“You wouldn’t let anyone slit my throat,” she whispered, as much to reassure herself as for anything else. Surely this feeling was fear. That was why her hands shook and her heart raced.
But she didn’t think Mr. Corbyn would let any harm come to her. Not after how he’d reacted when he’d stumbled upon her crying in the office. Despite his rough manners, there was kindness in him.
“You don’t know that. You’ve only just met me.” He was stubborn, but she wasn’t fooled. The thought gave her the courage to press onward.
“Anyway, Ineedto talk about the money,” she added in a whisper, dropping her gaze to the open button at the collar of his shirt. It was easier to talk to the man if she didn’t look him in the eye. Like the sun, he was too dazzling for comfort. “I have to tell you something.”
Mr. Corbyn scowled at her.
She would take that as permission to keep talking. It was the best she was liable to get. “I had to take a pound from what I owed you to bribe our coachman to take me to the same address he brought Eli this morning. I didn’t know where you lived, you see, so it was the only way to get here.”
She hadn’t wanted to dip into the funds, but she’d turned all her pin money into chips at Bishop’s last night and she couldn’t verywell ask her mother to give her more. The coachman had been quite reluctant until she’d plucked a note from the envelope for him.
“Youdidn’tneed to tell me that,” Corbyn said curtly. “I don’t care about your missing pound.”
“But you might’ve thought that I was trying to cheat you!”
“You paid a man to kiss you in front of a room full of people and that’s what you’re worried about?”
His mouth was twisted in a crooked line, but his blue eyes were icy and aloof. If he found her amusing, it wasn’t complimentary.
This was so mortifying—to be overcome by the looks of a man who saw her as a mere annoyance. Even if she were going to leave in just a moment, Hannah would have preferred to swirl in and out with a worldly, seductive air and leave him longing for another kiss.
Now you’re being ridiculous, she scolded herself.Once was enough. You have no reason to kiss him again.
Except that Hannah found—to her horror—that she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it. She’d hardly had the time to appreciate their kiss the first time. It had been over before she’d even had a chance to figure out what she was doing. When he’d leaned in to whisper his warning in her ear a minute ago, she’d suffered the most terrible longing to try again.
He didn’t even want to kiss you the first time, Hannah reminded herself firmly. She wasn’t the sort of lady who could inspire a man to passion. She never had been.
“What will you do now?” she asked, trying to turn the subject away from her blunders.
“I’ll start by getting you out of this house and back home to your brother, for one. Is your carriage waiting outside?”
It was, though Hannah was in no hurry to return to it. The only thing that awaited her at home was another scolding. “I meant for work. Perhaps I could help you find something, seeing as it’s my faultyou lost your post.”
“I think I’ve had enough of your help.” The words made Hannah wince. “If your brother learns you were here, he’ll have my hide.”
Eli again. What had he said to Mr. Corbyn? She wished they would all stop interfering in her life.
“He’ll never learn of it,” she promised. “The coachman has as much to lose as I do if anyone finds out he brought me here in exchange for a bribe. He’ll tell them that he took me to call on some other ladies.”
Hannah had thought herself quite clever for having planned it all out so thoroughly, but Mr. Corbyn merely grunted. Never mind. She didn’t need his approval anyway. He was right; they were little more than strangers and she was making a fool of herself by lingering here.
She cast another glance about the boardinghouse, a sense of regret making her reluctant to say her goodbyes. The surroundings seemed too shabby for a man as beautiful as Mr. Corbyn. Grime and years of wear had turned the wood of the floorboards an ashy gray. They matched the soot-stained walls. A heavy set of footsteps marched up the stairs, sending an ominous creaking through the beams of the roof above their heads, followed by a rapping on the door from the floor above them and the sound of a man’s voice.
How could Mr. Corbyn stand to hear every move his neighbors made? What had happened to drive him from his naval career and land him in such circumstances? It must have been a significant fall from what he’d hoped for. It would have driven Hannah mad to live in a place with so little privacy.
Mr. Corbyn cast a glance upward as the creaking shifted to a different part of the ceiling, perhaps thinking the same thing.
“You should go,” he said, his voice clipped. “Now.”
Hannah bristled at this. “You’re very rude. You could at least saythank you for the money first.”
“Thank you.” He’d obviously only obliged the request in order to be rid of her. He wasn’t even looking at Hannah as he barked out the words. His gaze was still fixed above his head, where the creaking had taken on an oddly rhythmic quality. Was someone up there using a rocking chair? “Now hurry, before you hear something you shouldn’t.”
“What does that mean?”
At that moment, the moaning began.
