Her whisper floated out through the room.
He didn’t immediately answer; instead, she heard a thud.
Realized with a sudden clenching of nerves that he’d pulled off one shoe.
He shifted and reached for the other. “You made me promise to come and tell you the instant I learned anything significant.”
Those had been her exact words. She shifted, wondering…“Yes? So what—” A sudden thought took precedence over everything else. She stared at the back of his head. “How did you get in?”
His second shoe hit the floor. “I slipped the lock on the drawing-room window. But you needn’t worry.” He stood and faced the bed. “I locked it again.”
That wasn’t what was worrying her.
Eyes widening, mouth drying, she watched as he shrugged out of his coat, glanced around, then flung it over her dressing table stool. Then his fingers rose to his cravat, smoothly tugging the ends free.
“Ah…” Good heavens! S
he had to…had to…she swallowed. “Did you learn something from your friend?”
She had to distract him.
“From Jack?” His tone was flat, his accents clipped. “Yes. As it happened, I learned quite a lot.”
He had the cravat undone; dragging it free, he flung it on his coat, then his fingers went to the buttons of his shirt.
It was getting harder and harder to think, to swallow, even to breathe. Had the moment really come? Just like that, without warning?
Panic inched higher and higher.
She clutched the edge of the coverlet. “So…what did you learn?” She tried to recall what had passed between them earlier—had she inadvertently issued some sexual invitation?
“Jack investigated Ruskin’s background. In Bledington.” Tony followed the line of buttons down, then glanced at her, yanked the tails from his waistband and stripped off the shirt. His eyes had adjusted; he could see how wide hers were. Wondered, cynically, intently, just how far she’d go before she broke.
He tossed the shirt aside, set his hands to his waistband, his fingers on the buttons of the flap. “Ruskin’s estate amounts to little more than a few fields—he inherited his liking for gambling from his father. The income he enjoyed could not in any way derive from his ancestral acres.” He slipped the buttons free. “If anything, the upkeep of the house in which his mother and sister live was a drain on his purse.”
She didn’t shift, made absolutely no sound as he removed his trousers and sent them to join the rest of his clothes. His determination hardened; it was an effort to keep his emotions—the mix of incredulity, anger, and hurt, and so much more he didn’t want to examine—from his face.
Clothed only in shadows, he turned to the bed. Silent-footed, he prowled down its side; it was a large, canopied affair. He was aroused but, apparently stunned, she was following his face; she’d yet to look down.
She moistened her already parted lips. “Ah…so… what does that…” She made a valiant and quite visible attempt to focus her mind. “I mean, why is that important?”
“It’s not.” He heard the harshness in his tone. Watching her closely, primed to smother a shriek, he reached for the covers. “But there were other facts Jack discovered that were far more startling.”
Her knuckles turned white as he grasped the covers, but when, jaw setting, he lifted them, her grip eased; the silky quilt slid through her fingers as he raised the sheets.
“Oh. I see…”
She was looking straight at him, but he would have sworn she wasn’t seeing him. Her tone seemed distant, as if she was thinking of other things.
His temper, held in tight check until then, flared. He slid onto the bed, dropped the covers, and turned to her.
His plan—what plan he had—was to force her into admitting the truth, the truth Jack had uncovered. The truth she’d so artfully kept from him, her protector and would-be husband. He’d intended to shock her, to use that truth itself to chastise her, to embarrass her into admitting all; he’d imagined she’d succumb to virginal fluster long before now.
Still convinced she would, that at any second she’d panic, call a halt, and admit all, he reached for her. Closing his hands about her slender shoulders, feeling the fine silk of her nightgown slide over the soft skin beneath, he drew her to him.
Slowly, steadily, totally deliberately.
He looked into her face.