Chapter 2 #2
“She’s like her cat,” he gritted out, gesturing to the window with his free hand. “Just climbed right up and out the top window and pussy-footed it over here along the ledge. I followed her with no other motive than to get back what she took from me.”
“Your story is utter tripe,” Prudence Morley accused. “My sister is not a thief, Mr. Wolfe, and we do not own any cats.”
“Then who the hell is that?” he stabbed his finger at the little, yellow-eyed fiend licking what was probably Eli’s own blood from between his claws. “She had a name for it and everything.”
Collectively, they turned to stare at the girl whose wrists were still firmly but carefully shackled in his hand.
Her complexion went from pale to a ghost-white iridescence he found a bit concerning.
“I can explain,” she said weakly.
“Someone had better do just that!” shrilled a terse, operatic voice from the doorway.
The light from the hall illuminated a tall woman with hawkish features, whose plaited, gray hair was mostly contained by a ridiculous sleeping cap trimmed with scads of lace.
“Lady Brackenfeld!” Though he had to be approaching thirty, the curly-haired man’s voice broke like a lad’s whose balls still struggled to drop.
“Lucy and I heard what we thought might be gunshots, and then several crashes and a struggle.” Hugging a shawl around her thin, sharp shoulders, she peered at the tableau with a dignified disdain only demonstrated by the elderly and the ecumenical.
Christ, what fresh British bullshit was this, now? And why the hell did everyone look as if they’d just swallowed the wrong end of a corncob?
“All is well, Lady Brackenfeld.” Prudence abandoned the lamp to the side table to gesture back into the hall. “It’s just a comical misunderstanding. Why don’t you and Lucy enjoy a bit of sherry to calm you back to sleep?”
The sour-faced woman dismissed Prudence’s overture with a sharp sniff. “I fail to see what misunderstanding could possibly result in Miss Rosaline entertaining a nearly naked man in her boudoir with only her night-shift on.”
Eli glanced down. He wasn’t even close to naked. He’d punched his arms into a shirt and pulled on trousers and boots before taking his pistol into the observatory. Sure, he’d missed a few—if not most—of the buttons and without a belt the trousers sat a bit low on his hips, but—
An iron hammer slammed into his gut as suddenly, all the words Prudence Morley had uttered permeated his famously thick skull.
My sister isn’t a thief.
Sister?
His fingers sprang open, freeing her instantly as he, once again, wiped—no, scrubbed—his hand on his trousers. “Look, I didn’t—”
“No one is interested in a word from you, young man.” Mrs. Brackenfeld lifted an imperious chin as she rejected Eli, altogether, before pinning Morley with her icy gaze.
“For the sake of your brother-in-law’s title, and my husband’s shares in the shipping company, I was prepared to believe that he was a good candidate for our Lucy.
However, we cannot be expected to abide this sort of chicanery.
I mean, really, his younger sister dallying with such a…
ruffian. And under his own roof! The absolute cheek. ”
Ruffian? He’d been called worse. But damned if old rich British ladies weren’t the meanest creatures on God’s green earth.
Eli’s mouth opened and closed like a goddamned goldfish as the girl—Rosaline?—put her hands together as if in prayer.
“Please, Lady Brackenfeld, this isn’t what it looks like.”
“Oh? Then please explain to me just who that man is, and what he’s doing in your bedroom!”
She looked back at him, those round doe eyes swimming with moisture, pleading with him to absolve her. To say something. Anything.
Eli poked around his spinning head for a fix, and realized that anything he could say damned either her or him further in the eyes of this battle-axe.
Besides, they were all sorts of squeamish here in the old country, he’d been led to understand. Had more rules than a virginal convent when it came to the particulars between the sexes.
He could land them in a deeper pile of dung if he opened his mouth now.
“He’s her fiancé,” Morley blurted. “To be married within a fortnight.”
Still reeling from the aforementioned slug to the guts, Eli swallowed another blow that emptied his lungs and drained all the blood from his extremities and rushed it to his head.
Oh shit, the room was tilting. He put out a hand and steadied himself on the bedpost. Is this what women felt like before they swooned?
Lady Brackenfeld’s features may have relaxed a little, his vision was too fuzzy to tell. “Well,” she smoothed her hands over her shawl. “Well, this is still highly improper. I don’t know how I feel about—”
Morley took control of the situation. “Emmett, why don’t you take Lady Brackenfeld back to her rooms to pour them that sherry and assure Lucy that all is well.
I’ll be along shortly to clear this up.” He turned back toward Eli and Rosaline, his pleasant smile dying a bitter death as he glared at them both.
“Just as soon as I have a word with the impatient couple.”
Emmett, the lean man with what he was coming to recognize as a familial trait of wide, blue eyes, anxiously gestured out the door to his prospective mother-in-law, offering her his elbow.
Eli didn’t miss the speaking look between Rosaline and her brother. There was a desperation to it.
An unspeakable fear that set his senses on edge.
Once the old woman drifted out of earshot, Morley shut the door firmly, allowing the remaining occupants of the room to visibly deflate.
“Quick thinking, Morley.” Eli strode forward and clapped his old friend on his solid, steady shoulder. “But doesn’t it seem like a fortnight might be a bit of a stretch for a convincing farce of an engagement? I mean, I just blew in from across the pond yesterday.”
“No, Eli…” Morley pried his fingers from the rifle one by one, setting it down behind the door with visible reluctance. “A fortnight is how long it will take me to procure the marriage license.”