He held her in place until the reality of his “nature” registered. The tactic worked. Whatever attack she’d suffered had her freckles standing out beneath the stark pallor of her skin.
All was not lost, despite the circumstances saying otherwise. Defiant to the bitter end, that was the woman he was coming to know.
“What are you doing, my lady?”
Her body atop his reminded him how long it had been since he’d had a woman. And a woman such as her… well, he couldn’t remember anyone so forthright. Granted, there were the memory lapses. The tightening in his loins grew more painful. He was hard as the limestone found at Stonehenge.
She cleared her throat. “At the moment, I’m helpless in your, er, grip, my lord.”
A smile tugged at him, he strived to conceal. “So you are.” They were in the center of his large bed. Slowly, he set her aside, noting his dampened brow and rose to sitting. “If you don’t wish to gain another husband so quickly, madam, I would suggest your immediate removal from my bed.”
“Oh, dear heavens.” She scrambled away, giving him an excellent view of slim, silk covered ankles. She stood and adjusted her skirts, never looking his way. Her face turned to the closed door.
“Again I must ask.”
She turned in his direction.
He couldn’t drag his eyes from the fire in her face.
“You, uh, had a muscle spasm and I thought to work it out…”
“A muscle spasm. Similar to that of last night?”
She nodded. “But in your arm. I fear it’s a side effect of the laudanum withdrawal process, you see.”
He considered her words. “Along with being so thirsty, I suppose.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You appear quite versed in the ways of opium addiction.”
She lifted her chin and lowered stiffly into her vacated chair but didn’t answer.
He let that slide as another thought occurred to him. In as calm a sonance as he could muster, he said, “Did I say, ah, anything?”
She smoothed her hand over her tightly coiled coiffure. One of the braids had escaped its pins, and she groaned.
“Er, you called me Markov.”
That brought him up. “Markov? Are you sure?”
At the sharpness of his tone, her eyes shot to his. She drew herself up. “I’m certain I wouldn’t fabricate such a thing,” she said in her haughtiest tone, likely learned at the knee of her mother. If anyone could shoot down a member of the nobility with the bullseye of an arrow, it was Lady Ingleby. Her barbs were considered lethal. It was one of those random things he remembered but wished he could forget.
The human brain was indeed a conundrum.
Seven
L
ock the door, Rory.” Harlowe didn’t trust his caretaker, Maeve Pendleton, Lady Alymer to not burst in at her whim. She had the ears of a bat. Not that she resembled one in the least. No, if he had to compare her to anything it would be to a spotted, sleek feline, a leopard. The freckles.
It was two in the morning and Rory had been assisting Harlowe in working diligently at rebuilding his strength. There was so much he couldn’t recall.
Yet when Maeve told him he’d called her Markov, a significant piece of his memory snapped into place. Only he couldn’t recallwhyit was significant. It took another twenty minutes to drag out of her that he’d thought she was there to kill him.He could have killed her. The thought horrified him. As a result, he and Rory had devised a plan wherein he would be rarely alone with the lady. Still, he had questions. Many questions.
It was time to speak with Kimpton.
The missing pockets of memory would drive him mad, but one could only work with what one had at hand. Vlasik Markov had been in the human trafficking trade. That was the only thing he could recall. Nothing of Harlowe’s own mission had broken through. Had he been on a mission? That was the question that disturbed him most.
