Marry the Man Today (12 page)

Dear Lord. He knows!

"Really, my lord?" Trying her best not to tremble, Elizabeth shrugged broadly from the steadiness of her chair, her palms clammy and cold. "The Abigail Adams has been very popular since the very first day we opened our doors. We've nearly two hundred members, and growing every day. I can't possibly keep track of them all."

"Perhaps you'd better start, madam. At the rate your members are disappearing, come next season there won't be enough women left in London for even the smallest meeting. Or don't you care?"

"Of course I care. We've all been quite worried about our missing members."
Just not worried for the same reason you are.
"
I didn't mention their membership because I just don't see how it matters."

"Oh, really? It doesn't matter to you that of all the women in London, the three who have been abducted were all members of the Abigail Adams?"

Oh, damn. What an unfortunate mistake. It just hadn't occurred to her that anyone would make the connection. Well, it wouldn't happen again.

"I'm sure it's just a coincidence that they were members here, my lord."

"Is it?" His voice was still way too calm, his words too smooth.

"What else could it be?"

"Besides suspicious?" Now he was shaking his head. "I don't know, Miss Dunaway. You tell me."

"Tell you what, sir?" Her cheeks began to burn with anger, a flare of outrage that he would have the nerve to suspect her of anything as nefarious as kidnapping. "Confess that I abducted three members of my own ladies' club?"

She didn't abduct anyone.

"I didn't say that."

The women left on their own.

"And what do you think I did with them, sir?" She got to her feet, the untellable truth on the tip of her tongue, raging to be heard. "Killed them, then buried them out in the courtyard beneath our prize-winning azalea beds? Why would I do such a horrific thing?"

Because they asked her to help them escape. And so she did.

B
lakestone stood looking at her for the longest time, the angles of his jaw changing and working as he studied her. She'd felt perfectly safe with him planted across the room, glaring at her with his stalking questions.

But now he was striding slowly toward her, his dark eyes fixed on her face.

"Are you a complete lunatic, Miss Dunaway?" He kept coming her way. Slowly, moving into the pale lamplight.

"You, sir, are the lunatic
.
" Though at times like this she could only wonder at how deeply, how irrevocably, she'd become involved. She backed up, stumbled against the upholstered arm of the chair, and then could go no farther, though he came closer and closer still. "What is it you want from me, Blakestone?"

"I'm trying my bloody damnedest to knock some sense into you."

"Oh, so now you're going to strike me? Resorting to violence, are you?" Though she knew without a doubt that he wouldn't. He wasn't the type. He was too sure of himself, of his place in the wide world. Unafraid of his own failings, willing to consider other possibilities. She had seen all that in his eyes from the moment he first stepped into her jail cell.

"Blast it all, Miss Dunaway, if you were a man I'd do more than just strike you for all the bloody danger you've been courting!"

"Danger?"

He was hovering over her now, breathing like a bull in his fury. His anger turned to impatience. "Don't you see what your bloody silence might have cost you personally?"

"My silence?" Now he wasn't making any sense at all. Lady Hayden-Co
l
e had arrived safely in New York nearly two months ago. Lady Cladsbury should arrive there any day now. Lady Wallace would safely board another ship this evening. "How do you mean?"

He clamped his huge, hot hands around her arms, enveloping them completely, and leaned so close she thought he might be planning to kiss her.

"Don't you see the pattern? Three women, from the best families, all belonging to the same controversial ladies' club, all go missing within months of each other."

"I still don't see where you're going." Though she could see the flecks of fire in his eyes. Could feel the soft sparks against her cheeks.

"Blast it all, woman! The Adams is the common piece of evidence between the abductions. And the Adams is you, Miss Dunaway! You're the linchpin of this whole mess."

Of course she was! But she could not possibly admit that to him. Not even to stanch the heat of his frustration. Lives hung in the balance.

"Which, Miss Dunaway, can only mean that someone disapproves of what you do here."

"Someone disapproves?" She nearly laughed out loud. "That, sir, would be every man in London."

But he only gripped her arms more firmly, frowned more deeply. "You've crossed a line somewhere, madam, in someone's evil brain. You've made a
m
a
l
icious enemy who will stop at nothing to close you down permanently. Even if he has to pick off your club members one by one."

"Pick off my ..." Oh, dear! She'd obviously drawn the wrong kind of attention to the abductions. Certainly the wrong kind of investigator. What the devil was she going to do with him now?

And what a very strange moment to be delighting in the heat of the man's spicy scent that was curling around her, teasing against the gathered linen of her nightrobe, seeping softly into the folds.

To be intoxicated by the fevered strength of his hands on her arms. Hands that even now were tucked absently against the outer edges of her breasts.

Soooo hot and thrilling.

"Don't you see the danger, madam?"

Oh, God, yes! And the danger was as sweet as honey. Calling to her.

"Danger to me, my lord?"

Ross caught himself. Knew better than to confess that particular threat: The surging danger he posed to her virtue.

The danger to his self-control.

He was standing too close to the woman for clarity of thought, too close to her sultry scent, to the whispery rise and fall of her chest against the soft linen of her robe.

He could feel every delicious inch of her through the inference of her curves against his thighs, the softly rounded heat of her breasts.

He should step away from the woman while he still had control of his better nature.

Bloody hell, he shouldn't even have come here tonight. He'd nearly convinced himself to wait until the safety of broad, blazing daylight to confront her with her stubborn, confounding foolishness.

But his uneasiness about the whole mess, about the woman herself, had seethed and bubbled as he pored over the archives in the Factory until it had finally boiled over. He'd made the short trek through the streets of St. James to the Adams on foot, unsure of what he intended, but determined to protect the woman, whether she liked it or not.

And with his every quickening step had come the chilling sensation that he wouldn't arrive in time, that no matter what wicked force was working against the women of the Abigail Adams, its evil was focused on Miss Dunaway herself.

That
was the danger he'd set out to protect her from tonight.

Not the danger from himself, the deep hunger she aroused in him.

Not from the temptation to slide his hands down her sleek arms and then around her waist. Over her breasts.

That temptation to taste her mouth, her throat, to carry her into her bedchamber and bury himself inside her.

Not that kind of danger. Not tonight.

Probably never. Because Miss Dunaway was the kind of woman a man married. And he wasn't in the market for a wife.

Even this kind.

So he dutifully released his hands from her arms and stepped back, clearing his throat as he freed her, his gaze still caught up in hers, waltzing there.

"I don't believe I've made myself clear enough, Miss Dunaway."

"Clear enough abou
t
. . . ?" She seemed bewitched by something, unfocused, almost amused.

"
About the danger to you."

"Me?" She blinked up at him.

Damnation, if he didn't know better, he'd think the woman was simpleminded. Or didn't care about her safety, the safety of the other women. Or wasn't listening to a word he said.

But she was far from simple; the woman was as cunning as a politician.

"Are you listening to me, madam?" He caught her arms again, but this time dropped her backward into the chair behind her. He knelt in front of her bent knees, hoping to see at least a shred of fear, but finding only that calm amusement.

"Of course I'm listening. I just think your imagination is working too hard. I'm sure there's no one hiding out in the alley, plotting to throw a bag over my head and steal me away. Or anyone else."

"Madam, I don't know how much more proof you need that the Abigail Adams has become the target of a madman."

Her lopsided smile held nothing more significant than gentle patience. Even shyness. "I appreciate your interest in the Adams, howeve
r
—"

He grabbed her wrists and held fast to them, trying not to speak through his teeth. "I'm sorry, Miss Dunaway, but 'however' just doesn't work any longer."

She frowned, dipping a shapely brow at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, that I'm moving into the Adams first thing tomorrow morning."

"You're what?" She yanked her wrists out of his hands.

Bloody hell! The solution had just come to him. Couldn't have startled her any more than it did him. But it was the perfect answer to the situation.

In fact, he would move in tonight.

"You heard me." He stood, his fears finally calmed. "Until these abductions stop, until we find the fiend who has been preying on your club members, the Abigail Adams is going to need twenty-four-hour security."

She looked genuinely horrified, scandalized
.
"Oh, no, it doesn't. Don't even think it, Blakestone."

"I'll move into the visitors' parlor on the ground floor. And you can just go about your daily business as though nothing has change
d
—"

"Oh, no, you won't." She threw herself out of th
e
chair and glared up at him.

"I'll put guards at each of the external doors. How many doors have you?" Of course, the woman wouldn't tell him, or couldn't, for the anger in her eyes. Or didn't even know where all the chinks in her armor were.

"Don't be absurd! None of the abductions happened in the Adams."

"Not yet. But a fiend with a grudge against you and your ladies' club will stop at nothing to do you harm. Surely you can understand that breaking into an unguarded building is the simplest of crimes."

"A fiend? Is that who you think is doing this?"

"A fiend, a madman, a maniac. Call him whatever you will, I'm not going to allow him to take another woman."

Certainly not you.

She just stood there in her simple linen robe looking at him in abject horror, her mouth agape and glistening.

"What if I say no?
"
she said finally.

"Then, regrettably, I'll have the Lord Mayor shut you down as a threat to the health and safety of your club members."

Or something like that.

"Close the Adams?" She gasped and backed away from him. "You wouldn't dare!"

"I would, indeed, if you don't cooperate with me."

She forced out a sharp sigh and paced across the sitting room to the alcove. She pulled aside the sheer moonlit curtains and looked out the window for a time. The breeze caught her robe around her slim ankles, revealing slender calves and a finely shaped hip.

"What if I hire my own guards?"

"This is a criminal investigation, madam. It requires the intervention of Scotland Yard."

"And a commandant in Her Majesty's Royal Navy, on loan to the Foreign Office and the City of London." Her lithe shoulders sagged. "You've put me in an unwinnable situation."

"It's not a matter of winning or losing, Miss Dunaway." He took a few steps toward her, an offering of sorts, as he tried to gentle his voice. "You and your ladies can come and go as you pleas
e
—"

She scowled at him. "Under your constantly critical eye. I know your opinions."

"Meaning what?"

"You're a man, Blakestone."

Now there was an indictment if he'd ever heard one. "Guilty as charged."

She had met him halfway to the center of the room, her hands shaped over her perfect hips. "The Abigail Adams is a temporary refuge for women, sir. They come here to relax, to escape the pressures of their households. To be themselves, without the fear of having to perform as the perfect wife, or the perfect mother, or the adoring daughter."

This wasn't going to be as easy as it seemed. "The guards will be posted outside, and when I'm in the hous
e
—
m
ostly in the evening and overnigh
t
—
j
ust tell your ladies to ignore me if they see me."