“You were right to bring them here. How did you know there was an intruder?”
“I heard noises from George’s study when I was in the library reading. I investigated, and that is when the man brushed past me, knocking me over.”
She had been knocked over?
Murderous rage rose, seething within him.
“Are you injured?”
I will find the devil and tear him apart with my bare hands for daring to knock you down,he wanted to say, but he knew he could not. Must not. Pippa Shaw was not his to defend.
“Did you see his face?” he asked instead.
“No.” She was so very pale, the fingers clutching his cool and dainty. “He was wearing a hat, and there were so many shadows. I was not expecting to find anyone within, and everything happened so quickly…he pushed me, and I fell to the floor.”
Tearing the bastard limb from limb would be too generous a punishment. Fury lanced Roland. How dare anyone steal into her home, push her to the floor, do her harm?
Ruthlessly, he suppressed his emotions, forcing himself to worry about more pressing concerns. “Have you contacted the police?”
“My butler was seeing to it.” She blinked furiously as tears glistened in her eyes. “Grimes is impeccable, but he is nearly an octogenarian. No defense at all against an intruder.”
Christ.He did not like the sound of that—a petite lady, a small child, a nurse, and an elderly butler against the ugly specter of whomever had stolen into her house. Anything could have happened.
“Have you any brawny footman?” he asked grimly.
“We’ve two footmen, though I would not describe either man as brawny.”
“It is not safe for you there. I warned you danger could come calling for you, and now it has.”
She tugged her hands free and whirled away from him. “Of course you would blame George.”
“And who else, madam?” he bit out, irritated with himself. “The miscreant was in your husband’s study, was he not? What other reason would he have to be there, if this had nothing to do with Shaw?”
His question stole through the armor with which she girded herself, for she froze, back to him, as she had been about to flee from the chamber. As he watched, a tremor passed through her. He did not think he had ever seen a woman look so broken or lost, and he took no pleasure in the sight. If anything, it filled him with more fury.
He moved to her, ignoring the staying sense of caution that warned him to keep his distance. His hand rested on her elbow when she did not turn to face him. He kept his touch carefully gentle.
She was trembling.
“Forgive me.” He found himself apologizing to her for the second time in one day. But then, the hour was late. He had not bothered to consult his pocket watch. Perhaps it was past midnight. “I did not mean to be so harsh. It is merely that I am concerned for your welfare and for your daughter’s also. Where shall you go this evening?”
“It is none of your concern. Coming to you was a mistake.”
He wanted to rail that it was not. That of anyone in her life, he was the man she could and should trust most, and furthermore that he had always been. He had been before George, and he would damn well be after the bastard as well. All he had ever wanted was to love her, to protect her, to make her his wife. But she had given her heart to that scoundrel instead.
“Coming to me is not a mistake,” he countered, proud of himself for the calm he exhibited.
Inside, his emotions were rioting, in tumult. Ranging from fury to bitter despair to regret to longing to anguish. But he would show her none of that. She was akin to a wild creature. He had a suspicion that if he made the wrong move, she would flee from him, never to return. Whether it was the unexpected sweetness of the kiss they had shared earlier or the fact that he was indeed the only person of her acquaintance with lights ablaze at this time of the evening, he was not going to take her presence here for granted. He was going to see her safe, damn it, and the only way he knew how.
“You must stay,” he said, softening his tone. Coaxing her. “I will have one guest chamber made up for you and the child, and another for her nurse. Or the child shall stay with the nurse if you wish. I will defer to your wisdom and that of my housekeeper.”
Mrs. O’Malley would know what to do. She always did. The woman was a miracle worker, and she was no stranger to the many, varied guests he had taken under his roof and wing. The last such guest had been his chum Adrian Hastings who, fresh from Dunsworth prison, had been a shell of his former self when he had first arrived. One wary widow and a small child and her nursemaid would hardly give Mrs. O’Malley cause for the blink of a knowing eye.
But Pippa was not so easily persuaded of the wisdom of his plan.
The tears and the trembling dissipated. The fire he had come to know and admire from her unexpectedly returned. It was apparent in the stiffness of her bearing, the regal posture she suddenly took on, the mulish tip of her chin, the flaring of her nostrils.
Her hazel stare met his, unwavering. “I cannot stay at your home, Northwich. Are you mad?”
