Free Cates, Kimberly by Angel's Fall Page B

Grafton-Moore waiting to take their hands?
    The thought was damned disturbing—bloody inconvenient. Far better to hold on to the opinion that the woman was a rattlepated fool. One who had tossed him onto the prongs of a dashed irritating dilemma. Keep his word to a dead man and drive himself insane, or walk away, leaving not only one wide-eyed angel behind, but the last tattered remnants of his honor.
    Pegeen slid a glass of whiskey onto the table, and he flipped her a coin with a smile, then downed the fiery liquor in one gulp. When he opened his eyes over the rim of the glass, he caught the thin black-garbed stranger staring at him with a hostility hotter than the whiskey's burn.
    The stranger got to his feet, rumpled frockcoat tumbling around lanky legs, one hand closing around the silver-headed walking stick leaning beside him. Those pale eyes fixed on Adam as he crossed the room.
    Loathing, pure and cold, shone out of odd lashless eyes. "Is it true?" his voice rasped. "You are the man who was at Angel's Fall today?"
    Adam's eyes narrowed. "And if I was?"
    "I should kill you for what you did there."
    Thunderation. That was all he needed. An offended starveling cur trying to sink its teeth in his ankle. Adam wanted nothing more than to shake free of the fool.
    He slashed a scathing glance from the man's thinning crown to his shabby boots, letting contempt glimmer about a hard-edged smile. "Kill me? You are welcome to try it. Don't tell me you are one of the poor sots whose doxy has run away from home? Save your shillings, buy a decent wig, and I'm certain you can find another ladybird."
    Hot color surged into those wasted cheeks. "How dare you even imply that I would soil myself fornicating with— with some sin-spawned slut! It is Miss Grafton-Moore who concerns me."
    Why was it that the very sound of Juliet's name on the man's tongue made Adam's fists clench? "Miss Grafton-Moore is your concern, is she?" Adam repeated. "Just exactly who are you? And what have you to do with the lady?"
    "My name is Barnabas Rutledge. Proprietor of the shop across the street from her establishment."
    Adam searched his memory, recalling the painfully tidy shopfront beyond the wall of Juliet's garden. "The pawn- shop?" Adam grimaced in distaste, abhorring vultures of this sort who preyed on the desperate. "What's the problem, Rutledge? Afraid Miss Grafton-Moore's ladies will move away, and find somewhere else to pawn the jewels and trinkets their protectors gave them? You must be doing a lucrative business with Angel's Fall so near."
    Rutledge bristled until Adam half expected that thin chest to explode. "I am only a neighbor. A friend to Miss Juliet. I wish only to save her from this madness!"
    Adam had stayed alive by reading people's emotions. The flicker of an eyelash, the infinitesimal twitch of a lip could reveal much to one attuned to it. Barnabas Rutledge's pale eyes were almost feverish, his hands fitful on the head of his cane. Devotion. That was what it was. It seemed Pegeen was not the only one loyal to the lady of Angel's Fall.
    Adam should have been amused by the absurdity of it all—this spindly crow of a man tripping all over himself because of a woman, flinging himself into the fray against a man who was five times his size. It should have been funny as bedamned. But it seemed as if Adam had lost his irreverent sense of humor somewhere in the rain.
    Impatience surged through Adam, mingled with an odd twinge of possessiveness that made him mad as hell. Possessiveness where Juliet Grafton-Moore was concerned? Blood and thunder, he couldn't wait to be rid of her!
    "If you have business with me, Rutledge, conduct it before I lose my patience. My affairs with the lady in question are none of your concern."
    "Affair?" Rutledge's cheeks went waxen. "You stay away from her! After all the damage you've done—"
    "Damage? From what I could see the least I saved her was a dozen more broken windows. And when that mob descended, matters