Then Comes Murder

Dangerous Games (part three)

Lieutenant Thornton-Spencer looked down at his hand, frowned, and quickly retreated.

"They're gone" he said, standing. "Hopefully apart from one another. Trust Charlie to make a fool out of himself."

The last part was said in a low whisper that Nora imagined he had rather meant to keep a thought. It quelled the thoughts of putting as much distance as possible between them, of returning to the party, of the excuses she meant to ready.

"Are you certain that was your brother?" Nora asked, frowning. She had considered herself a budding expert in the sound of Charles Thornton-Spencer's pining. It had filled their house in London for nearly a month before Caroline refused to see him. Once she'd banned him from the drawing room, it'd echoed at their doorstep and all down Grosvenor Square. Not that Caroline had done more than ask the heart-sick idiot to bear his feelings in a reasonable manner. For all her cleverness and ambition, Caroline was soft-hearted when it came to the youngest Thornton-Spencer brother, and her refusal of his attentions had been softer still.

But the voice between the hedges, though drenched with desperate yearning, did not hold the same plea to which she had grown familiar. There was something sharper in these secret whispers. For Nora, the conversation had been too soft to discern if it truly was Charlie's easy tenor, but Jacob's brow furrowed with confident certainty.

"Who else would it be?" He laughed darkly. "Does your cousin have a string of broken hearts trailing after her? Should George expect a storm of pining discontents at his doorstep?"

Nora bristled at the tone. The man had insulted her for being unsuitable for marriage and now condemned Caroline for being so suited that she had the luxury of choice. Why was it that there was always an impossible balancing act for women? In that moment, staring at her with smug superiority, Jacob Thornton-Spencer represented everything wrong with her world.

Proud and loyal, and perhaps just a touch indignant, Nora leapt to Caroline's—and her own—defense. Balancing on her good foot, she stood to meet the man's eye with a determined hardness. The warm tingling from his touch be damned! "Lieutenant, you cannot mean to imply that your brother is without fault. We both know Caroline would not have left the party without reason."

"I—of course not. Charlie is barely more than a child. He thinks he's in love for Christ's sake."

He leaned closer to hiss these words, as if he feared he might be overheard saying a word as feminine and silly as love. As if it were contagious. As if it were poison. Nora would have scoffed if she wasn't inclined to agree.

"While too young for marriage, your brother is an adult. He should not be dragging Caroline away to argue with her." Despite her own reputed height, she had to stretch her neck to glare up into his hazel eyes. "Love be damned."

As the word left her lips, Jacob stilled. For a single, skipped heartbeat, Nora thought he might kiss her. It was there in the way his mouth twitched, his eyes burned. She could have counted his eyelashes, mapped the flecks of gold in his eyes. Her insipid, hungry heart fluttered. But her thoughts, buzzing and flushed as they were, were wry. He looked just as ready to kiss her as he did strangle her.

Whatever that brightness in his eyes signified, it burned into cool ashes. The humming pull of the space between them silences as he took a firm step in retreat. It was as if he suddenly realized he was the one who had spirited her away, half out of sight from a crowd of scheming gossips, as if he suddenly could hear every wagging tongue in London re-tell the story. A surgeon's daughter, they'd undoubtedly say. The giantess managed to catch herself a duke's son.

"I'm afraid I cannot escort you back to the party," he said stiffly. The tight, formal inflection of his words pulled at dry humor that lived in the corners of her lips. If it hadn't been for the faint pang of her wounded ego, Nora might have snorted. She flirted with the idea asking him what sudden obligation had just arisen, for surely he wouldn't forsake all of his clearly well-bred manners after so gallantly displaying them for her all afternoon. Did Napoleon re-declare war? Did the Queen have need of a particularly rumpled lieutenant? Her own pride pricked, she could not exactly decide how best to torture him in return.

But those those bright hazel eyes glanced at the revelries, at the hedges, for anyone who might also be watching. He swallowed, and the weight of it pulled the edges of his mouth into a tighter frown.

A strange thread of pity uncoiled in her chest. He was nervous. Truly so.

As much as she enjoyed rankling him, Nora was not a bully. She opened her mouth to to ease his worries: her father was not so traditional to demand marriage and she had no shadowing mama to coach her into trapping a husband. She meant to tell him so.

Moreover, it's not as if you've any interest in him, Nora reminded herself.

The memory of his hand at her waist, the skipping of her stupid, silly heart when she'd been in his arms, dried her sympathy to dust. Eleanor Fane was not interested in any gentleman, much less a rude, prideful naval officer who'd spent half the afternoon insulting her.

Unsuitable for marriage, he'd said. It rang in her head like a war cry.

"At ease, lieutenant," she said, forcing her voice into an unaffected coldness. She answered his unspoken fear with all the biting sharpness she could muster. "I wouldn't accept a proposal from you if you were the last man on earth."

Before he could gather his wits for a clever reply, Nora grit her teeth, pushed passed him, and marched back to the party. It was a steely determination to be right that kept her from grimacing on each throbbing step. What did it matter if she were covered in dirt and carrying Caroline's idiotic shoes in her hand? She'd won, hadn't she?

Love be damned. Propriety be damned. And her bloody ankle be damned too.