Marry the Man Today (16 page)

"Cocoa!" Jessica carried in a tray of steaming hot chocolate.

Skye followed with a two-handled basket of hats and folded costume pieces. "Fresh from the seamstress."

"And orange cakes from the tea shop." Cassie winked at Lydia as she set the platter down on the table in front of the skittish woman.

"These three young ladies, Lydia, are your . .. shall we say, travel assistants?"

Elizabeth couldn't have asked for three more enthusiastic and committed young women. A shopgirl, an actress, and a retired pickpocke
t
—
t
he perfect background for their work at the Abigail Adams. Footloose and undirected, they each took to their well-paid jobs with relish and cunning.

"Have we a plan yet, Miss E?" Skye was already picking through the basket of clothes, holding pieces up to Lydia's chest.

"Not quite yet. We have a fortnight. That's when Mrs. Bailey's husband, who is currently at home in Derbyshire, expects Mrs. Bailey home from visiting an old friend in Hampstead.
"

"My dear friend Helen, who told me about you courageous ladies at the Adams."

"You know you'll never be able to go back home again, Mrs. Bailey." Jessica handed a cup of cocoa to Lydia, her pretty face awash in earnest sympathy. "From this moment on. Not ever. Not your home or your friends. You must leave your old life behind."

Lydia caught her upper lip between her fingers and nodded. "Yes, I know."

Cassie offered the woman a plate with a cake. "As my dear Irish papa so often said before he died, 'Stick with me lass, and you'll be fartin' through silk.'"

Silence fell against the bookcases and settled into the overstuffed chairs.

"How's that?" Lydia's brows had drawn tightly together, her gaze fixed and wide at the very prim-looking Cassie's very streetwise advice.

Needing to do something quickly to smooth the situation, Elizabeth put her arm around the woman's shoulder. "What Cassie means i
s
—"

"Through silk? Oh! Oh, my!" Then Lydia started laughing. And kept laughing. And laughing.

Absolutely roaring, until they were all convulsed in tears, holding their stomachs.

"Cassie, really!" But Elizabeth hadn't laughed so much in months and months. Laughed until her stomach ached and her eyes were flooding, until suddenly she felt a breeze at her back.

Lydia and the three young women had stopped laughing and were now looking over her shoulder at the door.

Blakestone! She'd know that devilish scent anywhere. That steamy presence.

She turned to him, carefully steeling herself for the sight of all that smoldering maleness.

It didn't work this time either; he was just too overwhelming.

And there was Lydia, standing beside Skye, as big as you please. All the evidence the man needed in his investigation of London's fiendish kidnapper.

"Can we help you, my lord?" she finally asked against the rise of her pulse.

"I didn't mean to interrupt, Miss Dunaway," he said with that dark, quirking eyebrow, those intelligent eyes that swept the room and caught up every nuance.

"Actually, you didn't. We were just finishing up."

In a flash her three keen-witted assistants had cleared the library of the cocoa and cakes, the costume basket and Lydia, the changed woman.

"Are you sure I didn't interrupt something, madam?" He reached back and closed the door behind him, clearly curious, amused. "I could hear your laughter all the way from the back stairs."

"Just a bit of humor between us women."

"With us men as your bull's-eye, of course."

"Of course. Turnabout is fair play."

"Turnabout is it?" He was looking quite smug at the moment. As though he'd just learned something highly personal about her, but was going to savor the secret power for a while, before using it. "Are you implying that men are in the habit of making jokes about women?"

"Come now. You must admit that men rarely take the opinions of women seriously."

"That might be true of some men, howeve
r
—"

"Excess baggage. An anchor around the husband's adventuring spirit. A brood mare. A cash cow. Livestock. Chattel. It's all very funny, isn't it?"

"Hardly, madam." He furrowed a dark brow at her, a forged injury.

"You saw for yourself this afternoon, my lord. That little entertainment in Parliament. By the time our contingent left the chamber, the members' protests of outrage had turned from derisive laughter to a thundering celebration of the male intellect triumphing absolutely over an uppity, feather-headed female prank."

The sharp planes of his jaw hardened as he came toward her. "Do you really believe what you're saying?"

"I believe in what I have observed my whole life long, sir. Just as surely as I believe in the course of the sun and the stars."

He narrowed his eyes. "If that's true, then you purposely went with your ladies to Parliament, with your trap baited and set, fully expecting to snare your quarry?"

Had she really?

"Possibly. But I was truly hoping against hope that the members of your sex would prove me wrong this time around. We would have loved to have been left to our harmless mission in the gallery; to observe for ourselves the workings of government. To be defended by our men folk instead of publically reviled by them."

He had made his way to her end of the worktable. "Not all men are as intolerant as that idiot Sayers."

“But there are enough of them for the rest of you to hide behind."

"Me? You're calling me a coward?" He leaned back against the edge of the table, arms crossed over his broad chest. "Including me in your blanket condemnation."

The poor man looked more stricken than angry. And he was, in truth, generally undeserving.

"To be honest, sir, I was surprised and quite impressed when you came so quickly to our defense in the Commons."

"Sayers is a madman."

"Yes, but you forcibly held him back from reaching his wife. And that took courage."

"Nonsense. Sayers is a scrawny bastard, for all his blustering, and
I
—"

"Yes, and you could have pounded him into the ground with a single blow. But that's not the kind of courage I am talking about."

He seemed suddenly pleased with himself. "What other kind is there?"

"The most important kind. Moral courage. You stood up for us in front of your peers. That says a great deal about the strength of your character."

"Madam, I merely stood up to a bully." He shrugged those massive shoulders as though to dismiss her compliment, which had so obviously pleased him, then left her for one of the walls of bookshelves. "Any man would have done the same thing, in the same situation."

"Pardon me, my lord, if I don't count on it next time. You did the courageous thing, and the ladies of the Abigail Adams agreed that your behavior was exceptional."

"Did they?" He turned back from his browsing and arched a brow at her, then went back to scanning the shelves.

"They talked about you all the way home. And told me to thank you the next time I saw you." She'd been giddily hoping he would come tonight. "And here you are, so . . . thank you. From me, as well."

"You're all very welcome, though I'm not nearly as deserving of praise as you are."

"Me?"

He stopped in front of the neat rack of newspapers and turned back to her. "For your grand exit from Parliament this morning."

"Are you mocking me?" His comment stung. Though she'd only known the man for a week, she'd come to expect so much more from him.

"I would never." He leaned against the bookcase strut, appraised her for a long sweep of his dazzling gaze. "I thought you were . . . spectacular."

Spectacular? Me
?

She tried to calm her heart, tried not to read anything into his admiring eyes, because there was danger here, of untold dimensions. "In what way, sir?"

He was smiling again, nodding as though he approved of her stance. "You stood up to the most powerful governmental body in the world, with great composure and dignity, and rightly chided them for their rude behavior."

She shrugged lightly, hoping to stave off the flush that his unexpected praise was beginning to cause. "I only spoke my mind."

"You challenged their petty universe to a duel of wills."

"A duel? I didn't mean
—
"

"And, make no mistake, Miss Dunaway, you rattled more than one conscience."

"Oh,
I doubt that."

"And had you stayed to listen instead of sweeping down the stairs with your entourage, you would have heard one of thos
e
rare moments that sometimes overtakes the House of Commons in times of national distress."

"Rare, how?"

"Silence, my dear. Utter silence."

"Oh." At the time, she couldn't actually hear anything for the anger and embarrassment ringing in her ears. And her heart had been pounding as wildly as it was now.

"Of course, all hell broke loose a moment later, madam, but you did substantially affect the morning's proceedings. They will remember you."

But will you remember me when you're gone, my lord, as I'll remember you?

He stared at her a moment longer, then turned back to the bookshelves, taking a sudden interest in reading each of the titles.

The titles! Oh, dear, this wasn't an ordinary library, for ordinary readers.

"Well, my lord, I will certainly remember my promise to
them.
"
Sensing his prowling interest in the contents of the shelves, Elizabeth gathered up the newspapers strewn across the surface of the table.

"And, though I don't know what the reporter from the
Times
will write about the your battle for the Public Gallery, you'll have some press again tomorrow morning."

"Then we're sure to be the object of ridicule at every breakfast table in London and in every dining room of every gentleman's club in St. James."

Looking much like a stalking bear, Blakestone pulled a burgundy leather-bound book off the shelf, then frowned at the cover.

Surely at the controversial title:
Rebel Wives and Household Revolutions.

He glanced back at her with that weighty, unreadable glint in his eyes, tilting the book at her. "Was your childhood home a household of revolutions?"

She'd never considered it before, but, "Yes, I suppose it was. That is to say, my great-aunts were both wildly revolutionary for their time."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me."

"What I mean is that they didn't bend their values to suit public opinion."

"So that's where you get your ..."

She knew exactly the word he was searching for: "Pigheadedness
?"

"Confidence, madam. An essential ingredient in all revolutionaries."

"I'd hardly call myself revolutionary." But she liked that he thought of her that way. Liked too much that he thought of her at all.

That he looked at her with such heat in his eyes, in the curve of his mouth.

"Neither of your aunts ever married, did they? The Hasleton sisters."

Blast it all, the man seemed to know everything about her and her past.

"The choice was theirs, Blakestone. They were both legendary beauties in their day, as well as wealthy heiresses, from an old family. They could have married anyone. However, to their dying days, they both preached loudly against marriage."

He gave a quick grunt. "I do hope you didn't listen."

Lord, what could he mean by that remark? And by the wry tilt of his frown, as though he were disappointed? Or cared.

"What does it matter to you, my lord, what I think about marriage?"

"
I
. . . well, I just think you ought to keep your options open."

"To paraphrase my Auntie Clarice: after marriage, the husband and the wife are one person, but that person is always the husband."

"Ah, and your Aunt Tiberia's words of wisdom?" Of course the lout would know her other aunt's name as well.

"Aunt Tibbs firmly believed that the law should not force the woman to surrender her independence or her fortune to her husband. And that men are only good for one th
i
—"

She stopped her words abruptly enough, but could do nothing about the flush of crimson spreading like a wildfire out of her bodice.

She probably could have stopped the flush by sheer dint of will. If only Blakestone hadn't suddenly shifted the heat of his gaze from her bosom to her face.

If he hadn't slowly smiled at her, like an artful, un-sated pirate.

"Good for one thing, madam? And what would that one thing be?"

"Um
m
m ..." There was just a humming occupying her head at the moment, the burring drone of a little bee, then a whole hive of them.