it seemed.
“Alice—”
“Yes?”
“How soon do you plan to leave?”
“Tomorrow, I expect. Other than you nice folks, I got no reason to stay here. And I understand foreigners have to lift before the first snow, anyway, because of the ice problem.”
He had stopped, so she stopped with him, his form a darker shadow in the shadow under which they stood.
“Alice, would you object if I—”
What was he trying to get out? Great snakes, if he wanted her to take some lovelorn message to Claire, she was going to give serious consideration to whacking him on the skull with the Remington.
“Oh, dash it all, this is impossible!” he exclaimed.
Then he seized her roughly by her upper arms, and before she could even take a breath, his mouth came down on hers in a bruising kiss.
Chapter 11
They were interrupted at breakfast by a messenger from the Landgrafin Margrethe, who was escorting a rather pale and silent Alice.
“Alice, do sit down and join us,” urged the countess, while Tigg jumped up from his seat and pulled her over to the table.
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” she mumbled. “This gentleman brought me over here all willy-nilly. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You are welcome at any time of the day or night,” Lord Dunsmuir told her. “Come and sit. Sir, you have a message from Count von Zeppelin?”
The officer dragged his gaze away from Rosie the chicken, who was enjoying a biscuit and some berries on a saucer under the sideboard, and straightened as if the count himself had spoken. He clicked his heels together. “Der Landgraf has bidden me to convey to you his greetings. He inquires as to whether you are at home to visit fafttondgraf
“We are indeed at home. But the count cannot mean to come over here himself when he is injured. The young ladies and Mr. Malvern will wait upon him at his convenience.”
But the man shook his head. “My lord is a man of action. If he were to put himself to bed every time he was a target, he would never get up. No, he will attend upon you here as soon as he may.”
The earl clearly knew when to back down in the face of a stronger force. “If the count would like to join us for breakfast, we should be very glad to see him.”
The officer bowed and vanished down the gangway.
“I adore the informality of this country—this airfield.” Davina returned to the table after giving the steward rapid instructions. “A request that would have been shocking in London—for who receives anyone before three in the afternoon, never mind at breakfast?—is utterly normal here.”
Claire sipped her tea and marveled at the strength of a man who could be shot in the evening and invite himself to breakfast the next morning. He was a man indeed whom any soldier would be glad to follow. “Society ladies would faint in ranks at the very thought,” she agreed.
“I am afraid the count is more likely to faint—from loss of blood,” the earl said unhappily. “I do hope he has not been hasty in attempting a visit so soon after his injury.”
“If he does faint, you will catch him, Papa,” Willie piped from his father’s lap, where they had both been engaged in dissecting several walnuts and an orange. “Will he wear his sword?”
“This is not a formal occasion, my boy.” The earl opened his mouth so that Willie could feed him a walnut meat. “We shall hold out hope for pistols, however.”
To Willie’s joy, the count was indeed armed when he arrived, though he divested himself of his twin Ruger pistols immediately upon coming into the countess’s presence, and handed guns and belt to one of his officers. When he bent over Davina’s hand, Claire saw that the bandage around his head had been replaced by a more discreet sticking plaster, partly covered by his flight cap.
“I am delighted to see you on your feet, my lord.” Instead of offering him her hand, Claire astonished herself and the whole company by rising on tiptoe and kissing him on the cheek. “I feared for you, truly.”
The count’s face reddened and Claire would have given anything to be able to drop through the floor and hide. What on earth had she been thinking?
But then she saw that his heightened color was the result of emotion, not affront.
“My officers have told me that you piloted the Daimler overland to bring me to safety, despite your own injury,” he said gruffly, blinking the