Garrick closed the door against the cool air of the night and took a moment to compose himself. So many emotions were roiling through him at once that his mind was nothing more than a thick, churning stew of anger, lust, confusion, and fear. He had been about to lose himself with Pen, it was true. The timing of the interruption could not have been better.
Or, it could have been planned.
Either way, there was no denying that Aidan had been missing these last few days. If he had indeed been taken against his will and was being held somewhere, Garrick would stop at nothing to rescue his brother and see him safely returned. And if Miss Penelope Sutton had anything to do with what had befallen Aidan, vengeance would be his.
She would be the one paying.
He turned and stalked back to the drawing room, this time bringing the brace of candles with him. Light flickered over the chamber, chasing the shadows which had drenched it and rendered it so intimate previously. It was just as he remembered, the furniture having been chosen and artfully arranged by his former mistress. And in the midst of it all stood Pen Sutton, as out of place as a cat floating in the River Thames.
She did not belong here. But damn it, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever beheld, even dressed as she was, in the poorest attempt at mimicking a gentleman he had ever beheld.
Those hips.
Christ.
Cease thinking of her hips, you daft fool.And her lips for that matter. And how wet she had been.
“What is in your hand?” she asked, her gaze dropping to his fist, which was still clenched around the unwanted communication.
“A missive from someone who has apparently apprehended my brother and is demanding one thousand pounds in return for him,” he ground out, clinging to his suspicion and his outrage. Those were far safer than the longing and desire, after all. He tried to summon an image of Lady Hester to his mind and failed dismally. “Tell me, Miss Sutton, what do you have to do with this latest farce?”
Her eyes were wide. “Someone has Aidan?”
“Lord Aidan,” he corrected, because he still disliked the informal nature with which she referred to his brother.
He felt ridiculously possessive when it came to this woman. Obviously, he was going to have to do something to rectify this terrible state of affairs.
“As if his title matters at a time like this,” she said, waving a dismissive hand in the air as if to suggest he were the one at fault.
“It matters.” He cleared his throat, thoroughly irritated with her and still battling a most inconvenient surge of attraction brought about by the swaying of her breasts beneath that cursed shirt. Why had she not bound herself again? Her nipples were erect, prodding the thin cambric. “But do cease your attempts at distraction. They ill become you. I shall ask you again, and if you do not answer me, I must warn you I’ll not be nearly as polite the next time I ask. What do you know of this, madam?”
Her brows arched, and she crossed her arms over her chest in a defensive posture, mercifully hiding her breasts from his avid gaze. “I know nothing of it, Lord Lordly. Why should I?”
“Why should you not?” he countered. “You have spent an inordinate amount of time with Lord Aidan recently. You orchestrated a fictional betrothal with him, one which your conscience apparently finally forced you to admit was a falsehood, and when one Weir brother was not available, you simply seduced another.”
The moment the last accusation left him, Garrick wished he could have recalled it. He took no pleasure in the way she flinched as if he had struck her. But then, her shoulders went back and her chin tipped up, and with her hair flowing down her back, she resembled nothing so much as an avenging goddess of war.
An enraged one.
“Is that what you truly believe, my lord?” she demanded, ice in her voice.
Yes, it was. Was it not?
He searched himself for the answer and realized it was not one he wished to know.
He sighed. “Do you or do you not have any knowledge of where my brother has gone or has been taken?”
She had claimed ignorance before, but he scarcely knew what to believe or think at this juncture. He had been torn apart with lust for a woman he had previously reviled, and now his brother was potentially being held captive by mercenaries who may or may not have been hired at her whim.
“As I have already told you on numerous occasions, I have no notion of where he has gone. If what you say is true and he has been taken captive, however, lingering here to pay me further insults will not do him one whit of good.” Her gaze was withering, her tone possessing the stinging bite of a cracking whip.
Blast her, but she was not wrong.
“You are correct that lingering here will not aid my brother,” he said, agreeing with her as a plan took shape in his mind. “That is why the carriage is being brought around as we speak.”
She nodded. “For once, you are exhibiting common sense. I commend you, my lord. I’ll just be dressing, and then I will show myself out and hire a hack home.”
The hell she would.
“You will be accompanying me, my dear,” he informed her before turning his attention to the room itself.
His damned cravat and waistcoat were somewhere within, and he had no wish to gad about without having first donned them. Never let it be said that the exalted Viscount Lindsey had been in a state of unfashionable disarray. He would find the deuced cravat and waistcoat if it proved the death of him.
“I wouldn’t accompany you to heaven if you claimed to be the Lord himself,” she told him stubbornly, her slim arms still crossed in a defiant pose.
He ought to have been relieved at the manner in which she kept him from ogling her breasts. But the truth was, he was every bit the raging reprobate he had always accused Aidan of being. The need to see, touch, and taste her again was as overwhelming as the worry he felt for his brother and whatever coil Aidan had landed himself in.
“You have not got a choice in the matter,” he informed the arrogant Miss Sutton. “You will go where I say you go.”
Her hazel eyes narrowed. “You do not tell me what to do, Lord Lordly. I do what I want, when I want to do it, and not because any man tells me. Not even a lofty viscount such as yournabs.”
Yournabs.
At times, it was appallingly easy—likely because she had been somehow tutored in the art of masking her dreadful accent—to forget she was an East End lady. But here was an alarming reminder of who he was lusting after. He ought to be appalled with himself in more ways than he dared to count. But that did not stop him from wanting her more than he desired to take his next breath. Even whilst Aidan was missing and possibly in the clutches of some villainous madmen. Even whilst Garrick suspected her of being a part of the plot, or perhaps worse.
“You are going to help me find my brother and bring him home,” he informed her. “I do not believe you when you claim you aren’t involved. There are far too many coincidences for me to believe otherwise. A fortune hunter such as yourself would not stop at five hundred pounds, would she? Not when she could have one thousand instead, and perhaps even the heir instead of the spare. Is that why you have been throwing yourself into my arms at every possible opportunity?”
It would certainly make sense. But a part of him loathed the notion of her wanting him for any reason other than the same mad desire he felt for her.
“Throwing myself into your arms?” she repeated, her tone indignant. “Of all the conceited, ridiculous, pompous, arrogant, arsehole remarks to have emerged from your smug lordly lips, surely that statement is the worst. Certainly, it is the most insulting.”