quite what to do with her.
Hugh jerked away from her, seeming horrified that he’d ever laid hands on her in the first place and watched those very hands with revulsion, like a very masculine Lady Macbeth, after she’d driven herself mad with murder and ambition and couldn’t wash the imaginary blood off them.
‘I know, so how can I wed your sister? I forgot what I am in the heat of the moment,’ he whispered and it was as if he and Kit were talking about something deeply important she wasn’t going to be told.
‘Whilst I suspect I don’t want to know about the heat of that particular moment, we both know there’s nothing to stop you marrying. The rub will come if you fail to make my sister happy afterwards and I’m forced to kill you,’ Kit told him implacably, and any illusion she’d suffered that he was resigned to what had taken place between herself and Hugh tonight melted away like mist in the July sun.
‘That would go quite badly with me, either way,’ she muttered mutinously.
‘Not as badly as you knowing the truth about me would,’ Hugh said, looking glum about her predicted unhappiness and softening her heart, if he did but know it.
‘I told you my tale,’ she challenged him, and if Kit chose to think it was the one about her abduction and lost reputation, then so be it.
‘And you think mine is that simple—just a few words and a rueful smile at how easy that was to get out of the way and go on?’
‘As mine was?’ she demanded, furious with him for brushing aside her fears and peculiarities as if they didn’t matter.
‘I didn’t mean …’ he blundered on.
‘Never mind what you meant, never mind your secrets. I haven’t got all night to spare for arguing with you. I’m tired and hungry and downright weary of rescuing ungrateful, lying, mistrustful idiots from their enemies. If neither of you intends to take me somewhere safe and warm and feed me, pray give me a hand up on to that brig of yours, brother mine, and I’ll get the master to drop me off at the nearest port downriver where I can buy myself a bedchamber for the night and a decent meal.’
‘Not in a hundred years, sister dear, and he’s long gone. I thought half of London must know he was casting off and none too happy to be going in the middle of the night, given the amount of noise he made about it.’
‘I didn’t hear him,’ she said stiffly and actually caught herself out in a flounce as she spun round to glare at her would-be bridegroom and dare him to comment.
‘Neither did I,’ he admitted meekly.
‘Lovebirds,’ Kit added sarcastically and Louisa wondered if she ought to kick one of them, even if it was just because they were men and couldn’t help being infuriating any more than they could voluntarily stop breathing.
‘What are we going to do, then?’ she demanded.
‘Go home,’ Kit told her implacably and, since there was nowhere she’d rather be, she allowed him to bustle her out of the warehouse and along narrow streets and alleys he knew even better than she did in the dark, then out on to wider and marginally more respectable streets where he hailed a cab, then sat back to watch the night-time streets roll past as if they fascinated him.
‘Where have you been, then?’ Louisa finally asked her brother, remembering she ought to be furious with him for disappearing as he had.
‘Here and there,’ he told her shortly.
Simmering with temper because it was better than letting her tiredness and uncertainty take over, she put her mind to Hugh Darke’s many mysteries as the little house in Chelsea and a degree of physical comfort beckoned at last.
‘Just as well you didn’t get back last night,’ she muttered as they arrived and her brother helped her down while Hugh paid the jarvey.
‘I’m not going to ask why not until I’ve had my dinner and a soothing shot of brandy,’ he said as he ushered her up the steps and rapped sharply on the door.
‘Hah! That’s a lot less likely than you think,’ she observed with a sidelong glance at Hugh that made Kit frown as Coste cautiously opened the door.
‘Let us in, you idiot,’ Kit ordered sharply.
‘Didn’t know it was you, now, did I?’ Coste mumbled as he stood back to do so.
‘You would have done if you actually made use of the Judas hole I had put in for once,’ his employer informed him as he used Coste’s candle to light those in the sconces round the cosy dining parlour they had got nowhere near last night. ‘Is there anything edible in the house?’ he demanded and put a taper to the fire laid ready in the hearth for good measure.
‘Aye, sir. Miss Louisa gave me money for food and a couple of cleaning women. We’ve a good pork pie and a ham and all sorts of fancy bits of this and that. There’s treacle tart, apple pie and gingerbread, too, but not so much of the treacle tart as there might be,’ Coste said with a reminiscent grin.
‘And you two somehow managed until now without my housekeeper and a kitchenmaid?’ Kit asked mildly enough.
‘Well, I was going to tell you about that, Captain …’ Coste trailed off, casting a look at Hugh that begged him to take over explaining their misconduct.
‘We two bachelors proved too rowdy to satisfy Mrs Calhoun’s strict standards of behaviour and she took herself and her daughter off before there was any gossip about them being here with two rowdy bachelors like us,’ he obligingly admitted, nodding at Coste to make himself scarce while he still could.
‘I warrant she did,’ Kit replied grimly. ‘Don’t forget to bring that pie and a pint of porter along with tea for Miss Louisa,’ he urged his retreating manservant and watched Hugh with cold eyes. ‘I trust my sister was not caught up in that rowdiness,’ he added with such mild iciness that even Louisa shivered in her seat by the fire.
Hugh shifted in his chair as Louisa carefully stared into the flames and Kit sighed rather heavily. ‘Later,’ he said portentously and Louisa felt as if the two men were once more having a silent but fierce conversation she didn’t understand, and that they had no intention of explaining any of it to her.
Hugh Darke wasn’t in the least bit overshadowed by her powerful brother. Despite her captain’s apparently subservient role in Kit and Ben’s empire, he acted as Kit’s equal and her suspicions about his true place in the world crept back and left her wondering why he took orders from even so compelling, and successful, a pair as her brother and Ben Shaw. She furtively surveyed her brother and her lover in turn, noting the similarities in their elegantly powerful builds and proud carriage. They were both dark-haired as well, of course, but that was about the end of any similarity between them and Hugh Darke was certainly the more mysterious and contrary of the two, even judged on appearance alone.
He had that strong Roman nose that looked as if it had been broken at some point in his varied career; emphatically marked dark brows frowned above his challenging silver-blue eyes and yet his mouth could have belonged on a poet or a troubadour, if not for the stern control he kept it under. She knew how sensitive it could feel against hers now, but the containment of it argued he’d been through a very hot fire to become the steely-eyed captain he was now. A younger Hugh Darke would be almost too handsome and appealing for his own good; she imagined this complex and contrary
