“I’m not laughing.” He paused. “You’re most welcome to search me if you believe I have a key.”
Her faint gasp made him wonder if she too relived that searing moment when she’d touched him. “The door’s really stuck?”
“It’s really stuck.”
He heard the faint rustle of her plain dark blue dress, the same dress she’d worn sitting across the table from him at dinner. Her expression had been critical as she’d observed her overbearing cousin’s attempts to captivate him. Caroline had been almost as busy as the beauteous Amelia making cow eyes at him.
When he’d accepted Sir Theodore Liddell’s invitation, he hadn’t realized matchmaking lay on the horizon. Although damn it, he should have. He was hardly a green boy when it came to ambitious parents.
Beside him, the doorknob rattled. Miss Sanders wasn’t one to give up before she was well and truly defeated. He admired her stalwart soul. He’d mocked her bravery in sneaking into his room to steal her sister’s letter, but it was a damned gallant act. An act that, unless they were very lucky, would have major repercussions.
As she moved, he caught a drift of her scent. Like Philippa Sanders, it was an intriguing mixture of tart and sweet. Lemon soap. And something warmer and earthier.
He couldn’t let her continue battling with the door. Already she breathed in frantic little gasps. He placed his hand over hers. There was that same shock of connection that he’d felt when she flattened her palm on his bare chest. “Do you believe me now?”
“Yes.” She sounded young and frightened, not at all like the assertive miss who had demanded the letter’s return. “This is such a disaster. We can’t say here alone. What if someone finds us?”
Chapter Two
ERSKINE DIDN’T EVEN consider sugarcoating his response. “We’ll find ourselves in the middle of an almighty scandal.”
“Please…please try and get the door open.”
Her shaky request tugged at his heart. No, she didn’t sound at all like the imperious chit so keen to put him in his place. Of course she was frightened. He was a stranger and he could imagine what exaggerated stories she’d heard about his amorous exploits. Hell, even without exaggeration, the truth was bad enough to terrify an innocent.
This tiny room wasn’t his preferred venue for flirtation, but up to this point, unrepentant devil he was, he’d enjoyed himself. More, he hated to admit, than he had in years.
But because of that barely concealed fear in her voice, he accepted that he must make some genuine attempt to break free. With a muffled sigh, he stepped back, braced himself, and plowed his shoulder into the solid oak door.
Then bit back a decidedly unheroic groan.
Hartley Manor had been built for a more warlike age. It was designed to withstand trebuchets and cannons. A mere human shoulder, no matter how enthusiastically applied, hardly rattled the latch. All Erskine got for his trouble was a bruised arm.
Although Miss Sanders didn’t speak, he felt her desperate hope that he’d get them out. Only that made him apply himself twice more to battering at the door. With equally disappointing results.
“It’s useless.” Miss Sanders paused, and for the first time, he heard a trace of warmth. “But thank you for trying. I can’t imagine this is your idea of the nicest way to spend Christmas Eve either.”
She’d think he was mad if he told her that right now he couldn’t think of another person he’d rather have with him. Was he getting old? He was only twenty-eight, but this last year or so, the parade of decadent pleasures had begun to pall. As a younger man, he’d enjoyed kicking up his heels in London and shocking his straitlaced and tyrannical father back in Scotland. But since the old man’s death two years ago, Erskine had a grim feeling that his hell-raising smacked of going through the motions. Nothing in ages had compared to the piquant thrill of knowing that he and Philippa Sanders were alone together—and that at last he might discover what lurked beneath her serene shell.
“Someone will come and get us.”
Her laugh was hollow, but he admired her ability to squeeze amusement, however bleak, from their dilemma. He heard a faint bump as she slumped against the wall beside him. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Odds are that it will be my valet Mills. He’s the soul of discretion.” With a master of such rackety reputation, Mills had to be.
“Does he wait up for you?” She sounded a little brighter. “Perhaps he’ll check soon.”
Erskine slid to the carpeted floor and leaned his head against the recalcitrant door. He extended his legs until his feet bumped the opposite wall. Stupidly he hated to disappoint her. Absurd as it was, she awoke a faint chivalry in his black soul. “I gave him the night off.”
“Oh.”
More rustling. Then something soft dropped across his lap. “What’s this?”
“A coat. It’s getting colder.”
It was. And he wasn’t dressed for a winter night. He’d been in the process of preparing for bed when he’d caught his little burglar. It was yet another sign of his jaded mood that he’d forsaken the drunken buffoons in the dining room and come upstairs to sleep.
“Very sporting of you, Miss Sanders.” He slipped the coat over his shoulders. The wool was scratchy, but he appreciated the immediate warmth. “Considering that my arrogance in trying to teach you a lesson got us into this trouble.”