Page 41 of A Stolen Heart

Aunt Hortense glanced at Alexandra, who grimaced. “I’m sorry, Mother. I was…upset.”

Rhea drew herself to her full height, such as it was, and said with a great deal of dignity, “Young lady, I cannot imagine why you keep calling me that. I am childless.”

Aunt Hortense and Alexandra stared at her, rendered speechless by her pronouncement. Rhea turned and started toward the stairs, saying, “Come, Hortense. It’s time we went to bed.”

“Yes. I’ll be right there.” Hortense looked at Alexandra. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry.”

Alexandra shook her head. “Don’t worry. I realize she’s not herself. She’s been drinking. I could smell it. How did she get hold of liquor again?”

“I don’t know. I will question the servants tomorrow.” Hortense sighed. “I better follow her and make sure she goes to her room and stays there.” Her face clouded. “I’m afraid that we may have to start locking her room. We cannot have her running all over London like this. Something’s bound to happen to her.”

Aunt Hortense turned to go up the stairs just as there was a heavy pounding on the door. Alexandra jumped and whirled, and Aunt Hortense stopped. Since the footmen were all in bed, Alexandra went to answer the door herself, opening it narrowly and looking out the crack.

“Lord Thorpe!” Alexandra opened the door wide, joy surging through her at the sight of him. Swift on its heels came the realization that Thorpe’s face was set in cold, hard lines, and that his gray eyes were like granite. She took a step backward.

“What were you doing at Exmoor House?” he asked abruptly, stepping into the entry without waiting for an invitation.

Alexandra gaped at him. “How did you—”

“Lord Thorpe,” Aunt Hortense interrupted crisply, “I believe that even in London it is considered a trifle late to be calling on a lady.”

He cast a glance at Aunt Hortense. “I am sorry, Miss Ward. However, I believe my business here is sufficiently important to warrant the late hour.”

“Indeed?” Aunt Hortense came down the few steps she had climbed and started across the hall. “Perhaps I had better hear this business.”

“It’s all right, Aunt Hortense,” Alexandra told her, her gaze not wavering from Thorpe’s face, her own face polite and impersonal. A cold, hard knot was growing in her stomach, but she wasn’t about to let Thorpe get a glimpse of her emotions—not the way he looked right now. “You go see about Mother. I can take care of Lord Thorpe’s problem.”

“It’s hardly proper,” the older woman began, scowling at Thorpe.

“It’s all right. Really.”

Grumbling, Aunt Hortense turned and went up the stairs. Alexandra gestured toward the drawing room.

“Would you care to sit down?” She crossed the hall into the room without waiting for an answer from him.

She sat on a chair, indicating the sofa across from her, but Thorpe remained standing.

“I asked you a question,” he reminded her bluntly.

“Yes, and very rudely, too,” Alexandra replied. “I am unaware of any reason I have to answer to you, Lord Thorpe.”

“Do you have something to hide, Miss Ward?”

Alexandra hesitated. The truth was, of course, that she did have something to hide. She certainly wasn’t going to tell Thorpe that she had chased her mother to Exmoor House, where the woman had fled after knocking her companion in the head. But offhand, Alexandra could think of no plausible excuse for her to have been there.

Thorpe saw her hesitation, and his face grew grimmer. “Obviously you do.”

“Tell me, Lord Thorpe, do you feel that you have to answer every insolent question a stranger asks you about your whereabouts or your business?”

If possible, his gray eyes turned even colder. She wondered why she had ever thought them warm; they reminded her of nothing so much as a cold, storm-tossed sea. “I am a stranger to you?”

“I think you are more a stranger every moment,” Alexandra retorted. “I would have called you a friend earlier today, despite our short acquaintance, but friends do not spy on one another.”

“I was not spying on you!”

“Then perhaps you would care to explain how you knew where I went just now.”

“I had come over here to see you, to talk about…something. As my carriage pulled up, I saw you leaving in a hurried way. So I followed you.”