on earth? Was Alexander going somewhere?
I dropped the curtain, straightening suddenly. Was it possible he’d had word from London?
I scrambled to my wardrobe and dressed as quickly as I could, picking a simple dress I could fasten by myself.
I did not bother with my hair, leaving it in a wild braid tumbling down my back.
I opened my door and peeked out into the corridor.
Even with Mrs. Rawlings now realizing the error of her ways—at least in regard to me not being a light-skirt fortune hunter—I hardly wanted her to come across me knocking at her son’s door at an ungodly hour yet again.
I crept down the corridor and knocked quietly at Alexander’s door.
I shifted my weight as I lingered, but he did not answer.
I hurried back the way I’d come and started down the main staircase, my stockinged feet hardly making a sound on the steps, my hand gliding like a whisper on the rail.
Likely, there were servants awake somewhere belowstairs, but the main part of the house remained silent and echoing.
As I approached Alexander’s study, I heard rustling from within. The door was slightly ajar, and his dark figure moved about inside, barely lit by the coming sunrise.
My heart thumped loudly. Something was happening, clearly. And I had a feeling that whatever I heard in the next few minutes might again change the trajectory of my life.
I pushed the door open.
Alexander’s head snapped up, his body still bent over his desk. When he saw it was me, he did not relax, as I might have expected him to. Instead, he straightened, regarding me with . . . wariness.
“Miss Lacey,” he said, his voice brisk. “What are you doing awake?”
“I saw your horse outside.” I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. “You weren’t in your room.”
“No.” He tapped one finger on the papers on his desk, as if anxious to return to them.
“I couldn’t help but wonder if you’d had word,” I said, moving closer, “from London.”
His expression shifted. “Yes,” he said. “Early this morning, I received a letter from Drake. It’s there, if you want to read it.” He nodded at a folded letter on the edge of his desk.
I shot him a sidelong glance as I moved to pick up the letter. He only returned to his task, which appeared to be sorting through his papers.
I stepped to the window and unfolded the page.
Rawlings,
I must be brief. This morning, we apprehended the man we believe is responsible for the attack on you at Vauxhall and the viscount’s murder. I cannot say more, but I urge you and Miss Lacey to return to London with all possible haste so you might identify the man.
Drake
“They caught him?” I gasped, my stomach performing a series of mad flips.
Had I read it correctly? I skimmed the letter again, and the words became a joyful blur.
Finally—finally—we could leave! I would not have to playact any longer, would not have to bear Mrs. Rawlings’s oppressive company.
We could return to London, and I could reunite with Ginny, tell her everything, feel her comforting arms around me.
“Oh, thank heavens.” I spun on my heel to face him, beaming.
“We can start for London today! I will go and pack immediately.”
I was prepared to dash upstairs and throw every one of my belongings into my trunk.
I could almost feel the blessed bustle and energy of the streets of London.
Even the thought of going home to Little Sowerby did not fill me with dread.
I wanted my room, my things, even my parents, such as they were.
Normality had never seemed so wonderful.
Then I saw Alexander’s face, the steel of a decision already made in his eyes.
“What is it?” I asked, taken aback.
“You are not coming to London,” he said. “I am going alone.”
I blinked, staring at him, his words incomprehensible. Then I remembered the lone horse waiting outside, saddled and ready.
“You are leaving me here?” My voice was suddenly dry, scraping up my throat.
“Yes,” he answered, picking up a stack of papers and tucking it inside a leather folio.
“Why?”
“I explained everything in my note.” He held up a folded paper without looking at me.
I exhaled a disbelieving laugh. “You were going to abandon me for London and leave me a note?”
“It seemed the simplest solution,” he said sharply, “so as to avoid this exact scene.”
“Oh, I am terribly sorry to have ruined your easy escape,” I snapped. “Pray tell, why am I to be left behind?”
“A very simple reason.” He dropped the note onto his desk. “They might have the wrong man.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said,” he replied. “We cannot be sure the man they arrested is the same man who attacked us at Vauxhall. Until I can identify him, I have no intention of waltzing you back into London with the murderer potentially still on the streets.”
Mr. Drake’s letter in my hands was bent and twisted, my grip too tight. “How is that your decision to make? Do I have no say in my own life?”
“I am the one charged with your safety.” He picked up the folio containing his papers. “I will not put you into any unnecessary danger. You will stay here at Briarstone until I return to fetch you.”
“Fetch me?” I gave a wild laugh. “Flattering. Yes, I shall await your return like an obedient puppy.”
“Good.” There was no emotion in his voice as he tucked his folio into a large traveling bag, the same one he’d brought when we’d journeyed here.
That detail brought everything into full focus.
He was really leaving me here. How long would I have to be trapped here still, wondering what was happening in London? Wondering if he was safe?
A memory reared in my mind of Alexander bleeding on the path at Vauxhall, wounded, disoriented. I’d been there that time. I’d helped him. But what if it happened again? How could I keep him safe if I was trapped here at Briarstone?
He picked up the bag and rounded the edge of the desk. “Stay in the house. You must keep up every precaution as before.”
I blocked his path to the door. “You are not leaving me here,” I said, my voice like ice.
His eyes narrowed. “It is too dangerous to take you. That is my final decision.”
He began to move around me, but I blocked him again. “That is your decision, not mine. Who will watch your back if I am here?”
“I’ve watched my own back for a dozen years.”
He tried to go around me, so I backed up until my shoulder blades hit the carved wood of the study door. I took the door handle in one hand, gripping it tightly and glaring defiantly up at him, daring him to physically move me out of his way.
“Step aside,” he growled.
“No,” I insisted. “I am coming with you.”
“You are not.”
“I am safer with you, and you are safer with me.”
“Blast it all, Beatrice.” He stepped closer, no doubt trying to intimidate me. There was a look in his eyes I’d never seen before, desperate and uncontrolled.
I raised my chin. “Give me one good reason why we are not better off together, and I’ll—”
He dropped his bag, took my face in his hands, and kissed me.
His lips were hard, fierce, unrelenting.
The rough skin of his hands encircled my cheeks, fingertips weaving into my hair at the base of my skull.
A crackle of heat burst through me, dry wood on a raging fire.
It was a furious kiss. An angry kiss. But there was more—so much more—behind the powerful press of his mouth.
The door behind me was solid, steadying.
He was so much taller than I, his shoulders curved into a stoop so he could reach my lips.
I rose onto my toes and kissed him back, clutching his waistcoat in great fistfuls of fabric.
His hands dropped to my shoulders, pulling me closer until our knees knocked together.
The warmth of his touch sank deep into my bones, stirring up a great whirlwind of embers and sparks.
We tore apart to breathe, both of us desperate for air.
“If you think,” I rasped, clutching his lapels, “that kissing me will make me forget about London, then you can—”
He kissed me again. Arrogant, infuriating, impossible man.
He did not slow nor rein in his passion. His lips grazed along my jaw, brushed the vulnerable, sensitive skin below my ear, and then returned to my mouth. I raked my hands through his hair, an irrational desire surging through me to throw his carefully arranged locks into disarray.
Poems would never be written about this kiss. It was too real, too imperfect, so ragged and raw.
But it was mine. Just like I was forever—and inarguably—his.
Our kiss unraveled, softened, and deepened all at once.
I trembled against him, unable to believe I was in his arms, that he wanted me as much as I wanted him.
He finally pulled back, lips parted and eyes heavy.
We inhaled in tandem—deep, scraping breaths entering our lungs.
He held my face in his hands, thumbs sweeping across the rise of my cheekbones.
“I am still angry with you,” I whispered.
“I do not care,” he said. “You are not coming.”
How could he be so unmoved? Had our kiss not affected him as it had me? I hit his chest once, my hands curled into fists. He did not so much as flinch. I raised my fists to pound him again, needing some reaction from him, anything. He caught my wrists.
“You are a danger to me, Beatrice Lacey,” he said, a dark huskiness shadowing the curves of his voice, that Scottish brogue claiming his tongue more fully.
“Since the first night we met, you have invaded my every thought. There is a madness—a wildness—that consumes me when you are near. I cannot—” He broke off, jerking his head to one side, eyes closed as his chest rose and fell.
I stared up at him, my wrists still in his firm grasp. His words flooded through me. I could barely focus, my thoughts flitting about. He was speaking about me.
“I cannot,” he said through gritted teeth, “allow myself to be distracted by you.” He forced himself away, dropping my hands and taking several steps back.
But there was no easing of the tension between us.
It was tangible, smothering. “Having you with me would be dangerous for us both,” he said.
“I cannot do what needs to be done if you are there.”
All I wanted to do was kiss him again, feel the burn of his fingertips pressing into my back. But I was also angry. I was overwhelmed. I was as likely to shout as I was to cry.
I was in love.
“Do you understand?” He spoke in a brusque, businesslike tone, as if that kiss hadn’t just happened.
I forced myself to nod, the barest flick of my chin. That was, I was just beginning to understand.
“You will stay inside the house,” he commanded. “You won’t come after me or take any unnecessary risks.”
“Yes.” My voice was low, throaty.
There was no point in arguing. He would not relent, and I could not find it in me to continue a doomed campaign.
And I had yet to fully comprehend his words or navigate the emotions that pounded through me like a torrent in a drought-ridden riverbed. His kiss still burned inside me, my frustration and exhilaration and desire melding together until they were hardly distinguishable.
He picked up his bag from where he’d so unceremoniously dropped it. “I wrote my mother a note as well,” he said. “If you would give it to her.”
“Very well.” I could not seem to move. If I moved, I would shatter to pieces.
“I will make all haste to London,” he said, and his words felt softer, even if they didn’t sound it. “I will return as soon as possible.”
I nodded again, not trusting my voice.
He looked at me then, his jaw set into a rigid line against his face. But his eyes . . . His eyes told me he wanted nothing more than to claim my lips once more.
And then he turned and left.