“You most certainly did not! A brief and temporary conjunction of lips does not equate to a—” She paused, because almost kissing a pirate was one thing, but speaking about it represented a whole new level of impropriety. “If you think that it does, sir, I can only pity your future wife.”
He took a lithe step toward her. She stood her ground, cocking her mouth into a smile.
“Pardon me,” the butler interposed before a fireball suddenly appeared on the rooftop of a London townhouse. Charlotte and Alex snapped their attention to him, but he did not even blink. “I doubt we would have caught Lady Armitage in any case,” he said. “She had too much of a lead on us.”
“Then it is not a matter of speed but intelligence,” Charlotte answered.
Now both men stared at her, their eyes dark, their hard jawlines taut. She felt a sudden, uncharacteristic leap of anxiety, appreciating finally that, in her haste to pursue the amulet, she had entered without a chaperone into the private company of a notorious scoundrel and his assassin-butler. Not even flying a bicycle in public touched upon the scandal this represented. She’d be ruined if anyone learned of it, and worse—Aunt Judith would sigh in Disappointment.
The proper feminine behavior at this point would be to say no more, leave the room, and lock herself in the closet. Charlotte did not need to reference a Jane Austen novel to know that. Clearly, there was only one choice she could make.
Taking a deep breath, she shook back her hair, lifted her chin, and marched forward to the house’s enormous, spoked wheel.
The men watched her, incredulous. Between the wheel and the window stood a tilted surface strewn with maps. Although these offered nothing comprehensible to her, Charlotte nevertheless tapped one officiously.
“I may be a mere London girl,” she said, “but even I know one can plot a tractory—”
“Trajectory,” Alex corrected.
“—to determine the probable course of one’s prey.”
“And this is something you learned in embroidery class, is it?”
She did not deign to look at him. “It is something every philanthropist is taught. Planning. Prediction. The subtleties of the art.”
“Philanthropist,” Alex echoed.
“Independent manager of wealth redistribution,” she clarified.
“Ah. Thief.”
“Do you want to listen or not?”
He shrugged. “Not. But don’t huff—”
“Huff?!” Charlotte, alas, huffed.
“I will admit your idea makes sense. Armitage has to land sooner or later, and we may be able to get there before her—or at least before the other pirates—if we can find a shorter route. The question is, where?”
“If you will give me just a moment, sir,” Bixby said. Turning to a series of alphabetized drawers set in the steering cabinet, he opened the uppermost and took from it a file thick with papers, which he proceeded to read.
“You should go home,” Alex told Charlotte. “Seriously, I know youwant that amulet, and I give you credit for your determination, but this is a dangerous business, not appropriate for a lady. Please understand, I’m only thinking of your safety when I—”
The thin but extremely sharp rapier at his throat prevented further speech.
“Perhaps you should think again,” Charlotte suggested calmly, twitching her besom so the rapier point scratched his skin.
He grinned. His eyes became heavy with an expression Charlotte did not recognize but her body certainly seemed to. She could almost feel his pulse beating through the rapier into her own veins. Suddenly, holding a weapon to him seemed lewd, and she pulled it back, leaving a tiny red mark on his throat.
Without blinking, he reached up and touched a fingertip to the mark, then to his lips. His eyes smiled wickedly as he licked the finger. Charlotte sensed a blush erupting over her entire body. She snapped the besom shut and returned it so forcefully to a pocket that the fabric strained against its seams.
“How revealing,” Bixby murmured.
Charlotte and Alex turned to glare at him. But he did not seem to notice what was happening between them. “Lady Armitage’s dossier suggests she has a proclivity for the seaside. I venture to suggest, since she is heading east, she will be aiming for the coast.”
“You have a dossier on Lady Armitage?” Charlotte asked with surprise.
“Madam, all professional butlers are tapped into an interconnected array of informational networks.”
