Olivia closed her eyes and braced herself for the first chomp, but instead all she got was the warm, wet slurp of his tongue over her hands.
“Blah,” she said, as the dog’s slobbery tongue bathed her aching hands, making her bindings a drooling, slippery mess.
Slippery? Her hands, now all covered in the beast’s saliva, felt as if they had been greased. With a mighty tug, she pulled one of her hands free from the bindings.
“Perhaps you wanted to even the score before you bit me,” she said to the dog, who sat looking at her with what she thought might be a smile.
Now all she had to do was find a way out of Chambley’s fortress and to get . . .
To get where? Olivia nearly swore again when the only thought that came to her was to
get to Robert.
To that scoundrel, indeed!
Not all that desirous of another encounter with Milo the Ox, she went to the window and opened the sash. Glancing down, she realized a trellis came all the way up to her window and would make her escape, while difficult, not impossible.
Holding her breath, since she hated heights, she swung her leg over the sill and then looked down to gauge the descent before her. The garden below swayed in a dizzy circle, nearly sending her tumbling out the window. It was enough for her to pull her leg back in as quickly as she could to consider another option.
She backed away from the open window and collapsed into the chair. Her heart hammered at her chest, and she could barely catch her breath. The dog came over and settled his head in her lap, looking up at her as if to say he was glad she was back.
“And so am I,” she told him absently, scratching at his ears. “I’m not cut out for scaling walls.”
For some reason her wayward imagination saw Robert Danvers making such a dangerous ascent to save his ladylove. Knife clenched in his teeth, dressed in black, his hair tied back in a pirate’s queue, he’d probably consider such a climb beneath his talents.
Well, it wasn’t like he, or any hero for that matter, was going to be coming after her, she thought. If she was going to be rescued, she’d have to do it herself. After several minutes of considering all her options, she decided that perhaps she could risk facing Milo if her only alternative was climbing down the side of Lord Chambley’s stately and all too tall town house.
Besides, how could she get down with her valise in hand? Olivia picked up her old, battered bag and gave it a slight hug, glad for the excuse it afforded her not to attempt such an escape.
She made her way to the door, her companion trotting companionably after her. “Oh, you want out as well?”
The dog wagged his tail.
Olivia went to put her hand on the door but found the latch turning by itself.
Egads! Someone was coming in! Her newfound protector started to growl, and Olivia glanced again around the room for something with which to protect herself and realized she had nothing but her own wits and the window.
Robert smiled to himself at Chambley’s hasty exit. He’d taken the bait with the note they’d bribed a young boy to deliver to the house.
“Castlereagh will be surprised to see him,” Aquiles chuckled.
“No more so than Chambley after he’s done bowing and scraping and then is dismissed,” Robert said, watching the coach wheel away. “Hopefully he’ll be kept waiting long enough for us to borrow back Miss Sutton and leave unnoticed.”
Getting into Chambley’s house might have posed a problem for someone with less experience than Robert and Aquiles, but the pair of them had been sneaking out of inns, houses and even French garrisons for the past two years, usually with the local dragoons hot on their tail, so they had confidently approached Chambley’s London residence with little doubt they’d be able to gain entry.
“This place is a bleedin’ fortress,” Aquiles grumbled after their fourth attempt to get into the house failed.
Chambley’s home was proving more difficult than either of them would have imagined. For one thing, his lordship kept most of his windows locked and barred, and those that were loose had the unwelcome addition of a dog or some other mongrel lounging before the hearth inside that threatened to set up an unholy racket every time they tried to enter the room.
They had found a poorly maintained trellis that led to a fourth-story room, but on Robert’s first attempt to climb it, the rotted wood crumbled between his hands and snapped beneath his boot.
There would be no entry or escape via that route.
As he searched for another route in, a window above them slid open. Robert and Aquiles ducked into an old hedge growing up against the house, concealing themselves from view.
As they watched, a face surrounded by a tangle of red curls peered out the window, as if gauging her surroundings.
Miss Sutton.
“Seems we’ve found Lord Chambley’s guest,” Robert whispered to Aquiles. “And she doesn’t look too happy about her accommodations.”
Just then a leg came dangling out the window, not only revealing a shapely and trim calf and ankle but indicating that the lady attached to it had no idea that the trellis she was about to climb down would never hold her.
Robert’s breath froze in his throat. Was she crazy? When he finally found his voice, ready to call out to stop her, even as her foot teetered inches above the first rail, she paused, then quickly plucked her leg back inside. The curtains settled back into place, hiding her once again.
While he wanted to strangle her for taking such a dangerous risk, a small part of him had to admire her aplomb for even considering such a daring escape.
“We could fight our way in,” Aquiles suggested. Robert’s servant did love a good brawl with a worthy opponent. And the large, burly footman they’d spied lounging about the front door promised to give the contentious Aquiles a good round or two.
“No, it’s too risky,” Robert said, shaking his head. “By the time we got to her, the watch would be on us, and then where would we be? It would only be our word against Chambley’s that he, the King’s own representative, is a traitor and his houseguest holds the very fate of the Peninsula. No, we need to take the lady without witnesses.” Robert glanced back up at the window so high above them.
What the devil had she been thinking aligning herself with Chambley? That she’d changed her mind was obvious, but that still didn’t explain why she’d gone with him in the first place.
Part of him wanted to believe her claim of noble duty to the Spanish treasure—the same part that found her kisses intoxicating and her spirited manners a challenging delight.
But her arrival at Chambley’s house only gave further evidence against her, and that, coupled with her treasonous and murderous past made it hard for him to believe that the lady’s lips were nothing more than the product of a skilled liar.
That didn’t, however, preclude him from gaining her back from Chambley, whether willingly or not.
When they started out of the hedge, Robert’s jacket got caught on a branch. As he turned to free himself, he spied a set of stairs, nearly hidden amongst the overgrown tangle, leading down to the cellar. They broke their way through the shrubbery, and as luck would have it, the long-forgotten entrance was not only unlocked but unguarded.
Finally inside the house, they discovered Chambley kept a minimal staff, for they saw only one or two housemaids as they dashed quietly through the halls.
In one of the rooms they ducked into to hide from a maid, they found it already occupied by one of Chambley’s more fierce looking dogs. The great creature opened one lazy eye and growled.
That was enough for Aquiles. “Get me out of here,” the man whispered, nearly climbing up Robert like a ladder. For a man who could bring down his enemy with one fist, Aquiles held an unequaled fear of dogs.
Robert nearly growled himself. “Pretend it’s a cat.”
“Bah!” Aquiles spat. “We should have fought our way in. Or called the Guard to help.”
“Because of a pack of overfed hounds? You’ve been away from the front for too long.” Robert peeked out the door into the hallway. “It’s clear, we can go.”
Aquiles barreled out of the room, nearly running down Robert in the process.
Very quickly, they found themselves in front of the door to the room Robert suspected held Miss Sutton.
“On the count of three,” Robert whispered, his hand on the latch. He held up his fingers and as he counted them off, he started to turn the handle.
On three they burst through the door, only to see a flash of muslin going toward the window.
“Dammit,” Robert cursed, as he dashed into the room. Before he could stop her, Miss Sutton flung herself over the sill and out the window.
“Aaahh,” came her terrified cry, followed by the splintering crash of wood. “Oh, help!”
Robert made it to the window only to find Miss Sutton dangling by one hand. Beneath her, the trellis had crumbled and she had nothing nearby to use as a footing or a handhold.
He caught her by the wrist immediately and held on with all his might. Although she appeared to be a slight thing, hanging four floors above the garden, she felt as if she could rival Aquiles.
Glancing over his shoulder, he called out to his servant, “I need a hand here.”
Aquiles only shook his head, pointing at the monstrous dog seated in the middle of the room, its tail wagging invitingly.
“Oh, come on,” Robert said, leaning out the window and catching her other arm. Aquiles’s head shuddered back and forth, his eyes never leaving his brindled nemesis.
Olivia’s hand slipped, and he held on tighter. “I don’t think I can get her inside by myself,” he told his servant.
It probably wasn’t the best thing he could have said, for she only struggled harder now, making it that much more difficult to hold onto her. Her eyes had grown wider than a pair of his aunt’s best dinner platters.
“Hold still,” he told her.
“You’ve got to get me up,” she sputtered, her feet peddling against the bricks, trying to find a toehold anywhere.
“It would have helped if you hadn’t decided to jump out the window,” he shot back, tugging at her and making some progress in lifting her.
“This is hardly my fault,” Olivia told him as he finally managed to hoist her up and through the window. She fell against him, her body molding to his, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. He steadied her as he found his own.
“I would have been just as happy . . .” she sputtered, “to escape out the door . . . if you hadn’t come bursting in here . . . scaring me out of my wits.”
“Scaring you?” Robert shot back, trying to ignore the heated response his body was having to her in his arms. She would have looked thoroughly scared and innocent, like someone in over her head, if it hadn’t been for her righteous indignation. But fury and Miss Sutton seemed to agree with each other, and he found it a compelling mixture. He couldn’t help provoking her a little further. “Look what you’ve done to my servant.”
She swiped at her errant curls and looked over his shoulder at his still cowering batman. “This is who you bring to rescue me?” When she glanced back at him, her mouth twisted into a wry smile, surprising him with the intimacy of it—as if it were meant to share some secret just for them.
For a moment it was like it had been earlier in the park, just before he’d stolen that fateful kiss. But this time they both knew what awaited them, and it seemed to Robert that the lady was not only waiting for him but more than willing.
Then suddenly she seemed to grow only too aware of her proximity to him and the heated sparks between them, for she pushed away from him, a blush coming to her face.
“I didn’t need rescuing, thank you very much,” she said, the annoyance returning to her voice.
“I didn’t exactly come here to rescue you,” he told her. “Rather to borrow you back.”
Her mouth closed tightly, and she promptly bustled past him to her discarded valise. “I should have suspected as much from the likes of you.”
She made it sound as if he were some Seven Dials shyster and not Wellington’s representative. But then again, he realized, she didn’t know he was here as the general’s handpicked agent.
“Now, if you are done making matters worse,” she was saying, “I’ll be leaving.” With a pat of her hand to her hip, the dog trotted obediently to her side and followed her out the door.
Aquiles scrambled atop the nearest chair to get out of the beast’s path. And Robert had to wonder if it was the dog or the click of Miss Sutton’s determined heels that sent the man skittering for higher ground.
Robert stared after her. He couldn’t quite believe her audacity. He’d just plucked her off a ledge, and she blamed him for the entire incident. More than that, she had a way of tangling with his senses, leaving him wavering between kissing her and strangling her.
Well, there was one thing he could say about her, she was a determined chit, there was no arguing that.
“Come on,” he barked at Aquiles as he went off after her.
She’d made it to the landing by the time they caught up with her. She glanced back at them, her gaze rolling upward, and then after a disgusted shake of her head, she continued down the stairs.
“You aren’t going anywhere without me,” he told her, catching her by the elbow.
She whirled around and leveled another one of those damned pistols of hers at him. How many firearms could one woman possess?
“I wouldn’t be so sure, if I were you,” she said.
He vowed right there and then, the first chance he got, he was going to get every blasted one of them away from her once and for all and toss them all into the Thames. He had half a mind to dunk her a couple of times as well, just for good measure.
So off she went, with Robert and Aquiles trailing after her.
“How do you know which way to go?” he asked her.
“I don’t,” she whispered back.
“Then you’ll get us all caught,” he told her. “If you would for just one moment trust me, let me explain everything, I’d have you out of here and somewhere safe—on my word as a gentleman.”
“Bah,” she told him. “Lord Chambley made much the same offer earlier. I’ve had enough
gentlemanly
promises for one day.”