Last Night's Scandal (The Dressmakers 5)

“Get away from me or I’ll scream!”

More knocking, but next door this time.

“Sir?” said Nichols.

“Not on your life,” said Lisle.

“I hate you!” the woman cried.

“Elspeth, I’ve had enough of this!”

“I’ve had enough of you!”

“Don’t make me drag you back.”

“Like the brute you are?” Mocking laughter now.

More knocking, farther along the passage.

“You stupid woman. No one’s going to open the door to strangers at this—”

An abrupt silence.

Then another voice. Though he was too far away to understand the words, Lisle had no trouble identifying the owner: Olivia.

“Plague take her,” he said. He threw back the bedclothes and ran to the door.

Chapter 7

With a sob, the woman flung herself upon Olivia, who instinctively put her arms about her and drew her into the room.

Olivia turned the sobbing woman over to Bailey.

“Hoi!” said the man. “That’s my wife.”

Swallowing a sigh, Olivia moved back to the threshold. She did not mind a row, but marital disputes were not proper rows. The odds, she knew, were strongly in favor of the woman’s being the wronged party. Marriage was set up that way, giving all the power to the male.

Still, that didn’t mean that a wife couldn’t be acting like a nitwit. She strongly suspected this was the case at present. One could not, however, turn one’s back on a damsel in distress.

She hated marital quarrels.

She bestowed a dazzling smile on the man. He took a step back.

“Your wife seems to be distraught,” she said.

“Deranged is more like it,” he said. “She said—”

“I heard,” she said. “I reckon the whole town heard. Frankly, I think you could have handled it more cleverly. If I were you, I should go away and devise a better strategy. Sobering up would be a good start.”

“I’m not drunk,” he said. “And I won’t be ordered about by females.”

“You’re not making a good impression,” she said cheerfully.

“I don’t care! You give her back!”

He leaned threateningly toward Olivia.

Though he wasn’t tall, he was square and sturdy, with arms like a blacksmith’s. He could easily pick Olivia up and throw her out of his way if he so chose. Having reached the reckless stage of drunkenness, he might.

She rose to her full height, folded her arms, and tried to forget that she wore her nightclothes, and only her nightgown at that. Bailey hadn’t been able to find her dressing gown in the dark on short notice and Olivia hadn’t waited before answering the door.

She pretended she was not only fully dressed but fully armed as well. “Do be reasonable,” she said. “I cannot in good conscience give her back if she doesn’t wish it. Why don’t you try coaxing?”

“Elspeth!” he shouted. “You come out of there!”

That was his idea of coaxing. Men.

“Brute!” Elspeth cried. “Betrayer! Womanizer! Libertine!”

“Libertine? Dammit, Elspeth, all I did was take a turn in the stable yard. You’re being ridiculous. Come out of there or I’ll come in after you!”

He looked at Olivia. “Miss, I’d give her back or get out of the way if I was you. This is none of your affair.”

He took a step forward.

Then a sudden step back, as a white-clad arm grasped his and spun him around. “Don’t even think about it,” said Lisle.

“She’s got my wife!”

“So she does. But you may not go in after her.”

The man looked down at the hand on his arm, then up into Lisle’s face. Lisle was wearing the extremely calm expression that usually preceded his doing something violent. Most people had no trouble reading this expression.

The outraged husband must have read it because, instead of trying to break Lisle’s jaw, he turned to scowl at Olivia. “Women!”

“I sympathize, believe me,” said Lisle. “But you can do nothing here. It’s claimed that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Why don’t you go downstairs and wait for your helpmeet to come to her senses?”

“Silly fool female,” the man said, but halfheartedly. Lisle’s dangerously calm demeanor had sapped the fight out of him.

Lisle released his arm, and the fellow went away, muttering about women.

Lisle watched until the man was out of sight. Then he turned to Olivia. His silvery gaze skimmed over her, from the rat’s nest of her hair down over the muslin nightdress and down to her bare feet. She felt every inch of the survey.

She gave it back, letting her gaze move slowly down, from his tangled hair, over the bruised eye, over the nightshirt that covered only as far as his knees, and on down a length of naked, muscular calf to his bare feet.

Then she wished she’d stared at the wall behind him instead. She was remembering his scent and the feel of his body and the heat of contact. Low in her belly, something wicked stirred.

“Knowing you, I ought to believe it,” Lisle said. “The mind reels all the same. It’s the middle of the night. You came to your door—wearing almost nothing—and opened it to strangers.”

“I’m not wearing nothing,” she said. “Or if I am, so are you.”

As though on purpose to contradict her, Nichols glided to his master’s side and helped him into a magnificent green silk dressing gown with a lining the color of claret.

Never taking his gaze from Olivia, Lisle absently accepted his servant’s ministrations, then waved him away. Nichols vanished in the same discreet way he’d appeared. How a man like Lisle could retain this superior, sophisticated valet was as great a riddle to Olivia as the little pictures and squiggles Lisle drew in his letters, to illustrate one point or another.

The elegant gown had to be the valet’s doing. Lisle was not a man who cared about his clothes. Olivia had always supposed that dressing him must be a thankless task. Yet the valet stuck with him, and braved the hardships of Egypt with him.

She felt a surge of envy, which she quickly crushed. What was so enviable about spending one’s life being invisible?

Meanwhile, with Bailey occupied with the hysterical wife, only Olivia was wearing almost nothing

“It was an emergency,” she said. “One can’t wait to be properly attired when someone in trouble seeks help.” She gestured toward the woman, who was blowing her nose in what looked like one of Olivia’s handkerchiefs.

“A damsel in distress,” Olivia went on. “What would you have me do?”

Lisle shook his head. The light from the sconce behind him made a hazy glow of his sun-streaked hair, like a halo—as though his angelic good looks needed enhancement.

She shifted her gaze lower, to resist the temptation to run her fingers through his sleep-tousled hair. She stared at the sash of his dressing gown instead, but that only reminded her of the taut waist she’d clung to hours earlier. She didn’t know where to look.

“I’d have you think,” he said.

“No, you wouldn’t,” she said. “You’d have me sit quietly, waiting for a man to come along to do my thinking for me,” she said.

“Even I know better than to expect you to sit quietly,” he said. “I thought you knew better than to get mixed up in a marital squabble. Do you never listen to your stepfather? Isn’t that one of Rathbourne’s rules?”

She was desperately aware of his bare feet, inches from hers. “I believe he taught you a rule about arguing with ladies as well.”

“Thank you for reminding me,” he said. “You are and always have been impulsive to a suicidal degree. It’s a waste of breath to argue with you at any time, especially

in a frigid corridor in the middle of the night.”

“You’re the one in the cozy dressing gown,” she said. “I don’t feel cold.”

His gaze slid downward, to her breasts. She didn’t follow the gaze. She didn’t need to. She was well aware of the state of her nipples.

“Part of you feels it,” he said. “But you’ll argue about that, too, and I’ve had enough.” He turned and strode down the corridor.

She stood for a moment, watching him walk away from her.

He always walked away . . . or rode away . . . or sailed away—off to his adventures, to his mistress, Egypt. He’d come back only long enough to unbalance everything. For a time she’d have her friend and ally back, but after he’d gone, she’d be more restless and discontented. She’d wait for his letters, to share his life, and he—oh, he’d forget all about her if she didn’t write to him constantly, reminding him she existed.

She clenched her fists and went after him.

Lisle entered his room and closed the door behind him and leaned back against it, eyes closed.

Ye gods! Ye gods! Olivia half naked.

And standing in the doorway of a public hostelry for all the world to see. Elspeth’s husband had certainly had an eyeful: Olivia’s tits standing at attention under that paltry excuse for nightclothes.