Soon after she and her father had arrived in Little Derrick, she’d started coming here in secret. She’d been a bewildered ten-year-old, mourning her beloved mother, coping with unfamiliar surroundings and unfamiliar people, not least an aunt she barely knew. In the fifteen years since, she’d never met another soul during her midnight swims. Sometimes she thought she was the only person on earth to know of the pond’s existence.
Tonight she’d desperately needed the pool’s tranquility. The week’s events had troubled her soul. And fear of encountering Mr. Evans, not to mention memories of the aborted robbery, had confined her to her room every night since he’d moved in. In this oppressive heat, she’d stretched out on her bed, chasing a thousand useless thoughts around her head. She could have worked, but what she’d longed for was freedom.
She’d stayed out longer than intended, but she couldn’t bear to leave the silky water. She found her footing and waded to the bank where she’d left her clothes and towel.
Something rustled in the undergrowth and she stopped, alert. Suddenly her recklessness in coming here while a thief prowled the neighborhood made her stomach cramp with disquiet. Just because there had been no trouble for over a week didn’t make it safe to roam the woods like a gypsy.
“Who’s there?” She cursed the quaver in her voice.
She edged toward her clothes, wondering if fleeing into the trees would be a wiser move. But she couldn’t stay outside naked until dawn. Another rustle set her heart banging like a trip-hammer. If only she’d brought her pistol, but it was safely locked in her desk along with the Harmsworth Jewel.
Frantically her eyes scoured the darkness, but shadows defeated her. Moonlit in the clearing, she was completely vulnerable.
An animal ventured out to stand a few feet away. She was in such a state that she needed a few seconds to recognize Sirius’s shaggy outlines. Relief made her legs feel likely to collapse.
“You scared me, you silly hound.” She stepped forward to collect her clothes with renewed confidence. “How did you escape your infernal master?”
She’d developed a healthy respect for Sirius’s intelligence. If he’d answered, she wouldn’t be altogether surprised. On such a night, animals could talk and frogs might turn into princes.
Fumbling after her towel, she found only her gown. Puzzled, she kneeled, patting around the area. She raised her head. “Have you eaten my towel, Sirius? If you have, I’ll sic Hecuba onto you.”
“Don’t blame Sirius,” a familiar voice murmured from behind.
As she stiffened into horrified stillness, her towel dropped around her naked shoulders.
“Dear God …” Genevieve breathed, frightened, humiliated, and furious. With herself and with the vile Mr. Evans. She stumbled upright on trembling legs and whipped the linen strip around her body. Too little, too late, she acknowledged with a sick twisting in her belly. She whirled around in outrage. “H … how long have you been there?”
From a few feet away, he stood watching. Tall. Lean. Outwardly relaxed. But that didn’t fool her. He was on the hunt and they both knew it. “Long enough.”
Mr. Evans’s calm response didn’t quiet her panic. “You had no right—”
“Of course I had no right. But I defy any man with blood in his veins to abandon you to the moonlight, Miss Barrett.”
She was such a fool. The worst of it, even as shame strangled her, was that he’d destroyed her sanctuary. Whether she never saw another person here, she couldn’t feel safe again. He’d stolen this source of happiness as blatantly as her father stole her work. At this moment, she loathed Mr. Evans.
She chanced a quick glance at his face, his smug expression clear in the bright moonlight. She bit her lip as fury overwhelmed embarrassment. No man had ever seen her naked. This felt like a violation. “You’re no gentleman, sir!”
“Come, Miss Barrett, you can do better than that.” His laugh played a chromatic scale up and down her spine. “A woman with your vocabulary can summon an archaic insult or two.”
“Well, you’re a filthy sneak. Is that better?”
“Much.”
Genevieve’s hands tightened on her inadequate covering as she backed toward her dress. Bored with the conversation, Sirius trotted into the shadows. “This is such a joke to you, isn’t it?” she snarled, fighting tears. “I’ll thank you to go now.”
“Surely the damage is done.”
Carefully she bent, then straightened, her gown dangling from her shaking hand. “Ha ha. So amusing.”
Her temper slid off him like the water trickling down her bare back. She shivered. As she stood dripping with the pond behind her, a wicked little breeze flirted around her.
“This sneak’s reward was a beautiful naked woman.”
Her cheeks threatened to combust. Self-righteousness was difficult to maintain when one only wore a flimsy towel. She struggled for control, even as the need surged to scratch and kick at him until he was bruised and bloody. “Please leave, Mr. Evans.”
“Wild horses couldn’t tear me away, Miss Barrett.” He stepped closer. “Given how our acquaintance has advanced this evening, can’t you bring yourself to call me Christopher?”
“I can bring myself to call you a self-serving rat,” she said coldly. He remained a few feet away, but that seemed too close. She retreated another unsteady pace, the grass scratching her bare feet.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“I can’t dress with you here.”
Moonlight silvered his features into beguiling black and white. “I could promise not to look.”
“You could demonstrate some honor and go.” She struggled to sound defiant. This was the most mortifying thing that had ever happened to her. And she had nobody to blame for this catastrophe but herself. How could she have been so foolhardy as to chance a swim when she knew Mr. Evans watched her like a buzzard watched a field mouse?
“Or I could just turn my back.” He suited actions to words.
For a fraught moment, she stared at him. She couldn’t trust him, but nor could she stand here covered in a strip of linen. She let the sodden towel drop and hurriedly tugged her old muslin dress over her head, fastening it with shaking hands.
“Can I turn around?”
“Yes,” she said sullenly, although she was angrier at herself than him. He’d only followed the dictates of his rodent nature. She should have known better than to come here.
“Do you feel better?” he asked neutrally, although the way his gaze ran over her body made her feel naked again. She resisted the urge to shield herself with her hands.
“Why did you follow me?” Although the answer was no mystery. He’d flirted with her from the first. Even without her flaunting herself, he’d leap at any chance to get her alone.
“I
