8
ALMOST
Temple should have guessed courting a lady in hiding would be rather difficult.But he’d pushed that tiny fact out of sight in his enthusiasm for having finally found a potential bride who could look at him without sneering.That the only thing progressing with ease.No sneering.Everything else… He swallowed a sigh.
She was rather distracted at the moment.They’d walked three times around Finsbury Square, and three times, Miss Chester had looked longingly at the bookshop across the square from Lady Guinevere’s.
“Would you like to go in?”Temple asked as they passed the green door.
“Oh, no.I cannot.”She tugged her straw bonnet lower.“Someone might recognize me.”
“Should I go in for you?”
“No!”She flinched, her hand flicking out as if she might touch his arm.But she didn’t.
She never touched him, not in the seven days they’d been walking together in the evening hours.She folded her arms primly (and surely uncomfortably) behind her back and ducked her head low.Her conversation came from the shadows of her bonnet and was directed at her feet.
Had she used up all her courage in her escape?
Each night spent watching her bow herself ticked Temple’s irritation higher.
“I’ve hired a runner,” he said.His voice was too rough, but he was too frustrated to care.
“A runner?What for?”Finally, she peeked up at him, but the bonnet kept her expression too much hidden.
This courtship was not going the way he’d planned.He’d been patient and kept his distance, giving her the freedom of inching closer in her own time.A woman like her, scared and careful, would need delicate handling.Only there had been no inching.Closer at least.Farther away, oh yes, plenty of that.
“To follow your cousin.”
“No.”She stopped at the corner of the square, her spine stiffening.
There was some fight in her after all.Damn, but he liked to see it.“Yes.Every evening you walk me round this square like a dog asking about him, and every evening I can provide no answers.But now, hopefully, I will be able to.”
She started back up again, an irritated clip to her steps.“Bow Street has more important things to do than follow my cousin about.”
He followed along, staying behind her this time.Quite the view from back here, the sway of her hips hypnotic.He should have been two steps behind her the entire time.“Bow Street is a dying organism, and Mr.Squires, the runner I hired, jumped at the opportunity.I have information.Already.But I see you do not want it.I’ll leave early this evening to speak with him and tell him his services are no longer?—”
“No!”She spun about.“No, no.If you have the information, you might as well share it.And if Mr.Squires needs the work, I would hate to deprive him of it.”
He grinned, offered his arm.
She refused it.
He’d never unhinge his jaw after this.Jaw too tightly clenched.She needed a protector.He needed a wife.A convenient arrangement.He was attracted to her.Even more convenient, that.God, how he’d wanted to kiss her in the roof garden a week ago.She’d been like a flower in that yellow gown, skin rosy and neck healed.Hell, how he wanted to kiss her now.The impulse grew stronger with every denial.
They folded their arms behind their backs in such synchronicity it could have been practiced, and they made it a quarter way round the square once more before Temple spoke.
“Squires has been following your cousin for three days now.Fordham drinks.Often.No matter the time of day.”
“That is not unusual.He began drinking to excess after my grandfather’s death.”
“He has also begun to visit potions rats.In the worst parts of town.”Though no shop but Lady Guinevere’s existed in London for purchasing potions, there was an abundance of shady personages who sold their wares in back alleys.Potions rats who scurried in the muck and led others into the sewer, charging exorbitant prices for unsafe elixirs.
“D-do—” The word like the stutter in her steps—sharp and throwing the world off balance.“Do you think he’ll come here?”She threw a glance over her shoulder at the potion shop.
He steadied her.“It doesn’t seem like he’s looking for anything legal.He’s been seen with dozens of unmarked bottles.Squires can’t figure out what it is, though.And it’s hard to catch a potion rat, apparently.”
“I don’t understand.”
