‘I don’t. Attic, cellar, hayloft, garden… Could be anywhere.’ He let the service door swing closed behind him with a bang. Wherever she was she would be frightened – anyone would be with that man in their trail. Theo tried to get the image of that riding crop bent between two powerful fists out of his mind and could not.
Chapter Fifteen
Pitkin was still in his female attire and Mrs Bishop was standing at the kitchen door talking urgently to Jed as Theo burst into the kitchen.
‘Just telling him to make doubly sure those confounded Swinburns really have gone,’ she said, coming back in and shutting the door. ‘You stay as you are, young Robert. Just in case Jed misses them and they come snooping back at the windows.’
His valet’s name was Robert? Theo gave himself a mental kick for not remembering. ‘That was exceedingly well done, Pitkin. We’d have been lost without you. Whose idea was it?’
‘His, my lord,’ Mrs Bishop said when the valet merely went pink.
‘Where is Laura?’
‘Cellar. Someone give me a hand to move this clothes rack, will you?’
Theo realised she had upturned the clothes horse, a wooden drying frame that normally stood on legs like a waist-height folding screen. Now it was propped on end against the wall like a ladder, draped in sheets and towels that completely covered the cellar door. ‘If those Swinburns managed to get past you and demanded to know where the cellar was, I was going to point them to the front one off the hall,’ she said, rescuing the tumbling laundry as Theo yanked the frame away and reached for the key.
‘Laura, it’s me,’ he called ungrammatically as he ran down the steps. The door closed behind him, plunging the cellar into darkness as instinct made him dodge and something whistled past his head to catch him a glancing blow on the shoulder.
&n
bsp; ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Theo, I didn’t have time to stop when I heard your voice.’
He reached out in the blackness, touched a bottle and pulled it. She came with it and he caught her up in his arms. ‘They’ve gone, you’re safe,’ he said urgently, letting the bottle drop. ‘Pitkin was wonderful, Perry was magnificent, although I thought we were going to have a duel on our hands. We spun them a yarn and got all pokered up on our honour and then Jared and Flynn arrived.’ He was talking almost at random, anything to stop the shivering he could feel running through her.
‘Laura? What are you wearing?’ Under his hands was soft, chilly flesh. She was cold, not frightened.
‘My shift,’ she said. ‘I had to give everything else to Pitkin, even my stays so there was something to hold the padding and my shoes, although he could only push his feet halfway into them. But it had to look right.’ She did not try and move out of his arms.
Probably needs the warmth, Theo thought, telling himself not to get his hopes up. What hopes? He rested his cheek against her hair, a small indulgence. ‘We wouldn’t have let them get you.’
‘I know. But it seemed a good idea to try and confuse them rather than let it turn into a fight. That would only make them more suspicious and besides, someone would have got hurt.’
‘Giles Swinburn,’ Theo muttered.
‘Oh, Theo,’ Laura said, half laughing and then, somehow, in the dark, her arms tightened around his neck and he was lifting her against him, seeking her mouth. He stumbled back, his heel caught in something soft and they tumbled onto what felt like a heap of grain sacks, Laura on top.
‘Ough.’
‘I’m sorry, that was my elbow.’
‘I know. That was my stomach.’ Very smooth, Theo. Very dashing. Fall over onto a pile of sacks, get an elbow in the gut… ‘Laura – ’ This time he had no trouble finding her mouth, or perhaps she had found his. It did not matter, all that mattered was the heat and the taste of her and her tongue tangling with his and the feel of her under his hands, chilly skin, deeper warmth, passionate woman.
My woman, something deep and dark and primal inside him said. Mine. He rolled and she was under him, then she shifted and he fought to find some kind of control to pull away, only to realise that all she was doing was wriggling so they fitted together better.
He had no experience with virgins beyond flirtatious kisses with a few fast young ladies on balconies or in hidden corners at balls, but he must be doing something right as far as this one was concerned, he realised hazily. Laura’s hands were pushing under his coat, finding the waistband of his breeches and she was making soft noises that were the most erotic thing he had ever heard.
This had to stop. There was no way he was making love to her on the floor of a filthy cellar, but just a few seconds more…
The door at the head of the steps banged open, spilling a shaft of light across the floor, mercifully just missing their feet.
‘Theo? Everything all right?’
He got to his feet, yanked his coat straight. ‘Yes. Laura decided I was a Swinburn and took a swing at me in the dark with a bottle – ’
‘My best port!’ Perry leapt down the stairs and scooped up the bottle that lay on the floor with all the passion of a mother whose baby has been dropped.
‘Mrs Bishop! Kindly pass down a blanket or something for Miss Darke, she is getting chilled. Turn your back, Perry, Laura had to disrobe to give her clothing to Pitkin.’ He risked a glance at her but she had risen to her feet, draped herself in two hessian sacks and moved into the shadows at the foot of the steps. He would have to speak to her as soon as possible. As soon as they were alone. Reassure her that he had every intention of doing to right thing. Somehow. It seemed impossible, but he had to find a way. But he wished she would look at him…