She blinked, but didn’t move.
He reached for her elbow. She permitted him to take it, let him turn her unresisting, and steer her back toward the terrace. She moved slowly, clearly still in shock. He glanced at her pale face, but the shadows revealed little. “Did Ruskin have a wife, do you know?”
She started; he felt the jerk through his hold on her arm. From beneath her lashes, she cast him a shocked glance. “No.” Her voice was tight, strained; she looked ahead. “No wife.”
If anything, she’d paled even more. He prayed she wouldn’t swoon, at least not before he got her inside. Appearing at his godmother’s soirée via the terrace doors with a lady senseless in his arms would create a stir even more intense than murder.
She started shaking as they went up the steps, but she clung to her composure with a grim determination he was experienced enough to admire.
The terrace doors were ajar; they walked into the drawing room without attracting any particular attention. Finally in good light, he looked down at her, studied her features, the straight, finely chiseled nose, lips a trifle too wide, yet full, lush and tempting. She was above average in height, her dark hair piled high in gleaming coils exposing the delicate curve of her nape and the fine bones of her shoulders.
Instinct quivered; deep within him, primitive emotion stirred. Sexual attraction was only part of it; again, the urge to draw her close, to keep her close, welled.
She looked up, met his gaze. Her eyes were more green than hazel, large and well set under arched brows; they were presently wide, their expression dazed, almost haunted.
Fortunately, she seemed in no danger of succumbing to the vapors. Spying a chair along the wall, he guided her to it; she sank down with relief. “I must speak with Lady Amery’s butler. If you’ll remain here, I’ll send a footman with a glass of water.”
Alicia lifted her eyes to his face. To his velvet black eyes, to the concern and the focus she sensed behind his expression, behind the masklike, chiseled, haughtily angular planes. His was the most strikingly attractive masculine face she’d ever seen; he was the most startlingly attractive man she’d ever met, elegant, graceful, and strong. It was his strength she was most aware of; when he’d taken her arm and walked beside her, her senses had drunk it in.
Looking up at him, into his eyes, she drew on that strength again, and felt the horror they’d left outside recede even further. The reality around them came into sharper focus; a glass of water, a moment to compose herself, and she’d manage. “If you would… thank you.”
That “thank-you” was for far more than the glass of water.
He bowed, then turned and headed across the room.
Suppressing an inner wrench, not just reluctance but real resistance to leaving her, Tony found a footman and dispatched him to revive her, then, ignoring the many who tried to catch his eye, he found Clusters, the Amerys’ butler, and pulled him into the library to explain the situation and give the necessary orders.
He’d been visiting Amery House since he’d been six months old; the staff knew him well. They acted on his orders, summoning his lordship from the cardroom and her ladyship from the drawing room, and sending a footman running for the Watch.
He wasn’t entirely surprised by the ensuing circus; his godmother was French, after all, and in this instance she was ably supported by the Watch captain, a supercilious sort who saw difficulties where none existed. Having taken the man’s measure with one glance, Tony omitted mentioning the lady’s presence. There was, in his view, no reason to expose her to further and unnecessary trauma; given the dead man’s size and the way she’d held the dagger, it was difficult if not impossible to convincingly cast her as the killer.
The man he’d seen leaving the grounds via the garden gate was much more likely to have done the deed.
Besides, he didn’t know the lady’s name.
That thought was uppermost in his mind when, finally free of the responsibility of finding a murdered man, he returned to the drawing room and discovered her gone. She wasn’t where he’d left her; he scouted the rooms, but she was no longer among the guests.
The crowd had thinned appreciably. No doubt she’d been with others, perhaps a husband, and they’d had to leave….
The possibility put a rein on his thoughts, dampened his enthusiasm. Extricating himself from the coils of a particularly tenacious matron with two daughters to marry off, he stepped into the hall and headed for the front door.
On the front steps, he paused and drew in a deep breath. The night was crisp; a sharp frost hung in the air.
His mind remained full of the lady.
He was conscious of a certain disappointment. He hadn’t expected her gratitude, yet he wouldn’t have minded a chance to look into those wide green eyes again, to have them focus on him when they weren’t glazed with shock.
To look deep and see if she, too, had felt that stirring, that quickening in the blood, the first flicker of heat.
In the distance a bell tolled the hour. Drawing in another breath, he went down the steps and headed home.
Home was a quiet, silent place, a huge old house with only him in it. Along with his staff, who were usually zealous in preserving him from all undue aggravation.
It was therefore a rude shock to be shaken awake by his father’s valet, whom he’d inherited along with the title, and informed that there was a gentleman downstairs wishful of speaking with him even though it was only nine o’clock.
When asked to state his business, the gentleman had replied that his name was Dalziel, and their master would assuredly see him.
Accepting that no one in his right mind would claim to be Dalziel if they weren’t, Tony grumbled mightily but consented to rise and get dressed.