Chapter 32

"You wish to remove your coat, Miss Armstrong? To make yourself at home?"
She didn't especially, and her scalp prickled that he gestured for her to go before him. Still, she had dressed with care, in what by no stretch of the imagination could be thought otherwise than the plainest gown, stockings, and sensible shoes. Unless of course his imagination was that of a blind man or a dotard. Why stir his suspicions with a silken spoon though when he knew she hadn't wanted to come?
Only now-well now, looking at the cold cuts on the dresser, the champagne chilling in the ice bucket, she blushed to remove the coat for the wrong reasons, didn't she?
Her practiced eye knew the threadbare aspect of this once fine country seat. This? This wasn't it. Everything here was of the best. She could only attribute that to him. Tilly and Eudora were hardly likely to have arranged it. As for Belle-oh yes, Cass could just see Belle doing that.
His footstep sounded softly beside her. "What are you thinking?"
"I am just wondering how I am going to explain Elgered's absence."
She wasn't wondering anything-apart from how not to remove her coat all of a sudden.
"Elgered?"
Ignoring his hovering proximity, she swept forward. "Yes. Gil. After all he's meant to be in Berkshire, isn't he? You know as well as I do where he is right now. So you'll also know as well as I do, we need a story, if I am here and he ... isn't, before we get to any kind of business, that is. I just ... I just would sleep so much easier in that bed knowing that much had been thrashed out."
Out the corner of her eyes, she sensed his gaze track her.
"Why don't I take the liberty of saying he has left on a mission and you are in my protection?"
While she may have had no physical experience of men, it didn't mean she didn't know how their minds worked. Was he really this desperate to have her?
She read it in the way his gaze roamed her. The way he walked around her. Now that he stood opposite his eyes held more than glittery hunger. How unnerving. Unless he knew what she had up her sleeve? And this was some ploy to shame her into not using it? Well, she couldn't let him. She couldn't remove the coat either.
"You, Lord Hawley? I didn't think that was what we'd agreed. With Tilly and Belle that is."
His gaze iced. He walked to the giant mahogany wardrobe and removed a hanger. "I will tell them you were never married if that's what you want, that the whole thing was a front."
His tone held a trace of grit. How much more did she want from him? Why did he give it?
"But you are a spy, Miss Armstrong. Is that understood? Before you open your sweet lips and start protesting."
"Me? Protest?"
His gaze, dark, motionless, held hers. "I don't want Lord Koorecroft asking any awkward questions."
"Even when it is your intention to ruin me?"
"Just sometimes, intentions can change. Now your coat."
He reached for the buttons, his touch alarming enough to send hot shivers spiraling down her spine, up it too, all the way to her hair roots, to her toes which curled in her boots, even as she fought to stop them.
"We can leave the food till after."
"After?You mean-after ... "
"What's wrong with that? Then you can dine with me in that charming black peignoir you wore the other night when you kissed me."
Charming? He had high hopes when she'd dressed like a crow.So now ... now he finished unfastening the buttons and took off her coat, the awful one, covering the even more awful dress, she needed to think how to reconstruct this. Because now, his face fell.
"If I'd known you'd no clothes, I'd have sent over something."
She straightened her arm so the cool glass of the phial slid down the inside of her sleeve toward her fingertips.
"Obviously my clothes befit a widow, not a whore."
It was only a pity that her attempt to shrug and sound nonchalant was marred by the soft thud of the phial slipping clean through her fingers and landing on the rug. How sodding great was that?
"Charlie, with the bags. At the door no doubt," he offered.
"But of course." She strove not to flinch, terror that he was going to look down and see what lay on the rug, rising, although if he thought the thud was Charlie, he was welcome."And who knows but I might have something in them. Something-" Appearing inviting was not something she did as a rule but there was a first time for everything. "better."She nudged the phial quickly under the sofa.
"Then I'll go look."
"Yes. Please do."
Her heart sank. Why couldn't he have said that before she kicked the phial under the sofa? Still, he crossed to the door. She glanced down. Now what? It wasn't necessary for her to have ever been with a man to know, if he turned around from the door and caught her on her hands and knees trying to fish the phial out from under the sofa, he'd pounce. Even if he wasn't aroused, his suspicions would be. It wasn't as if she could say, 'I'm looking for the laudanum I planned on tipping in your drink.'
If she had worn something a little more alluring, she might now be able to put him off guard, instead of standing here like a frump. Her heart thudded harder. He stuck his head out the door and looked up and down the empty corridor.
"The food... the food is ... " She spoke with a confidence she was nowhere near to feeling. In some respects it didn't matter what the food was, the drink neither, when she'd lost the laudanum to put in them, did it?
He shrugged and closed the door.
"Cold? It's hardly the only thing."
Did he mean her? For a second she was caught between hoping that even he wouldn't be so brazen and the misgivings that howled like wolves in her veins. Talking doors, she couldn't afford to be shown this one when the phial was on the floor and the papers down the stairs.