Lois Greiman (16 page)

“Why you puttin’ them two together? Princess and me, we’re a fit.”

Poke pulled his gaze slowly from her to the Ox. “You think so?” he asked. “Mr. Slate, come here and stand by my lady.”

He rose slowly from his chair, crossing the distance casually to stand beside her. Her skin tingled where their arms touched. Poke smiled and shook his head with paternal pride. “Such a handsome couple, don’t you think, Mr. Oxford.”

“I think ’e’s a pasty-faced fop.”

Poke laughed. “A pasty-faced fop who killed Vic.”

Oxford narrowed his eyes. “Maybe.”

“You doubt?”

“Aye, I don’t think ’e’s got the stones.”

“Truly?” Poke asked and laughed. “And what of you, Princess? Do you think our Mr. Slate here has stones?”

She didn’t glance toward him. Her mind was racing madly, but she kept her gaze on Poke’s, desperately showing no expression. “As you know,” she said, “I prefer to work alone.”

“I was under the impression that you were growing fond of our guest here.”

“No,” she said. “You weren’t.”

He raised his brows, eyes sparkling. Had she gone too far? Crossed that fine, lethal line? “Are you saying I’m a liar?”

“I am saying you’re no fool.”

The house went silent, and Poke laughed. “My princess. So diplomatic. But what of you, Mr. Slate? How do you feel about working with my beloved?”

He glanced at her. She could feel his gaze on her face, could feel the heat of his attention, the pull of his warm, enigmatic allure. “Certainly,” he said. “’Twould be a rare pleasure.”

Something sparked in Poke’s eyes. Something deadly, but he smoothed it away. “It’s decided then,” he crooned. “We’ve a match.”

I
t all seemed ultimately surreal to Will. He sat with his hands folded in his lap, his head swaying to the rhythm of the rented carriage. He had recognized the driver’s face, and though he didn’t know the hostler’s name, he was certainly one of Poke’s men.

But it was Shandria that fascinated Will. Shandria who stole his breath. She was quite fashionably dressed, her gown mint green, her hooded, emerald cloak lined with silver fox. Only her shoes were out-of-date. Just visible past the hem of her narrow skirt, they were boxy and scuffed, strongly resembling the color of dirt. And for reasons unknown, the state of her footwear made him irrationally angry.

“So…” He watched her profile as she looked out the window. “The all-powerful Poke couldn’t afford a decent pair of slippers?”

“Damn you!” She jerked from the window, her eyes snapping. Gone was the icy princess. Emotion flashed like lightning in her face, stunning him for a moment. She was always beautiful, but now…when she lowered her shields and showed the stoked fire within, it was all he could do to keep his hands to himself, to steady his mind. What the devil had happened to the cool baron
who shunned passion and scoffed at sentiment?

“Are you trying to get me killed?” she asked, her voice quieter as she struggled for control. Her nostrils flared, but she wrested her features back under submission, and he found that despite his noble heritage, he immediately missed the fire that had snapped in her eyes, though he failed to understand the reason.

“It’s not my foremost goal,” he said.

“Then why…” She paused as if struggling, then continued. “Why would you tell him you wish to work with me?”

So that was it, he thought, and shrugged. “Sometimes the truth is as good as a lie.”

Anger again, sharp and bright on her porcelain features.

He smiled. “But if you remember,” he added, “I didn’t actually say I—”

“I know what you said, and I know how he interrupted it,” she snapped.

“Can I help it if I enjoy your charming company?”

“Damn you!”

Honest emotion. How had he lived so long without seeing it on her face? “I could hardly lie to your lord and master.”

She leaned forward. “You’ve lied every moment since you’ve arrived,” she snarled. “Why now would you—”

“Ever see yourself in a mirror, Princess?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Her hair was piled in tight ringlets atop her head, making her eyes look all the more feline, her face all the more exotic. He had seen beauty before, certainly, but there was so much more here. Grace and hardship and intellect, melded with countless unearthed secrets.

He stared at her in silence, drinking her in. “Tell me,” he said finally. “Do you think him daft?”

She said nothing, and he continued.

“Do you think him deluded enough to believe I’m unmoved by the sight of you?”

Uncertainty flickered warily across her elfin features. He smiled, steeping in the pleasure of making her uncertain. God knew he had been off-balance since the first moment he’d seen her face.

“Believe me, love, I’m no saint.”

She settled back against her seat and folded her hands primly in her lap. Emotion had been overwhelmed, whipped into submission. Control was back in vogue. “My mistake then.”

He raised his hands, palms up. “A common one.”

“And so easily made. So tell me, Dancer, if not a saint, who are you?”

“I shall make you a bargain,” he said. “You answer my question, and I shall answer yours.”

“No.”

He canted his head. “No, you won’t answer mine, or—”

“No,” she corrected. “I won’t lie with you.”

He couldn’t help but laugh, for though she had guessed the question wrong, she had certainly divined his poorly camouflaged desire. Still, he longed for understanding even more desperately.

“Why didn’t you tell Poke I was in his chambers?” he asked.

For a moment he thought she’d deny any knowledge again, but finally she glanced out the window and spoke as if she were talking to the snow-covered rooftops. “How is it that you’ve survived so long, Dancer? Sometimes I lie awake at night wondering.”

“’Tis good to know you think of me at all.”

“Have you no sense whatsoever?” she asked, and glanced at him as though she sincerely wanted to know.

“I’ve sense enough to admit I want to spend time with you.”

Anger lit her face again, but she tamped it down in an instant. “He would have killed you,” she said. “Right there. Right then.”

“If he had found me beneath his bed.”

“Yes.”

“So you protected me.” Joy. It was the only way to describe the feelings that spurted through him. Unbridled, burgeoning happiness. But he carefully tucked the feelings away for later dissection. That was one of the many problems with being sober. It left so bloody much time to think. “By drugging him.”

She rasped an inarticulate denial. “I did not—”

“Because you couldn’t bear to see me hurt.”

She fell silent, her face flushed, her expression somber. “You, Sir Dancer,” she said finally, “are deluded.”

“You’re saying I’m wrong.”

She breathed a laugh. “You think I would risk my life for you? A man I’ve just met and care nothing about?”

When she said it that way, it almost made him doubt. “I was surprised, too,” he said.

She gave him a wry glance from beneath lush lashes. “I learned long ago to worry about myself and none other.”

“Truly? Is that why you traveled halfway across Sedonia to Pentmore Hall?”

“As I told you before, I hoped to steal the chest.”

“You’ve a terrible memory then, lass. For you left it lying in the straw.”

A glimmer of frustration flitted across her face, but she settled against her seat and shrugged, setting aside any
hint of emotion. “Believe what you will. But my concern is for myself.”

“So you’ve no feelings…even for the boy called Nim?”

Her mouth, lush and tilted and cherry blossom pink, twitched the slightest amount. “What is he to you?”

He shook his head. “You’ve only answered the one question, love,” he said, “and that one not very convincingly. Still, I’m a generous man and shall answer one for you. Which is it?”

She stared at him for one long moment. “Why are you here?”

Their gazes struck and held. A thousand reasons to lie scuttled through his mind. “I came to find answers.”

“To what?”

“Questions.” He exhaled carefully and wondered with lightning quickness what it would have been like if he had met her under other circumstances. If he had first seen her at some posh ball at court. If she had glanced coyly at him from under the brim of a stylish bonnet. If he had watched her over a sterling cup of champagne. Would he still see the exploding life in her? Would he still realize her exquisite value, or would he have been numb, even to her?

“You don’t plan to tell me what those questions are?”

“Not unless you explain why you drugged Poke.”

She turned away to stare out the window again. “So you think me a monster.”

Her profile was that of an angel, sculpted, golden, alluring. “I wish I could,” he said.

She turned back, her bottomless eyes glimmering.

“’Twould be safer,” he explained. “But when I look into your face…” He laughed at himself, for it was so tempting to spill the awful truth. Infatuation was rarely a
pretty thing. But on a man of his jaded vintage, it looked decidedly silly. He shrugged. “Life was easier when I was drunk.”

She said nothing.

“But you knew that, didn’t you?” he asked, watching her, studying her. There would come a time when she was gone, and he would be alone in the numbing darkness. “Didn’t you?” he asked again.

She watched him a moment, then turned again to silently study the wintry countryside roll past, as if she were an elegant lady of quality, well above the need to answer his bothersome questions. And perhaps she was. He was hardly one to judge. His sister had been considered the epitome of fine breeding, a great lady in the making, genteel, refined, retiring. Not one to cause a stir, not even to protect her own life. Was that what a lady would do? Or would she fight? Would she use every scrap of wit and strength at her disposal?

“You knew I was a sot,” he said.

She shook her head. “How would I know?”

“Are you saying you poison everyone’s drink at the Den?”

Her brows rose in surprise, but whether it was real or fake, he couldn’t tell. “Are you accusing me of attempted murder?”

“No,” he said, and was somewhat surprised to hear himself say it out loud. “I’m accusing you of saving my life.”

She smiled. “Back to the angel of mercy theory, are we?”

Did she know that she looked like an angel, that sitting by her felt ethereal and hallowed?

She cocked up one brow at his reticence.

“Some men blather on when they’re inebriated,” he said.

Her eyes were as steady as stone, but the quirk of her mouth questioned his meaning. “Do they?”

He nodded. “That could get a man killed in a place like the Den.”

“If he had secrets to hold.”

“Yes.”

“Are you trying to tell me something, Dancer?”

It was strange, really, for he found that he wanted to tell her everything, to reach into his past and pull forth all the scalding sins that had accumulated there. But he’d been trained at birth to be a nobleman, and she…She had been taught to guard herself. So he took a deep breath and leaned back into the plush cushion of the seat behind him. Resting his arms across the top, he examined her in silence. And then he saw the fear. It was hidden, but it was visible if one looked closely enough. She was afraid. Of him. Of the consequences of knowing too much. His secrets were as dangerous to her as to him, and in that moment he truly believed he would die if he hurt her. “No,” he said. “I’ve nothing to tell you. I’m simply trying to be mysterious.”

A glimmer of a smile flickered across her face, and he saw with an inexplicable mix of joy and sadness that she was willing to play along. To pretend he was not what he was. “Truly?”

“Yes. Are you intrigued?”

“Ever so much.”

“Good, then we’re even.”

She tilted her small, regal head the tiniest degree. “I’m intriguing?”

He forced himself to refrain from laughing at the ab-
surdity of the understatement. “A thief who carries herself like a princess and acts like a personal bodyguard. Yes, some might find that rather fascinating.”

Her face was somber now. “And you?”

“I think you know how I feel.” Far too well.

Their gazes held, but she pulled hers abruptly away to glance out the window again. “We’ve almost arrived.”

His stomach twisted. For a few priceless moments he’d almost forgotten the reality of their surreal existence.

“Shandria.”

She glanced back at him, but there was caution in her face again, and he mourned the loss of that abbreviated moment of trust. “I was thinking we might call a truce.”

She settled back slightly. “Are we at war, Dancer?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “I think we are. But perhaps we could put it aside. Just this once. For today. No battle.”

She studied her gloved hands. “I’ve heard it said that life is a battle,” she said, and when she glanced up, he saw that there was a world of hurt in her face, a limitless edge of pain held neatly behind her careful mask.

“Perhaps it doesn’t have to be.”

“Maybe not for you.”

Silence tumbled in, and though he tried to keep quiet, he found he could not.

“You could leave him. Go—”

“Quit.” She lifted a hand toward him as though she could physically stop the words. “Please.”

He watched her. He had lived his life among the privileged, duchesses and heiresses and debs, but true nobility was a rarity. So rare, in fact, that he wasn’t sure if he recognized it or was simply conjuring it in his own mind.

“He would not be so loyal to you,” he said, but it was a struggle to keep his tone steady, to refrain from grinding his teeth and shouting that she was a fool to stay.

“Is that what you think I would want?” she asked. “Loyalty?”

“Doesn’t every woman?”

The shadow of a scowl ripped across her face. “I am not every woman, Dancer.”

No. Hardly that. And yet he knew so little. “Who are you?” he asked.

She glanced at her clasped hands. “I am Poke’s woman.”

The world went quiet, cushioned by the soft rhythm of hooves on the snow-packed streets.

“No,” he said, though he knew he was a fool. “I don’t believe you are.”

There was something in her expression then. Almost a hopefulness, almost joy before she stashed it away. “That kind of thinking will get you killed.”

He smiled. Obviously he’d lost his mind. “I thought perhaps we wouldn’t have to tell him.”

Her own lips quirked, but she glanced down at her hands again, as if loath to allow him to see her smile. “Don’t underestimate him. ’Tis a fatal mistake.”

“Leave him. Right now.” The words spurted out, against his will, against his better judgment. “We could simply keep traveling.”

“He would find me.”

“The docks are not so far,” he said, and felt excitement surge like a thunderstorm inside him, though he knew better than to let it break. “You have a carriage.”

“Paid for by Poke. You think the driver is not loyal to him? You think he would not stop me? Even if I managed to escape, he would surely hasten back to the Den.” She paused. “Unless you killed him before he spoke to his master.” The world went silent. “Is that your plan?”

He watched her, remembering so easily how she had tricked him in the past, had made him believe she was asking for his help.

“I tire of your ploys,” he said easily. “Just as I tire of your belief that Poke is all-powerful. He is man just like any other—”

“No. He is not just like any other man.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “I cannot believe that. I won’t let myself.”

He scowled, trying to decipher, to understand.

She drew a careful breath and raised her chin as if silently finding her balance. “I’ll not leave him. Don’t speak of it again.”

Frustration ground through him, cranking bile into his system like poison. “Then you’re a fool,” he said.