He sank down next to her and finally allowed himself to exhale. He hadn’t needed to fight quite like that in many a year. It amazed him that his body had still known exactly what to do. He supposed it was the way a musician’s hands always remember a song.
Merry, teasing voices—a woman’s, a man’s, mingled with children’s laughter—floated on the breeze to them from the nearby path. It was both jarring and soothing.
“Are you angry with me?” she ventured finally. Her voice was a little frayed.
He decided to tell her the truth. “Yes. A little. I’m much angrier at myself, however.”
She accepted his verdict somberly. “I’m sorry.” She sounded subdued.
He shook his head. “I understand why you needed to do it, Miss Woodville.”
Neither spoke for a time. Merely breathed, and listened to the rush of wind and the voices.
“You might have mentioned you thought we would be robbed,” she said finally.
Damn the girl. He laughed.
She pulled his coat more snugly about her. “How did you know how to... how to do what you did back there? All the...” She gave the air a chop with one hand.
“Experience.”
“At hells?” He had to admire her commitment to being sardonic even in times of danger. “Did you fight a good deal at hells?”
“It was less about fighting and more about defending. My first job at a hell was at a place called the Pit, and I was the person who, shall we say, helped keep order. You get a feel for when trouble is about to ignite by just watching and listening. Someone might clench their jaw, or utter the wrong word a little too loudly. Someone might looktoononchalant. Pickpockets often do. More than once I had to wade into a brawl well underway. You tailor your approach to the circumstances and the men involved—height, weight, presumed strength, presumed weapons. Like that.”
She gaped at him, then closed her mouth again. “That isfascinating,” she said, sounding a little too sincere.
Which amused him. She really ought to have been appalled.
“You notice everything,” she quoted. She was recalling what he’d said about the buttons.
“I notice everything,” he confirmed quietly. Her knotted hands, the lush rose curve of her lips, the golden speckles on her cheeks. Everything.
“Do you think there are any more thieves where they came from?”
“I’m here,” he said calmly.
She studied his face. He knew a wayward impulse to remove his glove and slide his thumb across the curve of her cheek just to see if it was as soft as it looked. Finer than Ming, surely, that curve.
When she exhaled slowly, relaxing into, trusting, his protection, he felt gratified all out of proportion.
“Do you sing?” she asked.
He gave a short, startled laugh. “Do Ising? Not well.”
“I thought it might be soothing to hear a little song after our fright.” Her eyes glinted with mischief.
He sighed and shook his head slightly. For days now her audacity had been perforating his armor like kitten claws. He decided he would tolerate it as long as it diverted him, and not a moment longer.
“The only songs I know are unfit for your ears. There’s one about a bloke named Colin Eversea that goes on for days. He gets up to despicable things. Man after my own heart.”
“Sing it like a lullaby, under your breath. Maybe I won’t even notice the lyrics.”
“No, Miss Woodville,” he said sternly, “and here’s the reason. When you nurse an injured wild animal back to health—let’s say it’s a fox—you have to be careful not to allow them toget too accustomed to their cozy indoor accommodations, or they won’t be fit to live in the wild again. Too much exposure to bawdy songs and cutthroats and the like and various other discomforts and you might get used to them, which will make you unfit to marry an aristocrat. And that’s how you’re going to survive. A big country house, or a London town house on Grosvenor Square?Thoseare your natural habitats.”
Her lips curved slightly. “Oh, very well.”
“Surely you’ve some hopeful suitor hovering in the wings,” he added idly. “Your sisters can’t be the only Woodvilles in demand.”
