Far from London?
Kingston was less than thirty miles.
“You understand we’ll need to play a role to convince them?” He stepped closer. “You’ll have to touch me—let them think you’re desperate to get me out of these clothes and straddle me in bed.”
Her eyes widened. “Act like I want you?”
Why did her phrasing grate?
“Yes. Can you manage it?”
“I’ll have to follow your lead.”
Good God. He was considered among the best of his sex. It should be no hardship. Most of the women here tonight would unbutton his trousers in the shadows of the maze.
“They must believe I own you. That you’re at my beck and call.” He intended to make the most of the charade, to shatter whatever illusions she still held about him. “It’s the only way to keep lechers at bay.”
She nibbled her lip. A rare glimpse of nerves. He wanted to carry her to the carriage and keep her beside him the entire way home.
Damn this woman.
“Come.” He slid an arm around her waist, bracing himself. “Hold your breath as we pass the salon. Every fool in there is high on opium. Most are half-naked.”
A haze clung to the air, thick with perfume and pipe smoke. Voices murmured in dark corners, some laughing, some panting. The scent of sweat, wine, and something acrid warned this was no place for innocence.
No place for Miss Harland.
“Stay close.” If he didn’t end up in Newgate tonight, it would be a bloody miracle. “Play coy. Don’t act surprised.”
“So, the point of us being here is what?” she asked, eyesfixed ahead as they neared the drawing room. “You still haven’t told me.”
To threaten Templeton. To interrogate those on his list. To cement his place as the bastard everyone feared. Even if he had gone soft in the head.
“To draw out the villain,” he said smoothly.
“The villain who killed my father or hurt your mother?”
“Both.”
She tutted. “I’m still none the wiser.”
“Just pretend you’re in love with me.”
Her head snapped in his direction. “In love or in lust? Make up your mind, Mr Hawke. You’re confusing the issue.”
Had he said love?
He must have inhaled opium smoke.
“Either will do. And for heaven’s sake, don’t call memister, unless I’ve tied you to the bedpost with leather straps. Hawke is just fine.”
A lull greeted them, like the hush before a kill.
The quartet played Mendelssohn. A piece most people ignored. No one came here for the music. They came to hunt, to feast.
The predators stirred as if waking from a winter’s sleep.
Heads turned. Women took the measure of him. Men watched Miss Harland with the keen attention of gamblers studying the table. A few moistened their lips.
