stocking. When she'd thought longingly of lust and sin, the removal of her stocking had not been a significant part of it.
Nor had massage of her feet. What a lot there was to learn!
Curiosity, however, did not explain this devastation in her mind. She was overcome, dazzled, by the suggestion that despite his cool manner, the Marquess of Rothgar might be experiencing the same perilous pull to dangerous interaction that she was.
In bed in the dark, with Clara sleeping beside her, Diana lay awake, mind fluttering around ideas like a moth around a glass lamp. And that, of course, was the problem.
A clear barrier stood between her and the tantalizing flame. Beat against it as she might, the fire was not for her. She could not afford to marry, and now she knew that he could not be a casual lover.
As he had implied, the very heat between them made it far too dangerous to approach.
Chapter 12
Diana descended to breakfast the next morning warily, but if the marquess had slid out of control for even one moment the night before, he had corrected the flaw. Over eggs and excellent sausages, he treated her precisely as an aristocratic lady he was escorting to London. The effortless flow of small talk was again a carefully woven iron grille between them.
Diana could only be relieved when his manservant, Fettler, knocked and entered.
"Yes?" the marquess asked.
"About the French couple, my lord. They left in the night."
Lord Rothgar's brows rose. "Without paying their shot? How reprehensible."
Diana came to the alert. The marquess did not, in fact, sound surprised. For the first time she wondered if he had ruthlessly disposed of his potential assassins.
"As to that, milord," the valet said, "they left adequate coins. And traces of blood on the floor."
Diana stared. Her speculations had been idle, but now she had to take them seriously.
"What is more," the valet said, "a servant nearby heard a scream and then a cry."
"A feminine scream, and then a masculine cry?" Diana demanded. First one murder, then the other. She was beginning to be shocked after all.
The middle-aged man turned to her. "Precisely, milady."
"Then," she asked, "did anyone actually see them leave?"
"Oh yes, milady. They roused a groom to saddle their horses. It was with him they left the money. He would not have let them depart otherwise."
"Wounded?" she asked, both deflated and relieved, and casting a quick glance at the marquess. Amused by her again.
"The groom could not be sure, milady, but he thought Monsieur de Couriac favored his arm, and the lady might have had a mark on her face."
"Anything else, Fettler?" the marquess asked. When the valet said no, he dismissed him, then turned to her, easing the plate of sausages toward her side of the table. "Do have more of these, Lady Arradale, as you speculate."
Diana speared one with her sharp fork. "Don't patronize me, my lord." It also galled that he had noticed that she'd enjoyed two of the sausages already.
"I do beg your pardon. I certainly have no desire to be fatherly. What do you make of the little saga?"
Ignoring a twitch at the thought of what relationship he might desire, Diana said, "That he hit her for failing to compromise you, and she did something - perhaps with a knife - in response." She cut into the meat. "I certainly would have done."
"I will bear that in mind." He served himself more coffee. "So why leave, especially if he was wounded?"
Diana chewed, thinking. "Out of fear of you? Or," she added, "out of fear of their master." She halted in the process of raising another piece of sausage to her mouth. "To prepare some other trap?"
He did not pale in apprehension, of course, but he did say, "How fortunate that we travel with armed outriders."
Diana put her food down. "Lord Rothgar, why would the French be so determined to murder you? As one caught in the middle, I think I have a right to know."
"What reasons does anyone have for wishing the death of another?"
"A tendency to ask too many questions?" she responded tartly. "You are not Socrates, my lord, and I am not your pupil."
A smile tugged at his lips. "Then I will play Socrates to myself. What reasons does anyone have for murder?" He counted on his long fingers. "One: revenge. Extreme, and I don't think I have hurt France to that extent. Two: gain. The only person to gain materially from my death would be Bryght, and he isn't