Angling her head, she spied around the doorjamb. For the briefest instant her gaze took in the open window and a desk piled with papers and books. Then Mr. Albrighton completely arrested her attention.
He stood with his back to her, facing the window, naked to the waist and with his hair still unbound. She followed the tapered line from his shoulders to his hips, captivated by the honed, lean strength that had been hidden by garments.
His arms extended straight out from his body on either side. In each hand he grasped a massive, heavy book. The strain of holding those books like that showed. His muscles had hardened from the stress into tight, defined, masculine forms, as crisp as if chiseled by a sculptor. His hands displayed an alluring strength as they reacted to the weight they bore.
She forgot her intentions to drop the linens and scoot away. She forgot
everything
while she watched him, fascinated. How long had he been standing like that? How long did he intend to continue? The books must grow heavier with each passing moment. They were of good size and probably close to twenty pounds each to start.
He slowly raised both arms until the books met over his head, then slowly, painfully, lowered them again. The muscles in his shoulders and arms corded in resistance. Then those in his back, and even, perceptibly, the ones in his hips. Even with the window open and the cold entering, a fine sheen of sweat showed on his skin.
He looked magnificent. Beautiful, really. She flushed deeply, thoroughly, in ways the cold breeze could not cure. Twinges of arousal moved in her like strings on an instrument being mischievously plucked.
He raised the books once more. They began their descent. This time they did not stop but continued the arc until he held them down by his thighs.
He turned around.
He saw her, of course. She had moved to get a better view through the opening. He looked right at her and it was clear he knew she had been watching him. And why. Dark amusement showed in his eyes, along with a dangerous awareness that she was bedazzled. She practically heard him debating what to do about that.
She forgot to be embarrassed. Forgot how to speak. She just stood there, holding the linens, looking at him because she could not look away. The same strength showed in his chest, and even now, with the stress of the books relieved, his body possessed those tight, hard lines.
“You are allowed to come in,” he said. He dropped the books on the bed. She saw that it had a blanket at least. “It is your property.”
“I—I brought some—” She lifted her arms.
He made no effort to come and get them from her. He just stood there, half naked, watching her to see—what?
She collected herself enough to pretend more composure than she felt. She stepped over the threshold and dropped the stack of cloth on the bed. “You will have to make it yourself, though.”
“Of course.”
She should leave now. Run for her life. Only he stood a mere foot away now and, dear heavens, he was something to behold. She felt he had pinned her in place with some invisible power that sapped her ability to will her legs to move.
She made a display of gazing around the chamber like the property owner she was, but his body was never really out of sight. Again she noted all those books and papers. This time she also saw the pistols. Three of them, lined up on the desk, along with the implements to clean them. What could one man need with three pistols ready for firing?
He noticed her interest. “They are not loaded.”
“I suppose that is good to know. I thought perhaps you planned to kill someone.”
“Not today.”
He was teasing her. She hoped. Maybe not.
He seemed to see the question in her. “I am not dangerous to you.”
She was still flustered enough to respond too pointedly. “Aren’t you? I think you are.”
“I suppose I am.” He gestured to the pistols. “But not in that way.”
No, not in that way. She struggled to shake off his power, so maybe he would not be dangerous to her in any way right now. It felt like lifting herself, hand over hand, up a dangling rope.
“You should have thrown on a shirt when you saw me,” she said.
He stepped closer. She would have jumped out of her skin if she could move. His fingers were on her chin now. Firm ones, a little rough, holding her, his dark eyes looking into hers deeply. Too deeply. Warmth and too much knowing in his gaze, beckoning in a subtle but ruthless seductive lure.
“You spent a year in Alessandra’s home. You are no blushing innocent. Do not expect me to stand on ceremony as if you are. Do not expect me to treat you like an ignorant child instead of a desirable woman.”
Her cheeks quivered from the contact of his hand. A hundred tiny thrills flowed through her skin and down her neck. She could only look up at him, at those dark eyes so close to hers. He was going to kiss her, she was sure. She should back away and cast him off. She should—
His hand left her. He stepped over to the fireplace and lifted the bucket of water. “You can stay if you like. Or you can run away if you believe you must.” He poured the water into the wash bowl. He looked over his shoulder at her. “I should warn you, though. If you are still here when I finish with this, I will not let you leave soon after.”
Finding a shred of sense, she left. Not soon enough, though. Not before she saw the way the sodden cloth he used to wet his skin sent rivulets of water snaking sensually over those muscles.
C
elia’s “good” upon hearing he intended to go out led Jonathan to conclude that his own investigating would have to wait for another day. He assumed she was glad he would be out of the house because she intended to stay within.
She might want no contact with him at all if he kept insinuating his inclination to seduce her. That was not part of any clever strategy on his end, however, much as he wanted to tell himself it had been. In truth his advances were impulses that had nothing to do with his mission, even if they might ultimately help it.
As he rode his horse west an hour later, he discovered he had miscalculated Celia’s intentions for the day. Ahead of him he saw a cabriolet with a chestnut horse. The blond woman driving it wore a dress the same primrose color as Celia had worn today, beneath a lilac pelisse.
Nor did she wear a hat or bonnet, despite the crisp weather. Instead her golden locks had been dressed expertly in a style that he also recognized from the morning.
He slowed his own progress and followed, wondering where she went, knowing that he should return to the house at once and take advantage of her absence. The hair and back compelled his attention, however. He admired her poise, and enjoyed the secret glimpses he had of her face whenever she turned a corner.
She drove through backstreets, and eventually turned down a mews west of Hanover Square. He remained at their end, and watched while she stopped her little carriage, handed the reins to a man, and disappeared into a garden.
He paced his horse down the mews to where she had stopped. The garden in question surprised him. He knew this house very well. It was not one where he expected Alessandra’s daughter to be received.
“Spying on me, Albrighton?”
The question emerged at the same time the man did from the carriage house on the other side of the mews. The man wiped his hands with a handkerchief while his deep blue eyes gazed up at Jonathan expectantly.
“If I ever do spy on you, Hawkeswell, you will never know it.”
“You overestimate your subtlety. What the hell are you doing lurking at my back garden gate?”
This was one of those times when the less said, the better. “Cutting through.”
The Earl of Hawkeswell smiled, which did little to soften the hard, critical expression in his eyes. “Now you overestimate my stupidity. Since you have not asked why I played groom to that carriage and horse, instead of allowing a servant to do so, I assume you know who was holding the ribbons. My reason for excessive discretion is not what you may think.”
Jonathan experienced sharp annoyance at Hawkeswell’s assumption that anyone would assume Celia’s visiting here was for an assignation with the earl himself.
“I had no thoughts at all on the matter,” he said belatedly, after he conquered the spike in his temper. “I was only passing through, I assure you.”
“The hell you were.” Hawkeswell pulled open the gate. “Tie up your horse and come along. I am being imprisoned by my wife in the morning room. You can have coffee with me.”
Jonathan dismounted, tied his horse, and followed Hawkeswell into the garden. Its paths wound through attractive plantings, each of which presented itself as a private retreat. Finally they passed a conservatory, and mounted a few steps to the terrace. His host led him through doors directly into the chamber that served as the morning room.
Coffee waited. They sat on upholstered chairs, drinking as if they were merely old friends seeing each other after some time. The mood, however, was hardly that amiable.
“Our visitor is my wife Verity’s friend,” Hawkeswell said, breaking the silence. “Also a friend of Summerhays’s wife Audrianna. They all three used to live out in Middlesex with a woman named Daphne Joyes. The three of them are all in the library, talking about fashions and whatnot.”
“The need for your discretion regarding this call is understandable, then. It is also unfair, but such is the way of the world.”
“So you do know who she is. Damned if I did until recently. Even Verity did not know her history until the death of Alessandra Northrope. Imagine our surprise when the notice in one scandal sheet made reference to a daughter named Celia Pennifold. I should have insisted that Verity end the friendship at once, of course. But ...” He shrugged.
But the Earl of Hawkeswell cared too much for his wife to command it, and his wife cared too much for Celia to make the break on her own. Jonathan had never met Lady Hawkeswell, but her loyalty spoke well of her, even if it was probably foolish.
“I am convinced that there is no reason to think that Miss Pennifold is like her mother,” Hawkeswell continued confiding, the way so many others had confided over time.
At least this man knew to whom he revealed his thoughts. They had been at university together, and Hawkeswell was one of Jonathan’s few friends, such as they were. Time, place, and duties had made the best of that friendship only old memories, but it still stood for something, in Jonathan’s mind at least.
“It was generous of you to agree to allow the friendship to continue.”
“Generous? Allow?” Hawkeswell laughed. “Hell, you don’t know much about marriage, do you?”
“Not the good ones, no.”
Hawkeswell turned his mind and attention away from the topic, and onto his guest. Jonathan’s instincts in turn grew alert, from long practice.
“I don’t expect you will tell me why you were following her.”
“If you are determined to think I was, just attribute it to a man distracted from his day’s plans by a lovely lady.” It was, he admitted, the whole truth.
Hawkeswell found that amusing. “One of your answers that says nothing. That means there must be a very good reason. One of your missions?”
“That idea is ridiculous.”
“Indeed. Which is not to say it is wrong. After all, you are here and no longer up north in Staffordshire. There must be a reason for that too.”
“I missed town life, just as you do.”
“And you had also finished up there, hadn’t you? I don’t expect you to thank me and Summerhays and Castleford for our help.”
Hawkeswell referred to a mission Jonathan had recently completed, the one in which Uncle Edward had accused him of too much independence. Hawkeswell’s untimely and unexpected arrival in Staffordshire last autumn had almost ruined an investigation that had been months in the making. Jonathan did not mind that Hawkeswell and the other two men had ultimately solved the mystery more thoroughly than he had himself hoped to accomplish. He just did not want to talk about it. He could not discuss his work for the Home Office, or even admit he investigated for it in the first place.
“Was it you three who learned the truth behind that intrigue? Then, by all means, thank you.”
“As if you didn’t know.” Hawkeswell dropped his probing, fortunately. “Will you be in town long?”
“Perhaps a month.”
“Then we will all dine together. We will tell you how clever we were in exposing that crime, and you can pretend you are ignorant of the tale.”
There it was again. Time to depart. Jonathan set down his coffee cup and rose to his feet. “I must take my leave now. It was good seeing you, even unexpectedly.”
“If you are following Miss Pennifold around town, Albrighton, I expect that we will meet unexpectedly again.”
Chapter Four
L
ate that afternoon, Celia paced through the elaborate drawing room of her mother’s house on Orchard Street in Mayfair. Portly, balding Mr. Mappleton, the executor, detailed the bad news he had only outlined when they had met briefly yesterday, right before the funeral.
“As I indicated, this house must be sold, to pay off her debts. It and its contents should satisfy most of them. The coach will need to go too, but I calculate that you will be left with the cabriolet and the chestnut mare.”
“And the house on Wells Street?” She prayed his final reckoning had not shown the need to sell that too.
“It still appears that will be spared. However, if any more debts emerge—well, as I explained before ...” Mr. Mappleton patted his forehead with a handkerchief. Informing heirs that little would in fact be inherited distressed him. “Not much of a legacy, I am afraid. As her solicitor, I did advise less extravagance, I want you to know. Frequently.”
“Please do not feel guilty for a situation not at all of your making. Nor should you think that my mother ignored your advice. However, her profession required much of that extravagance. Maintaining appearances are as important to a woman like my mother as to a duchess.”