and keep her in comfort while he did so. How unfortunate that the one he wanted at the moment belonged to a friend he already owed so much to that he must leave her as untouched as a vestal virgin.
‘I mind my own business—would I could say the same for you, madam,’ he informed her sharply, in the hope she couldn’t read his bitter frustration at her unavailability or discern his ridiculous state in this gloom.
‘Kit and Ben are my business,’ she informed him impatiently and confirmed every conclusion he’d already reached about her, which really shouldn’t disappoint him as bitterly as it did somehow, especially considering he already expected the worst of her and most of her gender.
‘Not at the moment they’re not, since there’s a few hundred leagues of ocean between you and their moneybags, so you’ll just have to ply your trade elsewhere until they return,’ he drawled as insultingly as he could manage.
‘That’s it! Out you; go on, you get out of this house right now, you verminous toad!’ she ordered as if she had every right to evict him from the house Kit had told him to treat as his own while he was away.
‘Firstly, you’ll cease your screeching, my girl,’ he ordered as he grasped her arms in a steely hold, in case she started scratching and biting in retaliation for being thwarted as was the habit of her type—bred in the gutter and inclined to revert to it at the slightest provocation he decided unfairly, considering he’d long ago concluded nobody could help where they were born, mansion or hovel, and that he preferred hovel dwellers over their better-off neighbours nine times out of ten.
‘Damn you, I’ll screech as long and as loud as I choose to,’ she snapped back and he shook her in the hope it would rob her of breath. Her noise and her closeness and the elusive, womanly scent of her as she fought his grip with a determination he secretly admired was making his head pound again.
‘Secondly, you’ll get out of my room,’ he went on doggedly.
‘We’re not in a room; even if we were, it wouldn’t be yours.’
‘Irrelevant,’ he dismissed and felt something strange under the controlling grip he couldn’t bring himself to make a punishing one, despite his disillusionment with her sex and the urgent need he felt to be rid of her before disaster struck, something besides warm, soft, tempting woman. ‘And what the devil are you doing running wild about the place dressed in a man’s shirt and breeches and not just asking for trouble but begging for it, you idiot woman?’ he demanded harshly, quite put off his list of demands by that shocking discovery.
At least he wished fervently he really did find her unconventional attire shocking, instead of far too sensually appealing for comfort or safety as his exploring hand on her neat derrière made her squirm even more determinedly against him and curse him with an impressive, if far from ladylike, fluency while she was doing so.
‘How I choose to dress is none of your business and never will be,’ she informed him sharply at last, but if she could still blush he was almost sure she was doing so from the sudden increase in body heat under his exploring fingers.
‘No, it’s clearly Kit Stone’s or Ben Shaw’s business, and therefore mine in their absence,’ he asserted, senses sharpening despite the brandy, as he felt a terrible threat to his jealously guarded aloofness in that demand for more information and carried on all the same. ‘Come on,’ he urged recklessly, making her obedience irrelevant by tugging her after him all the way downstairs and into the kitchen, where at least a fire was still burning faintly, even if the manservant Kit employed was snoring in the porter’s chair in the hall, more drunk than Hugh had managed to become so far despite all his efforts before this confounded woman came along and spoilt his chance of a decent night’s stupor.
Now, he supposed bitterly, he’d have to endure his usual nightmare-haunted sleep replaying a past he’d so much rather forget, if he was to be allowed any rest this night at all, which currently seemed doubtful with Kit Stone’s woman actually here in the flesh rather than in spirit for once and making sure he had no chance of resting, even when he wasn’t dreaming about her writhing under him, moaning out her desire and then her lusty pleasure as he satisfied every single one.
Setting a taper to the dying fire, Hugh lit a candle, decided he didn’t believe his eyes and lit a whole branch of them. He wasn’t often rendered speechless nowadays, but he couldn’t think of a single word to say as his eyes roved over this extraordinary night visitor with numb astonishment. Numb because all the blood and feeling he still had left in him rushed straight to his loins and stopped there to torture him with the mere sight of such blatant allure. It should definitely be a crime for any woman to go about dressed like that, he decided bitterly. A felony carrying with it some sort of severe but not deadly punishment that would put her off taunting poor devils like him with her goddess’s body and those endless, neatly feminine legs. An amateurish attempt at binding her breasts had only made them seem all the more worthy of a sensual exploration and as for that sweetly rounded derrière of hers … If she didn’t realise what a temptation it posed to any red-blooded male who set eyes on her, then she ought to be locked up for her own safety until he’d taught her to know better.
‘What the devil are you doing strutting the streets at night dressed like a female resurrectionist or an undertaker’s apprentice?’ he finally managed, faintly surprised, until they came out of his mouth, that he’d got that many words left in him.
‘It’s nothing to do with you what I choose to do, or where I decide to go while I’m doing it,’ she told him and wrenched her arm out of his slackened grip at last so she could fold it belligerently across her body, trying her best to look as if she’d every right to go about dressed in black breeches and a dark shirt with a black cravat knotted about her slender neck. Her crow’s-wing dark locks suddenly cascaded down her back, like the wickedest promise he’d seen in a long time, when she shook her head defiantly at him and her neat black-velvet cap finally gave up trying to contain so much dusky luxuriance.
‘You just made it a lot to do with me, Witch,’ he informed her hoarsely and let his eyes rove as they pleased over the very feminine body he’d reluctantly fantasised over since the black day he’d found her waiting in Kit’s office, looking as if she had every right to be there and he was the intruder.
‘Men!’ she condemned impatiently, as if his sudden fascination with her long slender legs and those neatly rounded, womanly curves, so blatantly on show, was entirely his fault and nothing to do with her unconventional garb or extraordinary behaviour at all. ‘You’re all the same.’
‘Now there you’re almost certainly mistaken,’ he lazily informed her, making no attempt to disguise his wolfishly thorough appraisal of her well-displayed charms, for if she aspired to meet some impossibly gallant chevalier who’d be so overwhelmed by her sensual beauty that he’d offer her anything she demanded of him during her peculiar night wanderings, she should never have embarked on a career of selling herself to the highest bidder in the first place. ‘We’re all different, but we think alike when presented with nigh-irresistible temptation, such as you pose any red-blooded male by going about dressed like that.’
‘On the contrary, it seems to me that you don’t think at all,’ she muttered darkly and frowned at him as if she had the right to find his blatantly sexual scrutiny of her outrageously displayed body ill-mannered at best and deeply insulting at worst.
Hugh wondered how she expected any red-blooded male to actually think while she was standing there displaying her assets so generously that he’d soon only function on pure, or impure, instinct alone if she wasn’t very careful.
‘You could be right,’ he told her with a wickedly
