“Why are you here?” she asked, ready to put him as wrong-footed as he’d done her.
All traces of humor fading, he made his way to the room’s lone settee, lowered to its threadbare cushion, and crossed one leg over the other, as if he owned the place. The man was aristocratic, no doubt about it, but his movement wasn’t stiff or inhibited. He had a natural ease about him.
He pinned her with his stormy, arrogant gaze. Another beat of time passed, this one interminable. She wouldn’t shift on her feet and show her discomfort. She simply wouldn’t. Would he never state his business?
“I would like to hire you,” he said, at last.
Shock, sudden and jarring, flashed through her. What in the—
Then she remembered. He was amarquess. In short, a nob having a lark. He’d gotten a taste for adventure last night, and it wasn’t yet out of his system. “I make a terrible maid. Your household can do better,” she said, deliberately obtuse. Mayhap it would discourage him from whatever mad proposition he was about to put forth.
All it did was pull a sardonic grin from him. “How droll.”
If that was all he had to say, so be it. Unwilling to smooth the way for him, she gave silence permission to fill the air and create a bit of discomfort. Let him encounter a few bumps in the road. Likely, no one ever threw those his way.
“I am here to retain your investigative services.”
“Missing a dog?” she asked.
“Hardly.”
“Cheating lover?”
He snorted. If a snort could sound lordly, his did.
“Why me?” she asked. “A Bow Street Runner would likely serve your purposes, whatever they are.”
“I’ve already gone down that road.”
“Go down it again.”
He gave his head a slow shake. “I don’t want a runner.” He uncrossed his legs and sat forward, elbows on his knees. Of a sudden, he took up all the space in the room. “I want you.”
The breath vacated her lungs. That he could speak such words…
“For the job, of course,” he amended, but not sheepishly so.
She gathered her composure. And her wits. “My calendar is full.”
“This is a matter of some delicacy,” he continued, as if she hadn’t just refused him.
“Do I strike you as delicate?”
His head cocked, and his eyes narrowed in assessment. “In truth?”
Something in the sound of that question made her nerves perk to life, but she nodded anyway.
“You might be.”
Her lungs felt suddenly too full of air. She could ignore those three words. She must. Otherwise, she might wonder what else he saw in her.
“What’s the job?” she asked against her better judgment. She would be drawn in if she wasn’t careful.
“I need you to uncover what happened to a woman.”
Of course, came a cynical thought.Delicate mattersalways involved women. “The women in your set aren’t too difficult to trace, and you’ll find servants are usually willing to part with information for a bob or two. There are only a few places your lady could be.”
“She wasn’t myladyin the strictest sense.”
