Chapter 33

"Lord Hawley, I do realize how this must look to you. The truth is-"
His brows drew together. "You didn't intend coming here to be my mistress, did you?"
"I did ... and I do have more suitable clothes."
"Perhaps. But the fact is you couldn't have worn worse ones."
"I'm offended you think so. As I said to you I may dress as a widow, it doesn't mean I am one underne-"
"I know what you said. What you said is beside the point when you agreed this afternoon to do it in exchange for seeing the papers."
"And I am going to do it in exchange for the papers." A stroke of sheer genius occurred. "I just need to make my necessary preparations in private so we might begin the evening for-"
"Prove it."
Her gaze froze on the embroidered leaf on his waistcoat. "P-prove it?" she stammered.
"If your preparations are what I think, they won't be worth a damn."
Her preparations? My God, how could he know? "Lord Hawley, I want you to know that ... it ... well, it was, it was all of it, the dress, the ... well ... Rub-"
"While it's charming of you, there is no need to blush, Miss Armstrong. I should have mentioned it this afternoon."
"Really?"
"Yes, really. I'm not a complete cad, you know. I understand you're not the only one who won't want a lasting reminder. Please be assured I'll take care of that."
"Oh..." Suspicion thudded, pulsing from her cheeks to her toes, which she just managed to keep standing on, that what he meant had nothing to with the laudanum whatsoever. Ignorance both drew, yet prevented her, from giving the thought the feet and legs it deserved. "Right ... "
"So, prove it, if you intend keeping your side of the bargain. If not, the door is there. I should add the fire is too. If you think I'm for keeping a pile of useless old papers that are cluttering up my house, you can think again."
The fire? What a swine.
"You mean now, Lord Hawley. I see." She shifted her gaze from the embroidered leaf on his waistcoat to the trailing ivy. "But what about eating supper first-"
"You think I should feed you as well?"
She lowered her gaze from the trailing ivy. Fire? Door? The latter certainly was what any woman in their right mind would choose.
If she did that though, she'd lose the papers. Did she want her dreams going up in smoke just because he had set this vile condition? "I may, of course, be mistaken, but I think you did say we would eat first?"
"In some ways that's probably the root of the problem. You think too much for someone I brought here solely to entertain me."
"But I thought I was being entertaining, Lord Hawley."
"That depends," he muttered.
That she had made him angry, this man whose boredom seemed to stretch like a clothes line all the way to his soul, was clear.
So now she must decide what she faced him as. The woman brimming with coldly burning contempt for his plunder of what he took? Or the one who didn't want him to know how damned stupid and ignorant Sapphire, queen of thieves, truly was?
Her heart thudded. There was no point thinking it, buttons were made to be unfastened, and the sooner she unfastened hers the better.
Snagging a breath, she unhooked the clasp at the neck of her dress. Ever since she'd glimpsed him standing at the library door, he had unnerved her. This was one instant she must, she would, keep her hands from shaking.
She drew her gown off her shoulders. A sharp ache in her wrists made her aware how tightly she clutched the material as she stepped out of the mass swirling at her feet. Then she bent to ease off her ankle boots, one at a time, so she stood in her stockinged soles. What came next in the brittle silence, she'd no idea.
Sapphire would think of many things. In that moment she did not feel she was Sapphire, that creature of ice and certainty who feared nothing. In that moment what she felt largely was sick. Who was to say he wouldn't now ask her what she was doing and tell her to put the gown back on again when she'd been so awkward?
"There," she murmured, smoothing stray tendrils of hair back from her face.
"Miss Armstrong, I-"
"There is absolutely no need to seem astonished by my ability to be amenable. I think you will find that I can and will do whatever you ask. Well. Within reason. And just because I wasn't entertaining, doesn't mean I can't be."
Of course, she understood that standing here in this God awful shift, corset, and petticoat she had argued with Ruby about, feeling brittle enough to snap into a thousand pieces, she wasn't the most appetizing thing in the world. But so long as he overlooked that, it was fine.
"Yes? Or no, Lord Hawley? Didn't we make a bargain after all?" Lifting her chin a little higher, she faced him fully in the candlelight. "But perhaps you are the one who now desires to break it? If you do, well ... I do know where the door is, since you've been good enough to point it out."
So? What next? Her hair? Or the corset? She hesitated, feeling an instant's unease flicker beneath her marbled veins.
Of course, a few scars where she'd been beaten were nothing. But she was Sapphire. And Sapphire had her own limitless appeal, living in people's imaginations. Did she want this specimen knowing she had been beaten into stealing? Any more than she wanted him knowing how inexperienced she was?
Worse would be his pity. The leering pretense of it rather, since she doubted the man had a pitying inch of bone in his whole body. Half a quarter inch neither.
In that respect it was better she forget what he took from her and hurry this along as the masterful Sapphire. So, it must be her hair. She reached up, grasped a pin, and stuck the edge between her teeth. Then she grasped another. And another.
"You know that Christmas Eve, it was-"
"A wig." How could he remember that? "As Sapphire I kept my hair short. A footman. A lady. Whatever the mark. Whatever the plan. That was how it worked. I may as well say I'm surprised you recognized me."
"Perhaps because I had my reasons."
Her cheeks flooded with unwelcome heat. Was she that good? Somehow she doubted it. Still, despite the fact she'd left those emeralds in his pocket, a boy of that age would scarcely have been terribly troubled about it. Did it make her work here easier, or harder though, if after all the years he remembered, not just her, but what had licked up between them in the hot darkness of that coach? A world away from this night.
Suddenly she didn't know, and while she tried to think, he stepped closer. Her heart pounded like a blacksmith's hammer.
"Then you should be careful, Lord Hawley. Next you'll be telling me how hard you tried to find me."
His face held that sleek, distant quality. "You have no idea."
He reached his knuckle towards her.
"What are you-"
"I am just wondering how you are going to kiss me with a mouthful of pins. Or maybe that's part of the plan?"