Chapter 1 #2
The man who held their assailant by the collar was tall, much taller than most men in the room, with a build that suggested he had never once in his life required assistance carrying anything.
His coat was dark and plain, clearly chosen for anonymity, but no amount of plain clothing could quite strip the authority from his bearing.
The Duke of Wynford.
Her brother’s best friend.
His jaw was set. His green eyes—she was close enough to register the color even in the dim, smoky light—were very cold.
She watched him lean down, very slightly, and speak directly into the drunk man’s ear. His voice was low enough that the surrounding noise swallowed it entirely, but she was close enough to catch the words.
“You will apologize to these two gentlemen,” he said, “and then you will sit back down, finish your drink, and spend the remainder of the evening being grateful that I am in a patient mood tonight.” He paused. “Because I assure you, I am not always.”
He straightened. He did not step back. He simply stood there at his full height, entirely unhurried, and waited.
The man looked up at him, and whatever he found in the Duke’s expression was apparently sufficient, because the belligerence drained out of him with the speed of a man who had rapidly and correctly assessed his situation.
His lips parted almost instantly. “Sorry,” the drunk man muttered, and bolted.
The Duke straightened and turned. His gaze passed over the two of them in a brief, dispassionate sweep; the practiced assessment of a man accustomed to reading rooms, and for one taut second, something in his expression shifted.
A small furrow, barely perceptible. It seemed as though something had snagged his attention, but he did not fully register what or why he was compelled to take notice of it.
Caroline pulled the brim of her cap lower and inhaled deeply.
“Thank you,” she said in the lowest tone she could produce, and grabbed Laura’s arm. “Come on.”
She moved fast, threading through the thinning crowd toward the door, and for one blessed moment, it seemed they would simply make it out.
The alley behind the tavern was narrow and dark, lit by a single distant lamp, and smelled of wet stone and old rain.
“That was…that was…” Laura pressed her back against the wall, hat askew, both hands over her mouth. “He was right there, Caroline! The Duke of Wynford!”
“He didn’t recognize us.” Caroline gripped her friend’s arm, steadying her. Her own heart was beating considerably faster than she would have liked to admit. “He saw two young men, and that’s all. We’re perfectly—”
“Lady Caroline.”
The voice came from behind her, nearly stalling her breath.
Damnation.
Sucking in a sharp breath, she turned, very, very slowly.
The Duke of Wynford stood at the mouth of the alley, arms loosely at his sides, watching her with an expression that was not quite one of surprise but more the expression of a man who has suspected something and found himself reluctantly proved correct.
In her peripheral vision, Caroline caught Laura’s wide, panicked eyes. She tilted her head, the smallest of gestures: go.
Laura hesitated, and Caroline jerked her chin.
Go. Now.
Laura went, running past the Duke with the practiced invisibility of the truly terrified, disappearing in the direction of the waiting carriage.
Caroline did not watch the coach leave. She kept her gaze on Anthony Keating, the Duke of Wynford, who was looking at her with those green eyes: calm, unreadable, and entirely too perceptive.
She reviewed a swift, silent account of her options.
She could explain, she could try to deflect, or she could simply run.
She took a single step back and made her choice. She turned on her heel and bolted.
She tried to, at least—for his hand closed around her wrist before she had taken two strides.
“Just where do you think you’re going?” the Duke tutted.
The momentum of his grip swung her around, and the hat, already loose, already betraying her, flew from her head entirely. She felt her hair come down across her shoulders in one cool, tumbling rush, and for a single suspended moment, the alley was perfectly, damningly silent.
The lamp at the far end guttered in a passing breeze. Somewhere beyond the tavern wall, a man’s laughter rose and faded.
Caroline became acutely aware, in the manner one notices irrelevant details only when catastrophe is already in motion, that her hair smelled of the rosewater and orris root that Jane pressed into every rinse.
She cursed herself for not using pins to hold her locks and the hat in place.
Slowly, she lifted her chin and met his gaze.
The Duke of Wynford, standing less than two feet away, had gone very still.
His hand dropped from her wrist as though he had been burned. His eyes moved from her face to the loose hair over her shoulders and back again, and in them she saw the precise moment that certainty replaced suspicion.
“Lady Caroline.” His voice was different now, much slower. Deeper. “What on earth are you doing here?”