The Last Hellion (Scoundrels 4)

Susan had several toys. The battered wooden duck with its frayed pull string was her favorite.

If she was sulking, though, as it seemed she was, the duck wouldn’t cheer her, Lydia knew.

“Either she ate something that disagreed with her—a stray Pekingese, for instance—or she’s in a sulk,” Lydia said. “I’ll go out and have a look at her.”

She left the dining room and started for the back of the house. Before she’d taken more than a few steps, she heard paws thundering up the stairs from the kitchen.

The servants’ door flew open and Susan burst through. In her blind rush through the hallway, she bumped into Lydia and nearly overturned her.

The knocker sounded, and Bess hurried out from the parlor to answer the door.

Lydia recovered her balance and hastened after the excited dog. “Susan, heel,” she ordered. To no avail.

The mastiff thundered on, sideswiping the maid. Bess stumbled and caught the door handle. The door swung open, Susan pushed through, knocking Bess aside, and leapt upon the man standing on the doorstep. Lydia saw him stagger backward under the mastiff’s weight a moment before her foot struck something.

Lydia toppled forward, saw the wooden duck skid sideways while she headed downward. An instant before she could land, she was jerked up and hauled against a large, hard torso.

“Plague take you, don’t you ever bother to look where you’re going?” an all too familiar voice scolded above her spinning head.

Lydia looked up…into the laughing green eyes of the Duke of Ainswood.

A quarter hour later, Lydia was in her study, watching His Grace inspect her books and furniture as though he were the broker’s man, come to assess the property for a debt action. Meanwhile, Trent—he was the one Susan had tried and failed to knock over—Tamsin, and Susan had departed for Soho Square—because Ainswood had told them to go for a walk.

“Ah, Life in London, by Mr. Pierce Egan,” the duke said as he took the book from the shelf. “It’s one of my favorites. Is this where you learned what a chancery suit on the nob was?”

“I am waiting to learn why you have invaded my house,” she said frigidly. “I told you I would come to collect you at nine o’clock this evening. Do you want the whole world to know we’re acquainted?”

“The world found that out a month ago in Vinegar Yard. The world witnessed the introduction.” He did not look up from the book. “You really ought to get Cruikshank to illustrate for you. Purvis is too Hogarthian. You want Cruikshank’s slyer touch.”

“I want to know what you mean by strolling in here as though you owned the house—and bringing Trent with you.”

“I needed him to draw Miss Price out of the way,” he said, turning a page. “I should think that was obvious. He will keep her busy trying to fathom the mystery of Charles Two, which will prevent her speculating about my unexpected arrival.”

“You could have achieved that purpose by not arriving at all,” Lydia said.

He closed the book and returned it to the shelf. Then he eyed her, slowly, up and down. Lydia felt a hot prickling at the back of her neck that spread downward and outward. Her gaze slipped to his hands. The longing they’d stirred in her last night rippled through her again, and she had to back away and busy her hands with tidying her desk, to keep from reaching for him.

She wished she’d experienced a schoolgirl infatuation when she’d been a girl. Then she would have been familiar with the feelings, and disciplined them as she’d disciplined so many others.

“I’ve asked Trent to take Miss Price to the theater tonight,” he said.

That brought Lydia back to business with a jolt. Trent. Tamsin. To the theater. Together. She made herself think. She must have an objection.

“Jaynes won’t be available to fleece him at billiards,” Ainswood continued, distracting her. “And I can’t leave Trent to his own devices. I considered drawing him into our conspiracy—”

“Into our—”

“—but the prospect of having Trent’s unique brand of help—as in tripping, breaking things, walking into doors, knives, and bullets—made my hair stand on end.”

“If he’s so troublesome, why in blazes have you adopted him?” Lydia asked, while she tried to get her mind off the absurd images Ainswood painted and back onto the right track.

“He entertains me.”

Ainswood moved to the fireplace. The study being small, he had no great distance to travel. It was more than enough, though, to display the easy, athletic grace with which he moved, and the form-fitting elegance with which his garments hugged his muscular frame.

If he’d been merely handsome, she could have viewed him with detachment, Lydia was sure. It was the sheer size and power of his frame that she found so…riveting. She was hammeringly conscious of how strong he truly was, and how easily he wielded his strength. Last night he’d carried her in his arms effortlessly, and made her feel like a mere slip of a girl.

She’d never felt that way before, even when she was a girl.

At present he made her feel stupid as well, like a besotted adolescent. She hoped she was not looking as idiotishly entranced as she felt. She dragged her gaze away, to her hands.

“You needn’t be uneasy.”

The deep voice called her attention back to him.

Ainswood rested his elbow on the mantel and his jaw upon his hand, and gazed at her. “I told him you’d asked me to help you with a difficult assignment of a highly confidential nature,” he went on. “I asked him to take Miss Price to the theater, to ‘allay suspicions.’ He didn’t ask whose suspicions had to be allayed or inquire why going to the theater would allay them.” Twin devils danced in the green eyes. “But then, a man who imagines a girl can dig her way out of a stone dungeon with a sharpened spoon can imagine just about anything. So I left him to it.”

“A spoon?” she said blankly. “Out of a dungeon?”

“Miranda, of The Rose of Thebes,” he said. “That’s how she’ll escape, Trent believes.”

Lydia came out of her fog with a jolt. Miranda. Bloody hell. She gave the desk a quick survey. But no, she hadn’t left the manuscript out. Or if it had been left out, Tamsin must have locked it away. Letting her in on the secret had been an act of trust—not to mention less complicated than subterfuge would have been, with so quick and perceptive a young woman in the house.

Tasmin had also put away the Annual Register and Debrett’s Peerage. But Lydia’s notes and the Mallory family tree she’d begun lay square in the center of the desk. She casually pushed them under a copy of the Edinburgh Review.

“You’re not going to stab me with a penknife, are you?” Ainswood asked. “I didn’t give the game away. I know you wanted to surprise her tonight. I collect you’ve already fabricated an assignment.”

“Yes, of course.” Lydia shifted position to perch on the edge of the desk, her derriere resting on the Edinburgh Review. “I’m supposed to be digging up dirt on a literary rival. There’s no chance of their comparing stories. She would never disclose my doings.”

“Then what’s got your back up?”

He came away from the fireplace and made a circuit of the desk. Lydia stayed where she was. “I suppose the possibility of her declining Trent’s invitation hasn’t occurred to you,” she said.

“I heard they had an interesting encounter yesterday.” Ainswood rounded the corner of the desk and paused a pace away from her. “It seems she bore Trent’s blithering for rather a long while.” He bent his head and in lower tones said, “Maybe she fancies him.”

She felt his breath on her face. She could almost feel his weight upon her, and the lashing strength of his arms.

Almost wasn’t enough. Her hand itched to reach up and grab his pristinely starched neckcloth and pull his face down to hers. “I doubt it,” she said. “She…” Lydia trailed off, belatedly realizing that his neckcloth was indeed crisply starched and that, moreover, those form-fitting garments fit without crease, wrinkle, rips, o

r stains.

“Good grief, Ainswood,” she exclaimed softly. “What’s happened to you?” Her astonished gaze moved up to his head. “Your hair is combed.” Her attention drifted downward. “You haven’t slept in your clothes.”

His powerful shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I thought we were discussing Miss Price and Trent, not what I wear to bed.”

Lydia would not be diverted from her subject. “I collect you took my suggestion and hanged your valet, and found a responsible replacement.”

“I did not hang him.” He leaned in closer, and Lydia caught a tantalizing whiff of soap and cologne. “I told him—”

“That’s a most agreeable scent,” she said, tilting her head back. “What is it?”

“I told him,” Ainswood went on tautly, “that you did not approve of my manner of dressing.” His big hands settled upon the desk on either side of her. “I told him my life was henceforth rendered weary, stale, and profitless.”

She closed her eyes and sniffed. “Like a pine forest…far away…the faintest trace carried on the wind.”