“I don’t know about you, but I could use a shot of Irish whiskey.” Colleen adjusted the brim of her hat. “It’s been a hell of a couple of days.”
Max snorted, a portion of his anger easing. The butler looked shocked at her language, and truth be told, so was Max. But she was right. It had been a hell of a couple of days.
“We’re fine,” Max told the man. “We’ll just wait here until the carriage comes around.”
“Of course.” Pressing his lips into a white slash, the butler gave one last disapproving look at Colleen and oozed down the hall.
She fingered the chain of her pocket watch. “I hope I didn’t just get you blacklisted. But I don’t like hearing I’m not welcome merely because of the accident of my birth.”
“I’ll survive.”
“Then do you want to tell me why you were at St. Katherine’s?” She cocked her head. “You received my note in time?”
Max’s anger roared back at full force. “No, I didn’t get your damn note. I went to the club and learned you were actually fool enough to go meet a stranger alone, I raced here as fast as I could.”
“I didn’t plan to come here unattended, but none of the servants were available to come with me.”
“There was still the footman at the front door, the stable boy—”
She sighed. “I had to leavesomepeople at the club so it would function.” She nodded to the front door. “I did ask the hackney driver to wait for me so if Zed, or whoever it was he sent, tried anything outside the church, I would have a measure of protection.”
“And if he tried something inside St. Katherine’s?”
Colleen opened her mouth. Closed it. “No one would harm a woman inside a house of God. It’s a sanctuary,” she said in a hushed voice.
Max inhaled sharply. “You’d risk your life on the assumption that everyone is as pious as you?”
She lowered her gaze to the floor and toed the carpet. “By my estimations, it was worth the risk. I took precautions, and besides, Zed is a businessman.” She raised her chin and stared up at him. “I know businessmen. If he could obtain my cooperation, the information I would provide to him would potentially be worth in the tens of thousands of pounds. He wouldn’t hurt the golden goose.”
“Don’t assume everyone will act as rationally as you would.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s a good thing your driver was slow and I was able to arrive before you.” His hands tremored at the thought of what could have happened to her if she’d arrived on time, and he dug his fingers into his opposite biceps to hide it.
“The horse pulling my hackney threw a shoe.” She flicked a piece of lint off her sleeve. “I was delayed.”
He shook his head. “That horse saved your life.”
“You don’t know that.” Colleen stepped into him, and the scent of her soap tickled his nose.
The front door opened, and a footman stepped through, cutting off Max’s sharp retort. “Your carriage is here.” The boy pointed to the front steps. One of the club’s landau’s, a study in black and gold with the initial ‘S’ painted onto the door, waited for them.
Taking Colleen’s elbow, Max herded her out the door and down the steps, keeping an eagle-eye for anyone approaching. He tossed her into the carriage, one hand on her hip the other on her lower back. The feel of her warm body, alive and bristling with irritation, soothed the worry that had dug its claws into him ever since he’d fled The Black Rose.
Colleen slapped at his hands. “I’m in already.” Flopping onto the plush bench seat, she scowled at him. “We could have just taken my hackney.” She peered through the window. “Oh. He left. I owed him another bob.”
He climbed in behind her and slammed the door shut. “You thought you would purchase sufficient protection for a bob?”
She scooted to the end of the bench, as far from him as possible. “I don’t see how you can act as though you’re the injured party. We agreed last night that it would be for the best if our relationship was once again a purely business one. My employer doesn’t have the right to reprimand me unless it comes to the administration of The Black Rose.”
Max huffed. Agreed? After he’d confessed his crime, Colleen had gone white as a snowdrop flower and told him she could no longer continue with their affair. That she needed time alone to think. He hadn’tagreedto anything.
Max slid next to her, letting his thigh rest against hers. Needing the contact. “You have every right to hate me. And you have every right to keep me from your bed. But I will keep you safe, even if it goes against your will.” Pinching her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he turned her head to look in her eyes. “Is that understood?”
“Would it change anything if I disagreed?”
“It would not.”
She jerked her chin from his grasp. “Then it is pointless to say I don’t understand.”
“Perfectly pointless.” On one thing, at least, they could agree. He pounded on the ceiling, and the landau jerked forwards.
