He paused, realized that he was biting off every question that occurred to him and that from Mater’s dazed expression, she could not possibly keep up.
“Are you attending me, madam?” he demanded. “Have you nothing to say?”
“Mrs. Hatch said that she l-left a week ago,” Mater said at last. “I’ve no n-notion where she’s g-gone.”
Rhys stared at his mother, aghast. “You mean to suggest that my sister left this house a week ago, and you didn’t notice her absence until today?”
Mater went pale, guilt and a fresh sob crumpling her countenance.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered to himself, striding past his mother, breakfast forgotten.
He needed answers, and it was more than apparent that Mater didn’t have any. Rhiannon had been missing for an entire damned week.
Dear God. He shuddered to think the trouble his hellion sister could have landed herself in during that time. He needed to find Rhiannon.
Posthaste.
The troublewith pretending she had spent the last week visiting her Great-Aunt Bitsy, Lady Rhiannon Northwick thought to herself rather grimly, was that her brother wasn’t stupid. He would have questions. Questions to which she didn’t have suitable answers.
Such unpleasantness could have been easily avoided if not for the interference of one stubborn, maddening man. A man she would not think about now. Nor ever again, if she could help it.
Impossible, said a voice deep within herself.
A voice she promptly ignored. What she couldn’t ignore, unfortunately, was the burning memory of his kisses. His hands on her. His searing eyes that had seemed to see a part of her she hadn’t known existed…
No, she chastised herself inwardly. She must be strong. She must not allow her girlish infatuation with a certain handsome, conscienceless rake to weaken her resolve. He had made hisfeelings about her more than abundantly clear, dashing her heart to pieces in the process.
And that was why she was presently arriving a day too late back at the home she had left a short week ago. She had set off with such hope in her heart, so hopelessly naïve. How horridly wrong her plans had gone.
He had left without warning, without a word. Had disappeared. And then she had found him, much to her everlasting regret. Rhiannon squeezed her eyes tightly shut against a painful rush of heartache and betrayal.
His words still echoed in her mind.
You will thank me later, minx.
Minx, he had called her, daring to use the pet name for her that she had once found so endearing. Now, it felt like a dagger plunging into her flesh, glancing off sinew and bone, making her bleed.
Her hired carriage came to a halt before her brother’s town house. Rhiannon didn’t know what awaited her within, nor how she would brazen her way through her explanation. If she even could.
But there was one matter of which Rhiannon was deadly certain.
She would never, as long as she lived, forgive the Duke of Richford for what he had done to her.
As Rhys had promisedin his missive, the unmarked carriage he had sent for Miranda was waiting around the corner of the Lenox School of Cookery that evening. It was discreetly tucked away on a side street where no one would take note. And yet,as she prepared to enter its confines, she knew a moment of trepidation as she passed a guilty look over her shoulder.
No one watched.
She stepped up and into the conveyance, startled to find that it wasn’t empty.
Rhys was within, dressed in elegant evening finery, looking serious and unfairly beautiful. Her heart soared at the sight of him. Throughout the course of her busy day, she had done her best to distract herself from thoughts of him. But diverting herself had been an impossibility. She’d spent the time since she had seen him last in a haze of longing and desire. And she couldn’t deny that she had missed him. Desperately so. Hertfordshire—and Rhys—had quite spoiled her.
“God, I missed you,” he muttered, taking her into his arms and hauling her across his lap as the carriage door closed.
Her petticoats were bunched beneath her bottom, her skirts awkwardly twisted, and anyone could have seen him pulling her into his lap had they but glanced in their direction before the door had shut. But somehow, all that ceased to matter the moment she threaded her arms around his neck and looked up into his summer’s-storm eyes.
“I’ve missed you too,” she confessed softly.
His mouth was on hers in the next breath, ravenous and hot. She kissed him back with all the need and longing that had been building within her since they had parted ways the day before. How had it been only one day that had passed since she had seen him last? It felt more like a lifetime.
