Lady Rosabella's Ruse - By Ann Lethbridge Page 0,62

or the constable comes to see what’s to do, I’ll tell him about your little trips into other people’s houses in the middle of the night.’

She stilled. It wasn’t other people’s houses. It was her grandfather’s house, the house she’d been sure her father would leave to her and her sisters. But he hadn’t. The pain of it struck her anew. Her shoulders sagged.

‘That’s better.’ He dragged her to a wooden bench against the courtyard wall beneath the lantern by the door. ‘Sit.’

She sat. The man was drunk. All she had to do was wait until his attention waned and run.

She snatched her arm clear of his grasp and folded her arms across her chest. ‘All right, so I’m sitting. What do you want?’

In the flickering light he gazed down at her. He didn’t look angry, he looked confused and something else. Hurt? Surely not?

‘Why did you run away?’

She stuck with her role. Perhaps she could confuse him into thinking he’d made a mistake. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about, mate.’

‘Rose,’ he breathed and shook his head. ‘You can’t fool me. I’d know you anywhere. Why did you run?’

Caressed by the gentleness in his voice, she wanted to weep. What did she do now? Talk about disappointed love to a man who had scoffed at the very notion? Never. ‘I thought you were going to hand me over to the magistrate.’

He stared down at her. ‘I half wish I bloody well had. I’ve been searching London for you.’

She shrugged. ‘What I do and where I go is none of your business. I never stole anything from that house.’

‘Why do I think you are lying?’ He frowned at her.

‘I’m not. Remember, you just think every woman lies.’

He curled his lip. ‘But not you?’

She winced. She’d done nothing but tell him lies. ‘I did not steal anything.’ At least that was the truth. ‘If I had found some sort of treasure, do you think I would be working as a boy in the chorus?’

‘A question answered with a question. It means you have something to hide. What is it, Rose? What are you afraid of? You knew I’d come after you. We have unfinished business. The small matter of a wedding.’

She leaned back against the wall, tried to appear relaxed, resigned to being caught. ‘How did you recognise me?’

‘Your feet.’ He grinned and her heart tumbled over at the sight of his smile. ‘Other people never forget a face. I never forget a pair of feet. At least,’ he mused, sounding irritatingly smug, ‘not a pair I like.’

‘How peculiar.’

‘Mmm. One could almost call it a fetish,’ he purred. He slouched back against the wall and stretched out his legs.

‘What now?’ she asked, measuring the distance to the archway that led out into the alley.

His hand moved to curl around her thigh. A thigh clad in cheap velveteen breeches. Her insides clenched in a most inappropriate way. ‘I think I will take you home and seduce the truth out of you.’

His eyelids drooped as if he was imagining what he would do to her. Her insides fluttered in anticipation. Yearning.

Damn him.

‘No doubt it will take forever.’ She knocked his hand away and winced when his eyes opened and observed her with a keenness she hadn’t expected.

‘Oh, so you have been asking about me, have you?’

She should have pretended to go along with his game, pretended she liked the idea of a seduction. Only she feared if his fingers had travelled one more inch up her leg she would have melted at his feet and given up all thoughts of running.

‘Why would I ask about you?’

He acknowledged the cut with a slight incline of his head. ‘Why indeed? But you see, I have been asking about you.’

She straightened.

‘I thought it wise, d’you see,’ he drawled, his voice lazy, his mouth hard. ‘In the wake of your deceit.’

‘You asked Lady Keswick?’ The old woman knew nothing except what was in her letter of application.

He shook his head. ‘I asked the owner of the neighbouring house. I asked him about previous tenants, about a man with three daughters.’ He smiled then, and it was hard and mean. ‘And he told me there was never any such tenant.’ He let his head fall back against the wall. ‘You are a thief.’

She leapt from the seat and ran.

She didn’t make it to the arch.

His arm snaked around her waist. She opened her mouth to yell. He clamped his hand over her mouth. ‘Scream and you’ll have