How to Marry an Earl (A Cinderella Society 1)

The hall was shadowed, with a little light coming in from the window to the back balcony. It gleamed on glass cabinets and silver doorknobs. She crept across the long room, careful not to make a sound.

Even when a hand closed over her mouth.

Especiallythen. Her yelp was strangled, muffled. She was hauled back against a strong male body. Her skin prickled painfully with a burst of fear. A burst which disintegrated into something else; into several something elses: surprise, annoyance, excitement. She recognized those arms, that chest pressed against her back.

“Hush,” Conall murmured in her ear. The whisper of his voice and his breath on her ear, sent an inappropriate shiver across the nape of her neck. He was warm and solid.

And he had absolutely no reason to be here.

Not tonight.

Not now.

She scowled over her shoulder and when he didn’t release her, she kicked back with her heel. Mostly because she was seized with the most bizarre urge to snuggle back against him. That wouldn’t do. Kicking him was like kicking a horse. He barely moved, but at least his hand dropped away. “What are you doing?” she whispered hotly. She jerked out of his grasp and whirled to confront him. “You scared me half to death.”

“This is an odd hour for you to be cataloguing exhibits, Lady Persephone.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Odder still for you to be here at all, Lord Northwyck.”

“I expect we’re after the same thing.”

“I doubt that.” She couldn’t take the canopic jar while he was here. She couldn’t even look at it. She needed him to be anywhere but here. He saw too much. “You ought to go, my lord.”

“Looking to be rid of me, are you?” His expression was suddenly too complicated to read, and not because of the shadows falling across his face. His eyes glittered; there was a hunter’s intensity there, but also disappointment? That hardly made sense. And it hardly mattered. She needed to get to the jar.

Conall did not budge.

Persephone huffed a sigh. “Can I help you with something?”

“You can tell me the truth.” His tone was dark, dangerous.

She blinked. “All right.”

He waited. She waited. Finally, she shook her head. “I don’t understand this game, my lord.”

“No, and I’m surprised you’re playing it at all. I suppose it serves me right for thinking I understood you. Or any lady, come to that.”

“Don’t be tiresome.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re not one of those men who are unkind or discourteous to women merely by token of them being women. It’s dull. And not very clever.”

His mouth twitched. “And you aren’t who you appear to be either, are you?”

She was aware that he seemed to be having a different conversation than she was—especially when he suddenly stalked toward her. She backed up a step before her brain fully registered that her feet were moving. She would have stood her ground on principle, but he was already pushing against her, his hands closed tightly around her arms, until she was pressed against the nearest cabinet. The glass rattled. She nearly snapped at him to have a care for the artifacts, but something stopped her. He wasn’t teasing. There was something in his expression that seemed suddenly more dangerous than any weapon he might have brandished.

“I’ll ask you again. What are you doing here?”

Her mind raced to find some answer that might satisfy him, even as she vowed to speak to the duke about his autocratic godson. “I was merely testing the security of the exhibits,” she said quickly. There. That was plausible. “Clearly, it needs work.” She tilted her chin up. He was so close, crowding against her. “How did you get in?”

“Never mind that. I don’t reward liars.”

“I beg your pardon.” She attempted to infuse the regal confidence of an Egyptian queen into her voice, the kind Cleopatra would have mastered. Her gaze fell over his right shoulder, to the window to the balcony. It was partially opened. “You didn’t.”

“Answer me, Persephone. Now.” There was a silky menace to his nearness. She’d never seen this Conall before. Heat tingled in her thighs. She was meant to be intimidated, frightened even. And she was. But she was something else too. Aware. Aroused? He would never hurt a woman. He would never hurt her. The resulting thrill that licked up her spine was hot, languid.

How mortifying.