Danny laughed. For a man who’d boasted of killing and subterfuge, he was remarkably straightforward. His presence here should have sparked some panic, but Danny found herselfuncommonly at ease. She knew something about following her instincts, and he’d had two opportunities to harm her and had taken neither. Words were important, but actions remained the deciding factor of a man’s character.
She made for the chair by the fire and sat, shifting to get the best look at him in the moonlight.
Such a lean man. The black moleskin clung to his thighs and arms, both defined but slight, and yet he’d felt like a mountain atop her, as if there were nothing but muscle and sarcasm under the fabric.
Crossing her ankles, she made a point to look at the blue curtains behind him and not at those eyes that seemed to glow in the shadows and see right throughher. “Now that you’ve found out we’re stuck with each other, I assume you came here to threaten me to keep my mouth shut again.” She refused to glance at her bedside table, where evidence of their last nightly encounter lay hidden beneath her daily correspondence. “On with it, then.”
“Don’t tell anyone about what we discussed at the Leishires’ ball.”
She frowned. That was it? “Or else...? Really, is this only the second time you’ve threatened someone? The first time was much better.”
He chuckled and took her place leaning against the windowsill. “Most people find me terrifying, you know? I’m quite famous in the rookeries.”
“Most people believe coconuts are small enough for a dog to eat whole. Besides, I can always shoot you if you do something I don’t like.”
His gaze flickered to the reticule on the table beside her, her choice of seat in proximity to her weapon now evidently clear.
His teeth flashed into a smile, and Danny was glad for the chair’s support.
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said, rising. “Happy? Now you may go out the way you came or risk a very real possibility of running into our housekeeper, Mrs. Norman. For your safety, I’d choose the window.”
He blinked. “That’s it?”
She cocked her head. “What were you hoping for? Refreshments? Shall I wake the whole house and invite you to tea?” Really, were men nothing but fools? “If Papa didn’t shoot you on sight, my brother certainly would. And blood is such an affair to wash out of the rugs.”
When he spoke, it was not with wounded pride, but with something darker, deeper. “What a sharp tongue you have, Daniella.”
Why did he have to say things in that whispered tone? And why did her toes curl hearing it? She pressed her feet against the cold floor and nodded to the window. “You should leave.”
He didn’t move. “And if I don’t wish to?”
“I could always scream and wake the household that way.”
He came off the sill, shaking his head, and approached with unhurried steps that reminded Danny of the prowling tiger she’d read about just this afternoon.
She held her ground until she had to tilt her head back to keep him in her sights.
He looked down at her, his eyes black and predatory. “You didn’t scream.”
It was suddenly a struggle to catch her breath. “I did not.”
“Why not?”
Her body was floating. His body, his smell, her head spun with it. The man had no right to be so largeandsmell like hidden fantasies.
A slight tug on her hair had her blinking fast and upwards into his smiling eyes.
“Why didn’t you scream, Daniella?”
Why would she scream when all she wanted to do was sigh? She leaned into his scent, unable to help herself. “It would not be kind to wake the whole of the house for one inconsequential vermin.”
His responding grin was devastating as his fingers lifted her chin. “I’d say you aren’t as honest as you claim to be.”
The insult in his words, the idea that she was on his same level of deceit, had her feet firmly coming back to the ground.
She batted his hand away, his spell broken. “You make assumptions, sir, and I don’t care for it.”
He snorted. “My lady likes nothing aside from badgering a man for his right opinions.”
