In Bed with the Earl (Lost Lords of London #1) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,39
know whether to be terrified or reassured by that blunt admission. Pushing the door shut, she leaned against the panel and eyed him warily. After all, it hadn’t escaped her notice that he’d not answered her earlier question. Therefore, there was only one conclusion: she was his prisoner.
As he wandered to the opposite end of the room, Verity silently gave thanks for that space between her and her captor. The immediate threat that had her pleading for his help had since eased.
Since they’d arrived and he had deposited her in his room, he’d also gone and washed the filth from his person. And without the murky darkness that had served as the setting for their first meeting, Verity studied the broad back of the man who went by no other name than North.
He reached the windows and drew the curtains back a fraction to peer out.
Nervously twisting the fabric of her borrowed skirts, Verity made herself stop. “I didn’t thank you for your . . . assistance earlier,” she said into the quiet.
North continued perusing the streets, only pausing to briefly look back at her. “Is that what you think? That my efforts tonight have all been to help you?”
She dampened her lips. “W-were they not?” He was a glorious specimen, and yet his features were slightly too pronounced to ever be lauded as handsome by society’s standards. He had slashing, bronzed cheekbones. A hard set to a square jaw, slightly too heavy. Prominent scars that stood out starkly. And perhaps she’d the same ill judgment her late mother had shown toward the wholly unsuitable, for her belly danced with her awareness of him as a man.
“Don’t make more of my actions than they were,” he said bluntly, and resumed his inspection of the outside scenery. He released his hold on the gold velvet curtain, letting it slide back into place before he turned around once more. “The only thing I seek is answers.”
“I don’t have any to give you.”
His lips quirked up in a detached half grin. “I didn’t even ask you a question.” Yet. It hung there clearer than had he spoken.
“Fair point,” she allowed. Verity found herself gripping her black skirts once more. That smile, however, softened him. It marked him more man than the beast she’d first taken him as and worse . . . feared him to be.
And yet, he’d also brought her here, saving her from that fiend in the street.
“Who was the man on the street? Is he why you were hiding in the sewers?”
Why she’d been hiding? Her brow furrowed, and then she realized the conclusion he’d drawn. He expected she’d been in the sewers not in search of something, but because she’d been in hiding. Over the years, such similar assumptions had been made. People of all genders made determinations about her presence and her role in life for no other reason than because she was a woman. Those erroneous conclusions had proven a valuable tool that had allowed her to collect information from the unsuspecting. As such, Verity weighed her next words carefully. “I don’t know who he was. Only that he wished me ill.”
“And what was your first clue? The fact that he had a gun pointed at your chest?”
“Actually, yes. That and . . .” She felt herself blushing. “You were being sarcastic.”
“I was,” he said drolly.
“Oh.” Verity sighed. “As I said, the man was . . . is a stranger to me.” Which was, in fact, the complete truth. She could venture and speculate any number of potential enemies, but the list would be long, and the ranks of those foes great.
He quit his place at the window, and took slow, sleek steps toward her. Verity found herself contemplating the doorway and the path to freedom.
“Would you like to leave, Verity?” he asked in that smooth, slightly-too-deep-to-be-considered-a-baritone voice.
“Would you allow it?” She answered his question with one of her own, more than half-afraid of the answer, because she suspected she already well knew the truth.
“I would,” he said surprisingly.
Verity started for the doorway.
“Although I should mention that the bloke who cornered you earlier is circling outside.”
That ominous warning jolted her midstep, and she made herself face him. She felt the color drain from her face; it left her dizzy and off-kilter. “You’re lying.”
Sweeping one arm toward the window, he wordlessly invited her to verify for herself. Verity was across the room in four long strides. Curtain in hand, she peeled it back a fraction to peer out.