Sterling affixed a neutral expression on his face and turned from the window. Rather than look directly at her, he eyed the armchair before his desk and gestured for her to sit.
As she settled, he resumed his own seat and drew a slow, deep breath through his nostrils, hoping to catch a whiff of her unique, feminine scent. He did. He wanted more.
“I’ve decided to allow you to pose your question first, Lord Randall,” she said without preamble, and coaxed a laugh out of him. “After which I shall ask one of my own, and so on.”
“Indeed? Generous of you to grant me the honors, considering you are a guest in my home—an uninvited one.” He risked eyeing her, finally, and had to stifle the urge to laugh.
Despite his superior height, she somehow gave the impression of looking down her small, straight nose at him.
“If you hadn’t snuck off to your remote castle before allowing the detectives to question you concerning my brother’s death, I wouldn’t have needed to track you down.”
Snuck off, indeed.Impudent chit.
“That presupposes I knew anyone wished to speak with me. I did not.”
“How convenient,” she drawled. “Your question?”
“How did you discover my whereabouts?”
One corner of her berry-colored lips crooked upward, and she leaned forward to prop one elbow on his desk.
He almost wondered if the pose was a deliberate attempt to befuddle him. Certainly, everything in him burned to drop his gaze to her tantalizing cleavage. But he managed to keep his eyes locked with hers.
“Are you admitting you purposefully kept your location secret?”
“No. I merely wonder as I departed London rather spontaneously, for personal, private reasons,” he explained, “and did not share my plans with many outside my immediate family.”
And as Holy Island was not, in general, a well-traveled destination, it stood to reason her guessing Holy Island as a possible landing place for him would be next to impossible.
Yet here she was.
Her eyes narrowed in speculation. “What difference does it make to you, how I learned of your whereabouts?”
“Call it curiosity.”
“Curiosity.” The old wingback chair creaked as she leaned back. She reached for the long coil of blond hair draped over her shoulder, fingering it absently. “I am not the only one of us who suffers an expanse of curiosity, then?”
He tore his gaze from her languid strokes and met her challenging stare. “So it would seem.” He arched a brow, a silent demand for an answer.
“It was…If you must know, I overheard a conversation between your sister and my brother,” Annabelle admitted with obvious reluctance.
“What conversation?”
It took her a moment to reply. “I was sitting in with Gaston and Lady Caroline during one of her social calls—for decorum’s sake.”
Ah.That explained her anxiousness in recounting her tale to him. She’d eavesdropped on a private discussion and had rightly guessed how much he’d enjoy remarking on the fact. He was no fool, however. Should he opt to do so, she’d clam up, tight.
Still. He could not resist one jibe. “Always important to maintain the proprieties.”
She sniffed. “Your sister was working on one of her needlepoints, as I recall.”
He snorted. “Caroline does love her tapestry work.” And she was singularly awful at it.
She smoothed her lips together and plucked at her skirts. “Gaston asked after you.”
“Oh? How odd.”
She ceased plucking long enough to send him an icy smile. “No doubt. After all, it wasn’t as if the two of you were friends, was it?”
