out, as if he knew exactly what they’d been doing, but surely even her powerful brother couldn’t see through walls?
‘Nothing,’ she said impatiently. ‘And what are you doing here?’ she asked, standing away from him to examine his deeply shadowed face.
‘I asked first,’ he said silkily, his eyes not moving from Hugh and she wondered if these two warriors were about to try to kill each other over her.
‘And you’re clearly as annoying as ever,’ she sparked back, determined not to be sidelined and silent while they decided her future between them.
‘Clearly,’ he agreed with that flinty lack of temper she knew from experience was his most effective weapon in an argument. ‘An answer, if you please?’ he demanded starkly and Hugh Darke moved Louisa aside to confront her brother.
‘I was trying to persuade her to marry me, until you interrupted us,’ he said, as arrogantly challenging as if he’d just thrown down a knightly gauntlet and fully expected to have it thrown back in his face.
‘Oh, good,’ Kit said mildly and Louisa felt her rage soar almost out of control at the exact moment his seemed to deflate.
‘Good? Do you really want this idiot to marry me?’ she raged.
‘Why not? Lots of other idiots have asked you to do so and they only mildly annoyed you. At least this one seems to have found a way of holding your full attention while he puts the question, even if I don’t like anything else about him being shut in here alone with my little sister.’
Drat him, but why did her brother have to be so uncannily perceptive? Because he was Kit Stone, she supposed: precociously successful, driven and even more stubborn than she was.
‘Speaking as the idiot in question, I don’t care about your ruffled pride and your reputation for icy detachment, Miss Alstone. I just want you to agree to marry me, so your brother doesn’t have to beat me to a bloody pulp and we can all go home, before eating our dinner and getting on with our interrupted lives with no more of your infernal melodramas,’ Hugh told her impatiently.
‘Which is exactly why we should not marry, since your dinner clearly matters to you a lot more than I do,’ she said, rounding on him now that Kit seemed more an amused bystander than her avenging guardian.
If she let herself think about the volumes that detachment spoke about her brother’s belief in Captain Darke’s bone-deep sense of honour, she might start respecting the devilish rogue herself and she knew precisely where that would get her—marched up the aisle before she came back to her right senses again.
‘On the contrary, I’m exactly the right husband to deal with your wrongheaded ideas and headstrong ways. Any other man would be driven demented by your starts inside a sennight.’
‘He could be right,’ Kit observed traitorously.
‘And I’ll be flying to the moon any moment now,’ she scorned, but the idea of arguing with Hugh Darke for the rest of their born days suddenly seemed a little bit too promising.
‘I’ll take you there, Eloise,’ he whispered in her ear and she wondered how he’d managed to creep so close behind her that she was all but in his arms once more, and in front of her brother as well.
She shuddered with what she told herself was revulsion, but he’d reminded her how it felt to soar in his arms, to strive for the very moon and stars, and she sighed in besotted anticipation of doing it all again.
‘Not until you’ve put a wedding ring on her finger, you won’t,’ Kit warned as he eyed them very suspiciously once more. ‘And what’s all this Eloise business?’
‘You really don’t want to know,’ Hugh said with a return to his austerely apart, piratical-captain look as he withdrew his warmth and strength from her.
Louisa shivered at no longer feeling him next to her—how could she know if her scent and sound and touch were as deeply imprinted on his senses as his were on hers? He was so detached all of a sudden it was as if she’d dreamt that feverish interlude in his arms when neither of them seemed able to hold anything back from the other. She was almost glad when Kit decided this was neither the time nor the place for such an important discussion and put aside that comment to pick over later and eyed her pale face with brotherly concern.
‘I probably don’t either, but let’s get Louisa out of here. We can deal with Eloise and the details of your wedding in the morning.’
‘No, I can’t go home with you, I need to get away,’ Louisa argued, an illogical sense that she needed to escape nagging at her even now she had two powerful protectors instead of just the one.
‘Why?’ her brother asked.
‘Because Uncle William has been scheming to marry me off to a worm of a man, who probably offered to share my dowry with him, and both of them will be hot on my trail by now.’
‘He’ll answer to me for it, then, but why would that mean we can’t go home?’
‘The insect abducted me and kept me in his bedchamber for a night and a day and made sure my uncle and aunt saw me there, so they could exclaim loudly about my wickedness and their scandalised feelings. They forbade me their roof, unless I instantly married the repulsive toad, which I refused to do needless to say.’
‘That need not worry you, Miss Alstone. He won’t pollute the world for very much longer,’ Hugh Darke gritted between his strong white teeth and, given the fierce look in his eyes, she believed him.
‘How would your killing him help me? You would have to flee the country and I would still be the centre of a fine scandal, all the more so if I was stupid enough to have married you in the meantime. It would seem as if I ran off with you after growing bored with him.’
‘She’s right, Hugh,’ Kit intervened as Hugh Darke rounded on her with his best master-of-all-I-survey glare. ‘You need to leave the worm to me,’ Kit added, offering that caveat to soothe the devil of temper so very evident in Hugh’s furious gaze and stirring hers instead.
‘No, he’ll only dirty your hands,’ Hugh gritted furiously, quite lost to reason, even if her brother only had more masculine folly to offer. ‘What’s his name, this insect-worm?’ he asked fiercely.
‘Do you think I’m fool enough to tell you that, when you will only add to the scandal already surrounding me by calling him out?’
His hands closed about her arms, as if he wanted to shake some sense into her and she condemned her senses for leaping to attention, even at his angry touch through her second-hand jacket and gown. For a betraying moment she swayed towards him, as if her body and her senses were begging for a kiss despite her growing fury.
‘He must not get away with it, Louisa, I can’t let him,’ he gritted as if her lost reputation mattered to him more than it ever could to her. As surely as she knew Charlton would walk away if she was teetering on the edge of a cliff, she knew this man would plunge off it himself, if that was what it took to save her.
‘Don’t you think me capable of making him sorry he was even born, then, Hugo?’ Kit said almost gently.
‘I do, but it should be my job. No, make that my pleasure.’
‘It can’t
