The empty space mocked her.
Perhaps she had dropped the paper somewhere along the way, in the library, or out here in the street. Her heart missed a beat. What a confounded nuisance if she had. If it were in the library then there was an outside chance that Garrick Farne might pick it up … She stopped again.
“The low, despicable, devious, loathsome, odious toad!” she exclaimed. A lady and gentleman passing by, arm in arm, looked at her with some concern. Merryn stamped her foot. It hurt. It did not relieve her fury.
She could see it all now. Tears of anger and frustration stung her eyes. She replayed in her mind the exchange with Garrick.
You won’t find any evidence …
I already have …
How had he known where to find the paper? Had he seen her slide it into her pocket in the library? But she had been so careful … She started to walk again, hands thrust deep into her pockets, her head down, shoulders hunched. It did not matter how Garrick had known. What mattered was that now he knew what she was doing. He knew she was gathering evidence and he knew her intention. As soon as he realized she was a threat he had moved to discover exactly what she intended. He had hired someone to identify her and then he had come after her.
Tom had been right. Garrick Farne was a dangerous man. She had underestimated him.
Merryn bit her bottom lip hard. It was still tender from Garrick’s kiss and for a moment an echo of sensation coursed through her, heating her skin, making her burn with a mixture of hopeless arousal and complete mortification. She hated Garrick Farne but for a second she had thought, foolishly, wildly, that he might have kissed her because he wanted to. She had enjoyed it far more than she should have done and that had puzzled her. Now she felt fury as well as shame. Garrick Farne had once been a rake and he had used every ounce of that experience to trick her. He had kissed her with deliberate intent, to manipulate her—to pick her pocket—and she, silly little innocent that she was, had melted under his touch. She had been so distracted that she had not noticed what he was doing. She had responded to his practiced seduction and then she had stalked out, her senses full of nothing but him, her head still spinning at his touch, and he had gained exactly what he desired. He had won.
Merryn raised her chin. He would not find her so easy a target next time.
The cold wind tugged at her bonnet, stinging her cheeks. She wished she could anticipate Garrick’s next move. In some ways he was a chameleon just as she was; she sensed a very different man under that cool, controlled exterior. He was unpredictable, enigmatic. There was also a forceful masculinity about him that she had observed in few other men. Her brother-in-law Alex possessed it, too, but Merryn had merely noted that—and noted the effect that Alex’s powerful attraction had on her sister Joanna. Like all of her observations of life it had been objective, completely without emotion. But with Garrick … A shiver skittered across her skin. With Garrick that ruthless masculine appeal felt personal. It seemed to fill her with awareness. She could not explain it nor could she shake it off but it made her acutely vulnerable. She gritted her teeth. It was the reason that Garrick had been able to take advantage of her response to him.
She turned the corner into Tavistock Street. At the moment she was lodging with her sister Joanna and Alex in their rented town house. It was warm, comfortable and quiet. There were servants to attend to her every need. The only thing that was lacking was her freedom. Merryn was not accustomed to accounting to her relatives for her every move. It was one of the reasons she had invented various friends with whom she pretended to stay when Joanna was out of town. Her sister had never questioned her. Joanna had no notion of the type of life she really led and her work for Tom Bradshaw. She trusted Merryn. And until recently, Merryn had never felt guilty over her deception. Now that Joanna was back in town, however, and Merryn was misleading her on a daily basis, her conscience was starting to trouble her.
She had reached number twelve. A footman bowed her inside the house. A small white terrier threw himself on her with excited abandon and she bent to give him a hug. Merryn’s sisters, Joanna and Tess, were in the sitting room reading, respectively The Ladies Magazine and The Ladies Monthly Museum or, more accurately, looking at the pictures. There was a library in the house but the only person who ever picked up a book other than Merryn herself was her brother-in-law, Alex. Merryn had sometimes wondered what it was that Alex saw in Joanna. Theirs had been an arranged marriage in the first instance but was now well and truly a love match. It seemed incomprehensible to Merryn that a man like Alex with broad scientific interests and a sharp incisive mind could possibly love her sister who had no interest in anything except shopping and was about as incisive as a sponge cake.
“Merryn darling!” Joanna cast aside her magazine and gave her sister a radiant smile. “Come over to the fire. You looked chilled to the bone! What have you been doing this afternoon?”
“I’ve been to the library,” Merryn said, without bothering to specify which or what for.
“Well, how lovely, darling,” Joanna said vaguely. “Would you care for some tea?”
Another cup was brought. Tess poured for her. Merryn let the heat of it warm her and the strong flavor revive her. Tess and Joanna were talking about winter fashions now. They were seated together on the sofa, heads bent. The firelight flickered over their glossy brown curls. Suddenly Merryn was transported back to the nursery parlor where two little girls were turned out as pretty as china dolls for visitors to admire. She could have made a third, perhaps, a pale imitation of their prettiness, except that she had already been up a tree, knees scraped, skirts torn, reading a book. Joanna and Tess, older, wrapped up in themselves and happy in each other’s company, had never paid her a vast amount of attention. Neither had Garrick, on those rare occasions when he had been down from London with Stephen and the two of them had brought laughter and vitality and a sort of masculine vigor to the household that had felt so very different from the humdrum everyday life Merryn was accustomed to. Merryn remembered seeing them coming in, spattered with mud from riding hard, Garrick’s auburn hair whipped by the wind, his face tanned brown. She remembered the impromptu boxing match he and Stephen had held in the paddock; Miss Brown, the governess, had clucked and shepherded all the girls away but not before they had all seen Garrick stripped to the waist, muscular and broad, much as he had been when Merryn had seen him that night in his bedroom … Merryn shifted in her chair, feeling a bolt of something fierce and wicked shoot through her. She bent her head over her teacup, aware that she was more than a little flushed.
Alex came in. He greeted Merryn warmly. She watched as he bent to kiss Joanna. For a second she saw a look in Alex’s eyes, dark and intense, that mirrored the heat that had been in Garrick’s when he had looked at her. Suddenly Merryn felt hot and breathless again as though the drawing room had been drained of air. Joanna had blushed, too, a pretty color that stung her cheeks and made her look very young. Alex was smiling at her. The atmosphere seemed to sizzle. Merryn felt supremely uncomfortable and quite out of her depth. For years she had viewed love as a literary phenomenon, something she read about on the page and analyzed with the same intellectual curiosity as she viewed philosophy or language. Yet now it was as though something had awoken inside her and could not be put back to sleep. She closed her eyes for a second and felt again the caress of Garrick’s fingers against her cheek, his touch firm and sure, his mouth on hers, hungry, possessive.
She gave a little squeak and jumped to her feet. Everyone looked at her in surprise.
“I think I will go and rest,” she said quickly. “I feel a little tired.”
“You look rather flushed,” Tess said. “Have you caught a chill?”
“No,” Merryn said. “I don’t believe so. I
