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‘Someone’s comin’,’ he hissed. ‘I just ‘eard the front door.’
‘The watchman’s not due for another twenty-five minutes,’ Rob declared, his voice low and urgent. ‘So, it has to be Holt or Grainger.’ Closing the ledger swiftly, he handed it to Billy. Without speaking, the boy dropped again to his belly and returned the book to where he’d found it. As soon as he was back on his feet, he began stuffing the paper anyhow back into his jacket while Rob and Beatrix swung the panel concealing the strongroom closed.
It took all three of them to push the bookcase back into place, but they managed it in seconds, and after blowing out the candles and putting them back on the mantelpiece, they fled back into the coal tunnel, pulling the door closed behind just as the sound of voices reached them.
‘They might smell the burning candles,’ Beatrix whispered as they hurried back along the passageway towards the yard.
‘There’s nothing we can do about that now,’ Rob responded. ‘They might not even be going into the study. I doubt they’d be wanting to destroy evidence in the dark – especially when the night watchman is due.’
No one spoke again until they were back out in the yard, the grating dragged carefully back over the coal hole and the door they’d just come through, shut firmly behind them.
It was only once they’d put two full streets between themselves and Southernhay, that Rob finally stopped, turned Beatrix bodily by the shoulders, bent his head and kissed her – hard and brief and entirely without permission asked or given. Then, raising his head, he looked down at her, his expression somewhere between remorse and something else she couldn’t name.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, his voice hoarse with the same unidentified emotion
Beatrix, who’d never been kissed by anyone and certainly not out of the blue by a so-called gentleman, was surprised to find her hands pulling his head back down and repeating the performance to check if it felt as good the second time.
Billy, several feet away and finishing off the bread rolls from his pockets, allowed them precisely ten seconds before coughing loudly.
‘Not that I ain’t pleased as punch to see yer both gettin’ on so well,’ he declared, ‘but I’ve got ‘alf a solicitor’s box o’ tricks stuffed down me shirt an’ it’s diggin’ into me somethin’ chronic. Can we please go an’ work out what we’ve found afore one of us gets nicked fer it.’
CHAPTER 15
Lying in bed an hour later, Beatrix was completely unable to sleep. Her mind replayed the events of the last twenty-four hours on an almost continual loop, only to stop dead every single time at the kiss.
Though her experience with men was limited, she was no fool and had swiftly assumed it was simply the sudden euphoria of their escape after being in danger that had prompted him to be so forward. Which made her reaction all the more reprehensible. Charlotte would undoubtedly have used the word wanton had her aunt been present.
Nevertheless, Beatrix couldn’t forget the sensations that invaded every part of her while his lips covered hers. The first kiss had been hard, triumphant, but when she’d pulled his head down for the second one…
Bea moved restlessly in the bed. Had he felt it too? The tingling feeling that seemed to invade every nook and cranny? For her, it had centred in two places. Deep in the very core of her and, oddly, her nipples, which had become inexplicably hard, like the point of a pencil. And now, touching them, experimentally, she felt the very same sensation shoot down to the juncture between her legs.
But instead of being merely pleasurable, it left her feeling strangely unsatisfied, wanting something more.
And in truth, her body had been reacting strangely since the moment Rob Noon had walked through the front door of Cliff House.
Could this be love? She scoffed in the darkness. One couldn’t fall in love over the course of a few days. Arabella might have fallen head over heels for Benedict Hartley in little more than a week, but Bea was not her sister. She’d always had little time for romance, and the only tingling sensation she’d ever experienced was a consequence of Mrs Williams’ cooking. Which frequently left her wanting more…
Her scoff turned into a frown. Even if she had developed feelings for him, she was well aware that Rob Noon had every intention of returning to Australia once he’d found his godson.
But the mere thought of him sailing to the other side of the world and likely never seeing him again had a chill entering her bones as though she was developing an ague. Overwhelmed by a sudden desolation, Beatrix turned on her side, hammering at her pillow. Such maudlin thoughts were ridiculous. She wasn’t a child, and well knew that love played very little part in most unions. The fact that her two older sisters had found their soul mates was neither here nor there. Bea had never intended to marry anyway.
And besides, surely his departure was weeks away yet?
* * *
Lying in the bedchamber across the hall, listening to Billy’s soft snoring, Rob Noon knew he was in trouble.
As soon as they arrived back at the inn, Rob had suggested they retire immediately. His reasoning was that they were all tired and examining the documents they’d discovered needed clear heads and daylight.
But while all of that was perfectly true, it wasn’t the reason he’d rushed the three of them to their beds…
When he’d bent his head and pressed a kiss on Beatrix Shackleford’s lips, it was an impetuous action borne out of a sudden euphoria – like punching one’s arm in the air in jubilation.
When she’d kissed him back, the desire that had raged through him nearly brought him to his knees.
The taste of her lips and the feel of her breasts pressing against him was all it had taken. And only the fact that Billy spoke up when he did had stopped him from deepening the kiss and grinding her onto his hardness.
Though largely popular with women, Rob was no philanderer, but he couldn’t deny he’d always been happy to take what was offered with a cheerful enjoyment he always ensured went both ways.
