“After all,” she offered, “I am new at this disguise thing. I might require some waistcoat recommendations. ”
His lips twitched.
“Dinnae wear the fooking mustache,Robbie.”
It took a moment for his meaning to sink in, but when it did, Rosie’s heart leapt. She’dwon!
Her hand fumbled behind her for the doorknob. “I will see you Friday at six.”
“Make it four,” he rumbled, scrubbing his hand down his face and surely inadvertently hiding his expression. “I’ll have yer disguise…and we’ll do something about that hair.”
She nodded quickly as she made her escape, afraid he’d call her back and say it was all a trick. But when she reached the street and raised her hand to hail a hack, she realized she was smiling.
In anticipation.
CHAPTER 5
He followed her home.
Ofcoursehe followed her home, for fook’s sake!
Sitting in the hired cab, watching Rosie—Robert?—bounce up the steps to Merida’s apartment building, Bull felt his lips twitch, remembering the shite she’d given him about his crude language.
She was right; she’d grown up hearingmuchworse. Apparently Demon had done his best to moderate his cursing when his children had been born, but as they’d grown, he’d slipped back into his old ways.
The eligible Lady Rose Hayle could likely out-curse a sailor, if she had a mind to.
ButRosie? His Rosie was more interested in art theories and family history. She’d glued a mustache to her lip, for crying out loud, to see this case through to the end. Andthen she’d more or less forced him into taking her to the auction.
The reminder sent him into a scowl again, even as Bull told himself he’d had no choice but to agree. The kind of woman who would dress in a disguise of trousers and awful facial hair just to accompany him to the National Portrait Gallery wasdefinitelythe kind of hellion who would attend that masquerade ball and auction by herself.
The door to the building shut behind her overcoat-wearing rear end, and Bull sat abruptly forward.
There were two lads lounging outside the stoop. Impossible to tell if they were the ubiquitous London urchins without a home, or perhaps locals who’d been shooed outside by an overwrought parent.
Either way, they could be useful.
Bull gestured the older one closer, and when the lad sidled to the hack, Bull twisted his wrist, making a coin appear to roll across his knuckles. “Did ye see that—thatmanwho just entered the building?”
The lad didn’t seem to notice his slip and nodded, his gaze locked on the coin.
Bull grinned.
“I’ll have two of these for ye if ye trot along inside, follow him without him noticing ye, and come tell me which apartment he goes into.” As the lad ran eagerly for the stairs, Bull called after, “Andif he’s smart enough to lock the door behind him!”
The lad darted into the building and Bull sat back againstthe squabs, idly passing the coin across his knuckles, watching it catch the light.
The thought of Rosie wandering the city alone, forgetting to lock Merida’s door…
He shook his head and swallowed down the instinctual growl.
Rosie was just a lassie, damn his eyes! He had no right to pull her into this kind of sordid affair; mistresses and courtesans and secret artists! She needed to be sitting pretty in a parlor somewhere, sewing or…or whatever it was lassies did.
He remembered the sight of her and Merida giggling together on Hogmanay, and nodded to himself.Thatis what lassies should be doing.
Except…
Except that had likely been the day they’d cut each other’s hair. Even then, in that charmingly picturesque scene in the parlor where they’d laughed and tugged each other’s curls, they’d been planning mischief.
