Out of the ordinary, indeed.
“I must certainly put away my pistol, then,” he said, and obligingly tucked his pistol away in his greatcoat pocket, then felt another flicker of amusement at her reaction. She gave a great sigh of relief—the soft white swell of her bosom heaved enticingly above her constricting arms as she did so—and most of the wariness left her face. With his pistol out of sight, it was clear she no longer considered him much of a threat. He had only to choose his moment now, and the thing was done. It would be over before she even knew what was happening. He was skilled enough that she would feel no pain.
A comforting thought, he concluded wryly.
She watched him still, her expression severe. “If you are a burglar, I must warn you that you are quite out in your timing: the house is full of people. There is a ball in progress just at this moment, you know. And perhaps this would be a good time to mention, too, that I have only to scream, and a hundred people will instantly come rushing to my aid.”
“Why don’t you, then?” he asked, genuinely curious. He almost wished she would scream. He would be upon her before the sound left her throat, of course, silencing her quickly and forever, his hand pushed by necessity, which would make this easier. It had been many years since he’d felt any hesitation at all about killing anyone, but he was conscious of having to deliberately keep reminding himself that in the name of self-preservation he had to kill her.
When his target died, as his target inevitably would, this too-beguiling chit would remember him. It would be trusting too much to luck to assume she would not then associate him with the event.
Get on with it, then.
His footsteps were entirely silent on the deep pile of the Oriental carpet as he closed the distance between them. Years of necessity had made it second nature for him to move without making a sound.
“Oh. Well,” she said. “As to that . . . ”
She paused.
With interest, he watched the quick darkening of her eyes as self-consciousness suffused them. He was so close now that she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze, leaving her slender, pale neck more vulnerable than she had any notion of. She was clearly, foolishly unafraid of him.
“I have no . . . ” she started up again.
The man on the floor stirred and groaned. The lady jumped as if someone had grabbed her by the ankle, almost losing her grip on both the poker and her bodice in the process.
She took a couple of skittering steps back and looked down at her victim with wide-eyed dismay. The man on the floor lay once again motionless, eyes closed, jaw slack. Drool spilled from the corner of his mouth. A smear of blood was now visible through his fair hair. It was the only real indication that he was not simply asleep on the rug.
“Do you think he’ll die?” she asked anxiously. Neil looked into the big blue eyes that had lifted to meet his again and felt grim. She was very young, very sweet—and very much in his way.
“Probably not. It’s difficult to be certain, of course. Do you wish him to?” He took another step toward her, until he was close enough to once again smell the faint, lavender-tinged scent of her. Like the rest of her, it was unmistakably—and titillatingly—feminine. Up close, her skin had the soft, pearlescent gleam of ivory satin. He was certain it would be smooth to the touch—and warm.
It had been a while—a long while—since he’d been this close to this kind of woman. Young ladies of quality were thin on the ground in the places he regularly habituated.
“No, of course not. At least . . . ”
She broke off, hesitating, glancing back at the man on the ground. Neil reached out and took the poker from her—she made no protest, seeming more glad than not to be relieved of its unwieldiness—then realized he was, in effect, hesitating, too. The poker posed not the slightest degree of hindrance to what he needed to do, and he knew it.
“Who is he?” Even as he laid the poker on the carpet, Neil recognized that in asking the question he was simply trying to delay the inevitable for a little longer. A glance upon entering the room had told him that the man on the floor was not his target. Therefore, he had no interest whatsoever in who he was. And yet he asked.
“Lord Rosen. He is—was—my fiancé.”
“Ah.”
The loathing in her voice was unmistakable. Having listened to the determined fight she had put up to defend her honor, Neil gave her full marks for emerging the victor in the encounter. Given her size and style, and the size and style of her assailant, he would have expected the outcome to be very different.
Not, he told himself, that he cared one way or the other.
He cared about doing his job, and that was all. That being the case, he needed to do what was necessary to repair this farcical situation, and be gone.
“Did you end your other two engagements with the same amount of, ah, ferocity?” he inquired, and had the felicity of watching her eyes darken still more with self-consciousness and her cheeks turn even rosier.
“You were listening!” she accused. Then, primming up her mouth, she added, “I’ve no intention of telling you anything at all until you tell me who you are—and why you came in through the window.”
Her tone was haughty, her gaze direct.
To his own amazement, Neil found himself teetering on the brink of being charmed.
“Perhaps I am a guest, and merely stepped behind the curtains and opened a window to blow a cloud without being disturbed. Unaware, of course, that you would soon be enacting your little drama in the very room I had chosen for my respite.”
With skepticism evident in the quick twist of her lips and lift of her eyebrows, she looked him up and down.
“Believe me, I am not such a flat as to fall for that.”
Her voice dripped scorn. He’d seen many a magistrate on the bench who did not look half so stern.
Again to his surprise, Neil found himself reacting with enjoyment.
Enough, he thought with grim resolve, and reached for her. At the same moment hurried footsteps and a girlish giggle could be heard just outside the door.
His newest target caught her breath.
“There shouldn’t be anyone in here,” a man said. A young man, from the sound of him. His words were muffled, but still clearly audible through the door.
“Oh, no,” she breathed, and cast a panicked glance up at him. “Shhh. We must hide. Hurry.”
Grabbing his hand, literally snatching it out of the air scant inches away from sliding around her neck, she dragged him after her as she rushed toward the window he had recently abandoned. Surprising him with her strength—and her ability to remember to keep an arm clamped over her breasts under what were clearly harrowing conditions—she shoved him into the embrasure and then crowded in behind him. With a single gliding step she positioned herself in front of him, standing with her back pressed to his front as she twitched the curtains closed, thus cutting off his view of the room.
Bemused, Neil found himself staring at lush folds of ruby velvet. How the hell had he allowed himself to be dragooned into a potential disaster like this? If they were discovered, there would be just that many more witnesses to be dispatched—or, alternatively, he might find himself looking at his own end, a notion that filled him with disgust at his own stupidity in allowing such a thing to happen.
Glancing down, he saw a mass of tumbled red curls and found his answer. Below that bright crown, the tip of her nose was just visible. Below that, creamy cleavage swelled temptingly. She was breathing fast, and he could feel the slight expansion of her rib cage as she drew in air. The scent of lavender teased his nostrils. Though he had no recollection of how they came to be there, his hands curled around her upper arms. Her skin was as warm, and as silky smooth, as he had imagined.
Damn it to hell and back anyway, you are not such a fool as this, he told himself. Then he realized that, clearly, he was.
His mouth turned down sharply at the corners. His hands tightened on her arms. She glanced up at him
inquiringly, her big blue eyes and uptilted face disarmingly devoid of fear.
She had no idea of who or what he was, or the danger she was in.
Beyond the curtains, there was a faint sound: the door opening. Distant music. Laughter. His attention, and hers, shifted, fixing on what was happening beyond the curtains.
“Mama will miss me,” a girlish voice said, over the unmistakable sounds of two sets of footsteps entering the room. Neil felt his companion stiffening. She stood rigid against him now, and if she was breathing at all he couldn’t tell.
There was a faint click as the door closed again.
“A kiss. You promised me a kiss,” the young man beseeched. He and his companion were clearly inside the room now.
“Lud, I did no such thing.”
“You did.”
A coquettish giggle was followed by the kind of silence that spoke of a kiss taken or given. Neil tried to ignore the soft warmth of her, the unmistakably feminine fragrance, the tantalizing view, and failed abysmally.
Fool . . .
The door opened again. The sounds of music and laughter spilled into the room.
“Rory, whatever are you doing?” another girl scolded, low-voiced. “Mama’s looking for you!”
“Oh, bother!” The first girl sounded more annoyed than alarmed. “I must fly to the ladies’ retiring room, I suppose, and claim to have been there all along. Sonja, you won’t tell?”
“I should,” the other girl said.
“’Twas nothing—no harm . . . ” the gentleman stammered.
“Our mama won’t think so, I promise you that.” The second girl’s voice was grim as she spoke over the quick shuffle of retreating footsteps. “She—”
The sound of the closing door cut her off. Nothing besides the faint, distant strains of ballroom music could now be heard beyond the curtains. Neil only realized that his hands were sliding sensuously down his companion’s arms when she gave a big sigh of relief and slipped free of his hold. But instead of running for her life, as he now almost wished she would do, she leaned forward slightly to peep out through the crack in the curtains. He could feel the firm roundness of her backside pressing solidly against the saddle-hardened muscles of his thighs.
His body’s instinctive response was inconvenient, perhaps, but not unexpected. It had been a long time since he had been with a woman. Longer still since the woman had been a lady. And this one was young and beautiful and really quite delectable.
A pity . . .
“They’re gone.” The relief in her voice was palpable. “Thank goodness they didn’t see him.”
By him, she was clearly referring to her fallen suitor.
Ignoring the reflexive tightening of his groin, Neil glanced at her neck and flexed his fingers. Dispatching her would take no more than seconds . . .
Before he could make a move, she stepped with blithe ignorance through the curtains, putting herself temporarily out of his reach. Neil silently cursed himself and followed. The perfect opportunity had been at hand and he had let it pass. That only made things more difficult for the both of them.
“This can’t go on,” she said, echoing his thoughts with uncanny precision. She had her back to him still, both arms clamped protectively over her swelling chest, staring down at the unconscious Lord Rosen as if deep in thought. She chewed her lower lip in some agitation. It was obvious that the hideous crocodile-carved settee had been her savior: it stood squarely between the man she had felled and the door, blocking the view of anyone who entered—at least until he walked farther into the room. “I have to do something.”
Indeed.
“It appears to me that the problem is, you already did.” His tone was dry as he stepped right up behind her again, resolved to get the job done and be gone before there were any more complications.
She glanced over her shoulder at him, frowning, her silky dark brows once again almost meeting over her small nose. Her spine stiffened; her shoulders squared. Then she turned to face him.
“I’ll make a bargain with you,” she said.
Chapter Three
TO NEIL’S SURPRISE, the image that flashed into his mind in that instant was Old Hook Nose surveying the field before sending his weary troops forth to engage the numerically superior enemy at Waterloo. It was an unwelcome flashback—he had never been an admirer of Wellington’s, and especially not on that day—but there it was.
As he had learned to his frequent displeasure over the years, there was no doing anything about stray memories. They popped up as and when they willed.
“What kind of bargain?” He knew he was a fool to ask. His fingers were already curving at his sides in anticipation of what had to be done. Her neck was slender, soft—a quick, hard snap and it would be over.
Get it done.
Her eyes held his. They had, he was bemused to discover, changed in a matter of seconds from deep, feminine blue to gunmetal gray.
“If you’ll help me, I won’t tell anyone about you.”
Her chin had the jut and her spine the ramrod stiffness of a soldier’s—no, a general’s. Wellington again.
Neil’s flexing hands stilled.
“Help you what?” The humor of seeing his former commanding officer in this silky-skinned Venus hit him then, and, most unexpectedly, his lips twitched. If she’d feared him at all, that fear was clearly long gone. She was regarding him with a martial light in her eyes that told him that to her mind, she was the one in charge. Clearly, the lady saw him as nothing more than the solution to her problem, with no idea whatsoever that her life hung by a thread. He’d dispatched so many souls over the years that killing was second nature to him now. As far as he was concerned, his victims had no humanity. They were just jobs to be completed as efficiently as possible. But this redheaded charmer had made herself vividly alive to him, and he was having to work to summon forth the emotionless killer he generally was.
“I have to get him”—glancing down, she prodded the slack-mouthed Lord Rosen with a disdainful, golden-shoed toe—“and myself out of here without anyone seeing us. If I don’t, if anyone discovers us like this, I will either be forced to wed him—which I won’t do—or be hideously, horribly ruined.” Her eyes met his. “You came in through the window. I thought perhaps you could help me lower him out of it, then lower me down as well. From there, I could get up to my bedchamber by the back staircase without anyone seeing me, I think. I could say that I gave William his congé, and he left, and I then went upstairs. And—and perhaps you could convey Lord Rosen home, or at least somewhere other than here?”
Her tone was hopeful. So were her eyes. His mouth tightened with impatience at himself even as his gaze slid reluctantly over her. Granted, she was beautiful and vulnerable and, yes, even somewhat ridiculously endearing with her resolute expression and glorious hair and arms folded tightly over her bountiful bare bosom—but she was also a danger to him. There was no getting around that. When the time came, she could bring ruination down upon him with just a few words.
Something of his inner battle must have shown in his face, because her eyes widened at him as she added hastily, “I have money, you needn’t worry. I’ll pay you for helping me. Pay you well.”
Neil suddenly made up his mind. It was stupid of him and he knew it was stupid of him, the kind of soft-headed error that could end up costing him dearly if, later, anything went wrong, but he realized in that instant that he was going to take a chance: he wasn’t going to kill her after all. She was lovely, charming, very young, and totally undeserving of death, an innocent who tonight had simply had the misfortune to find herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he wasn’t, he was surprised to realize, quite as devoid of human decency as he had long supposed.
To kill this girl simply because she’d had the misfortune to stumble across him was something that he simply did not want to do.
It seemed that the Angel of Death, as they called him in certain circles, had a heart after all.
Or if n
ot a heart, then something. A shred of conscience remaining to him, maybe. Or at least a predator’s lack of interest in killing something that was not its natural prey.
He would take her bargain. As the decision crystallized, he felt the tense muscles of his neck and shoulders relax.
“Very well.” He hesitated, then pointed a monitory forefinger at her to underline the point. “But you must keep your end of it, mind.”
“You’ll help me? Oh, thank you!” Relief and gratitude blazed from her eyes, which were once again that beguiling delft blue. “You needn’t worry, I shan’t tell on you.” Then she made a quick, wry face at him. “Though if you are a burglar it is probably very wrong of me. If you would just engage to find some other residence—” Rosen groaned and she broke off, glancing down at her erstwhile suitor nervously. “Um—never mind. Can we hurry this along? Much longer and someone’s bound to discover us.”
Rosen was stirring in earnest now. The lady’s expression as she looked down at him turned truly alarmed. It appeared that he was, indeed, on the verge of regaining his senses at any moment.
Grimacing at his own folly, Neil moved with quick grace, leaning over the now groaning-in-earnest Rosen. By means of a quick, brutally efficient right to the jaw, he instantly restored him to total unconsciousness.
“Oh, well done,” the lady said with unmistakable admiration, and despite his own annoyance at himself and the situation, Neil almost smiled. The reaction felt strange, foreign even, and he realized that it had been a very long time indeed since he had relaxed enough to enjoy a situation the way he was starting to enjoy the fix he was in.
“Thank you,” he said. Then, by the simple expedient of hooking a hand in the collar of Rosen’s too-elaborate coat, he dragged him over to the window while his new partner in skullduggery followed anxiously along behind.
“Shall I help . . . ?” she began as the curtains billowed around them. She broke off as Neil flipped Rosen over onto his stomach, then reached down and grasped the seat of his breeches. A heave, and Rosen’s bulk was up and over the iron railing that edged the small stone ledge (it was too narrow to be properly termed a balcony) outside the window.
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