The Blood of a Baron - K.J. Jackson Page 0,32

to your family are doing well?”

“The woman is fine.” Platford waved his hand in the air. “The babe is fine.”

“Excellent.” She quickly glanced at Wes, then fixed her gaze on his cousin. “Forgive us, Lord Platford, as we are late for an important meeting and I must steal Wes away.”

“Of course, my lady.” The words grumbled from Platford’s mouth. For all that his cousin clearly wanted to cut both Wes and Laney, he had to keep up appearances of civility with his acquaintances looking on.

With a quick bob of her head, Laney moved to her right and tugged Wes along with her.

His feet slow to follow her, Wes silently inclined his head at his cousin.

This wasn’t over. It never would be over with him and his cousin.

Nonetheless, he fell into step beside Laney as they worked their way along the serpentine path toward the far edge of the park.

Out of earshot of his cousin, Laney glanced back over her shoulder and then looked at Wes. “I have never enjoyed looking down on men, save for that one. That one I am happy to look down upon, as much as it shows poor character on my part.”

A low chuckle rumbled up from his chest. “You mean outstanding character, don’t you?”

She looked up at him, a laugh at her lips and the green flecks sparkling in her amber eyes. “Maybe I do.”

Wes’s gaze dropped from her to watch the gravel path in front of them, an odd sense of displacement in his chest unnerving him—like his lungs needing to breathe were battling with his heart needing to beat.

Laney had just saved him. Saved him from himself.

Something she’d always been quite adept at. And she’d just willingly chosen to do it.

Even more disturbing, he’d let her.

{ Chapter 13 }

Laney stared at the undulating waters of the Thames. It swirled beneath the bridge, brown water bubbling, coiling upon itself. Tides shifting from high to low.

Instead of hiring a hack at the edge of the park, Wes had suggested they walk back across the river to Mr. Filmore’s offices just in case he had returned to town, before moving onward to Wes’s townhouse. She gladly took to his suggestion.

Anything to keep her mind occupied. Anything to not set her alone with Wes in his townhouse again. She had come far too close more than once the previous night to leaving her guest room to find him—to repeat what had happened between them in his library.

Time had slowed to a snail’s pace after leaving Mr. Filmore’s office, and walking about the city had at least shifted her mind off the Box of Draupnir. Off getting out of London. Off getting away from the agony of having Wes at her side every moment.

Her look lifted from the waters to the bank of the south side. Carts and horses and carriages jostled about the street—so many it was hard to find order in the mayhem. People walking, hawkers barking out their wares, dirty scamps running in and out of the crowds.

She’d forgotten all of this about London. How the city was alive at every hour. People always moving about, places to be. The disorganization of it. The wonder that even through the chaos, people still made it to their destinations, still fed their families, still sold their goods.

Magical at times. Sobering at others, like when her eyes drifted down and she would see the mudlarks scampering about the banks of the Thames as the tide went out.

A quarter of the way across Westminster Bridge, her hand still laced in Wes’s arm, Laney pointed at the opposite bank of the river. “This—I’d forgotten this about London.”

“The mayhem of it?”

“The hum of it—how it looks like a mess but most are getting exactly what they need from it in the moment.”

“Does it wear upon you?”

Her head shook. “No, quite the opposite. It actually makes me energized. People about. Life in all its glorious, loud, chaotic mess. A cacophony of humanity falling over each other. And then you find that one thing that’s still in all the motion. The flowers planted in a window box. A little girl in her best dress waiting in a doorway. A pigeon on a door sign looking down upon you. A flickering light of a lamp post. And that one thing becomes beautiful because it is solid. Solid in the storm.”

A soft smile crossed Wes’s lips. “So why are you in such a rush to get back to Yorkshire?”

Her mouth clamped closed, her gaze going