“Picadilly is this way,” he said, his expression closed.
Her brows lowered. She’d have sworn Green Park was to their left. Though the walk from Cleveland Row to Picadilly was the matter of a handful of streets. They had been walking for some time now. “Are you sure?”
He pointed to a sign on the brick building overhead. Too small a print and too dark a night to read.
“They should put the signs on the lampposts,” she grumbled. Where normal people could hope to see.
“It says ‘Belgrave Street,’” Jackson said, sounding amused. “Is that the real reason you get lost so easily, the signs?”
“No.” Not thewholereason. She scowled at the man beside her. “You took the long way around.”
He shrugged, unrepentant. “You let me.”
As if a duke requires permission.
Chapter Five
Verbally sparring withAnnabeth Greene was as aggravating—and invigorating—as he remembered.
Calling her a ‘general’ wasn’t too far off the mark. The majority of thetonmay have found Anna unpolished and as tarnished as common coal—though with a bit of shine now that her brother was a viscount—but Jackson had always seen the gem beneath the soot.
He’d hoped to have the discussion of their future—and good Lord, havingchildren—in a quiet room where they wouldn’t be disturbed. Yes, a part of him also wished the security and advantage of the impressive Grandfellow furnishings around him, complementing him and their arrangement. But Annabeth Greene didn’t play by anyone else’s rules but her own.
Imagining her hosting a ball, the most discerning eyes of society’s matrons watching her with the intentions of carrion birds to a wounded animal—and her inevitable triumph when she told the ruffled vultures to fly off—who could blame him for gleefully anticipating the carnage?
No one would know what to do with Annabeth Greene.
Including his household.
Jackson led her down Picadilly, the impressive columns of the Grandfellow townhouse at the end of the street standing twice as tall and twice as thick as the gas streetlamps standing sentry along the way.
Passing through the black, wrought-iron gate, the gray gravel underfoot crunched loudly. No flowers in the window boxes, no ferns or greens of any kind in the large pots on either side of the staircase leading up to the front door. The nature of his arrangement with the Home Office meant he spent most of the year in town, but he’d never found solace in the ducal city residence, never sought to make the place more inviting or habitable. A rundown, single-room inn or the lavish trappings of any of the six Grandfellow properties, the location he rested his head at night hardly mattered.
He did little more there than sleep, a few hours a night, before he was back to work. It was easier that way.
But that wouldn’t be so easy now.
He ascended the stairs leading up to the door and raised his hand, but he didn’t knock.
His instructions to his butler were to lock the doors and retire if he hadn’t returned by midnight.
Jackson glanced over his shoulder toward the east. The gray on the horizon said dawn wasn’t far off.
A key. That was what he needed. He always kept a spare one on him, never presuming his staff to keep to his irregular hours as a Home Agent. Of course, his servants knew nothing of his connection with the government. A libertine coxcomb, if he had to imagine their perspectives of his coming in at all hours and in constant states of torn clothing—altercations with numerous blades and fists, in all fairness, but he wasn’t about to share that fact with those individuals in charge of darning his wardrobe.
“Are we to stand out here freezing our toes off the rest of the night?” Anna asked beside him, her mouth set in a sardonic line.
He was unable to resist teasing, “Shall I remove your boots and rub the feeling back into them?”
She smiled, the scary one. “Only if you desire a kick to the teeth.”
He shouldn’t find the idea of her naked toes—or the loss of enamel—so enticing. “As soon as I find the key, I will see to your toes... with a warm fire.”
He padded his pockets. Cold metal in his lower vest pocket. He extracted the object with a victorious, “Huzzah—” and went hot at the ears at thepocket watchthat swung from the length of chain in his hand.
Anna blinked. “Bravo, Duke. Shall we time how long it takes you to locate another useless item for the situation?”
Words most men would take for a fowl.
