A low voice rumbled in the vicinity of her ear. “Shuffle your feet like you’re infirm.”
Nell immediately got his idea and thought it might work. So, though she would prefer to hie out of this place as fast as her feet could carry her, she shuffled one excruciatingly slow step at a time until, at long last, a hand—hishand—wrapped around her upper arm and tugged her to a stop. She heard the twist of a door handle.
Anticipation had her jumpy beneath the towel. Again, his voice sounded in her ear. “I don’t recommend shedding this blanket until you’re inside the ladies’ bathing room.”
“Just point me in the right direction,” she said in a hushed whisper.
He chuckled and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Five steps, and you’re there.”
Nell didn’t have to be told twice.
She’d taken two steps when his voice sounded at her back. “Meet me.”
She drew up sharp, her haste momentarily forgotten. “Pardon?” she hissed, having no idea if they were alone or not.
“Meet me for tea in the Old Bath Hotel at four o’clock.”
That was… unexpected. “Hasn’t our business with one another reached a conclusion?” she asked, cool, when she felt anything but.
Business?They had no business together. She didn’t even know the man’s name. She did, however, know every contour of his chest.
Oh, where had that thought come from?
From the same place that would likely be dreaming about that chest all night, she reckoned.
“I owe you,” he said.
Beneath the blanket that was increasingly closing in on her, Nell frowned. A man had never told her he owed her anything in all her life. Something inside her responded to those words and the plea within them, and inexplicably, she said, “I’ll be there.”
She crossed the remaining few feet to the ladies’ bathing room and shut the door firmly behind her. She pulled the blanket off her head and slumped back, instant regret tracing through her.
Why had she agreed?
Men only got her into trouble—and this man in particular. Except…
He didn’t appear to be a rogue.
Of course, she knew from experience, it was the ones who didn’t appear to be rogues that one needed to keep the closest eye on.
3
He should be on the road right now.
Lucas knew that.
Instead, he sat in the tea room of the Old Bath Hotel, waiting… forher.
The day had started so innocently. He’d intended to take Matlock Bath’s waters before continuing his interrupted journey on a reshod Lady Mischief. Then he’d seenher, and that plan had flown out the window, a new plan forming in an instant.
Well, not precisely a plan.
But an urge.
To see her again.
Maybe this time he’d even learn her name.
He snorted. He was acting like an instantly besotted green youth who had never even kissed a girl. He had, in fact, kissed a few ladies in his time—and done more as any other man of eight-and-twenty years—but he’d never kissedher.
