His estate.
He descended the wide marble stairs to the ballroom floor, where a crush of bodies writhed in time to the orchestra situated behind a wall of greenery at the far end of the room. The heat of the revelers overwhelmed him as he made his way through the throngs, pressing against him, pulsing with laughter and sighs, hands reaching for him, touching, grasping. Wide smiles and unintelligible words beckoned him deeper into the mass of people—welcoming him into its center.
Home.
There was a glass in his hand; he lifted it to his lips, the cool stream of champagne quenching the thirst he hadn’t noticed before, but was now nearly unbearable. He lowered the glass, letting it fall into nothingness as a beautiful woman turned and stepped into his arms.
“Your Grace.” The title echoed through him, coming on a wave of pleasure.
They danced.
The steps came from distant memory, a slow, spinning eternity of long-forgotten skill. The woman in his arms was all warmth, tall enough to make him a proper match, and curved enough to fit his long arms.
The music swelled, and still they danced, turning again and again, the sea of faces in the ballroom fading into blackness—the walls of the room falling away as he was distracted by a sudden, heavy weight on his sleeve. He turned his attention to his forearm, wrapped in black wool, pristine but for a sixpence-sized white spot.
Wax, fallen from the chandeliers overhead.
As he watched, the spot liquefied, spreading across his coat sleeve in a thread of molten honey. The woman in his arms reached for the liquid—her long, delicate fingers stroking along the fabric, her touch spreading fire as it crept toward the spot, hot wax coating her fingertips before she turned them up to his gaze.
She had beautiful hands.
Beautiful skin.
She wore no gloves.
He followed the line of her long arm from wrist to shoulder, taking in her piecemeal perfection—the curves and valleys of her collarbone; the long rise of her neck; her angled jaw; her wide, welcoming mouth; long, equine nose; and eyes like none he’d ever seen. One blue, one green.
Her lips curved around the words he’d craved and feared for so long. “Your Grace.”
And, like that, she was in focus.
Mara Lowe.
He woke on the floor of his library, coming to his feet in a mad rush, a foul curse echoing in the blue fog of breaking dawn.
A green and black tartan fell to his feet as he rose, and the fact that the woman had covered him with a blanket after drugging him in the dead of night was no kind of comfort. He imagined her standing over him at his most vulnerable moment, and wanted to roar his anger.
She had drugged him and left.
Again.
On the heels of that thought came another.
Dear God. She was alive.
He hadn’t killed her.
Relief burst full and high in his lungs, warring with frustration and ire.
He wasn’t a killer.
He ran one hand down his face to ease the tightness of the emotion, and noticed that she had not simply left him.
She’d also left a note, scrawled across yesterday’s news, and pinned to his chest with a simple hairpin, as though he were a package to be delivered by post.
He tore the missive from its mooring, knowing that whatever she had to say would do little to assuage his anger.
I had hoped it would not come to this, but I will not be intimidated, and I will not be strong-armed.
He resisted the urge to crumple the note and throw it into the fire. She thought she was the one being strong-armed? When it was he who had been knocked out on the floor of his own study?
The offer is a trade, and nothing less.
When you are in a negotiating frame of mind, I welcome your visit for a discussion of equals.
That would be impossible. He was not nearly mad enough to be her equal.
You will find me at No. 9 Cursitor Street.
She’d left her address. Mistake. She should have run. Not that he wouldn’t have caught her; he would have spent the rest of his life chasing her if she’d run.
He deserved his retribution, after all. And she would give it to him.
Who was this stupid, brave woman?
Mara Lowe. Alive. Found.
Strong as steel.
The thought came, another fast on its heels, and he reached inside his boot, knowing what he would find.
The harpy had stolen her knife.
Within the hour, he was washed and on his way to No. 9 Cursitor Street, uncertain of what to expect. It was possible the woman had run, after all, and as he made his way deeper and deeper into the streets of Holborn, he wondered if she had done just that and left him with directions to her personal cutthroats to finish the job she’d begun the prior evening.