Suzanne Robinson (10 page)

As she passed the sarcophagus, its red stone glittered in the lamplight—and something rose from it. Georgiana glimpsed a frozen mask of gold, a headdress, a serpent diadem, heard a long, low groan. She screamed. Scuttling backward, she bumped against a chair, sat down, and burst into tears from the sudden fright.

“Oh, Ludwig!” she cried.

The man sitting in the coffin reached up and removed the mask. Georgiana blinked through her tears.

“You?”

“Sorry, George.”

Now her tears were those of anger. Georgiana removed her spectacles. She fumbled with her apron, found her kerchief, and stuck her face in it. A thump sounded as Ross climbed out of the sarcophagus and jumped to the floor. Georgiana lowered the kerchief, scowled at him, and sobbed at the same time. Her heart was still racing from the fright.

He approached her, set the mask on the table, and knelt at her feet. “I was trying the box on for size while I waited for Ludwig. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I hate you,” she said as she sniffed and swallowed back more tears. “What a contemptible trick.”

Her spectacles had fallen. He picked them up and held them while she buried her nose in her kerchief.

“It wasn’t a trick, Lady Georgiana. I’m sorry to have frightened you.”

“Again.”

He smiled at her, revealing white teeth that stood out against his sun-darkened skin. “Yes, again.”

“No,” she said between sniffs. “I mean you’re doing it again. Speaking like a Cambridge man when at any moment you’re going to drop the illusion and turn into a gunfighter or an East End thief.”

Responding in the same educated accent, he said, “I promise not to do either. I shall maintain this illusion for the moment, to assuage your terror with the comfort of the familiar.”

Georgiana snatched her spectacles from him.

“Why are you being polite?”

He didn’t answer at once. His dark lashes dropped, concealing those blue-and-indigo eyes and contrasting with the delicate skin upon which they rested. A muscle twitched in his jaw, calling attention to the hollows in his cheeks that made him seem almost vulnerable. Then his head came up, and he gave her an off-center smile that held the menace and excitement of a forbidden pagan ritual.

“Call it a penance for scaring you, my lady.” The smile faded as they looked at each other. “Never made a woman cry before. Don’t enjoy it.”

“You’ve never made a woman cry? I find that hard to believe, Mr. Ross.” The more they talked, the less she sniffed.

He grinned this time, in a knowing way that irritated
her. “Never. Always made them smile, or laugh.” He paused this time, his gaze drifting over her face. “Groan, perhaps, but never cry.”

“Groan. How could you make a lady groan unless you hurt her, sir?”

He appeared fascinated with her lips, almost distracted, which made her even more uncomfortable than she already was. At her question he started and his gaze riveted on her eyes.

“Bleeding hell.”

“You’re profane, sir.” Georgiana’s back stiffened, and she poked her kerchief back into her pocket.

“I forgot you wouldn’t know about—groaning.”

Suddenly his voice grew low and rough on the last word. Upon hearing it Georgiana felt a jolt of alarm that sent prickles through her body. Shifting uneasily in her chair, she glanced around the workroom.

“Where is Ludwig? He should have returned. He’s probably been diverted by some book. If he becomes absorbed, he’s likely to forget you.” She began to rise. “I’ll fetch him.”

His hand closed over her arm, and Georgiana found herself gently guided back to the chair. She stiffened when the hand remained on her arm, its warmth and strength penetrating her sleeve. She darted a look at it, perceiving long, slim fingers and a gold ring engraved with a pair of winged griffins. She pulled her arm. The fingers tightened, then let go.

Georgiana swallowed and stared at the spectacles in her hand. He hadn’t said a word, only detained her with his hand and the force of his silence. And that feeling was growing upon her, that feeling that she needed more distance from him. He was so close, she could smell sandalwood again, and still he didn’t
speak. She was going to do so herself when he broke his silence at last.

“Bleeding hell. If you know what’s good for you, George, you’ll scarper quick. Get out of this house and away from me.”

“There,” she said. “You’ve done it again, transformed into the rude thief who wouldn’t know the letter
H
if it sat on his knee. Why can you not remain the gentleman?”

“ ’Cause you don’t pay no attention when I’m acting like a gentleman, but you sure as hell notice when I ain’t.”

“As I said, sir, you’re accomplished at illusion—gentleman, thief, gunfighter. Which is real?”

Dark brows grew together. That twitch in his jaw muscle was back, and Georgiana grew alarmed as his eyes narrowed. His hands fastened on her arms, and he drew closer, making her back away from him.

“That’s wot’s wrong with you, George. You never had to face what’s real. Maybe you need a good dose of something real to make you pay attention.”

Nick’s mind was burning as hot as his body. Was he really thinking about kissing her? He was kneeling before a woman who—in the space of a brief moment in a plunge bath—had transformed from a nuisance into an obsession. After the plunge bath he’d run away from her and Threshfield, had tried to rid himself of this unlooked-for hunger. He had thought himself successful—until he knelt before her and touched her gown.

He’d never felt like this. Touching the fabric was like drawing the tips of his fingers over the surface of pristine, still water. The sensation arced through his hand to quicken his body. It erased the memory of past conquests and even a few submissions, of nights spent in raucous pleasure.

A part of him still growled protests even as he drew closer to her, close enough to see the startled emerald eyes grow as large as coat buttons. She backed away from him but was stopped by the back of the chair. Only a few inches more to go, and he would
feel her lips beneath his. She said something, but he couldn’t hear her for the churning of blood in his ears.

Then her lashes fluttered and her eyes narrowed to slits the way Jocelin’s did when he was surprised.
Jocelin
. He was about to kiss Jos’s sister. Nick froze, then thrust himself to arm’s length, searching for some way to distract himself and her.

“Mr. Ross, are you ill?”

“What? No. Yes. Yes, that’s it. I’ve got a dashed miserable headache.”

“Perhaps you should take a headache powder. I have some, which I can fetch if you’re through insulting me and will move out of the way.”

“Did I insult you, my lady?” he asked faintly. He had to keep her talking, because it would be embarrassing to stand up until his unruly body had calmed.

“Of course you insulted me, sir. You accused me of not knowing what’s real. You’ve disapproved of me from our first meeting. You made that clear.”

That almost jolted him out of his aroused state. “You’re acting like a spoiled—bloody hell. When I think of what my sister’s life was like compared to yours—”

“Pray tell me how you know I’m spoiled, Mr. Ross, when we’ve never spent more than a few minutes in each other’s company.”

“Ladies are all alike.”

Georgiana lifted a thin, arched brow. “Are they?”

“I’ve known a few,” he said with a smile that didn’t quite conceal how intimate that knowledge was. “Never lift a finger to do honest work. Don’t even raise their own children. Spend more blunt on petticoats than my mother ever saw in her whole life.
Throw fits if they don’t get to go to fifty balls in a season.”

He frowned as he remembered how raw his mother’s hands had grown from scrubbing floors and fireplaces in winter. Georgiana was looking at him strangely, and the fine line of her brow had settled down from its derisive curve.

“I’m sorry that your family was poor,” she said gently, “but that doesn’t give you the right to assume that because mine wasn’t that I have no troubles.” She hesitated, as though she would say more, then tried to rise from her chair again.

“All right,” he said to prevent her from forcing him to move. “Prove it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Prove you got troubles.”

Her mouth fell open in astonishment. “I shall not, sir.”

“ ’Cause you can’t.”

“Because I do not conduct intimate conversations with strangers.”

Shifting his weight to his other knee, Nick pretended to think hard. “Let me see. What troubles could Lady Georgiana, the duke’s daughter, have? I know. Papa won’t let her spend double her allowance on Paris gowns. The shade of the carpet in her bedroom doesn’t go with her dressing gown.” He put a hand to his cheek in mock alarm. “And, heavens, her suitors are either of high rank or handsome, but never both at the same time.” He grinned at her. His body was cooling, and he’d be able to stand soon. Her next comment hit him like the blast of a shotgun. Her hands draped off the ends of the chair arms, and she looked down at him through long lashes.

“Mr. Ross, I find intimate discussions with mere acquaintances distasteful, but your prejudices seem to rule your behavior and are in need of revision. We don’t know each other well, but I do understand that you’re Jocelin’s closest friend, and I know what he’s told you. And since he’s made you privy to intimate matters concerning himself, my parents, and, worst of all, my uncle, I would think you’d have more intelligence than to assume that my life has been idyllic.”

Nick straightened, suddenly alert. “Has that bastard Yale done you harm?”

“Of course not. And please guard your language, sir. Uncle Yale’s brain is rotting away and he can’t even feed himself anymore. He’ll never harm anyone again. A just fate, in my opinion.”

“So you know about him?” Nick asked, a little shocked that Jocelin had spoken of such things to her.

“I know he hurt Jocelin terribly, and that Mother and Father didn’t believe my brother when he came to them for protection. But I saw his pain. His soul was in hell, and they abandoned him rather than face the truth, face the scandal. Do you know what it is to feel contempt for your own father and mother?”

Nick stood up then, turned away from her, and spoke softly. “Yes, I do. For my father, that is. He was a drunken coward who used his fists on my mother and my sister and me until the day I stopped him.”

They remained silent, she in her chair and he next to her, staring into darkness past dusty shelves littered with papyrus, gold pectoral necklaces, and jars filled with ancient entrails.

“You know what it’s like,” she said.

He glanced at her and would have looked away,
but he was caught by the bright-green jewels that were her eyes.

She continued when he didn’t reply. “You know what it’s like to hate the one who gave you life. There is nothing on which to depend if you know that your own parents have abandoned their child rather than face ugliness. You must have felt that you were the man and your father the child.”

“A monster child.” He picked up a book and read the title,
Book of the Dead
. “It does no good to talk about it. My pa never changed. Yours won’t either.”

“That’s true, Mr. Ross.” Georgiana rose and began stacking books into neat piles on the table. “But I know how to make myself feel better.”

“How? By marrying an old man who can’t do you any harm?”

“No,” she said. “By gaining independence. Once I do that, I can use my fortune to establish homes for children who are the victims of such monsters.”

“Going to build workhouses, are you?”

“Don’t be insulting, Mr. Ross. I want to build refuges, places where children can be safe and can grow up surrounded by love and gentle discipline. I want to arm them with education so that they can make their own way in the world instead of being forever at the mercy of—of evil.”

Nick couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d said she’d wanted to become a cook on a trail drive. Her eyes were as bright as the Mediterranean on a July morning, and she spoke with such intensity that she made him want to shovel money at her to aid her cause. He hadn’t been embarrassed since he was five years old, but he was ashamed now, embarrassed at his
own ignorant presumptions. It had been a long time since a woman had earned his respect.

“Strike me blind, George. You got more sense than I ever thought.”

Drawing herself up, she leveled a chilly stare at him. “I have asked you repeatedly not to call me that, sir.”

“Damn if you don’t look like the queen taking down a lazy footman when you do that.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Spine straight as a fence post, shoulders square like the cross piece of a gibbet. Nose in the air, and those amazing emerald eyes sighting down the bridge. You could command the deck of a man-o’-war.”

“You’re being rude, sir.”

“Just admiring your pluck, my lady.”

“Pluck!” Her voice echoed off the mummy cases, and she lowered it. “You called me a fence post.”

“Now, don’t come over all red-faced and prissy, hang it.”

They exchanged scowls. Ire lit her face with color. Her eyes glittered and enticed him despite his anger. And to his dismay his anger fed his arousal. A loud slam made both of them jump. Ludwig stood in the doorway between the library and the workroom and picked up a book he’d dropped.