Chapter 27

Talking running, there was no saying where Pearl and Ruby had run off to. What they might come back with either. Then there was the matter of what thrummed hot and strong in his blood. How he hadn't just wanted to seize the spade. He'd damn well had to refrain from seizing her. Those lips. Those hips. That backside. What had flamed in that second was something he seldom experienced. But then perfect women never held any charms for him.
It would all of it be worth it now he had her on the turn though. Finally. After ten years.
The thing was not to let her think she had so much as an inch here because that inch had a habit of becoming miles where he was concerned. So, forget kisses and all that horse shit, he'd lost the way with that moonlit night. Look at the indignities he'd suffered as a duke's son in that damned regiment to begin with, how they'd pissed in his food-pissed on more than his food.
He knew what he wanted here. Exactly what he wanted. He wasn't leaving here till he had it either.
"Do drink up Mrs. Armstrong, while I get that fire." He strolled to the hearth. "And you can tell me as I do, was Elgie even a spy of the realm you kissed me in defense of? Since you won't tell me whether or not you killed him."
"Why would I when he dropped dead of his own accord. A sick man like that. It wasn't exactly unexpected."
What? No, 'Me? Now why would I kill him?' No beating around a garden of bushes? The masculine concept was one he was familiar with, although he'd that night she'd caught him at her window as a glowing example. How she'd run to Lord Koorecroft, who Pearl and Ruby might have fetched by now. Lord Koorecroft who knew about him and the emeralds. She didn't though, did she? Or that Koorecroft knew all about it either. Well? That was something he kept secret.
He reached across the hearth for the char-cloth. That damned lie about the realm and being a spy was the worst of it. A hell of an achievement if he discounted the most hellish one. The fact he was kidding to think that what was in his mind about her hadn't been there permanently since he'd seen her in the library. So deeply engraved too, even the throb in his thigh had dulled.
Well, he'd rather shove a hot poker in it and twist it round. After all, everything he'd suffered and everything he'd lost was written in blood. His. Small wonder boredom had become a retreat for him. The one place no-one could take. Not even her.
She downed the drink in one, poured another drink and spoke in the commonest accent he'd ever heard from her lips.
"All right, wasn't it? I mean he had it coming. Had it coming a long time if you ask me.Ask old Rube, or Pearl. They'd tell you. So yeah, seeing as you're asking about realms and kissing you, that depends on the realm, 'cos God knows what one he's in now.Gil Gressingham Nicodemus Starkadder's right hand man. And I didn't kill him. Pearl, or Ruby either. Felt like it many a time. Got to tell you that. But never. There now, is that what you want to know? Does that satisfy you? Would you have been frightened of me if I had killed him?"
Sparks showered onto the darkened char-cloth. In fact they all but burned his trousers, the immaculate ones he'd paid a fool's fortune for and didn't even like. For ten years he'd imagined hearing these words. In the icy rain of Ireland, the snows of Switzerland, the heat and blast of Corunna. A hundred different places. But still, only one way, the one in which he brought her to her knees, cleared his sullied name. And saw her body jerk on the end of a rope, as he stood by rubbing his hands gleefully. He was exonerated finally.
In all that time he'd never once imagined he'd ever hear them though. Now he had, he'd never imagined that he would crouch here on an unswept mosaic floor, in a cold room, cursing, as sparks flared from a piece of flint, having just buried a body in a herb garden. He'd never once imagined truth would be enough, the way she bled these words because she'd no choice. Although he realized that entering this room today, when she asked him what he wanted, truth, while not all of it, was partly it.
"Still." She rubbed her hand across her nose. "You'reright about everything else. I did kiss you ten years ago in that coach. I put my hand down your trousers too, for which I do most heartily apologize, although I won't deny I'd do the same again if I had to. I was pushed you see. Yeah. Definitely."
And she thought he was what? Turning cartwheels. Well, if she thought he was taking nothing more than capitulation and a pair of burned trousers from the situation, she'd another think coming.
Seconds ticked by while she poured another drink. "But you knew who I was already, so let's not pretend it's exactly a surprise."
Well, damn it. It wasn't, was it? Was she going to take that as well? Smugly rub his nose in the fact the pretense was so paper thin it was all right to be done with it? Then there was the business of them being in this together. Was that why she'd given him something because she thought she'd something on him?
Like hell she did. He had who, now he just needed why. Why she, her friends, London's finest snaps and that man, the right hand man, were here. It couldn't be chance. It had somehow to be one thing. Get that and he wouldn't just go straight to Lord Koorecroft, he'd be the hero of the hour. "So?The Wentworth emeralds--"
"What? The emeralds. What about the soddin' bleeders?"
"Are you always this common?"
"When the coat fits. What's it to you, coming in here in your fancy-boots? What's them bleeders to you either?"
"Are you meaning before or after you put them in my pocket?"
"You tell me. You're the one asking the question."
"And you're the one who's come looking." Yes. Nothing she'd say could stop him now, not given what burned in his breast beneath his ice cool exterior. The indignation, the humiliation, the fact he wanted her more than he'd ever wanted any woman.
"Says who? You? Oh, that's a good one, that is."
"Well, it is seeing as you planted them on me. Let's face it, whatever way I look at this, what the hell else is there here, that such an illustrious thief could-"
"This place as a matter of fact." She shrugged. "It's mine. Never thought of that, now did you?"
He almost dropped the burning splint. "Yours? This place is yours?" Seldom had he heard such piss. Spoken without a blush too. As if this was something he should know. Well, he didn't damn well know and he didn't damn well want to know. "I thought you were renting it?"
"I am."
"Then how is it yours?"
"Not legally. I do admit."
He leaned forward and tossed the splint onto the heaped paper and pinecones in the grate. "But you can fix that, can you, when you steal it?"