without hesitation or compunction to protect herself or others, just as he knew that none of that might be enough to keep her safe.
He said, “We’re all vulnerable. Especially when dealing with a madman.”
She was silent a moment, her face solemn, a frown digging a furrow between her eyebrows. “Do you think I don’t worry about you?”
“That’s not—”
“Not the same? Because you are a man and I am a woman?”
“No. Because it’s one thing for me to make the choice to put my own life in danger and something else entirely when my actions endanger someone else.”
She touched her fingers to his lips. “I knew what I was letting myself in for when I married you, Devlin.”
He smiled against her hand. “I’m not sure I did.” It was the closest he’d ever come to speaking of the profound shifts in their relationship and the unexpected, life-altering deepening of the ties that bound them.
She let her hand slide down his chest, down over the tender flesh of his belly. His breath caught, and he saw her eyes darken with want.
He rolled her onto her back, rising above her. The wind drove the rain against the windowpanes. The green glow of the lightning flickered in ethereal pulses around them. He kissed her cheek, her eyelids, her hair, the delicate hollow at the base of her throat. His world narrowed down to the rasp of flesh against flesh, hands reaching, fingers clenching. The softness of her lips. The whispered urgency of her desire.
And his.
Sebastian was easing his breeches up over his hips when he became aware of Hero coming to stand in the doorway of his darkened dressing room. She’d drawn a blanket over her shoulders against the chill, but otherwise she was naked, her body long and pale, her rounded belly silhouetted against the throbbing electric light of the storm.
She said, “I suppose there’s a good reason you’re sneaking away from my bed at one in the morning.”
He smiled and pulled a shirt over his head. “I want to have another look at Eisler’s house—alone, and with no interruptions.”
“Unless someone interrupts your housebreaking with a blunderbuss.”
“Do you think me so careless?”
“No. But you didn’t get any sleep last night. You need to rest, Devlin.”
He bent to pull on his boots. “How much rest do you suppose Russell Yates is getting tonight?”
“There will always be innocent men in danger of being hanged.”
He knotted a casual kerchief around his neck and reached for his coat. “True.”
“You said the doors were bolted and the windows barred. So how will you get in?”
“I’ve an idea.”
“Well, it’s reassuring to know that should we ever find ourselves in dire straits, you could make a credible living as a burglar.”
He grunted and caught her to him for a quick kiss, but she surprised him by holding him close and hard.
She said, “You’ll be careful.” In typical Hero fashion, it was more of a command than a request.
He kissed her again, on her nose. “Good God. You sound just like a wife.”
“Don’t be insulting.” She adjusted the set of his hat. “What exactly do you expect to find?”
“Answers, hopefully.”
“To precisely which questions?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
Chapter 19
A
single oil lamp mounted high on the wall of the corner greengrocer’s shop cast a small, murky puddle of light. But the rest of the crooked lane lay still and quiet in the wet darkness.
Pausing in the shadow of a recessed doorway that smelled strongly of urine, Sebastian watched as the gusting wind ruffled the rain-drenched ivy that draped the scarred stone facade of Eisler’s house and half obscured the ancient leaded windows. Like the warehouses and shuttered shops around it, the house was dark. He had no way of knowing if the aged retainers employed by Eisler were still in residence, but if so, they would long ago have retired to their attic bedchamber for the night. Casting a quick glance around, he crossed the street to duck down the narrow, malodorous passageway that ran along the south side of the house.
Vennels, he’d heard them called in Scotland and the north of England. This one was barely wide enough for a man turned sideways and terminated in an old gate made of thick, vertical planks studded with clavos and hinged with iron straps. But the wood was crumbling with rot, the rusted mountings flaking and so thin they snapped easily when Sebastian leaned his weight against the boards. He caught the gate before it could clatter onto the weed- and leaf-strewn paving