He still held the half-eaten pastry he had fed her in his hand. It was apparent she had no intention of consuming the rest, or allowing him to feed it to her. He had to admit doing so had been a grave lapse in judgment. Because performing any task which required him to not just look at Miss Montgomery’s mouth, but to get near enough to touch it was a horrible, disastrous idea.
Still watching her, he popped it into his own mouth. Her eyes dipped to his lips. A flush stole over her high cheekbones. He felt that gaze as if it were a touch. The steady thrum of longing, which had first struck him in the carriage on their return to Lark House, returned. Only this time, it was stronger. More insistent.
He swallowed. Miss Montgomery reached for her water. An uneasy silence settled between them which was far too intimate for his liking. What in the hell was he doing, sitting here mooning over the partner he did not want?
Turrets, he reminded himself. He needed to rebuild his. At once. He could not allow this maddening woman to storm his battlements and overtake the castle. He had worked far too hard, for far too long, to gain his position as the leader of the Special League. Commanding the agents charged with keeping England safe was everything he wanted. All he needed.
Lucien cleared his throat and stood. “I will leave you to finish your repast in peace, Miss Montgomery.”
He offered her a bow, then began stalking from the room.
“Arden?”
Her drawl halted him. He turned back, taking in the sight of her, all disheveled and adorably rumpled, a tray laden with tartlets at her side. She had not called him Mr. Arden, and he rather wished she had. When she nettled him, it was much easier to recall his dislike for her.
“Yes, Miss Montgomery?” he demanded, when she said nothing more.
She smiled, and that simple curvature of her lips was a revelation. When she smiled at him in such a fashion, he found it difficult to not only think, but to breathe. Even in her horrid dress, with all her odd mannerisms and strange brash ways, she was bloody gorgeous.
“Thank you,” she said.
Turrets.
He nodded. “You are welcome, Miss Montgomery.”
Then he did the only thing he could do. He gave her his back and strode from the chamber, before he did something exceedingly foolish, such as sinking back into the divan and hauling her to him for a kiss. Licking the sweet taste of cherries from her lips and mouth. Discovering for certain whether or not she wore a corset today.
This would not do. Not at all. He increased his pace, fleeing as if an invading army followed in his wake. And in a manner, it did.
Turrets, he reminded himself grimly.Turrets.
Chapter Five
The Duke ofArden confounded her.
And Hazel did not like being confounded. She liked answers. Knowledge. She liked plans and lists, and people who acted exactly as she expected them to at all times. People who did not act out of character. People who did not surprise her with sudden kindness.
She did not like men who were supercilious and patronizing one moment, then tender and considerate the next. She did not like men who had tricked her into drinking so much port, she’d spent the next morning feeling as if she’d been run over by a railcar, then fed her cherry tartlets and stared at her lips.
She examined her reflection in the looking glass, nodding at herself. The ragged-looking waif of the day before was no longer in evidence. She had refreshed herself with a bath and had scraped her wayward hair into a neat braid pinned at her nape. Bunton had offered assistance once more, but Hazel had declined. She was self-sufficient, and she needed to remember that. It would not do for her to grow weak and complacent, accustomed to having someone wait upon her, as if she were a lady to the manor born.
Hazel Montgomery was not a lady to the manor born.
She was an orphan, who had been raised in squalor with other orphan children whose parents had either died, did not want them, or could not afford to feed them. Her childhood had unfolded beneath the dark cloud of civil war being fought all around her. She was a woman who had taught herself everything she knew, from reading and writing to shooting a pistol. And she could damn well dress herself.
This morning, she was dressed for battle, wearing the divided skirt she’d had made for herself in New York, and a fitted bodice covered by a jaunty jacket. It would not do for the Duke of Arden to think of her as a female, and neither would it do for her to think of him as a male. These garments were her armor. She had donned them often when working in partnership with her male colleagues, and while the trousers inevitably shocked, they also served their purpose, reminding her fellow agents she was an experienced detective worth her salt.
And she would remind the Duke of Arden of that too as they began their work together today. More importantly, she would eradicate from her mind the memory of the way he had looked at her mouth the day before. She would forget she had imagined, for one wild and foolish moment, what his lips would feel like moving over hers.
She would banish all such wayward thoughts and impulses, for they were beneath her. Her post was important, after all, in myriad ways. For Hazel, it was a much-needed increase in pay as much as it was an affirmation. Her case history spoke for itself, and though she had worked herself to the bone on those cases, she was proud of her work. She knew she was a damned good detective. But the Home Office had requested her specifically, and she considered that proof to all the men she had worked alongside who doubted her abilities.
Not only was she earning a greater salary, but she was also the agent who had been chosen from all the rank and file to represent the agency abroad. Although Pinkertons were regularly consulted by the English Home Office and their Special League devoted to Fenian containment, no Pinkerton before her had ever been asked to partner in leading the League itself. Had others before her been asked to provide consultation?Yes.To provide intelligence?Also, yes.
Lead the ranks of their London agents?
Impossible.
Butshehad. Hazel Elizabeth Montgomery, who had been fighting and clawing her way through life from the moment the mother she could not remember had abandoned her on an Atlanta street, had been asked—a woman, and one of few lady Pinkertons—to aid the League. Her reaction to the Duke of Arden was an aberration.
