“Will you cease teasing Lady Emily?”
His brow lifted. “Ah, a champion arises for Marie Antoine.”
“Do not imagine you can flummox me, Mr. Yale. I have two brothers and both are masters at plaguing me.”
“I know that you can hold your own in company a great deal more exalted than mine.”
Kitty’s tongue felt dry. Everyone knew of her involvement in Lord Poole’s exile. It would never be forgotten.
“Will you treat her civilly, please, sir? She is young and bookish and hasn’t the knack for the regular concourse of ladies and gentlemen.”
He studied her a moment, in his face intelligence and thought. Kitty could not but wonder again how he and the earl had come to be such close companions.
He took her hand and bowed over it, this time deeply.
“It will be my pleasure to abide by your wishes, my lady.” But his eyes twinkled, mischief just beneath the surface.
She smiled. “Really, sir. You could at least—” Boots tread upon the stair and the dog’s tail set up a racket slapping against the wall. Lord Blackwood entered the corridor.
“Back so late, Blackwood? Your animals returned hours ago.”
“Flirting wi’ the leddy, Yale?” He looked perfectly at ease and not at all like he had kissed her out of her senses that morning.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Mr. Yale released her hand and moved toward the stair. “Leaving that to a better man than I, old chap.” He descended.
The earl set his hooded gaze on Kitty and she could not bear the lazy caress, not after seeing something so different in his eyes when he had held her. But she must pass by him to go downstairs.
Silence stretched. She fidgeted.
“This is extraordinarily awkward and not at all pleasant,” she muttered, entirely bereft of every social grace and attitude of comportment.
The corner of his very talented mouth twitched. “Than A’m tae take it ye winna be casting yerself at me again?”
“Oh, good heavens.” Her face flamed. “You haven’t any civility at all, have you?”
He laughed outright. Amid her complete consternation, and no little shame over her thorough hypocrisy, Kitty had the urge to laugh as well.
“Well, you needn’t be so plain speaking,” she insisted, hiding her smile. “I am exceedingly mortified.” And still exceedingly in need of his hands on her. Simply looking at him made her hot and a little hungry.
“Scots be a practical folk, lass.”
“I’ve heard that. But I had never seen it in action before and frankly wish I hadn’t still.”
“Forgie a puir fellow, than.” He bowed, never releasing her gaze.
“For precisely what? No! Don’t answer that.” She covered her face with a hand, an action she had never, ever once affected. But her palm seemed stuck to her nose. She was falling apart. “Good Lord, I haven’t any idea what to do or say now.”
Through her fingers she caught a glimpse of his eyes glimmering with pleasure.
“Mrs. Milch has called dinner early,” she mumbled. “Country hours for the holiday, I daresay.”
She moved forward, entirely tongue-tied and perfectly, gloriously alive beneath her skin. It felt so good to laugh inside, like a girl again, the girl she had put behind her at far too young an age.
She passed him. He grasped her arm, barely a touch that ground her to the spot like a Chinese candle planted in earth, bursting with fire.
“Lass.” His voice was unmistakably husky. “A winna take it amiss if ye chuise tae cast yersel at me again.”
Delicious weakness spilled through her. She tilted her gaze up.
“You will stare at my mouth quite distractingly often, won’t you?” she said breathlessly.
“A canna seem tae nae.”
She was trembling in his touch. She could do nothing for it. He bent his head, his mouth mere inches from hers.
She whispered, “You are not being consistent, my lord.”
“Naither be ye, lass.”
Kitty swallowed around the lump of courage in her throat.
“What do we do now?”
He paused, then: “Whitiver ye wish.”
She gulped in air, drew away, and hurried down the steps. She did not know exactly what she wished, only that for the first time in an age she looked forward to the next minute, the next hour. She felt like a girl awaiting her first Christmas. Like a gift, wrapped up, waiting to be opened by the Earl of Blackwood.
Chapter 9
Five years earlier, after Lambert took her innocence, then told her she must be content to have him as a lover but not a husband, Kitty had taught herself to spy. For the sake of revenge. To satisfy her angry soul.
In society she did not hang upon his sleeve. Rather, she made it a habit to remain at a slight distance from him in company, straining her ear to hear his conversation, especially hushed conversation with gentlemen. When he moved through a ballroom or parlor, she followed discreetly.
She believed herself infinitely clever; she was collecting information. A man such as he—who used an innocent girl the way he had used her—must have other secrets at least as dishonorable.
His secrets were in fact considerably more dishonorable.
She redoubled her efforts.
When he noticed her doggedness, she allowed him to believe she still harbored hopes of marriage.
He mocked her. On occasion he even bragged, revealing more than he should and making her despise herself that she had once admired such vanity and arrogance. Occasionally he propositioned her, finding her in private, making certain they would not be disturbed. She bore his embraces so that she could gain access to his pockets, his billfold, even once his private apartments.
Endeavoring to appear sincere, she suggested to him that perhaps she would find herself in an interesting condition, then he must wed her, to which he replied that were that to occur it already would have, that she was deficient, and that he certainly would not continue to meet her privately otherwise. She submitted to a secret examination by a physician to prove her determination to him; what she learned there hurt nearly more than she could bear. But the hope of revenge masked the pain.
All for the cause of revenge.
She had been very clever. Very proud. And very cold.
Then, in her twenty-third year, it came to an end. The night she made the acquaintance of a cretin of a Scottish lord. A very handsome cretin. A cretin with dark, fathomless eyes. In a ballroom filled with costumed revelers, the earl’s gaze seemed to say to her what her heart had told her for years already—that she was better than vengeance, that she must release the past and allow herself to live again.
Moments later, beneath her breath and with perfect poise, she told Lambert she was finished with hating him or caring about anything he did. And since then she had been free, until six months ago when he tried to hurt Alex and she finally ruined him.
Now, settled into a soft chair in the parlor of the Cock and Pitcher, she studied the Earl of Blackwood as she had once studied Lambert. The draperies were drawn against the cold night without, candles glimmering and firelight filled the chamber with a warm glow, the aromas of cinnamon and wine tangling in the warm air. She
