A man named Beast, no less!
“You were…” he prompted, sounding annoyed.
“I was looking for something,” she suggested, seizing on the first excuse that entered her mind.
“Looking for what?” His voice was icy, but he’d yet to release her.
Instead, he was holding her far too close, as if he feared she might flit away if he released her.
“A book,” she said, the first object that rose to her mind, for she had been going to the library to find one.
His gaze narrowed. “And in one of the spare bedchambers?”
Curse it, he had seen her at the door to the room where Lady Deering and the guard were.
“It is not within.” She flashed him a bright smile, aware she was speaking far too loudly. “I had thought perhaps I had left it there earlier whilst I was exploring.”
“Exploring?”
“Yes,” she lied blithely. “Hunt House is so vast that I am still finding new rooms.”
“Hmm,” he said noncommittally, his countenance making it plain he did not believe her.
Fair enough. Shewaslying. But she had to lure him from the chamber where Lady Deering and the guard were hidden away. She owed her chaperone that much, at least.
“Perhaps you might aid me in finding it,” she suggested to the duke.
Ridgely released her. “I am only just returning from Angelo’s. I was on my way to my chamber when you ran into me.”
“I believe I may have left it in the music room,” she fibbed. “Or was it the library?”
“You and libraries do not go well together,” he muttered.
And she knew what he was referring to. Those kisses. Those unbearably erotic moments they’d shared together on the divan. Her stomach flipped again, an answering warmth settling low.
“Will you help me find it, Ridgely?” she asked as sweetly as she could muster. “Please?”
“If I must,” he relented. “But only so that I needn’t worry about you invading every room in search of it. How did you lose it so quickly? Were the books not only just returned to you?”
She moved in the direction of the spiral staircase. “It wasn’t one of those books that I lost. It was a different one.”
Ridgely followed her, his long-legged strides keeping easy pace with hers. He was wearing gleaming Hessians today, and with the breeches he had donned for fencing, they accentuated his muscular calves quite nicely.
“I thought I told you no more books,” he drawled wryly.
Virtue sent him a smile. “Lady Deering took me to a book shop.”
That much was true, but she wasn’t so frivolous that she’d abandoned one of her precious finds in the music room. Ridgely needn’t know that, however.
He muttered something that sounded distinctly likePamela and her blasted shopping.
“Besides, you’ve returned my books to me,” she reminded him. “Was there a reason for your change of heart concerning my punishment?”
“Lady Deering suggested that if you had something with which to occupy your mind, you may find yourself in fewer scrapes.” His tone was grim as they descended the stairs together, almost arm in arm if not touching. “It would seem she was wrong yet again.”
“I have been a most dutiful ward these past few days,” she defended herself.
They were approaching the main hall, and she steeled herself against the grim memory of what had happened on these very stairs not long ago, and the attack which had preceded it.
