Guarding a Notorious Lady (6 page)

“Meriwether,” Rosalind corrected flatly. And then those rosebud lips twitched with a smile, her eyes daring him to laugh at himself, he suspected.

And with those warm blue eyes twinkling up at him, Nicholas felt something inside him crack a little, and he almost smiled, too.

But instead, he gave her a stiff nod, then turned to melt into the crowd.

“O
h! Find him! FIND HIM!”

One hour later, Rosalind found herself on her knees, peering under her aunt Eugenia’s bed while scores of guests yet danced, conversed, and made merry below stairs.

“I shal not sleep a wink unless he comes home,” Eugenia exclaimed, pacing the length of her guest bedchamber, a soaked handkerchief pressed under her nose.

“I cannot see how you can sleep with a house full of guests,” Rosalind mused before straightening. She dusted the wrinkles from her scarlet gown, then crossed the room to examine the wardrobe again.

Eugenia shook her head, clearly unnerved. “I always retire early.” She paused to sniffle. “And Oliver always nests upon my covers. He’s a great comfort to me, and now . . . and now . . .” Eugenia collapsed in a chair, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth.

Having turned to her aunt, Rosalind now averted her gaze. She’d never seen her aunt so upset.

Apparently, this Oliver was very dear—he’d have to be to move a rather cantankerous, impassive old woman to tears by his absence.

“Perhaps he’s in the garden,” Rosalind suggested.

“No, not with all those people about,” Eugenia muttered with an agitated flick of her handkerchief.

“He’s a bit skittish.”

“Then, that’s it. He’s probably hiding somewhere in the house. Somewhere quiet and warm.” Rosalind moved to stand before her aunt. “He’ll come out when everyone’s gone home, I’m sure of it.”

“But what am I to do until then?”

Rosalind blinked, speechless for a second. Her aunt seemed a little lost, and it pulled a bit at her heart. “Margaret will help you ready yourself for bed while I delegate some of the staff to help locate Oliver.

I’ll continue to look for him as well.”

“You ought to be enjoying yourself at the ball. Your brother will become agitated at your absence.”

“I daresay he will not,” Rosalind replied with a grin.

“He’s happily doting upon his wife and most likely thankful that he need not scowl at any of my dance partners.”

Eugenia nodded solemnly, wiping her nose. Her next words stopped Rosalind at the door. “You’d do well to stand clear of that Scot.”

“I’m sorry?”

Her aunt’s red-rimmed eyes centered knowingly on Rosalind. “You know who I’m talking about. He might be a marquess and he might be acquainted with your brother, but I don’t like the way he looks at you.” Rosalind swallowed, suddenly feeling a bit warm and stunned by this information. “He—he looks at me?”

“Indeed, he
looks,
” Eugenia informed with a raised brow, “while trying very hard to appear
not
to be looking.”

“That made absolutely no sense.”

Eugenia’s posture became rigid. “It’s deceitful and misleading. It makes me wonder what depths he would sink to if there was to be no repercussions for his actions.”

“Let me assure you,” Rosalind murmured, “that man holds no interest in me.”

“All right,” Eugenia nearly barked, holding up a hand. “I confess I know little in the ways of men, but he’s powerfully handsome. And those sorts of men are good for nothing but mischief, mark my words.” Rosalind gave a small laugh. “Do not worry. He’s quite occupied this evening. In fact, I believe he has already engaged a partner for every dance.” Indeed, except for the waltz.

Eugenia’s gaze was unusually shrewd. “Do I detect a note of disappointment?”

Rosalind merely shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

“Good.”

At her aunt’s satisfied nod, Rosalind quit the room with promises of retrieving the errant Oliver.

Halfway down the hall she encountered a maid, to whom she imparted the news of the missing cat and the need to have every available hand searching for him. As most of the Devine staff were busy in the kitchen and ball room, Rosalind knew that the number of hands available to search was small. No matter, she would aid in the search, as well.

With the girl dashing down the corridor to inform others, Rosalind chose to use the servant’s staircase, thinking it was dark and the perfect place for a timid kitty to hide.

She descended the steps and meandered down the sparsely lit corridor, her gaze skimming the floor as she went, but Oliver had the misfortune of being a dark gray cat, she reminded herself; he would match the shadows perfectly.

After a couple of turns, the sound of voices raised in merriment grew as each step brought her closer to the ball room. Turning the second to last corner, she spied Gabriel’s retreating form. He must have come from the library, she mused.

She spied the open door ahead and the twitch of what looked like a tail just before it slipped inside the room.

“Ah-ha,” she whispered. “Oliver, kitty, come here.” Creeping to the door, Rosalind made little noises with her tongue, pressing it on the roof of her mouth, in an attempt to call the cat to her.

She crossed the threshold, her gaze darting back and forth across the dark room for some sign of him.

“Oliver,” she whispered. “Come on out, Oliver, and I’ll take you upstairs.”

A small branch of candles had been lit and set upon on a sideboard equipped with a row of decanters.

The soft glow of light did little to lighten the deep room.

Determined to find the cat, she ignored a twinge of foreboding, blaming it on the dark silence of the spacious room.

And then a sound that could only be described as a soft growl emanated from a circle of chairs and sofas across the room. She ambled toward the center, mindful of the legs of the furniture.

“Ack!” All right, perhaps not so mindful. She bent to rub her sore ankle, which had had the misfortune of whacking the corner of an unseen footstool.

Oliver sat under a small oval table, tail flicking, eyes glowing yellow and huge in the dark.

“There you are,” she whispered, bending to reach under the table.

The cat let forth a sudden, vicious hiss, swinging needle-sharp paws at Rosalind’s outstretched hands.

Startled, she lurched back in reaction. “Why, you and Aunt Eugenia are a perfect match.” And then Oliver shot out from the table, springing toward her.

Rosalind shrieked and jumped back again. The backs of her thighs hit the arm of a wingback chair and she tumbled backward, landing, to her surprise, not on the plump seat cushion but instead upon the hard lap of the unseen occupant of the chair. “Oompf!” Stern gray eyes met her startled gaze.

“Nicholas,” she breathed.

“Oliver is the cat, correct?” Nicholas asked, his deep voice vibrating through her. “Or are you looking for one of your suitors?”

She chose to ignore his taunt. For whatever reason, her gaze was drawn to his neck. “Your cravat is crooked,” she blurted.

“Thank you,” he murmured grumpily. “I shal endeavor to straighten it as soon as possible.”

“Good.”

“Fine.”

They stared at one another through several beats of silence, some sort of tangible tension building between them. And truly, she couldn’t remove herself if she wanted to. The chair was deep and she was nearly folded in half.

She swallowed hard, suddenly acutely aware of every inch of her that happened to be touching him—

her backside in between thighs that might very well have been made of granite, her breasts pressed against the heat of his chest, her fingers nestled into the fabric of his frock coat.

She had imagined such a scenario at least a hundred times before, but nothing had prepared her for just how
good
it felt to be so close to him.

Nicholas swallowed heavily, and Rosalind watched his Adam’s apple bounce between the corded muscles of his throat.

“You should get up now,” he said quietly, his gaze never leaving her face.

“Really?” She heard the disappointment and gave her head a small shake. “I-I meant, yes. Yes, of course I should.” The room felt overly warm. If she didn’t know better, she’d think there was a roaring fire in the grate.

Letting forth a rather unladylike grunt, she tried to scoot off the way she’d come, but her knees were hooked high on the arm of the chair and the silk of her dress was too smooth. All she managed to do was wiggle back and forth.

Nicholas did little, if anything, to help her.

Her position forced her to face him or lie back. She tried rearing back, but something tugged at her bodice.

She looked down the same time he did, their foreheads brushing.

“Damn and blast,” he muttered.

For a second all Rosalind could see—and feel, for that matter—were the stiff lapels of Nicholas’s coat brushing against the swells of her bosom. She tried hardening herself against the sensation, but as she stared down, his warm breath feathered over her sensitive skin. Thousands of tiny shivers raced down her arms, goose pimples rising across her flesh.

“We’re stuck,” he growled.

“Stuck? Stuck how?”

He half sighed, half growled again. “Your brooch.

My tie pin.”

Rosalind blinked, willing her eyes to focus. “How did that happen?”

He picked up his head and delivered a sardonic glare, but said nothing.

A sudden spurt of raucous laughter echoed from the corridor.

She inhaled sharply. “Someone could be coming.” Her movements quick, she braced her hands on the arms of the chair, which made it look, at least for the barest of seconds, as if she was trapping him in the chair on purpose. Using her hands as leverage, she pulled her legs in, then twisted to slide them to the floor.

Awkwardly leaning forward with one hand at her back, Nicholas moved with her—his cravat pin was stuck to her bodice, after all.

In the end, no one came to the door, but Rosalind found herself kneeling between Kincaid’s legs, a knee on either side of her breasts. Her hands braced his rock-hard upper arms. He looked incredibly uncomfortable leaning forward as he was. And incredibly handsome.

A thick, dark brown lock had slid out from the queue at his neck and half-covered one gray eye. “What the devil did you do that for?”

She looked at his lips as he spoke and became momentarily mesmerized by their sculpted shape and a peek of white teeth.

“I-I’m sorry.” She gulped. “Here . . . let me . . .”

“I wouldn’t think it was possible,” he said as he looked down briefly, an odd light in his gaze, “but I think you’ve made things worse.”

“Surely you don’t still think I did this on purpose!”

“I’m not certain,” he said quietly, his brogue sounding thicker now for some reason. “And you should quiet down.”

“Not certain! I was trying to collect my aunt’s atrocious cat. Just what were you doing in here, sitting in the dark?”

He didn’t answer her.

“What then?” she pressed.

“Well, I wasn’t waiting for a certain clumsy female to land upon my lap.”

“I am
not
clumsy,” she intoned, affronted. She straightened a bit, which brought them eye to eye.

And mouth to mouth.

He raised a dubious brow but did not pull away.

Their lips were so close that they might as well have been kissing. But they remained thus, almost as if testing—or perhaps challenging—the other to take action.

“Were you
hiding
in here?” she asked, her words mostly air.

His silver gaze dipped to her mouth before returning to meet her stare. “Why the hell would I hide?”

“Hmm. Gabriel said you had come to London on business. Perhaps your business has something to do with being in this room.”
Like, having a romantic
tryst with a potential bride, perhaps.
The flare of jealousy didn’t surprise her.

He looked down and began fumbling at her bodice, twisting her brooch and causing her to become acutely aware of the weight of her breasts. “If it will get you to hush that bonny mouth of yours to know, I was having a dram with your brother.”

“
Hush
?” she blurted, positively perspiring over his use of the phrase “bonny mouth.” Still, she tried to hold on to her senses. “No one has ever ‘
hushed
’ me before.”

“Aye. If you keep talking so much, I’ll hush you again.”

She wanted to pinch him . . . really hard.

“Come closer,” he commanded.

“If I come any closer, I’ll be in your lap again.” More precisely, she’d be further in between his thighs.

“Just shift . . .” He reached around her back and place his warm hand in the middle of her shoulder blades. Then he pushed her slightly toward him, arching her back. Once he got her in the position he wanted her in, he went back to work on his task.

She looked about herself, noting the way he loomed above her, around her. He radiated heat and smelled marvelous.

“Someone could walk in at any moment,” she murmured. “Look at us. Do you think they’d believe that we came about our position by happenstance?” He merely grunted.

Her chin dropped to watch his long fingers maneuver her brooch this way and that. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to discern the best way to disengage ourselves without ripping your gown.”

A thought occurred to her then. What if her guardian were to walk in just then? It was possible his “watch” had begun this evening. And she didn’t know anything about this person. What if he was the sort to jump to conclusions? What if he carried a pistol? What if . . . ?

“Hurry, then.”

Briefly, Nicholas looked up from his work, his gaze intensely annoyed. “Believe me, I am hurrying.” Their breath mingled between them for a moment, then he looked back down. A strong pull, that same thrumming vibration, seemed to hover around them.

She tried to ignore it, but it occurred to her at that moment that for two people doing nothing more than trying to extricate their accessories, they were both suddenly breathing quite hard. And Nicholas’s hand seemed to be trembling.

“Nicholas,” she whispered.

His fingers stilled and his gaze traveled slowly upward from her brooch, to her bodice, to her neck, to her mouth, and then finally her eyes.

Rosalind licked her bottom lip, thinking she ought to say something, when one of his hands lifted to cradle her chin between his fingers. Shivers danced down her spine. He applied light pressure with the pad of his thumb, and she felt her lips parting. He looked at her mouth so intensely that her eyes drifted shut and her head tilted.