“I am hardly the heroic type, Nora, but thank you for that delightful fancy. No, I have arranged for someone to stay here and keep watch over you. You may come and go as you please, but he has been ordered not to let you out of his sight.”
“And who might this paragon be?” mused Honora, biting into her toast with a soft moan of delight.
“Silas Sinclair.”
The toast turned to ash on her tongue, and she choked slightly, forcing the mouthful down with a shocked gurgle.
Most unladylike.
“Silas? And he has agreed to this scheme?”
Silas, the Earl of Windham, was the last person she had expected her brother to name. Although, that was obviously a moment of utter stupidity on her part.
Still, in her defence, she had been hit on the head rather hard.
Silas was her brother’s best friend, a powerful peer of the realm, and her secret shameful infatuation.
Of course,she would be placed under his watch.
If only he didn’t treat her as if she had the plague or horrid breath. Or the face of an ogre.
The man apparently loathed her, and it had been painfully obvious from the beginning of her first season that he couldn’t bear to be in the same room as her.
“But he can’t stand to be near me!”
“Is that so?” said Benedict with a raised brow, a strange gleam in his eye.
Honora blinked, her mind reeling at the thought that she would be placed in close confines with the intimidating man for an indeterminate amount of time.
The door creaked open, and the devil himself stood in the doorway. Wide shoulders hugged by a rich blue superfine jacket, long, powerful legs outlined in mouthwatering detail by buff calfskin breeches, encased in polished black leather riding boots.
The devil smirked, his angular features turning to that of a fallen angel, as he stepped into the room, dragging one huge hand back through the mop of dark hair that hung to his collar.
“Yes, Honora. I have agreed to be your protector while the madman or men responsible for this crime are hunted down.”
If she hadn’t just woked from a pitch-black stupor, Honora might have fainted dead away.
Four
By midmorning,Honora was bored to death of lying in her bed and falling in and out of restless slumber.
Or, rather, hiding.
Hiding in her bed where she knew she would be safe from the perils of having to make polite conversation with the Earl of Windham.
Her brother had long since dressed and left the house to pursue his investigation of the incident in the park. She refused to call it anything else than that, no matter what Benedict said.
She still found it unacceptable to imagine anyone would attempt to harm a lady on her morning ride. Hyde Park washardlySt. Giles, after all.
Silas’s heavy footsteps could be heard pacing up and down the passage outside her rooms at regular intervals, and Honora certainly couldn’t fault the man’s dedication to the task her brother had bestowed upon him.
With a ragged sigh, Honora swung her legs out of the bed, rising and ringing for her maid. Her head pained something awful, and her arm still ached, but no amount of sleep had made any difference. She needed to be patient and wait for her injuries to heal, but that had never been her forte.
Sometime later, now adequately, if simply dressed in a loose gown of soft blue muslin, she tentatively opened the door, relieved that Silas was nowhere in sight.
She padded lightly down the corridor, making her way to the small parlour on the second floor that she had made into a small sanctuary.
Slipping into the room, Honora smiled at the cosy cluttered charm of the space. While her brother pursued loftier agendas, Honora preferred to spend her time on more simple pleasures.
