Page 49 of Secrets of the Heart

“Do you plan to wrestle him to the ground if he proves a danger?” he asked, raising an eyebrow pointedly.

“If I had to, I would,” Rachel shot back. “However, if you have a small gun, I could conceal it in my reticule and use it if anything happened.”

“I don’t know about him, but you are certainly frightening me.”

“If you are not serious about our investigating this thing together, then I shall simply go on my own,” Rachel told him.

“Dammit, I will not allow you to—”

Rachel crossed her arms and looked at him, brows raised. “Excuse me? I don’t believe that there is any question of your allowing or not allowing me to do anything.”

He set his jaw, then said grudgingly. “Of course not, Lady Westhampton. If you wish to endanger yourself, there is nothing I can do about it.”

“I will not endanger myself,” Rachel retorted. “Don’t be foolish. I can take a footman with me. Or Anthony could accompany me.” Of course she would not do that, Rachel knew. She had no intention of seeing Anthony again because of her long-ago promise to Michael, but this man did not know it. There was no reason for him not to believe that she would carry on the investigation without him.

His eyes flashed and he began “You will not—”

He broke off and slammed his hand down on a nearby mahogany dropleaf table, making the array of delicate porcelain figurines on it rattle. “Bloody hell! You are the most aggravating female I have ever had the misfortune to meet.”

“Then I presume you must have lived a life very much to yourself,” Rachel retorted amiably. She could sense that she had won the argument.

“No one but you would suggest taking a possible murderer with you as protection.”

“Oh, Anthony Birkshaw is no more a murderer than I am. Are we going to interview the footman or not?”

“You cannot go dressed like that,” he protested, looking her up and down with a critical eye. “It is obvious that you are a lady. He would never talk honestly in front of you.”

Rachel looked down at her dress, frowning. She had been rather obvious the other day in the East End, she thought, remembering the ragtag collection of children that had followed her.

“I will get a change of clothes from my maid,” she said.

“That will take too long. I have little desire to be trudging about with you late at night, inviting thieves—or worse—to attack us.”

“Oh, you are just trying to be obstructive,” Rachel replied crossly.

A grin crossed his face. “Am I succeeding?”

“Yes. You are exceptionally good at it.”

He sighed, giving in. “All right. You can borrow something of Lilith’s.”

“She isn’t here. She went next door.”

“That’s all right. I shall get a maid to find something. Lilith won’t mind.”

Rachel was not so sure about that, but she wanted to go too much to protest. Hobson rang for Lilith’s maid and explained what he wanted, so the maid led Rachel upstairs to Lilith’s room and after the woman sorted through the dresses in her mistress’s wardrobe for a while, she brought out two, one bright red and the other an equally vivid peacock blue. Rachel, feeling daring, chose the scarlet one and let the maid help her out of her own dress and into that one.

She inspected herself in the mirror, feeling a mixture of delight and trepidation. It was not a dress any lady would wear. The low-cut top exposed more of her breasts than anything Rachel had ever worn, and the fact that Lilith was slightly smaller than herself meant that the material was stretched tautly across them. But the vivid color sang against her coloring, and excitement made her eyes sparkle and her face glow, and she looked, she thought, more dashing than she ever had before.

Rachel left the room and descended the stairs, her nerves jumping a little as she wondered what James’s reaction would be. She had her answer soon enough in the way his eyes widened and his jaw dropped as he looked up at her from the bottom of the stairs. He drew a quick breath, then opened his mouth and immediately shut it.

“I can see I shall have my work cut out for me if I am to keep you safe in that,” was all he said.

But Rachel had seen the fire that had lit up in his eyes when he saw her, and the tightening of his face. She knew as surely as she knew anything that he wanted her. The rather frightening thing was the fact that his obvious hunger had awakened a similar response deep inside her. Feeling rather too warm and breathless, Rachel gripped the stair rail and continued down the last few steps to the bottom of the stairs.

They stood for a moment facing each other. His eyes went to her mouth, and Rachel wondered if he was going to kiss her. She knew, guiltily, that she wanted him to.

He cleared his throat and called up the stairs to Lilith’s maid, “Fetch us one of Mrs. Neeley’s cloaks, too.”