When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,127

lost her almost immediately in the twisted maze of London. At the time King had acknowledged that he might never lay eyes on her again, and an acute and disturbing regret had come with that admission. Until that woman had unexpectedly swept into his hall in a gown fit for a queen, and his disturbing regret had been replaced by an equally disturbing anticipation.

She had dared to steal from him in his own home and offered no apology or excuse, only challenge and accusation. Had she been anyone else, he would have already ordered her escorted out at the very least, or thrown in a dark hole somewhere, or tossed onto the first ship back to whatever corner of the continent from which she had come. Instead he remained rooted where he was, fantasizing about casting her in far more sensual places. Like his bed. Or the desk behind him. Or—

“Make your case before I change my mind and do something I may or may not regret later,” he heard himself say.

Adrestia merely gazed back at him, the silver in her eyes reflected in the metallic threads that ran through the pale silk of her gown. The dress was daring, skimming low over her breasts, cinched tightly at her ribs, and then flowing enticingly over her hips in a froth of fine fabric. King grasped the edge of the desk at his sides in an effort to smother the sudden, excruciating impulse to reach out and touch her again.

Jesus, this was insane. He had to stop this.

From the surface of his desk he picked up a small knife, the one he used to trim quills. He turned it over in his hand, allowing the blade to press uncomfortably into his palm. “My patience is not infinite.” His words came out harshly. Good.

“The man who sold you this.” She seemed impervious to his tone and instead simply touched again the locket where the sapphire was concealed. “Charles Howells. Did he tell where it came from?”

“I don’t ask questions I don’t need or want answers to.”

“Ah.” She glanced around at the art that hung from his walls. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

King could feel his jaw clench, but he didn’t give her the satisfaction of a reply. At the time he had bought that sapphire, it hadn’t mattered to him where it had come from. Just as it hadn’t mattered that he didn’t like Howells. The man reeked of desperation, but so did most of the men who came to him for money. And desperation was always profitable.

Yet the sapphire, impressive as it was, was not as valuable as the two magnificent diamonds that had flanked it. Adrestia could have taken either of those stones. Or taken both and been far richer for it. But he had watched her leave the diamonds where they lay and take only the sapphire.

And King wanted to know why. Needed to know why.

In the wrong hands, need, more often than not, ultimately leads to downfall. Unbidden, Adrestia’s earlier words echoed in his mind. And as he had earlier, he dismissed them.

“I’m asking now,” he growled, tapping the tip of his knife against his thigh. “Where did the sapphire come from?”

Her full lips thinned. “Spain,” she said. “A tiny villa called Canillas de Río. It doesn’t exist any longer, of course. It was razed, its livestock slaughtered, its men killed, its women raped, and its contents looted, the most valuable objects shipped back to England by one Lieutenant Charles Howells during Wellington’s 1809 campaign. The sapphire was part of that shipment.”

“And now you’ve come to fetch it back.”

“That’s a rather overly simplistic assumption.”

King’s jaw hardened. That was the second time today she had accused him of making assumptions. The worst part of her accusation was that she was right.

“My client,” she said, “grew up in Canillas de Río and was thirteen at the time Charles Howells raped her. She might have forgiven him that transgression had he not made her watch his men brutalize each one of her younger sisters first.”

King swallowed, dark tentacles of memory rattling their prison walls in the deepest recesses of his mind. Recesses he had ruthlessly buried with time and self-control. With some horror he felt cold perspiration gather at the back of his neck. “Stealing back a family heirloom will not fix any of that. It will not make her forget.”

“No,” she agreed flatly. “It won’t.”

And King understood that Adrestia hadn’t come just for the sapphire. She’d come for far