Jealousy, hideous and foreign, crept its way through him, a silent beast with an appetite for destruction. “You are making him a scarf?”
She blinked. “It was originally meant for Charles, but Pye is a rather nice young man, and he seemed quite thrilled at the prospect of sporting a scarf from me. I offered it to him instead. Besides, how do you think I have been able to find my way to you so often? The scarf seemed to be sufficient bribery for Pye. He has not once questioned my absences.”
This mollified Griffin not one whit. The scarf had initially been crafted with Flowerpot in mind, and then had been reassigned to a bodyguard with a pastry for his surname. “No one has ever knittedmea scarf.”
“It is called crocheting,” she corrected him again, a vee of disapproval furrowing the otherwise faultless skin between her dark brows.
He longed to kiss her there, but refrained. In truth, he knew by now what the lady’s art she practiced with string and hook was called. He simply enjoyed hearing her correct him. “No one has evercrochetedme a scarf either.”
She surprised him then by withdrawing from his touch, then reaching up and cupping his face with her satiny palms. Through the layer of his well-groomed beard, he felt that touch like a brand. He stilled, unable to look anywhere else, unable to think of anything else.
“I will crochet anything you wish, Strathmore.”
How foolish he felt then. He did not need the scarf. Did not need to beg for one. Here was his cue to return to the task at hand. To revert to the hardened, emotionless husk of a man he ordinarily was.
He cleared his throat. “The crocheting can wait, my lady. For now, let us deal with what awaits us. You will leave the chamber and go into the hall. I will follow you and come up behind you, putting one arm around your throat and holding my dagger to you with the other. You must act surprised and fearful, but you must always remain limp and willing, so that I can lead you about as necessary.”
“I am going to crochet you a scarf in your favorite color,” she said, as if she had not heard a word he had just uttered.
And damn it if she didn’t shatter something inside him with that one sentence. A handful of words. The promise of an abysmal scarf—he had no doubts as to the quality of anything she created, for he had been living with the supposed seed pouch for days now—ought not to be enough to bring him to his knees, when not even cuts and lashes and beatings had.
But it did.
So he did the only thing he could think of doing in that moment. He kissed her. Not her lips, for if he had her mouth beneath his, there would be no stopping him. Instead, he kissed the smooth, pale flesh of her forehead, as if he were anointing her with a benediction. And perhaps he was. Certainly, he was marking her as his.
“Thank you,” he breathed, and it was all he could say, but he knew it was enough by the way her eyes darkened and the gold and brown flecks within them shimmered.
He would wear the bloody scarf every day, even in the summer, if it pleased her.
She smiled up at him, and he knew he would happily take on the whole world for her.
“What is your favorite color?” she asked.
He did not even hesitate. “Purple.”
“Oh.” She swallowed. “Truly?”
It hadn’t been before, but it was now. “Truly.”
Her smile deepened. “Then purple is what it shall be. But we had better get our plan sorted. You pretend to take me prisoner in the hall. What happens next?”
He was grateful once more for her uncanny ability to see him as no one else ever had. For her realization he required a change of subject before he knew it himself.
“Next, we will make our way to the street,” he said, “where a carriage will be waiting for us not far from here. From there, we will fly as far and as fast as we can travel, until we disappear for a time.”
If everything were to go according to plan, that is. He had gone to great efforts to send word of his needs to his connections with Lady Violet’s help, but being isolated from the rest of the world, he could not be entirely certain his messages had reached their intended destinations.
All he could do was hope.
Chapter Nine
Violet was stillshaking with a brutal combination of fear and excitement by the time she and the Duke of Strathmore reached their destination for the evening.
She stood in the front parlor of a small home in the countryside, well beyond London. Modest and small, it was nevertheless cheerful, with brightly striped wallpaper. Strathmore had picked the lock to gain entrance, reassuring her he knew the owner when she had protested, adding that picking locks was one of his talents as an agent of the Crown.
In the wake of their abrupt race from Lark House and London itself, Violet and Strathmore had not spoken much. He had been preoccupied with making certain they were not being followed.
She had been alternately preoccupied by hoping she had not just made the most disastrous decision of her life, and fearing she was falling in love with the strange, reckless, beautiful man she had run away with.
