As the carriage rocked, her stomach lurched, as if in warning. She bit her lip, thinking it would serve him right if she cast up her accounts all over the long legs and strong thighs she had been ogling. Lord knew no man’s arrogance could withstand vomit.
“You are vexed because I outsmarted you.” He raised a dark brow.
“Vexed does not begin to accurately describe my feelings for you at the moment, Mr. Arden.” And yes, she took great joy in watching his nostrils flare once more, and his full lips turn down with displeasure, upon her deliberate confusion of his title. “But rest assured, try though you may, you will never be capable of outsmarting me. Not even the wiliest criminals have been able to escape me.”
“I accept your challenge, Miss Montgomery.”
“It was not a challenge, Mr. Arden,” she grumbled, as pearls of sweat broke out on her brow, “but a promise.”
“Sure of yourself, are you not?” His tone was amused.
Hazel saw nothing humorous in their current circumstances. She needed food, and she needed a chamber pot, and with each moment that dragged by, she was more and more uncertain which of those things she required first.
“I am secure in my abilities,” she told him anyway.
She could not bear to allow him to think her weak. Or to imagine he had broken her. He had not. Hewouldnot. She was H.E. Montgomery, and she had faced murderers, without a hint of fear. She had infiltrated the Emerald Club. She had traveled an ocean to take on her biggest case yet. No duke too arrogant to accept a partner was going to scare her away.
“It is good you are, my dear Miss Montgomery,” he told her smoothly, smiling his wolf’s smile again. “For you will need to be.”
By the timethey returned to Lark House, Miss Montgomery’s pallor had returned.
By the time he accompanied her into the entry hall, she began to crumple. There was no other word for it. One moment, she was striding boldly at his side, as if she were a general marching into battle, and the next, she was falling like a felled tree in the woods.
He reacted instinctively, catching her, before she toppled to the marble floor and struck her head. His aghast butler looked on as Lucien stood there, Miss Montgomery’s drab skirts pooling around him, her unconscious form in his arms. She was heavier than she looked.
“Shall I fetch your physician, Your Grace?” Reynolds asked.
“Not yet,” he said grimly. “I’m taking her to the salon. Have someone bring me a tray of food and some water. With haste, if you please.”
He had a feeling he knew what had caused Miss Montgomery to suddenly swoon. It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, and she had yet to eat a thing after having spent the morning emptying her stomach into the chamber pot.
Because ofhim.
Guilt crashed over Lucien, and this time, he made no effort to dispel it. Even if shehaddeceived him, he had no cause to do her injury. Forcing her to grow so weak she fainted had decidedly not been his intent. Moreover, he had already gotten even with her for her deceptions by pressing Winchelsea to agree to the notion of Miss Montgomery staying at Lark House for her own safety. In truth, it was so Lucien could more easily continue in the task of ridding himself of the unwanted burden of her as his partner.
A burden he felt physically now, as he strode to the salon, carrying her. With ginger care, he laid her upon a divan. She had begun stirring already, and he had a feeling she was too stubborn to remain unconscious overly long. He removed her hat, then arranged her skirts so they draped over her legs, showing nary a hint of ankle.
Tending to her felt odd, and it occurred to him he had never before performed such personal tasks upon a female. Not even his sister Lettie, for Great Aunt Hortense had been an ever-present boon to aid him with raising his sister after the deaths of both of their parents. He briefly thought about fetching Aunt Hortense now and begging her assistance, but something overcame him: shame at his culpability in laying Miss Montgomery low, along with something else…
Some unfamiliar need to tend to Miss Montgomery himself. Some foreign sense of tenderness, the likes of which he had never felt for anyone other than Lettie. A tendril of dark hair had escaped Miss Montgomery’s messy chignon, and he brushed it away from her forehead, before he could rethink the gesture.
She groaned, her dark lashes fluttering against her silken skin, as wakefulness returned to her. He noticed, quite against his will, that Miss Montgomery had a small trail of freckles over the bridge of her nose. And then his gaze dipped inevitably to her lips. They were the lips of a courtesan, lush and full and inviting. They reminded him of the manner in which she had been staring at him earlier in the carriage. At his cock.
At first, he had been convinced he was mistaken. But as he had observed her, watched her eyes widen, her pupils dilate, he had known he was not. Prim Miss Montgomery—the feisty enigma, who had just yesterday warned himyou cannot think of me as a female—had been ogling his erection. An erection which had initially been caused by a disturbing combination of their discourse on the street and his proximity to her in the carriage.
But beneath her stare, he had swelled even more, until he had been forced to attempt to readjust himself and hope like hell she had not noticed. Or, if she had, since she was a Miss Montgomery rather than a Mrs., she would have no notion of what she had seen.
Her eyes opened at last, some of the color already having returned to her ashen cheeks. She looked adorably befuddled for a moment as her gaze traveled wildly about the chamber. A strange burst of warmth unfurled within him. Not longing or desire, but something else. Something more profound.
“Did you push me from the carriage while it was moving?” she asked groggily.
The warmth fled instantly. Was her opinion of him truly that low? “You think me capable of throwing you from a moving carriage, Miss Montgomery?”
She eyed him mulishly.
“You swooned,” he snapped, irritated with himself as much as with her. “In the entry hall. I brought you here, to the salon.”
She frowned at him, returning to her usual, troublesome self. “I do not swoon, Mr. Arden.”
