Free Linda Needham by A Scandal to Remember

stubborn as ever. “You mean dead or alive?”
    “Please, madam, no more escape attempts.”
    She pursed her lips and shook her head. “I wasn’t planning to escape, Wexford. I was…looking for something.” She sauntered toward the hearth, her candle leading the way, reminding him of how she’d traipsed along the duke’s garden path earlier in the evening.
    She had been looking for something, then…
    For someone.
    “What exactly were you doing tonight at the ball, Princess, prowling alone through a pitch-dark garden?”
    Caro hadn’t yet been able to still the thrashing of her heart since finding the huge man waiting for her just on the other side of her chamber wall, and now the low rumble of his voice curling toward her out of the darkness only made the thrashing worse.
    Made her face flame and her fingers tremble.
    Turning back to look at him as he emerged from the shadows into the pool of her candlelight hadn’t helped either.
    “What I was doing, Lord Wexford, is of no interest to you,” she said, trying to regain her composure because she had been testing her boundaries. “And I wasn’t prowling.”
    “You were flitting through the shadows between the topiary sculptures and the fountains, keeping a close eye on the windows and doors of the ballroom.” Wexford had come into the fullness of the candle flame, looking more devilish than human. “Whatever you call it, Princess, you didn’t want anyone to see you.”
    “You’re right, I didn’t. But not for any reason you might expect.”
    He reached out and took the candlestick from her, his smile never reaching his eyes. “Meeting a lover?”
    Caro held back a gasp but not a burst of laughter. “I’m afraid not, Lord Wexford.” That’s the last thing she needed to juggle at the moment.
    But her answer only seemed to make him frown more deeply at her. “Had anyone contacted you prior to the ball, requesting to meet you in the maze?”
    “I’m not a fool, sir.”
    He exhaled hard and frowned at her as he set the candlestick on the mantel. “Then someone else? Someone you might even believe that you can trust?”
    “Are all diplomats this suspicious?”
    He straightened, focusing all that towering interest on her mouth. “If not an assignation with a lover, who were you going to meet in the maze?”
    “Who was I meeting?” Caro laughed at his confusion and sat down on the hearth stool. All right, if he really wanted to know…. “Nicholai Gora.”
    “Well, well, well, so there was a man. I thought as much.” The earl grunted and leaned down to her. “How well do you know this Nicholai Gora?”
    She laughed, because now she held all the secrets for a change. She flicked her fingers in the air, trying to look as careless of her reputation as he must believe of her.
    “Actually I don’t know him at all. Though I’ve read enough about him to find him immensely admirable. Yet I assure you that he has nothing to do with your investigation.”
    “You’re not in the position to judge. Admirable or not, he could very well be a danger to you.”
    “I doubt that very much.” Unless he fell on her.
    “Don’t be a fool, Princess.” He knelt and leveled afinger at her nose, shook it at her. “There’s nothing more dangerous than an unarmed woman, royal or not, agreeing to meet a man, a complete stranger, in a garden maze in the middle of the night, without a bit of protection.”
    “You were there,” she said slowly, certain that she’d remember that encounter for the rest of her days.
    “You thought you were alone!”
    “I was hoping I was.”
    “Are you completely mad?” He stood and stalked away to the desk on the opposite wall. “Anything could have happened to you.”
    “But that’s not how it turned out, is it? Thanks to your interference, I never got a chance to see him.”
    A match flared and Wexford’s deeply planed features flickered to life. “Because I stopped you before you could run headlong into the maze and