Usually when he reached Alloway Chase, the weight of the world slid from his shoulders. Not tonight. Nor any time in the near future, he grimly suspected. There was a difference between visiting the country at one’s own prompting and having one’s political advisers demand a rustication for the nation’s good.
Outside his library, he paused puzzled.
A line of faint light shone beneath the door. At this hour, the household should be asleep. Stupid with tiredness, he wondered if at the grand old age of thirty-two, he’d finally encountered one of the ghosts. The most active specter was Lady Mary Fairbrother, murdered by her husband after he caught her in bed with a royalist.
As the door slowly opened before him, the unreal sensation built.
Flickering gold filled the widening gap. Leath found himself staring into wide dark eyes.
The apparition gave a breathy gasp of surprise. A stray draft extinguished both candles, and then he heard a dull thud as the girl lost her grip on the light.
Instinct made him drop the satchel and reach for her. It was as dark as a thief’s pocket, and something told him that she’d use the cover to flee. His hand closed around a slender waist. This was no visitor from the spirit realm. The body he held was undoubtedly human. Warm. Lissome. Taut with outrage or fright. Perhaps both.
“Are you a burglar?” she asked in a low voice, wriggling to escape.
“Isn’t that what I should say?” he asked drily.
“I don’t understand,” she hissed back.
She sounded young. Before the candles went out, he’d merely glimpsed her features. He wondered, although it could have no importance, whether she was pretty. “Damn it, stop squirming.”
Uselessly she pushed him. “Then let me go.”
“No.” He caught her more securely and back-stepped her into the library.
The thick darkness was confoundedly suggestive. He was overwhelmingly conscious of the curve of her waist and the brush of her breasts against his chest. The soft, urgent rasp of her breathing indicated fear, but sounded disconcertingly like sexual excitement. Hell, he could even smell her. Her intentions might be murky, but she smelled of freshly cut meadows and soap. If she was a burglar, she was a dashed clean one.
As he kicked the door shut behind him, she released a soft yelp and made a more vigorous attempt to break free. “I’ll scream.”
“Go ahead.” He dropped his candle to the carpet and reached behind him to turn the key in the lock. When he rode up to the house, he’d been mutton-headed with weariness. This riddle of a female in his library stirred him to full alertness.
“You’ve locked us in,” she said accusingly. “Who are you?”
A snort of laughter escaped him. She was a direct wench. This encounter became more bizarre by the second. Perhaps he’d fallen asleep in the saddle and he was dreaming. If not for the living woman under his hand, he might almost believe it. “More to the point, who are you? And what are you doing in my library after midnight?”
A bristling silence descended. “Your library?”
“Yes.” Unerringly he approached the high windows and flung back the curtains. Moonlight flooded the room. He turned to inspect the woman, but she lurked in the shadows by the door and he discerned little, apart from her slenderness and unnaturally upright posture. Her hands twined nervously at her waist.
She piqued his curiosity. A welcome change from the bitter dissatisfaction that had dogged him this last year. Using the tinderbox, he lit the branch of candles on the table under the window.
Briefly Leath caught his reflection in the glass, outlined in gold light. Large, looming. If he’d made the girl nervous in the dark, she’d be terrified now that she saw him. He didn’t look like a welcoming, easy sort of man. Recent trials had added sternness to a face not blessed with charm at the best of times.
Slowly, he turned. And his heart slammed to stillness.
His mysterious lady was a beauty.
Ignoring the way her lips tightened with resentment, he raised the candles to inspect her. A plain gray dress with white linen collar. Silvery blond hair drawn severely away from her face. No trace of curl or ribbon to soften the austerity. Her face was austere too, as perfectly carved as an angel on a cathedral doorway. High forehead; long slender nose; slanted cheekbones; pointed chin. Assertive brows darker than her hair above widely spaced eyes that regarded him with impressive steadiness. Few men could withstand the Marquess of Leath’s intense stare, yet this girl didn’t even blink.
Her mouth provided the only hint in that pure, calm face that she was more than a beautiful marble statue. Her mouth was…marvelous.
Full. Lush. Sweetly pink.
He was so big that most women seemed tiny in comparison, but the repressed energy radiating from her made her appear taller than average. His eyes lingered on the delightfully rounded bosom beneath her demure bodice.
Her gaze turned frosty and despite the uncertain light, he saw a flush on those high cheekbones. Good God, whoever she was, she had spirit. He reduced most young ladies to blushing silence. This girl—and she was little more, mid-twenties at the most—might blush, but she was far from intimidated.
When she bloody well should be.