Chapter 3
“Come the fuck again?” Eli strode closer to Morley, if only to make sure he was hearing the lawman correctly.
Rosaline scampered out of his path and retreated to the bed where Prudence went to console her.
Morley, a man of medium stature with the strength of a titan and a force of will as hard and unbending as tempered steel, now regarded him with a damned unsettling sort of helpless regret. “I’m sorry, Eli, but under these circumstances, it’s the only course of action.”
“I can think of probably a dozen different courses of action. Not the least of which is jumping out that window head-first.”
His old friend ran a hand over his sharp, angular face, uncovering grooves of exhaustion deepening by the moment.
“Now’s not the time to be hyperbolic, Eli.
This is damned serious. The Goode family has been through more than enough scandal, and something like this might just see the entire name crumble.
We are really at a pivotal moment with Emmett’s much-needed alliance with Lady Brackenfeld’s family, and—”
Eli put his hand up. “I feel for you, friend, I do. But I fail to see how your delinquent sister breaking into my house and touching or taking my shit without my permission behooves me to shackle myself to some stranger until death do we part.”
Prudence put a defensive hand on Rosaline’s shoulder.
“She’s not a delinquent, she’s a dear heart!
Besides, her trespassing in your home isn’t what forces our hands here.
It’s the fact that you broke into the window rather than gaining entrance through the front door like any regular person would do. ”
Eli’s blood began to boil. “I chased this clearly irregular young lady across an ice-laden ledge to save your asses from being robbed! I didn’t want to make a scene while you had guests, so I thought I’d get back whatever it was she’d stolen, scare her against any more crooked behavior, and be on my way.
I was gonna save you all the burden of theatrics and tell you in private—” He threw his hands up against the invisible walls closing in.
“Know what? I don’t have to explain myself to you.
What are you doing with your sister-in-law sleeping in the attic anyhow? You treat her like the help?”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Morely answered, “No, Eli, this house was built before the eighteenth century. Our servants often sleep below stairs by the kitchens and the storage.”
“Should have fucking guessed,” he muttered. “Americans put our servants up top, so we don’t have to climb so many stairs.”
“Yes,” Morley answered wryly. “I’ve gathered you’re all about the economy of movement and output of effort.”
“We’re going to talk later about why that sounded like an insult.” Eli jabbed his finger in Morley’s direction. “But right now, we’re talking about why the hell this young trespasser was in my house to begin with.”
“I turned twenty-one quite some six months ago,” Rosaline piped in.
“Bullshit,” he spat, not sparing her a glance in lieu of keeping Morley’s direct gaze with one of his own.
“I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head around the ladies,” Morley warned sharply.
“My lack of a civil tongue is one of the many reasons you don’t want me married to one of your kin, Morley, and you know it.”
The Englishman’s eyes darted away, finding the ladies perched on the bed, clinging to each other’s hands.
“Rosaline,” he addressed her in the gentle, measured voice one used for shy children and wounded animals.
“I believe an explanation is warranted. Do you have anything to say in your own defense?”
Ever the lawman, Eli thought as he planted his boots, arms folded over his chest.
This ought to be good.
Rosaline’s gaze was affixed nowhere close to his. In fact, he caught it in the middle of a curious crawl up his torso, starting at the low, exposed waistband of his trousers and ending just below his clavicles.
Right. The undone buttons. Probably more man meat and body hair than she’d seen in her “twenty-one” years. The tattered vestiges of his decency mentioned that he might want to do up the rest of his buttons.
Decency be damned. Covering up felt like admitting some sort of wrongdoing. And his pride was having no part in that. None. She wanted to gawk at his big, ragged hide, she could be his damn guest.
Besides, despite the window being wide open to the encroaching winter, he was uncomfortably warm beneath her perusal.
“Rosaline?” Prudence prompted, nudging her with a gentle elbow. “What were you doing in Mr. Wolfe’s house?”
After chewing on the inside of her cheek for a second, she finally spoke. “I thought the house belonged to Lady Clarkwell. I’d no idea she’d passed on.”
“She hasn’t,” Morley replied. “But she sold Mr. Wolfe the place only yesterday.”
“That still doesn’t explain what you were doing there.” Eli’s patience had reached a limit he’d not known he possessed. And yet, something bleak in the curve of her shoulders kept him from losing what was left of his temper.
She directed her answer to Morley, as if looking at Eli caused her more distress. “I was there to modulate the Fraunhofer’s Dorpat Refractor so I could observe the meteor shower tomorrow.”
“The what?” both men asked in unison.
“The telescope,” she said as if patiently explaining to dense children.
“It’s one of the only privately owned telescopes with a refractor that can see the Andromedids meteors that peak tomorrow in the boundaries of Andromeda.
” Glancing about at the mystified faces of those gathered, she finished rather weakly.
“That is…the Andromeda constellation…not the—the galaxy.”
The only thing that moved in the room for a full three seconds, was the kitten, who batted and gnawed at the end of the braid falling in a thick rope over Rosaline’s shoulder.
“There,” Prudence patted her sister’s slim hands. “That explains everything. She didn’t mean any harm.”
“That does not explain what you took,” Eli pressed. “I swear I felt something in your pocket when I had you trapped against the ladder.”
“When you what, now?” Morley asked darkly. “What the hell were your hands doing anywhere near her pockets?”
“It was my hips, not my hands.”
Morley reached for the rifle.
“Wait.” Eli put his hands in the air in the universal don’t shoot gesture. “Let me explain.”
“You have three bloody seconds.”
“Three?” Sarcasm oozed from his pores. “You’re too kind.”
Apparently deciding against the rifle, Morley began to roll up his sleeves. “Kindness has nothing to do with it. I’m about to relieve you of several teeth, and it’s easier for you to speak before that happens.”
“He didn’t hurt me, or touch me in any way untoward.
” Rosaline finally stood, small fists balled at her sides.
“Please, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.
It was just so late at night, and I knew Mrs. Clarkwell doesn’t ever go to the fourth floor.
No one has stepped foot in that room in months, and the telescope is just sitting there. Forgotten.”
“Did you take anything from the room, Rosaline?” Morley asked.
She shook her head, wrapping her arms around her middle.
God was she a skinny thing. Waist as slender as a reed.
“Where’s the wrap you were wearing?” Eli demanded. “I’d swear you had something other than the butter knife in there.”
“Butter knife?” Prudence’s dark eyebrows creased.
“I use it to undo the observatory’s window latch,” Rosaline muttered reluctantly, padding on bare feet toward the wardrobe. She fetched the wrap from a basket, and tossed it in his direction.
Snatching it out of the air, Eli could feel by the weight of the velvety garment that the pockets were empty, but he made a show of checking them, anyhow.
If only to keep himself from doing something ridiculous like sniffing it.
What sort of witchcraft did women use to smell like honeysuckle in the middle of a smog-choked city in winter? It defied the laws of God and nature and he didn’t fucking appreciate it.
“Doesn’t mean you couldn’t have hidden it away somewhere,” he grumbled. Had he been mistaken? Could his body have pressed close to the ridges of the ladder or something? Was he losing his ever-loving mind?
“If Rosaline says she didn’t steal from you, she didn’t,” Prudence insisted. “I know her to be an honest woman.”
“I don’t,” Eli pointed out, balling the garment up and tossing it back to the basket.
He pawed the clothing aside, pressing them this way and that before opening a drawer full of dainty things he wished he hadn’t seen.
“I don’t know her at all.” He moved on to a delicate dressing table topped by foreign feminine doodads and jars filled with shit he couldn’t begin to identify. “Which is why I’m not marrying her.”
When he reached for a floor-to-ceiling cupboard in the corner, Rosaline leapt forward, a strangled denial tripping off her tongue.
Gotcha, Eli thought. With a triumphant flourish, he unlatched the cupboard and pulled it open.
At least half a dozen fuzzy kittens spanning several colors of the spectrum tumbled out onto the ornate carpet. They seemed to sprout from another basket lined with fluffy linens placed next to a box full of fresh dirt and sand.
“Rosaline!” Prudence gasped, following her sister to the floor in order to collect the sprightly crew of cats. “Where did you get all these? Why were you keeping them in the cupboard?”
Eli looked to Rosaline, who was doing her utmost to scoop up the knavish critters and place them on her bed.
“They were living above the stables, but their mother was killed by a carriage two weeks ago. I brought them in here so they wouldn’t freeze.”
“Does Emmaline or Emmett know?” Morley asked.
Rosaline again shook her head.
“We’ve been staying at Cresthaven all week.” Prudence handed a mewling white one to her sister. “Why didn’t you say anything?”