Then nodded.
Scarlet swept from the room, the echo of her boots a bitter drumbeat in her wake.
Meghan gripped the back of the chair and kept it between them.
Had there ever been a less revealing stare than this man’s?
“Who are—?”
“You needn’t be afraid.”
Meghan blinked slowly.
“I…needn’t?”
The towheaded, tree-sized fellow shook his head.
She kept her weapon raised.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Meghan and her peculiar champion spoke at the same time.
“That is meant to reassure—”
She rolled her eyes extravagantly.
“Oh, I needn’t be afraid of a strange gentleman entering my bloody rooms. Goodness, you should have said that sooner. I feel vastly better.”
He stood with the proud carriage of a military man—and the silence of one too.
Meghan warily studied the stranger. His sun-bronzed skin marked him a sailor.
“Who are you?”
“Lord Greyhold. I am in the earl’s employ.”
He followed that with a bow.
Meghan ignored the courtesy.
She narrowed her eyes. “I do not know a Lord Greyhold.”
The cryptically even stranger lifted a single dark brow. “You know all the lords in London?”
“I have had five London Seasons, attended enough events, plays, and operas, and stood in and observed enough receiving lines to say beyond a shadow of a doubt there is no Lord Greyhold.” She delivered the entire speech without pausing for breath.
“Ah,” she spat. “Another gentleman pirate.”
His already fully erect shoulders snapped back. It was a wonder his spine did not crack.
“I am no pirate.”
His mouth tipped in slight distaste.
She had offended him.
Meghan regarded him carefully. August would not keep crew unskilled in sailing. What manner of man who served under a privateer should take umbrage with the title other men boasted about? Based on his bearing and deportment, she marked him as a military man.
