Ever wondered if he’d turned his heated musings into reality when a rain-drenched Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook stumbled into his office, a tiny flat hidden in a warren of establishments along an unremarkable lane in Islington.
Anger hit hard and fast. He glanced over her shoulder to the figure looming behind her in the shadowed corridor. Brick was the only other living soul who knew of this place. “You thought to bring herhere?”
“She barged into your residence, commanding as a general.” Brick shuffled his feet, shrugging his massive shoulders in a gesture Ever knew well, though it took him a moment to name it—masculine confusion born of an overwrought female. “Good news, there’s a first-class companion this time. Prim as a nun, a right judgmental gel I left shivering on the entryway stairs. The lady wanted tospeak to you in private.”
Ever lowered his gaze, noting Isabella’s red-rimmed eyes. Tears, recent ones at that. They were a penetrating chestnut just now, nothing gossamer about them. Emotion deepened the hue. He added that to his growing list of observations about her. His regard opened the floodgates, and she bowed her head, her shoulders shaking.
Bewildered, Ever dismissed his manservant with instructions to serve tea to the disapproving chaperone. Rain struck the windowpanes hard enough to dull the echoes from the street, the sound steady and enclosing as Brick’s footsteps retreated. When the door closed, he reached Isabella in three urgent strides.
“Stop, Isa, I have it.” He knocked her hands aside as she tried to undo her spencer’s hooks—they’d been fastened wrong, a tangle that should have alerted him. He’d been trained to look for just such a thing, mainly to use as leverage. She was without a bonnet, the damp darkening her hair to the color of raw honey, strands curling about her sleek jaw. Instinct urged him to gather her close, to ease her pain in a way he feared would crush them both.
He hadn’t once pictured her crying, and the lone tear that trailed the rounded curve of her cheek before slipping past her jaw undid him in ways he’d believed he was beyond feeling. As if to prove how shaken she was, she let her arms hang at her sides as he removed the soaked garment. Beneath it, her gown clung to her, every generous curve revealed in a way that stole what little breath he had remaining.
Hell’s teeth, her body was a glory.
Without thinking, Ever pressed his handkerchief into her hand, startled to see it was the one she’d embroidered. Her birthday gift, never far from his person since she had presented it to him.
The small shift of power lifted her chin and her spirits. Her eyes were watery, but the weeping was under control.Enough, in any case, to allow her to step back, withdrawing from a situation clearly headed toward an embrace. Or more.
The air fairly quivered with his desire to?—
Exhaling roughly, Ever moved to the mock sideboard he’d erected on a crate. He selected his finest brandy and poured them two fingers each. He feared he needed reinforcement more than she did. When he turned, it was to find her doing precisely what he’d dreaded: standing before a shelf that held pieces of him he didn’t even trust keeping in hishome, she inspected each with exacting care.
She was no longer observing from a distance; she’d stepped into his orbit.
The walls closed in, the stakes rose, a lethal familiarity having nothing to do with sex, the only kind of intimacy he knew.
Crossing to her, Ever handed her the tumbler. It was chipped, a cast-off from Merevale House once meant for the rag-and-bone man. “What happened?”
He ought to have questioned why she’d come to him in crisis rather than to her family. But it felt too satisfying to be her port in the storm, to have her here, in his sanctuary.
Taking the glass, she leaned toward a signet ring on the back shelf, the motto engraved inside the band barely visible:Attend, then act.She didn’t touch it, but her fingers hovered, as though she instinctively understood it mattered enough to keep, if not to wear.
Taking a fast sip, her eyes met his. They glittered with fresh tears, and he sent a silent prayer that (1) he could solve her problem and (2) he had the strength to keep from touching her.
“He knows. About the garters,” she whispered, words piling atop each other. “He was following me for weeks. I don’t know how long. Does it matter? I’m his first choice, as if that’s a prize. Something I’dwant.” The gulp of brandy wasmore than she’d prepared for, and she coughed before continuing: “He’ll ruin me unless I agree. Which I only care about because it will hurt Weston and Penny, mostly Weston. My brother-in-law is trying to get his steam enterprise going, as you know, and society’s approval is required. Americans aren’t exactly welcomed here. My reputation was wrecked long ago anyway. I’m delighted,” she added with brittle cheer, “to become a sad spinster!”
“Slow down. Who’s been following you?” His grip tightened around the crystal until he feared shattering it as he drew on every vestige of professional skill to keep his expression bland.
Turning aside, Isabella zeroed in on that bloody ring again. Before she could ask, Ever tucked it behind an atrocious vase his sister had made for him, the gesture shocking them both.
Her amber gaze was amused, just enough, when it lifted to his. From a hidden pocket in her skirt, she slipped his embroidered handkerchief free and pressed it into his palm.
She was going to be fine. And so was he, he vowed as he tucked his gift away.
Ever would play her tender mainstay, while wishing, dangerously, that it were true. In thirty-six days he would retire to Derbyshire—fix his leaking roof, assist with repair of the village’s roads, and coordinate with his tenants on crops he’d been researching as having the best chance of success. Adopt a dog, a family of felines, erect proper fencing for the livestock he wanted to house in the field behind the manor. Find someone of appropriate age to entertain on occasion—a willing widow, perhaps—someone who didn’t make him feel this tangle of need and trepidation every time he got within range of her.
Those were things he could accomplish without distraction.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me, sprite.”
Isabella swallowed, her throat clicking. Picking up his mother’s thimble, she turned it over and stared into the dented void. He had to work to quell the urge to hide it as well. “Ireton. He knows about my little venture. The racy garters, not myRake Reviewconnection. That would be the ultimate disaster, too much aggravation for even him to undertake. Outside my family and the Brazen Belle, only you know about that.”
Ever sipped while counting to twenty and back in Latin. He hadn’t approached that miscreant at Landry’s ball, reasoning that society preferred theft by charm over any contest of strength. Mr. April had no need to press a blade to a man’s throat to win the girl when, in his other life, such measures were routinely required. But he’d known Isabella didn’t trust the man because of something nefarious in their shared past.
He’d erred in judgment, and not for the first time.
“What does he want?” Ever asked once he was certain his voice would be devoid of emotion.
