“Is that what you think? I’m not going anywhere. Not until you tell me why Quentin has been missing for another full night and another full day and none of you can be bothered to inform me what is going on—”
At the sound of her raising voice, Dionysus growled louder. Sharp claws protruded from the wildcat’s trembling paws.
Jaw clenched tight, Jacob trapped the wildcat with his arms—for now, at least—and looked over his shoulder to glower at his overstepping client.
She was breathtakingly beautiful, damn her. The clinging day dress of cerulean muslin. That touchably soft skin. Even her disgruntled expression was unfathomably fetching. Her arms were hidden beneath a long-sleeved spencer and her hair mostly covered by a straw-colored bonnet with blue accents.
He wanted to untie the ribbon and toss the bonnet aside. Then unfasten the four buttons keeping the short spencer closed tightaround her bodice. Then—
No. None of that. He wanted her to go away. Before things got any worse.
“Miss Henry,” he ground out, “if you wouldpleasewait inside the house—”
She snorted in derision. “I have no intention to keep waiting—”
At the aggressive sound of her rising volume, the Highland tiger sprang free from Jacob’s arms. With a loud hiss, the wildcat launched himself at the interloper in order to protect his human from feral Miss Henry.
“No!” Jacob scrambled after him.
Miss Henry smiled and sank to her knees, arms out.
Jacob sprinted toward her. “Get up! Get out! He doesn’t want you to pet him, he wants to kill you!”
The wildcat opened his jaw wide and sank his fangs into Miss Henry’s delicate wrist. When she jerked her arm free, Dionysus turned his claws to her exposed bodice and belly.
Jacob braced himself for screaming as he disentangled the wildcat from Miss Henry and pulled Dionysus back into his arms to calm the injured animal.
Miss Henry chuckled and rose to her feet. “That was quite a welcome.”
His heart was still pounding. “Why aren’t you sobbing? Do you need sutures?”
She pulled back the cuff of her spencer. “Lined with leather,” she explained. “I was never in danger.”
“But your chest and stomach!”
“Protected by a reinforced corset. A thin layer of chain mail with whalebone reinforcements. I didn’t feel a thing.”
Good God, Elizabeth was going to love this madwoman.
“How did you know you were going to need all that?”
“I didn’t. It’s a habit I picked up after Quentin starting bringing wild animals home. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to domesticate a polecat. Ours was quite resistant to the idea.”
He stared at her. “You wear polecat-armor beneath your clothes when you pay house calls?”
“I have to dosomething. My cousin faints at the sight of blood.” She held out a hand toward Dionysus. “May I try again?”
“If he bites you, I won’t stop him,” Jacob muttered. “You’ve been warned.”
She touched her fingertips lightly down the back of the wildcat’s neck.
Dionysus leaped from Jacob’s arms in protest and streaked back to his special carpet in the rear of the barn.
“Oh, well.” Miss Henry sighed. “I tend to take a bit of time to grow on people.”
Jacob had no doubt. He pulled her hand into his to inspect her wrist. There were indeed tiny holes in the outer sleeve from Dionysus’s fangs, but the interior leather was perfectly intact.
“Satisfied?” Miss Henry said archly. “Or will you need to inspect the chain mail at my bosom next?”
