“In a Bengalese monsoon?” He dropped the muffler. “That fellow we sought in Calcutta tracked you all the way through the jungle, if you recall.”
Leam shook his head, moving to his horse’s stall. “I’ve no idea why this one hasn’t come closer.
He’s within spitting distance yet he balks.”
Yale leaned back against the cold stable wall and swung the bottle once more to his lips. “Much as the lovely Lady Katherine?”
Leam would not oblige him with a reply. But it was a damned nuisance sometimes that the lad had the instincts of a real spy. Always watching.
“He is closer than I like given the circumstances.”
“P’raps you ought to simply wait for him behind a wall and shoot him when he appears. Works like a charm, you know.”
The big roan bumped its head into Leam’s chest. He ran his hand along its smooth face.
“Is that how it happened, Wyn? When you shot that girl?” Leam didn’t know the whole story of it; Yale had never shared it. But he knew well enough that his friend had not always drunk the way he did now. It had started after one assignment went terribly wrong.
The Welshman pushed up from the bench and hefted a saddle into his arms. On steady legs he moved to his horse’s stall. But this time Leam could see the drink in his eyes and the set of his mouth.
The soberer the lad grew, the more he laughed. For years they had gotten along famously together: Mr.
Wyn Yale, the drunk, and Lord Uilleam Blackwood, the man with a hole where his heart should be.
Yale unfixed the latch on a stall door and heaved the saddle and blanket to his black’s back. It was an elegant creature, beauty and strength in its Thoroughbred lines.
“Going for a ride, Wyn?” Leam spoke mildly. “It is unwise in this weather, of course.”
“When you call me by my Christian name, Leam, you intend to lecture me. I will save you the trouble. Ta- ta.” He tightened his mount’s girth and reached for the bridle.
“I could knock you down. You would sleep this one off.”
“You couldn’t, old man.”
“I haven’t bothered to in years, it is true. But I am tempted now.”
Yale slid the bit into the black’s mouth and dropped the reins over its neck. He drew the horse from the stall, its hooves clomping across straw-strewn wood.
“Are you trying to kill yourself, or the horse?”
The Welshman pushed the stable door open and mounted amid lazy swirls of snow blowing off the roof.
Leam followed. “Don’t be a fool, lad.”
“Save your lectures for your son, Blackwood. He’s still young enough to find some use in them.”
He spurred the horse into the snow. It stepped high, wary of the drifts, but the Welshman pushed it forward.
His
“You will ruin that animal’s legs, you idiot!” The wind grabbed Leam’s voice. Heedless, the black-clad man and black-coated horse disappeared around the corner of the stable.
He cursed and headed for the inn. He shook his coat and pushed through the entrance. Bella and Hermes came in behind and he shut the door—too forcefully. He tugged off his gloves and threw his coat onto a hook, bending to swipe his boots with a cloth, his head a wretched mash of anger.
Anger, he could feel in spades. Only anger, still after so long. His tenure with the Falcon Club had done nothing for that, nothing at all, although that had been the reason he’d joined five years earlier.
To cast off grief and guilt, and most of all fury, with purpose. To release his anger by keeping himself occupied.
All idiocy. He’d run away, accomplishing nothing but alienating himself for far too long from his home, the house in which his son lived.
His son.
He went into the parlor.
Lady Katherine stood by a window. The pane was open and the cold air blowing in rippled the delicate fabric of her skirt. But she did not seem to note it. Her wide gaze rested on him, strangely questioning once more.
His anger slid away, heat of an entirely different kind replacing it, low and insistent again. By God, those thundercloud eyes could bewitch a man.
“An ye wish, lass, A’ll saddle ma horse an search the road behind,” he heard himself say.
“For our servants?”
“Aye.”
“You would do that when you have just told Mr. Yale he oughtn’t to ride?”
“Aye.” That, and quite a bit more he began to fear with a sick twist in his stomach. He wanted to please her and see those thunderclouds glimmer with desire as they had in her bedchamber. “An ye wish.”
She remained silent a moment, slender and poised like a portrait, but shimmering with muted life in the gown that caressed her curves as his hands might. There was every newness about her, yet every familiarity, as there had been for the briefest moment that night three years ago. His heart beat a frantic pace.
A tiny crease appeared between her brows. “I would not have you put yourself at risk.”
He nodded. “Nae tae worry, lass. Thay’ll hae found shelter.”
“I hope so.”
“A ken ye dae.”
Her frown deepened. “
She was ice and fire at once, diamonds and feather down, soft heat bubbling forth through a cool veneer.
“Aye.” Leam backed toward the door. Distance was safest. Imagining she would shy from his blatant barbarity, he had redoubled his incivility earlier, boorishly commenting on her gown. The ploy had rewarded him only with the sensation of her skin marked upon his hand and the sweet, humid heat of her breath upon his lips.
But this honest conversation was going no better.
Distance. Sanity. Alvamoor, where his son awaited him to celebrate Christmas. His son. Nearly six now, his appearance no doubt altered since the previous year, as always with the swiftly growing young. But Leam knew the boy’s face well. Better than his own.
Without bidding the lady adieu, he grabbed his coat and gloves and retreated once more into the wild out- of-doors. The cold without could not touch a man with a soul of bleak barbarism like his.
Chapter 5
Kitty folded linens. She had not performed such a domestic task in an age. Permanently residing with her mother in her brother’s town house, she left the housekeeping to Alex’s capable London staff.
But Mrs. Milch had complained again of the lack of the serving girl, and Kitty’s brain was good for nothing more taxing this afternoon.
By the stable Lord Blackwood had spoken perfect English to Mr. Yale. Nary a hint of brogue or tumbling roll had marred the cadence of his deep voice speaking clearly and smoothly the king’s own English.
She’d heard it by accident. She had opened the window to release from the parlor a cloud of smoke a hard wind had sent down the chimney. But she had tarried there in the frigid air to spy on him. She would deny it to herself if she could, but she had no wits to now.
Perhaps he had been putting on airs to tease Mr. Yale, like an actor employing a false voice to mimic
