Free Lady Be Good by Meredith Duran Page A

brooding alone in the darkness, while an assembly of rough veterans caroused through his public rooms.
    Her silence finally won his attention. He turned to look at her. “What did she want?”
    This was decidedly not the best start to the conversation she hoped to have with him. “Whom do you mean?”
    He rose. “The girl in the street.”
    From an animal perspective, he’d been fashioned for power: tall and long legged, with powerful shoulders and thighs. She remembered the breadth of his upper arms, which she had gripped during their kiss. Soldiering had shaped his body, laid layers of hard muscle over his large, solid frame. He would have made a fine brute, were he in the market to work for her uncle.
    She cleared her throat. “She wanted to know if this was your house.”
    The darkness of the room veiled his expression from her. But she had made a study of him at Everleigh’s. She found the spot where that wicked scar carved a curving arc from the corner of his right eye to the middle of his cheek.
    The war had made him a hero. Perhaps it had also done other things to him—difficult things that sharpened one’s instincts. She should not treat him as an ordinary mark.
    “She knew very well whose house this was,” he said impassively. “What did she want? The truth, Miss Marshall.”
    The note was her only advantage. She had not intendedto surrender it until it promised to bring good value. But his fierce gaze made her feel transparent.
    Unnerved, she reached into her bodice and drew out the letter. “She asked me to give you this. She intends to stay in town.”
    He took it and put it aside unread. “Was that all?”
    Lilah hesitated, puzzled. There was a starkness to his face, a stripped-down quality, quite at odds with his quicksilver charm that night at Everleigh’s. It was a strange mood, for a man throwing a party.
    “Why are you in here all alone?” she asked.
    One brow edged upward. “My guests do not require a host. Merely an excuse to gather, and eat a square meal.”
    And he had given that to them. Why? “I am glad one cannot say the same of the crowds at Everleigh’s.” With humor she tried to lighten the atmosphere, for in this state, he would shoot down her proposition in an instant. “I would be out of a job.”
    “I feel certain you would land on your feet,” he said.
    That might have been a compliment. But feline imagery so rarely was used to compliment a woman. Why was that? Cats, in Lilah’s view, were tremendously admirable creatures—self-sufficient, but very skilled at being charming, when they wished to be.
    Perhaps that was the reason, though. What man did not fear a self-sufficient woman?
    “I expected to see you yesterday,” he said. As he turned up a lamp, the strengthening light painted his hair gold and laid shadows in the hollows of his cheeks. He had good, strong bones: a hawkish nose, a broad, square jaw. Solidly hewn, in every regard.
    “I pay no calls on Sunday,” she said absently. His lips riveted her. She had seen handsomer mouths with fullerlips, but his were finely molded, his upper lip so sharply bowed that it lent his slight smile a wicked cast. She still didn’t understand how he had managed to scatter her wits. A kiss should not have done it, no matter the mouth.
    “Ah. Sunday.” He settled his weight against the writing desk. “The Lord’s day. I suppose you spent it in church, praying for forgiveness.”
    “I did go to church. But it wasn’t forgiveness I prayed for.”
    He drummed his fingers on the desktop. “Do you think God takes much interest in the prayers of a thief?”
    “You’ll have to hope he does,” she said. “For I believe you became one Saturday.”
    That startled him. He laughed, flashing white teeth. One of his incisors was slightly crooked. A relief, to spot that imperfection. “You’re quick-witted,” he said. “But surprisingly easy to distract. How long would it have taken you to notice the papers were gone, had I