He snorted. “Spoken like a woman who has never been outside it.”
“And you have?”
Jamie remained silent, watching her.
“It’s all right for you to do that, is it? To strip to the waist and fight in such a barbaric manner? I fail to see why that would not ruin you also.”
“We are not talking about me, but you. I am a man who can look after himself,” Jamie snapped.
Behind them came a shout, followed by laughter and footsteps. He turned, positioning himself between her and the noise. Three men were relieving themselves against a fence.
The sound of running feet made him glance back, just in time to see Lady Alice fleeing.
“Damn it.”
He followed. Reaching the street, he watched her climb into a carriage. It lurched away before he could stop it. Jamie stoodthere until it vanished from sight, then turned and walked in the opposite direction toward his townhouse.
There could be only one reason Lady Alice Smythe had been in that room tonight, Kenneth Jackson. But how had she known he might be there? Jamie had found her once on that road, and now this. The woman was deliberately courting danger. The question was, what was he going to do about it?
Kissing her had been a mistake. Now he knew what she tasted like, and that knowledge would haunt him. The night he’d carried her before him on his horse should have warned him how she affected him. It hadn’t. Tonight, he’d pressed her soft body to his and kissed her until all sense deserted him.
Idiot.
Jamie didn’t need this kind of complication. He could pull back, he was good at that, but he couldn’t recall a time when a woman had filled him with such heat and want.
He couldn’t offer her anything, ever, and that alone should tell him to keep away from her. But would he? She intrigued him. And if she truly was searching for Jackson—what other reason could there be?—he had to make her see sense before she was hurt.
Her brother had been a Blackwood boy like Jamie, and she wanted vengeance. But that was a path he didn’t want her to walk, even if she was nothing to him.
Jamie would need to speak with her and find out what she knew. And then convince her to stop throwing herself into danger. Then he could avoid her.
He broke into a run as the first drops of rain fell. By the time he reached his townhouse, he was soaked through. After washing and changing into his dressing gown, he poured a brandy and sat before the fire, replaying every moment of the night.
After his last two encounters with Lady Alice, he no longer believed that the cool, proper woman society thought they knew was the real Lady Alice Smythe.
“Who are you?” Jamie muttered into the empty room.
Chapter Six
Alice had sleptlittle the previous night. She’d woken with tired eyes and a less-than-sunny nature. Maggie had taken a single look at her and had a bath drawn, believing a soak in hot water cured a great many things. It had not.
“Your aunt has yet to rise, my lady,” Maggie said after finishing with Alice’s hair.
“Thank you, Maggie. Go to the kitchen now and take your tea with that bossy man of yours.”
Her maid smiled. “I’ll do just that, thank you, my lady.”
After she’d left, Alice wandered the halls of her father’s townhouse. He hadn’t set foot inside it for many years—not even to attend his son’s funeral—which had only confirmed in her mind that he was a weak, immoral, horrid beast of a man.
Yes, he had left Alice and her aunt to live as they pleased in his estate and townhouse, but she would never forgive him for choosing his mistress over burying his child.
Alice returned to her room and sat at the desk. She was the one who ran the family’s finances, and who ensured he had money to lavish on his mistress. She sent it through his trusted servant, a man who arrived on her doorstep with notes that never asked after her, only for funds.
“Coward,” she muttered.
She had spent the night thinking about Lord Stafford. Alice saw him over and over, shirtless, his big body glistening with sweat. Seeing his power unleashed should have been terrifying.It was not, instead awakening something she’d never felt before. A need for a man she neither wanted nor had room for in her life.
Alice had long ago accepted that she would never marry or bind herself to a man. It had been her choice because she refused to be dictated to, as her father once had. Then there were her memories of her brother, and of the pain he had endured. No, she would never allow a man control over her again.
