The Perfect Temptation (50 page)

"My question exactly," Aiden
countered as they reached

the parked carriage and stopped.
"Mohan's whereabouts is

no real secret. They don't have to follow
Alex to find
him.

And that business about her marrying the
raja someday...

Alex assures me. that Mohan doesn't know
what he's talking

about. That it could never happen. They're
of different castes."

"Well," Barrett replied, frowning
as he stared off into the

distance, "so much for the possibility
of someone wanting to

keep her from producing half-English heirs
to the royal

throne. Which is rather disappointing,
actually. I was favoring

that theory."

"It was the only one I had," Aiden
groused. "Dammit,

Barrett. I can feel it, I can smell, but I
can't see it. What

threat can she pose? To whom?"

"Maybe she knows something she isn't
supposed to know

or saw something she wasn't supposed to
see."

''Then you'd think she'd be aware of
it," he countered, his

chest tightening. "She insists that
there's absolutely no reason

anyone would want to harm her."

"Maybe Preeya knows," Barrett
ventured. "Have you

asked her?"

"I didn't figure out that Alex was
actually the one in real

danger until this morning. We've only been
home a little

while and Preeya's still off to market with
Sawyer."

"It's a little late in the day to be at
the market, don't you

think?"

''This household doesn't run on a clock. Not
a British

one, anyway. When she gets back, I'll ask.
But honestly, Barrett,

I don't think she knows anything.
If
she thought Alex

might come to harm, she wouldn't keep quiet.
She'd come to

tell me why and who."

"I don't know that it would do any good
to ask Mohan.

He's proven himself to be a somewhat dubious
source of information.

Besides, how much could a ten-year-old
know?"

"I'll ask anyway. It can't hurt."

They fell into silence, Barrett staring off
into the city and

he scowling at the toes of his boots and
feeling a growing

sense of unease. A question, unformed and
unaskable, taunted

him
from the edge of
his awareness, beyond his reach, beyond

his frustrated grasp.
If
he focused, though, and stretched-

"Alex's mother and the raja?"
Barrett asked abruptly.

His brows
knitted,
Aiden considered his friend in confusion.

"Where the hell did that come from and
what does it

have to do with the price of tea in
China?"

''The two who fell in love and couldn't be
together," Barrett

explained, still looking off. ''Were they
Alex's mother and the

raja?"

Christ. Give the man just the tiniest little
crumb and he

could build the perfect cake from it. "I
didn't tell you that."

Barrett looked over at him and grinned.
"You didn't have

to. I can--every now and again-put two and
two together

and come up with a reasonable
conclusion."

"It's supposed to be a secret. I
promised Alex that I'd

keep it."

"It's safe," he assured him.

Which was far more than could be said about
Alex, Aiden

realized. "Well, I Wish you'd put that
incredible deductive

ability to work on my problem. It's been
days. Why again today?"

"I'm afraid I didn't follow that.
Deductive genius only

goes so far."

Aiden sighed heavily as the unknown question
flitted

past his awareness again. "He was at
the window of the

Blue Elephant the day Alex was almost
kidnapped," he

said, crisply laying down the pieces that
felt relevant. "And

then he disappeared from sight. Why did he
appear again

today?"

Closer, he thought. But still not the
important, elusive

question.

"I assume that we're talking about the
stranger?"

Aiden nodded, staring off blindly, straining
to see
in
ward.

"I call him the shadow warrior."

"Has Alex been out of the house since
that morning?

Other than today, I mean."

"No." Closer still, but not yet
close enough. "But she

wasn't out that morning, either, and he was
there. Why was

he there-twice-today?"

"Good questions. I wish I could conjure
the answers for

you. The only way I can see to get them is
to force them out

of the Indian."

"But he has to be caught first and he's
quick," Aiden supplied.

"You never get more than a second's
glimpse of him

before he's gone."

"Even the best make a mistake
eventually, John Aiden,"

his friend assured him, clapping
him
on the shoulder. "When

he does ... " Barrett opened his
carriage door, called up to

his driver with instructions to take him to
his club, and then

climbed inside.

The door was closed and the driver had the
reins in hand

when the question danced close enough for
its outlines to be

faintly seen.
It
was sufficient. Aiden groaned at the simplicity

of it and understood both the implications
and the path it

necessitated.

"Barrett! Wait!" Gripping the edge
of the open window,

lie asked, "Can you come back here
around two in the morning?"

"If
you need me to,
yes. What do you have in mind?"

He needed time to
think
the specific details through, but

the central task was crystalline clear.
"Leave the carriage at

home," he instructed simply. "Wear
your London hunting

clothes and bring your gun. I'll explain it
all then."

"Two it is."

Aiden stepped back and signaled the driver.
Watching the

carriage roll away, he couldn't help but
think
that he

shouldn't have spent that year drinking
himself into a blind

stupor. Now that he needed and wanted to see
clearly again,

it was damn hard to do. And it took far too
long. He was always

two beats behind the music. So far, he'd
been able to

recover from the deficit quickly enough that
no harm had

come to either Alex or Mohan. And maybe,
just maybe, and

if he were truly lucky, by morning the
general dullness of his

brain wouldn't matter anymore.

Where, exactly? he wondered, turning slowly
to survey

the buildings and alleyways around the Blue
Elephant. He

was there, watching; Aiden could feel it in
his bones. It was

part of his unease. But only a small part.
The largest part of it

came from the gut feeling that time was
quickly running out.

He moved to the edge of the yard, widening
his visual

search of the neighborhood. Somewhere ...

A rented hack eased up to the curb just a
few feet away,

interrupting his quest. The door opened and
Sawyer, market

basket in hand, stepped out. He immediately
turned back

and offered his hand and Preeya gracefully
joined him on

the walk, accepting his arm. The hack rolled
away and Aiden

watched, fascinated as the two servants made
their way toward

him. Oblivious to his presence, he realized.

"Sawyer," he said in greeting as
they drew close enough

that he didn't have to raise his voice.
"Preeya."

Sawyer actually started. Then, his composure
back in

place, he cleared his throat and affably
said, "Good afternoon,

sir," as he led Preeya past without so
much as a hitch

in his stride.

Aiden pivoted, watching and grinning as a
surprising

possibility took shape. "Sawyer?"
he called after the butler.

"Are you ... wallowing?"

Sawyer stopped in his tracks and turned
back, a silvery

brow raised. He seemed to consider and
discard several responses

before he smiled and replied, "Your
shirt is misbuttoned,

sir."

Aiden looked down. What he could see looked
just fine to

him. There weren't any gaps, no holes
missed. He reached up

for the collar. His stomach rolled over as
his heart slammed

into the base of his throat. One side was a
button higher than

the other. And he'd stood there all that
time, talking to Barrett,

with it like that. He might as well have had
a sign hanging

around his neck proclaiming his guilt.
Barrett had known.

He would have had to. There was no way he
couldn't. And the son of

a bitch hadn't said a single damn word about
it.

The floodtide of embarrassing realization
was abruptly

stemmed when Preeya stepped closer and
reached up toward

the center of his chest. He looked down at
her hand, acutely

puzzled. Until he saw the long, raven-dark
strand of hair she

slowly, gently pulled from a buttonhole.
When she had it

free, she held it up between them, smiling
at it, then handed

it to him, her grin knowing and wide as she
met his gaze.

"Thank you, Preeya," he managed to
choke out as he took

it from her.

"If
you' have no
objections, sir," Sawyer said, obviously

fighting a smile, "Preeya and I will be
dining privately in the

kitchen this evening."

As though he were in any sort of position to
mention,

much less lecture on, the value of
propriety. "None at all.

Enjoy."