She glanced up, a glint in her eye. What an extraordinary blue they were. As if the Mediterranean Sea had been hit with a lightning bolt. The terrier at her feet pinned him with the exact same look, except his eyes were brown. “I have a question for you,” she said.
“Go on.”
“How did you know I’d been in your study? I was careful.”
At this reminder of the reason for their first encounter—no more than two hours ago—his outrage made an attempt to flare up. But its former ire could muster not much more than a fizzly spark.
“The inkwell,” he said.
She frowned. “Pardon?”
“The inkwell wasn’t at its usual angle.”
Her brow lifted. “And you noticed?”
“Aye.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
She gave her head a curt shake, as if trying to clear muck from it. “You’re not so different from your brother, are you?”
“As day from night.”
“And which are you?”
He opened his mouth and shut it. In truth, he wasn’t certain.
Without another word, she scooped up the little terrier and ducked into a narrow alleyway that Jamie only just noticed. His eye followed her until she disappeared through a doorway.
And all the while he kept his feet firmly rooted in place, for if he gave them leave, they might try to follow the frustratingly interesting woman.
Something in him didn’t want to let this night go.
But it was no use. He commanded his feet to move, away from her street, away from her neighborhood, one step in front of the other.
He attempted to hold on to the feeling that had started humming through his body tonight at the very first sight of her. It was one he hadn’t felt in months, years, maybe his entire life. Yes, there had been the outrage, but what had followed was singular. Excitement, yes, but something more.
The air around that woman held a brightness, an unpredictability.
Hers was an unusual life, one he’d never understood in all the years Nick had engaged in it. But, tonight, he’d been given a glimpse, and he’d be damned if he didn’t want more.
For some deuced reason, he wanted to be impressive to that woman who he suspected was quite impressive herself.
You’re not so different from your brother, are you?
When she’d asked the question, again, he’d felt it.Seen.He didn’t quite understand it, but this womansawhim. Strangely, it mattered.
At last, his feet led him to St. James’s Square, and his mausoleum of a mansion. Dread sank to the pit of his stomach, as with each stride, the night faded further behind him.
Ahead lay his future, the opposite of tonight.Predictable…dull…
Alone.
Except… What if it didn’t have to be? What if…
Of course.
