in her stomach and threatened to turn her physically sick, but she braved his flinty gaze again despite it, if only because she would not be stared at as if she was something unsavoury on his boots.
‘Do you make a habit of relying on second-hand judgements, my lord?’
‘No, I rely on experience,’ he told her with an impassive stare she flinched away from understanding.
Yet even while he was condemning her, his long fingers soothed her tense wrist and she was shaken by a tremor of forbidden excitement very different from the effect he was striving for. The memory of that kiss was not just in her reeling mind, it was imprinted on her body, spinning between one drunken sense and the next.
‘Behave yourself and you can have your week, my dear,’ he went on, ‘you can hardly wreak your usual havoc in so short a time.’
‘As Grandfather’s will insisted I was to be given houseroom before his estate was finally distributed, you must offer me welcome, my lord, and I am certainly not your dear.’
‘I always have a choice, madam.’
‘Choose to let me go and you might get your dinner on time, then.’
He dropped her hand with unflattering haste and thrust his own into his coat pocket as if she had scalded him, and she saw some of the vulnerability and driven passion he had shown in that kiss.
‘Go on, then,’ he rasped, almost as if he was in pain. ‘I dare say you plan your every entrance you make for maximum effect.’
‘I long ago made it a rule never to be predictable. A trait you might do well to mimic, my lord, if you plan to make a success of your new life.’
‘Nothing you do could surprise me, madam,’ he warned with a smile that did not reach his eyes.
Then he bowed a brief and not particularly polite farewell, before picking up one of the ledgers stacked on the nearby desk as if he had dismissed her from his thoughts.
Telling herself she was glad to forsake the company of so boorish and prejudiced a man, Miranda left the room without another word. If so small a piece of self-restraint was all it took to assure him of his own omnipotence, he was a man of straw after all. Outside the fine mahogany doors she blinked determinedly a few times, telling herself that the threat of tears stinging her eyes was purely the product of tiredness and ill temper. She would not let him spoil this brief homecoming, and even Christopher Alstone could not police her thoughts.
Chapter Three
Kit waited a few moments to make sure she had really gone before he threw down the ledger he had been staring at as if it was written in hieroglyphs and poured himself a brandy to brood over. He might have given vent to a grim laugh if he could indeed read Miranda’s mind. After all, he couldn’t govern his own dreams, let alone her thoughts. The last half-hour had proved that, when it came to Miranda Alstone, he had no sense at all.
Restless night-visions of her had haunted him for five long years, even when he managed to dismiss her from his waking thoughts. Indeed, they had an annoying habit of plaguing him with ridiculous fantasies about a woman he had encountered once and never managed to forget, try as he might. Well, now he had made bad worse, and how could he finally persuade her to take him to her bed and slake this ridiculous, ill-begotten, urgent need of her when she was a guest under his new roof?
The knowledge that she was totally oblivious to their one fateful meeting all those years ago made him want to throw something to vent his volcanic fury, lest it boil out at the most inappropriate moment and scald those who didn’t deserve it. He made himself lean back in his chair and reassemble the cool self-command he had learnt so painfully. Let one passion in and another might ruin all, he assured himself, and that kiss had nearly changed everything.
Yet he couldn’t help wondering how the Honourable Mrs Braxton would react if he stormed up to her room right now and took what should have been his five years ago. He smiled wryly as he anticipated the spirited refusal such tactics would meet with. A base part of him might be in thrall to the lovely witch, but wasn’t that very spirit the reason he wanted her so stubbornly? He had never forced a woman in his life and didn’t intend to start now, so he sat in the chair by the fire to remember her, standing proud and defiant in that stinking tavern on Bristol docks as if it was yesterday.
Five years ago Kit Stone had let his hair grow and forgot to shave now and again as he adopted the language and habits of the street. A man of his upbringing developed many unfair advantages over his competitors. Maybe he should be thankful for the years when he had to scavenge, beg and steal to feed and clothe himself and his sisters. Or maybe he should just carry on hating his noble relatives for leaving them all to go to the devil, along with the drunken gambler who had fathered them.
Thanks to Bevis Alstone’s decline and fall, it didn’t take long for his son to establish himself as a shady dealer in whatever came his way, once he had traced the two rogues who had corrupted or murdered his crew and stolen his cargo. After a day spent finagling customers and suppliers out of as much as he could get, he usually spent the evening drinking and dicing in one of the lowest dives on the docks while watching and waiting. At least the man he had drunk with that night had almost played fair, which was all a half-honest man could ask after all.
‘Gen’lmen…’ a voice rose over the hubbub in the stinking tavern ‘…got a proposition for you.’
Seeing who was making it, the customers went back to gaming, drinking and whoring with a contemptuous shrug and a snarled curse or two. Kit’s gaze lingered thoughtfully on the ravaged figure at the door that must lead upstairs. The man’s face, under that unkempt golden beard, must have been handsome before drink and dissipation put their stamp on him, and his voice had the polished edge of a gentleman, even if the rest of him fell well short of the mark. A man with nothing to lose, he deduced, and wondered if he was on to a lead after all.
‘Last time ’e wanted to ’awk a goldmine,’ his fellow gambler told Kit with a dismissive shrug. ‘Told ’im to take it up to Clifton where there’s flats a-plenty to catch.’
Kit’s well-honed instincts told him there was something odd about that particular drunkard. Business and pleasure carried on around him, but when the sot reappeared, the woman at his side took Kit’s breath away, and stopped the clamour in the tavern between one second and the next.
Smoky lamplight highlighted a heavy mass of silky hair that was neither gold, brown nor red, but a rich mix of all three as it lay loose on her shoulders and framed a face made for a far better setting—Olympus, perhaps? Kit blinked and tried to believe rum and lust were riding him, but when he opened his eyes the goddess was still there, looking back at him as eagerly as he was staring at her.
He might have been flattered, if not for something strange in that lapis-lazuli gaze of hers that part of him wanted to lose himself in and not count the cost. They would be bewitching he decided, even if the rest of her didn’t match their vivid glory. Yet half-closed eyelids and velvety black pupils woke him from a daydream, and told him she didn’t see him for the narcotic ruling her. Apparently his Venus of the dockyards was far from untouched by the corruption around her after all.
‘Drugged to stop ’er runnin’, poor soul,’ the barmaid murmured, as she placed another glass of rum on the table beside him.
Did she think he’d pay well for a harlot fresh to her trade and thus keep the irascible landlady happy for once? Or was that simple pity for whatever indignity his goddess was about to suffer? He’d been a cynic practically
