The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray - Anna Bradley Page 0,28
worry about the lady. I’ll take very good care of her. Go on back to your pints.”
The two men were happy to abandon their heroics for their drink, and ambled off toward the pub. Sharpe, however, wasn’t as agreeable. He stared at Miss Monmouth for a long, silent moment, as if memorizing her features, then turned to Tristan with a sullen look on his face. “I might ’a gotten my head kicked in just now. I want ’er taken up for lying, or making a false charge, or whatever it is ye call it.”
“Yes, I think I must.” Tristan turned to find Miss Monmouth assessing him with narrowed eyes, as if she were searching for all the soft places on his body where she might land a kick. “We can’t have dangerous criminals roaming the streets, assaulting innocent gentlemen, can we? Come along, madam. You can explain yourself to the magistrate.”
Chapter Six
“The magistrate, again?” Sophia tugged at her arm to free it from Lord Gray’s grip. “My goodness, my lord. You have a troubling fondness for turning innocent citizens over to the law.”
He gave a derisive snort at the word innocent.
Oh, very well, then. Perhaps in this case she wasn’t quite innocent, but then questions of guilt and innocence were tricky, plaguing things, weren’t they? She was far less guilty than Peter Sharpe. If the scales of justice were properly balanced, he’d be the one being marched down Hatton Street by a tight-lipped Lord Gray.
Sophia gave another fruitless tug on her arm. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. You said yourself no harm was done.”
He didn’t deign to reply. He didn’t release her, either, but neither did he take her to the magistrate. Sophia was relieved by this at first, since she didn’t care to explain her interest in Peter Sharpe to anyone, but when Lord Gray hustled her back to Newgate Street and stuffed her into a carriage waiting there for him, her relief faded.
Lord Gray had been intimidating enough when he was chasing her through a dark graveyard, but he was even more so when one was a smallish lady crowded into a carriage with him, especially with that ominous look on his face. “If I didn’t know better, my lord, I’d say you were cross with me.”
A slight pinching of his lips was her only answer.
He has rather nice lips.
Sophia hadn’t gotten a proper look at him the night he’d accosted her at St. Clement Dane’s. It had been too dark and she’d been too flustered to pay much attention to his features, but now she took a moment to study his face.
Emma thought him very handsome, and Sophia couldn’t deny there was something pleasing about him—that is, pleasing in a severe, rigid, humorless, unforgiving sort of way. His features were almost too aristocratic, too harshly elegant, but the forbidding symmetry was offset by surprisingly wide, darkly lashed gray eyes, and a slightly crooked mouth with a small white scar carved into the left corner of his upper lip.
Sophia was perversely fond of scars, but of course there were scars, and then there were scars. Lord Gray’s was of the latter variety. One couldn’t help but wonder how it might bend and twist when he smiled.
If he ever did. Sophia hadn’t seen any evidence he knew how. He’d likely be vastly improved if he did, but there was little enough chance she’d ever find out.
Certainly, there was no fetching smile hovering on those stern lips now. He was scrutinizing her with the sort of narrow-eyed suspicion usually reserved for ferocious dogs and poisonous vipers. Which was fair enough, really, since she had bitten him the last time they met.
At last he raised an imperious eyebrow, and crossed one long leg over the other. “If you’ve quite finished assessing me, Miss Monmouth, perhaps you’d be kind enough to answer a few questions.”
Ah, so he’d discovered who she was, had he? Not surprising, and again, only fair, since she’d made it her business to learn as much as she could about him. “What if I’m not finished assessing you, my lord?”
In truth, she’d hardly begun. He had the sort of arresting face that deserved prolonged attention, and she hadn’t had even a moment to consider the rest of him.
The eyebrow twitched up a notch. “Carry on, then.”
His voice was pleasant, deep and smooth, if a touch frigid, and Sophia was aware of a low thrum of pleasure in her belly when he spoke.