Chapter Four #2
Where the devil was she, anyway? Why he felt the need to keep her within arm’s reach was beyond him. She was as likely to try and break that arm as not. Still, he felt he should protect her from those who might like to make mischief, and there were plenty.
“Well, old boy, you had better think of some novel ways to say nothing because the hordes are about to descend.” Dalmere motioned towards a group of young men coming towards them. They were already smirking and jeering within their little group before they had reason to do so.
Oliver groaned. He knew he would have to deal with this kind of situation but had foolishly hoped to avoid it.
“I say, Bellamy, just the man we wanted to see,” said one fellow who was bleary-eyed and sweating profusely. “How are you and the Black Raven getting on? At this rate you’ll be leg-shackled and spending her inheritance by the end of the month.”
“Really? Why on earth would I want to do that, Bently?” Oliver said in reply.
“Why, for her fortune, of course. It’s why she did it, don’t you know, for the money?”
Oliver decided he didn’t like Bently.
“Leg-shackled to her? I’d rather think he doesn’t want to wind up dead, like the last one,” said Dalmere in mock horror.
“Dalmere, that accusation was never proven.”
“If it was proven, Bellamy, she would have swung from the Tyburn Tree. Doesn’t mean she didn’t do it,” said Lord Chalmers.
“Mind you,” said a young man who Oliver had seen last night at his club, but whose name had escaped him. “I’d risk it for one night with her. I’ve never seen anything like those eyes before, makes me so hot I could fry eggs.”
The men all laughed, all except Bellamy. For some reason he didn’t find their banter at all funny.
“I have nothing to fear from the Countess of Blackhurst I assure you, gentlemen, though your concern is touching.”
The others all snorted, coughed, and laughed in their amusement. He, on the other hand, had had enough of amusing them. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I believe I need to see if the Black Raven is sharpening her dagger correctly.”
Their laughter followed him through the crowded room.
They are all simpletons, he thought to himself and then stopped.
Yesterday, he would have been laughing along with them.
This thought did not sit well at all considering his dislike for the woman.
He looked around the ballroom again. Now, where is she?
*
“Well, isn’t this is a very pretty picture of a very naughty little countess?”
Lisbeth’s heart froze at the sound of Bellamy’s voice behind her.
How had he found her? She turned slightly from her position on her hands and knees, where she had been searching for a key or a hidden panel to Wainwright’s desk.
Didn’t they all have hidden panels? The quick glance over her shoulder confirmed his presence, and the arrogant look on his handsome face as he leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest and one brow raised nearly to his hairline made her groan.
She closed her eyes. This could not be happening to her. The man was a veritable homing pigeon.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Looking for my mistress, actually,” he replied casually. He stepped farther into Wainwright’s study, looked around, and tested the top of the nearest table for dust, before turning his attention back to her.
“Well, she isn’t here, is she?” Lisbeth hotly retorted, sitting up and absently checking her hair.
She tried to convey she wasn’t the least bit flustered by his having found her.
By the look on his face she hadn’t succeeded.
She would like to wipe the grin right off his face but there were no fire pokers on hand.
“Au contraire, my dear, she is right where she ought not to be.”
It took a few seconds for her to realize to whom he was referring. “What? Me? No!” She put her hands on her hips. “What have you been saying, Bellamy?”
“I haven’t had to say anything,” he said as he pushed away from the doorframe and walked into the room. “They all presume it. You’re a widow, I’m an unattached man, and I am bandying you around town on my arm. What did you imagine they would think? We are whist partners?”
Lisbeth hadn’t thought about it. She was astonished she even cared what those people downstairs thought of her or her arrangement with Bellamy.
If anything it made things more believable, but it also made her feel distinctly at his mercy, a feeling that was definitely uncomfortable.
Of course he hadn’t expected her to answer his last question.
He was now hooking one hip on Wainwright’s desk and looking down at her.
“What exactly are you doing in here? Do you have a rendezvous with Wainwright?” He frowned. “No, that would be inconceivable. If not, why are you sniffing about in his… drawers?”
“I am not sniffing his dra… anything!” she retorted.
“And, why would it be inconceivable? If I did have a rendezvous with him or any other man, it would be none of your business.” She turned away so he would not see her blush and pretended to be looking for something on the floor.
This was humiliating. Of all the positions he had to find her in this one.
More ridiculous was she was still pretending to have some dignity left.
She sat back on her heels, which was the most she could do with her skirts restricting her movements.
“Oh, I see,” he said, picking up a paperweight from Wainwright’s desk and examining it. “Who is it, then?”
“Who is who, Bellamy?”
“The man you are meeting.”
“I’m not meeting anyone, you idiot!”
“Have you hurt your ankle then?” he asked in a casual tone, dismissing her nasty comment.
“No, I have not hurt my ankle, though I hardly see what that has to do with anything.”
“Then I can only assume you make a habit of getting about on your hands and knees. You know you really should have warned me, Countess. One could get the wrong idea when one is presented with such a view.”
“Oh! For Heaven’s sake! I am simply stuck by my skirt.”
He smiled, stood, and held out his hand. “Then let me lend you assistance. I would hate to have you tear such a lovely gown.”
She shook off his hand. “You really are intolerable, do you know that?”
He looked at his hand to see what had been so distasteful to her then let it fall back onto his thigh. His very impressive thigh. Thighs. Right at her eye level.
He looked down at her. “I thought you found me irresistibly charming?”
She lifted her gaze back up to his face, glad to be focusing on something other than his thighs. “Not in the least.”
“Then I will simply have to try harder,” he said with a chuckle as he hauled her up by the shoulders and against his massive chest which Lisbeth imagined would be what it would be like to slam into a warm, and not bad-smelling, cliff face.
Damn the man. She immediately tried to put space between them by turning her back on him and crossing her arms over her chest. “Go away, Bellamy.”
He ignored her as usual.
“Do you realize you have the most beautiful neck? These little curls back here are very fetching, indeed. They are like little gates guarding the treasure beneath.”
“Oh, please!” Lisbeth rolled her eyes but his whispered words and hot breath had sent sparks down her spine. Confused, she went to turn towards him to give him a good push in the chest, so she could storm out, but the warm cliff was in her way.
“Shh!” he said, stopping her. “Why don’t you try being quiet for a change.” He turned her back around towards the desk and for some unfathomable reason she let him.
He leaned in close behind her and spoke into her ear again.
“You put both of us in a devilish position when you scamper off to play treasure hunt.” His voice was deep and seemed to vibrate through her whole body in quite an unexpectedly pleasant way.
“Especially, in the middle of a ball containing over a hundred people. All of whom are waiting for you to do something… Raven-ish. Disappearing was not wise.”
She closed her eyes for a moment as sensation tingled from her toes right to the top of her head.
She wanted to tell him to go to the devil, to leave her be, that she had changed her mind and would find some other way to find her husband’s killer.
Although she knew there was no other way.
All her nerves were singing, trying to tell her danger was near but her traitorous legs were frozen to the spot as his fingers caressed her bare neck and shoulders and her voice caught in her throat.
“Perhaps we should return then,” she finally choked out, her voice just above a whisper.
“Perhaps you should just tell me what it is you are looking for?”
Lisbeth, still facing away from him, placed her hands on the large mahogany desk, as her legs wobbled. She could not tell him. He wasn’t a man who could be trusted, yet she would have to tell him something.
“I thought I had lost my ear bob.” Willing her legs not to desert her, she focused on the ghastly deer head mounted on the wall.
“On the floor, in Wainwright’s study?”
She looked sharply over her shoulder at him. “No, Bellamy, in the Tower of London. Of course, here, you lack-wit.”
He smiled as one of his fingers tugged on one of her curls. She was seriously starting to think he actually liked her to call him names. She looked helplessly at her reticule on the far end of the large desk.
“All right, Countess, why were you in here in the first place?” He was tracing the edge of the back of her gown where it dipped low.
She shivered again and hoped to God he did not notice. “I was looking for the withdrawing room and I got… lost. I was about to return when I realized my earring was gone.”
“How unfortunate. Let me help you find it. My eyesight is exceptional.”
Tiny sparks of awareness erupted all over her body. She panicked, felt hemmed in by the desk, her lie, and his body. “No, it really doesn’t matter. Let’s return to the ball.”