The Scandals Of An Innocent

would have no time to dissemble.

“Yes, I think that she was,” she said evenly.

“She did not say anything to you?”

“No, she did not,” Alice said.

Miles nodded slowly. He turned fully to face her, leaning back against the door panels. “Do you think she will speak to Laura tomorrow?”

“I doubt it,” Alice said. “I know that Mrs. Anstruther is her cousin but-” she shrugged helplessly “-her feelings for Tom are too strong to betray him.”

“Why do you think that she trusts him?” Miles asked.

Their eyes met and held. “Because she loves him,” Alice said. She sighed. “For no better reason than that.”

“Do you think her instinct to trust him is correct?” Miles said.

“I doubt it,” Alice said. “Tom is a scoundrel, and love is more likely to distort one’s good sense than to reinforce it.”

Miles smiled slightly. “You sound almost as cynical as me, Miss Lister,” he said. “Lock the door behind me,” he added, checking that there was a key, “and do not open it until your maid knocks in the morning. Ask her to call out to identify herself first. I will be in the room across the landing-should you need me.”

He went out and Alice turned the key in the lock with fingers that shook a little. She got into bed and lay there for a moment before blowing out the candle. Tom Jones would have to wait for another night. She was already quite sufficiently disturbed as it was.

Perhaps it was the relentless ache in her arm, or the fear that someone might indeed attempt to break into her room, or more likely the disquieting thought of Miles Vickery across the corridor, barely feet away from her, but Alice did not sleep well that night. Miles’s face seemed obstinately to appear in her broken dreams. His dark hazel eyes invaded her most private thoughts. Even after he had left her bedchamber his presence seemed to dominate the room, as though she could not escape him. She could hear the echo of his question about Lydia in her dreams and her answer: She trusts him because she loves him…

She woke shivering whilst it was still dark and burrowed under the blankets as much for comfort as warmth. Love made one do such foolish things, such as entrusting oneself to a man who might be a dangerous criminal, or indeed to one who was an accredited rake who could never be faithful or trustworthy or any of the things that a sensible woman would wish for in a husband. She opened her eyes and stared at the shadowy canopy of her bed. She could not be falling in love with Miles Vickery all over again, not when she could see so clearly his faults and imperfections now, not when she was supposed to have learned from her bitter lesson of the previous year. She was far too levelheaded for that, too practical, too wise. She knew that she was suffering from a bad case of thwarted lust-the sort of thing that ladies pretended never to experience, let alone speak about-but that was merely a physical problem. Anything deeper and more profound was out of the question.

She rolled over and buried her head under the pillow. She had forced Miles to honesty, and now she knew she was being most dreadfully dishonest herself. She threw the pillow aside and gave a long sigh.

She was starting to love Miles all over again, against her will, perhaps against all sense but with a helpless inevitability that she was not sure she even wanted to fight. The tenderness she had sometimes glimpsed in him and his determination to hold her safe had completely undermined her resistance even though she knew he was acting as much out of self-interest as concern for her. Now, more strongly than ever, she sensed the complex and damaged reality under Miles’s cynical outward shell, and she wanted to reach him. She was a fool. There was no doubt about it. She, who prided herself on her practicality, was behaving like a silly little scatterbrain, just like Lydia. Her mind told her she was making a mistake but her heart was not listening.

A sound out on the landing caught her attention. Thinking of Lydia made her wonder whether her friend could be so imprudent as to creep out before dawn to risk another hour in her lover’s arms. Alice slid softly from the bed and padded over to the door. She remembered Miles’s strictures about not opening it until Marigold called her in the morning, but then she heard another soft sound and she turned the key and opened the door a crack.

There was a single lamp burning down the hall and by its light Alice could see that Miles was sleeping on a pallet outside her door. Her heart gave a huge leap of shock and something else. She stared down at him, absolutely rooted to the spot. In sleep he looked relaxed and the hard lines and planes of his face were softened. His dark eyelashes rested against the curve of his cheek. A day’s stubble already darkened his jaw and Alice suddenly felt a huge, near-ungovernable urge to fall to her knees beside him and run her fingers along his cheek to feel that skin rough beneath her hands.

She must have made some noise, or perhaps a tiny movement, because the next moment she found herself flat on her back on the pallet with Miles’s body on top of hers, pinning her down. He was breathing fast, and there was a hard, dangerous light in his eyes. Alice was so shocked that for a second she could not move and barely remembered to breathe. Then she tried to struggle but it was as humiliating as when he had caught her outside the gown shop; he was too strong and she could barely do more than wriggle beneath him, a maneuver that did not seem to do anything to ease the situation, for something even more dangerous flared in his eyes. Her hands came up against his chest and it was then that she realized he was naked, or at least partially so. The skin beneath her palms was warm, hard and smooth. Alice swallowed, her throat suddenly feeling as parched as a dry riverbed.

“You are lying outside my bedroom door and you aren’t wearing any clothes!” she blurted out, realizing a second too late that she had spoken her thoughts aloud. She saw Miles’s smile, and then he rolled off her and sat up.

“I still have my breeches on,” he said mockingly. His tone changed. “Don’t ever do that again, Miss Lister. I could have hurt you.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Alice protested. “I thought I heard a sound-”

“And so you came to investigate even though I had expressly told you not to do so?”

Alice sighed. “It was wrong of me,” she conceded.

“It was.” Miles still sounded furious.

Alice sighed again and struggled to her knees, abruptly aware that her nightgown was bunched up and revealed the backs of her thighs. She grabbed the gown and dragged it down, and in the same moment she saw Miles’s gaze slide over her naked skin, and then his eyes widened and darkened with an equal mixture of shock and something Alice immediately identified as lust.

“What,” he said, “is that?” His voice was rough and just the tone of it sent flickers of erotic sensation through her body.

“Wh…what?” Alice asked, dragging the lawn and lace as far down as she could and gripping it tightly about her ankles.

Oh Lord, he had seen. And she could never, ever explain…

In a panic now, she tried to scramble to her feet and back away from him, but Miles put out one lazy hand, grabbed her about the ankle and she tumbled back down onto the pallet with a little shriek.

“Shh.” Miles put a hand over her lips. “You’ll wake everyone.”

Before Alice could protest he scooped her up in his arms, strode through the door of her bedroom and deposited her on the bed. She sprawled there, out of breath and indignant, her nightgown riding up again, her face bright pink.

“Lord Vickery, what are you doing?” Her words came out as a strangled croak. Her body was one huge, burning blush of combined mortification and utter desire.

She tried to crawl away from him up the bed, but once again Miles was too quick for her, his hand clamping about her bare ankle again and holding her still.

“You will tell me,” he said softly, “what it was that I saw just now-or I will take a look for myself. Well?”

Alice clutched the nightgown tighter about her legs. “I-it…” It is just more proof, if that were needed, that I am not a lady…

Miles’s bright hazel gaze pinned her against the pillows. “I thought that I knew all your secrets now, Alice, but it seems not.” His glance traveled over her slowly, from flushed face and tumbled hair to bare feet. “You do realize that when we are wed,” he said, “if not before, I will see you-all of you-without your nightgown?”

Alice made another choked little noise. She did not think she could feel any hotter without burning up. “Then you will just have to wait, won’t you?” she whispered.

“Unfortunately, I am of an impatient disposition,” Miles said. “Forgive me, but I am about to behave most