Chapter 49

"Give me that, Lord Hawley. Thank you."
As the door to the adjoining room flew open and she stood there in her bloody black peignoir, hair sitting like a dark cloud on her shoulders he knew one thing. If she thought he'd limped back and forward lugging all these bottles and then limped back and forward lugging them again, she'd another think coming in the realm of giving her anything. Too bad, if it resulted in a wrestling match that made the one with the spade look tame by comparison.
"Give you-"
"Yes. Now. Thank you."
She strode across the rug in ways he'd never seen and also, in these same diffident, sexy, had-enough-of-you, ways he had, reached past him and tried grasping hold of what he automatically put behind his back. His stash after all.
"You said I could have it. I could have all of them," she said.
"And you said you didn't want any of them."
"Just because I didn't, doesn't mean I won't. Now-"
"That's what happens to great minds, Miss Armstrong."
"Cassidy."
"They think alike."
"No, they don't."
"In terms of changing them. Yes, they do. And I'm afraid in terms of my mind, that's what's happened." He raised his arm higher. Such a cheap trick. Her lips were inches from his. If she wanted the bottle she could kiss him for it. She wouldn't. So she could go. Seriously. Her eyelashes fluttered down like a dead bumblebee's.
"Really?"
Anyway, why want a kiss when he could damn well have what was in these bottles? If he'd had them on him in that coach all these years ago, he'd never have been arrested, because he'd never have kissed her. He'd have been sprawled on the seat in a different sort of ecstasy. And his life? His life? Christ, what would his life be right now?
"Well, why don't I just take these ones then?" She stepped back, offering one of her tantalizing stares.
"What?"
"The ones that are right here on the bed ... "
"Bitch."
She grasped two. "And why don't I bin them? Hmm?" A gust of freezing cold air blew in as she flung the window open before he could stop her, stuck the bottles out of it too. "Just pour the contents from the window here out into the garden below. Like so? You see? Going. Going. Gone."
"Cussed, by-blown- Give me--" He leapt forward, reaching wildly for the catch.
"Make any references to my ancestry and I swear I won't help you."
"Damned, blasted-"
"My occupation either."
"Snit-faced snit of a-"
"Gracious Lord Hawley." She wiped her hands together. "Do you know this is the most animated I've ever seen you? Well, sort of anyway, if I discount certain other things."
What a lie. He'd other bottles after all. Crates of them. In his hand, on the bed. But how damn dare she come in here and water the flowerbeds when he'd no damn way of getting these contents back. Short of throwing himself out the window head first and licking up every spilt drop. He considered it, given what leapt along his veins. Was she even listening to the sound of his heart dribbling away below?
"And, I don't know about you, my lord, but I think it will do the garden good. As for the servants, if that is what you're thinking, the servants or anyone else hearing this will just think they are listening to the sound of a chamber pot being emptied. Anyway, why trouble yourself about the servants and what they think? You haven't this far. Although I daresay if you're desperate you can always run down the stairs and lick it all up again. Of course, it wouldn't have been necessary if you'd just given me the bottle in your hand."
"Over my dead body."
She strode to the bed, swung her calculating gaze over what was there.
"But you wouldn't. So ... Let's just see what we have here, shall we? In for a farthing, in for a guinea."
With what was left of him, he tore at the bottle cork with his teeth. Once what was in the bottle was safely down his throat she'd have a hard job getting it back. Even if she put a gun to his head, tore off her robe, offered herself naked. The hell with his breath tearing and his hands shaking. He hadn't brought these bottles all the way from London for them to end as fodder for the bloody flowerbeds.
And yet, hadn't he laid them like sacred sacrificial offerings before her, asking for her help?
"You do know you and Tilly are as bad as each other that way." Another stream decorated the flower bed. "She has brandy in her coffee. You have brandy in your opiate. But a man who wants to take it straight? Well? Now, that's a man with problems I'd say. But there, perhaps you want to happily kill yourself. Perhaps I only dreamed you asking for my help? Maybe my dreams are every bit as bad as yours?"
He snagged a breath. "That would be difficult, Miss Armstrong. Now ... if you don't mind ... "
"Cassidy. And yes. Yes it would be difficult, the way you judder and shudder. At least I trust I don't do that."
He took his gaze down from whatever starry sky he didn't look at. Christ's sake she was right. Was every woman he'd slept with, every drug he'd taken, so much a part of him, it was him? Where was his measured calm? His boredom? The shadowed gaze that should flit across her skin like a shadow?
He couldn't do without this stuff, could he? He was just put out at her refusal to help. At limping back and forward when what bored into his thigh this morning was like the cannon blast that had torn his sleep to pieces last night.
Hell, she'd already seen that inexcusable, damned, sweating, juddering, display. Why give her this one? The window was open. Surely he could empty this bottle out of the window to make it look as if that was why he'd just torn the cork out? With his teeth no less?
Anything less would make him look like a damned petulant fool.
Forget fool. Anything less would make him look like a damned addict.