Free The Love Affair of an English Lord by Jillian Hunter Page B

worry. I lost him in the woods.”
    â€œDon’t worry?”
    Dominic glanced at her, momentarily distracted by her undeniable appeal to the senses. Little surprise that other men stole kisses from her ripe mouth and prowled beneath her bedroom window. Those deep blue eyes definitely put wayward ideas in a male’s mind. In fact, he thought it highly likely she would be swooning in the mist with her admirer at this very moment if not for him.
    â€œMy gamekeeper assumed I was a poacher,” he said, returning to her question, “and chased me off the estate.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you reveal your identity?”
    He smiled. “Because I
am
a poacher, in the process of laying a trap for my murderer. Finley, for all his cleverness, did not recognize me.”
    â€œConsidering the way you look,” Chloe remarked with a grimace, “I’m not surprised.”
    â€œYes, well, we can’t all wear decadent corsets and beautify country musicales with our presence, can we?”
    Chloe stared past him to the massive outline of his Elizabethan house. He claimed to be well informed. Had he heard the talk that his mistress had been a frequent visitor there in the days following his funeral? It was assumed in polite company that the woman had been advising Dominic’s cousin Edgar on her lover’s personal affairs. But naturally, in private, people believed the worst.
    Especially when the lady had been seen visiting the estate late at night.
    â€œDoes Lady Turleigh know you’re still alive?” she asked without looking at him.
    â€œNo.” There was a resigned tone to his voice that discouraged further inquiry.
    â€œIt seems cruel,” she said, “not telling the woman who loves you that you aren’t dead.”
    The look on his face as he turned to her gave her pause. Yes, she had hoped for a reaction, a clue to his feelings, but not the sudden vulnerability she saw, the raw anguish of a man who had been stripped emotionally to the bone.
    â€œLove,” he said in a light tone that belied his expression, “is a ghastly emotion, overrated by poets and idiots who live with their heads in the clouds.”
    â€œIt’s a good thing that everyone doesn’t share your cynical views,” Chloe said after a moment’s hesitation.
    â€œMost people have not had the misfortune to be murdered in their beds.”
    â€œThat is true,” she conceded, “but your friend wasn’t at fault for that, was she?”
    Again his silence revealed more than words, perhaps even more than Chloe wished to know. Had the fair Lady Turleigh been involved in his murder attempt? No. The thought of a well-bred woman lying in bed while her lover was stabbed to death was so appalling that Chloe preferred to believe his reaction was only a symptom of his cynical nature.
    â€œYour brother fought with my brother Brandon,” she said, in a deliberate attempt to change the subject. “Heath said that you had been investigating the attack on their party in Nepal.”
    Dominic’s face darkened at the reference. “Yes,” he said tersely.
    â€œWell, what did you learn about them?” she demanded.
    â€œProbably little more than you already know,” he answered evasively.
    Chloe examined his profile with curiosity. She had always wondered if there could be more to Brandon’s death than the reported Gurkha rebel attack on his party. She had suspected that her brothers had been hiding the truth from her. Yet as a young woman in a family of men who restricted her every move, she could hardly sail off to Nepal to investigate.
    â€œYou know something,” she said softly. Which was half a guess on her part and half intuition; Dominic’s shuttered features told her nothing one way or the other.
    â€œWhat I know,” he said, moving from the window to kneel down on the floor, “is that I have told you quite enough for one