“You could be,” he told her, turning his head to observe her. “You could be lolling about in mine.”
Her mouth dropped open for a moment, color brushing her cheeks. She immediately turned to look out the window. “I will have the driver bring you home,” she said briskly.
“Oh, good,” he said with a lazy grin. “I was hoping you’d take me home with you. I have things to discuss with you, Victoria. Vix. Vicky mine.”
“Do not call me Vicky,” she said coldly. “I shall kill you.”
“Do you promise?” he answered softly. “How will you do it?”
She made a strangled little noise that sounded like it was trying to be disgust. “You are impossible,” she said. “What do you want to discuss with me?”
He grinned at her, enjoying the tipsy spin of the carriage that the champagne was providing him, and the way she glinted every time they passed by torchlight. “I want you to tell me about Caroline Sedgewick,” he said, “and in return, I will tell you why they knighted me. Is that fair?”
She hesitated, clearly surprised that his answer was coherent, those dark eyes narrowing at him. “A trade?”
“A trade,” he confirmed, letting himself examine the rest of her at his leisure as the swaying carriage took them past a row of well-lit public houses. The only thing better than that dress, he thought, would be the lack of it.
“If it is not a good story,SirAmbrose,” she said with venom, “you will regret tricking me.”
“It is an awful, awful story,” he assured her. “You will love it. I will go first, if you do not trust me.”
“Oh, I think not,” she said, shaking her head. “You will bear the full brunt of the debt you wish to incur, and then you will pay it in full. That is what you get for storming into my carriage like some toothless highwayman.”
“Toothless!” he repeated, affronted. “Madam, I would be a dashing highwayman.”
She gave him a begrudging half smile, like she resented finding his petulance endearing, and turned her face toward the window as the carriage rounded the final block in St. James toward the Tod & Vixen.
“Oh,” he said, snapping up to sitting. “Tod & Vixen.”
She turned to look at him with a weariness in her face. “What?”
“Tod and Vix,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Like you and your brother.”
“Get out of the carriage, Ambrose,” she said with a sigh, gesturing as the door was pulled open by the driver like she had done the thing with the very power of her force of will. “Out.”
He tumbled out, giving a stern look of rebuke to the ground for tilting under him as he did so, and then steadied himself toward the Vixen as she thanked the driver.
“Come along,” she said impatiently. “Not the front door.”
“Oho,” he said, sinking his hands into his pockets and following her around the side. “Are you sneaking me in?”
“Of course I am,” she said flatly. “You think I want people to see this?”
He frowned.
“Don’t pout,” she said without turning around.
She opened a door that led directly to a staircase to the apartments above the club, circumventing any need to pass through the revelry going on below. She did not wait for him or usher him in ahead of her, just knocked the door open with her hip and took the stairs with her skirt pinched in her fingers, her hips swinging as she climbed.
He watched with dedicated attention, deliberately staying no fewer than four steps behind her for the duration.
When she reached the top, she pulled a low-lit lantern from the bannister and turned the knob on the side, making the flame jump to life. Which was the point where he realized—
“Is no one here?” he said, his eyes widening. “Are we alone?”
She held the lantern out in front of her as she walked into the landing. “Hannah and Teddy are at the Fox tonight,” she said without turning, taking him through the dining room and into a little hallway. “I thought you would know that.”
He blinked, his eyes still following the swing of her hips. “Oh. Yes. I should have,” he said absently as she turned into the second room to the right and set about igniting the lamps as he stood in the doorway, considering all manner of ill-advised things.
