Woodley’s daughter’s honor deserved protecting, regardless of what she’d done. If she was still alive, she’d need it.
Was she well? In danger? Having simply awonderfultime?
Sometimes he wondered if he’d get further, faster, in his inquiries if he’d said, “Her eyes are the color of a sky on a spring day. Her hair never can stay in its ribbons. The top of her head reaches about to my collarbone. And if you make her laugh, it’ll likely be the best thing to happen to you that day.”
Words might be magic, but he’d learned they hadn’t invented the ones that could adequately breathe life into people who were gone. It almost seemed a disservice to try.
He pushed his hair back and blew out a breath and read the letter again. It was notable for what it didn’t convey: his impatience to be home, so he could unleash his ambitions and build the life—the empire—he’d long envisioned. The methodical, needle-in-a-haystack nature of the search and its urgency. The infuriating mystery of it all: why thedevildid she do it?
He allowed himself a few minutes of wild conjecture about all of that before sleep, and no more. Nobody was more dogged. He would find her.
But now he had a new problem: his conscience.
A fortnight ago, Miss Woodley was his first thought in the morning and the last at night. A fortnight ago, he’d met another woman.
Their encounter had lasted all of three minutes.
It had been sifting down around him like ash from a forest fire ever since.
He had looked into the barrel of enemy rifles, the slavering jaws of a furious bear, the lifeless faces of his father and brother. He could build a home from the stripped timbers on up, shoot to kill nearly anything, expertly hold a newborn baby. He figured he’d been tested in more ways than Hercules, and in the end he supposed he was grateful that the war had sorted the entirety of life into two categories for him: what was worth living for, what was worth dying for. And now he had land, some money, plans, and fierce ambition. If the devastation of the past eight years left one gift, it was the confidence that he didn’t have a single weakness left. The world was his to conquer.
But when Lady Lillias Vaughn had emerged into view from the dusty twilight of an unfinished part of the Annex at The Grand Palace on the Thames, he’d been struck dumb. Like the child he’d been when his father had pointed up and shown him Polaris, hanging up there like a diamond pin holding the black, black sky in place.
He’d never seen anything so beautiful.
Or so clearly out of reach.
She’d been, improbably, smoking a cheroot.
She’d assessed him with a swift, expert glance. Having reached her conclusion—American, possibly a peasant, despite that, good looking—her voice was all refined velvet and bored, amused disdain when she spoke.
“Well? Aren’t you going to bow to the daughter of an earl?”
Underestimating him was tantamount to handing him a weapon.
He’d disarmed her instantly with silky, ruthless directness. “Why waste a second doing that, when I can remain upright admiring you?”
He’d had the pleasure of seeing her blink. And then he’d assessed her with a glance more swift and expert than hers. The lines of her body seemed expressly designed to shorten a man’s breath.
He’d become aware of a very low, simmering anger that had nothing and yet everything to do with the girl.
He’d learned over the years that anger often masqueraded as fear. After the events of the past few years, surely he wasn’t afraid of a damned thing. Particularly not a woman.
And just before he’d plucked that cheroot from her fingers and crushed it beneath his boot, he’d seen the pulse beating in her throat, the fine strands of hair fluttering near her parted lips. He’d seen himself reflected in the velvety dark of her pupils. Her silvery eyes had gone nearly black.
He’d never so profoundly disliked a woman while simultaneously wanting to take her up against a wall.
He wasn’t proud of it. He had all the skills but none of the inclination to be a first class rogue. He was practical. He was disinterested in being encumbered by its consequences.
With any luck, that earl’s daughter had learned a valuable lesson. The thing that made her pupils go the size of dimes and her breath go short... it didn’t give a damn who had a title and who didn’t. It alone dictated who was at its mercy.
And yet.
He couldn’t fight it. The need to prove to himselfthat he wasn’t at anyone’s or anything’s mercy had driven him back to London.
He sprinkled sand over the message. He’d have it posted, then spend the day making inquiries, be back in time to join everyone in the little drawing room. While he waited for the ink to dry, he stared wonderingly at the leaping fire, the little vase with a bud in it next to his well-worn precious copy ofRobinson Crusoe, a gift from his Uncle Liam, who was even now on a ship heading for English shores from China. At the crumbs remaining of the two glorious scones the maid had brought up to him this morning. All of those things lifted his mood. He still wasn’t fully accustomed to being waited upon. The sheerluxuryof his shirts being mended (and even laundered if he paid a little more), a maid to poke up the fire and bring in his coffee and maybe even return with an additional scone. He could do all of that himself, and had for years.
He reached for his hat, jammed it on, and grinned to his reflection.
