“What?” she spluttered. There was the image of his hand on her bottom again. “Absolutely not!”
“Now.” Obviously he would brook no argument. When she didn’t move to lead him toward it, he started on his own. Lorrie was forced to follow on his heels. It was her bedchamber, wasn’t it? She had a right to say who could and could not enter. And finally she resorted to running as his legs were longer than hers.
On the first floor, he opened the drawing room doors, surveyed it, then looked right and left. Finally, his gaze landed on hers—a clear question in his eyes. Which direction to her chamber?
She could refuse to lead him. He might take the left and find her brothers’ chambers first. But eventually he would find hers. There was no stopping him. Lorrie sighed. “This way.”
Her room was close to the servants’ stairs, and when she indicated the closed door, he made a sound of disapproval. Then he gestured for her to open the door. Gritting her teeth, she did so.
Welly didn’t bark or run toward her, so he must be out with a footman. Lorrie wished she had the dog so she would have something to do other than watch the Viking survey her chamber. She hadn’t really paid much attention to it in the past few years. Whereas her room at the duke’s country estate had been refurbished three years before, this one had not. It was done in powder blue and white. The dolls she had played with as a child still sat at a small table adorned with pretty blue-and-white china from her tea set. The lacy curtains, which she did like, had been tied back with large blue sashes, making them look like a child’s flounces.
But whatever the Viking thought of her chamber, he didn’t voice it. Instead, he walked straight to the window and looked out. Whatever he saw there did not please him. He frowned and shook his head slightly. Then he walked the perimeter of the room, seeming to study the walls. “Secret passages?” he asked curtly.
She almost laughed, until she realized he was serious. “No.”
Beside her bed—which looked quite small to her now, especially with Ewan Mostyn next to it—he lay on the rug and peered underneath.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Not surprisingly, he didn’t answer before he stood again. Lorrie prayed she didn’t have dirty chemises and stockings under her bed. How mortifying if he should see her underclothing.
“How did you get out?” he asked.
“I use the door, of course.”
“Your father mentioned an attempted elopement. How did you get out?”
“Oh.” That. She was not inclined to answer that question.
“The door or the window?” he prompted.
“It won’t happen again,” she said, “so there is no need to worry over it. Francis is too much of a gentleman to marry me without my father’s blessing.”
At that, the Viking laughed. It was such an unexpected thing for him to do—she hadn’t even seen him smile—that she gasped in surprise. And then she had to take a very deep breath to calm the fluttering in her belly because, when the Viking smiled, he was easily the most intriguing man she had ever seen. Lorrie had the strangest urge to kiss his lips, which looked soft and quite inviting when not set firmly in a frown.
But the laughter died away and the frown returned. “Door or window?” he asked again.
She didn’t answer, and he took a step toward her. “Door or window?”
“I don’t have to tell you.” She took a step back, though she knew he would not hurt her. Her father would never allow it. But he had a way of looking at her that made her shiver—and not in a good way. Oh, very well. Some of the shivering was the good kind.
He stepped closer, the unanswered question still hanging between them. Lorrie stepped back again and abruptly collided with her bed. She sat down hard, and he towered over her. Since she couldn’t move any further away, she leaned back until she was flat on the bed. The Viking put his hands on either side of her and leaned over her. “One last chance—door or window?”
He smelled surprisingly pleasant for a man she was coming to consider an uncouth ogre. There was nothing civilized in his scent—no bergamot or hint of citrus—but there was a feral quality to it that spoke of wood fires and the Christmas greenery that overflowed at the house during the Yuletide.
“You can torture me all you want,” she whispered, a little unnerved at the breathless quality of her voice. “But I will not tell you.”
He stared at her, their gazes locked in battle. Lorrie could hardly breathe. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and all she could think was that the Viking was close enough to kiss. She could reach up, twine her arms around his neck, and press her lips to his. But her body was rigid with fear, and the Viking made no move to take advantage of his position.
Finally, she closed her eyes, pressing them tightly together. That small capitulation was enough, apparently, because he straightened and moved away from her. When she opened her eyes again, he was walking toward the door.
“I will have words with my father about this!” she called out.
He looked over his shoulder and captured her gaze, held it. “Too late. You are mine.”
*
As Ewan assessed the rest of the town house, he admitted to himself he’d developed a grudging admiration for the lady. It wasn’t the caliber of admiration he had for Neil Wraxall or Lieutenant Colonel Draven. He admired no man as much as he admired those two, but considering Ewan had never before admired any sort of female, the fact that he had even the remotest esteem for a silly chit like Ridlington’s daughter came as something of a surprise.
First of all, she was no great judge of character if she thought Francis Mostyn a desirable mate. Of course, Francis could be charming—very charming—and she was young and naive. One look at her bedchamber told him just what an innocent she was. He might have walked into a nursery, not the chamber of a woman.
That did not explain why he’d suddenly felt uncomfortable when he realized he had her trapped on her bed. He’d merely meant to intimidate her, but when he’d looked down at that sheet of tawny hair spread on the coverlet and the fast rise and fall of her chest, he’d felt more like a lecher.
Even worse, he hadn’t managed to force her to divulge her means of escape for the attempted elopement. Ewan really didn’t need her to confirm what he suspected, though it would have made informing the duke that the tree outside her window had to be cut down a bit easier. As it was, the duke was surprisingly amenable to all of Ewan’s recommendations—from bolting the door to the servants’ stairs to removing the tree limbs that had grown toward Lady Lorraine’s window—and did not even balk when Ewan suggested he be given a room in the town house.