Free Dawn Thompson by The Brotherhood Page B

truth.” He swept his arm toward the wing chair. “Please.”
    Cora sank into the chair, spine rigid, her tiny hands folded in her lap. How beautiful she was, even now, lost in yards of sumptuous brocade, her hands having disappeared inside his dressing gown sleeves in the manner of a Chinese potentate. She presented such a comical image he would have chuckled if the situation weren’tso grave. Instead, he went on quickly, while her hands were out of sight and disinclined to hurl some inanimate object at his head again, at least for the moment.
    “My butler has not merely died. That coachman has killed him,” Joss said.
    Cora gasped.
    He nodded. “The bounder threw him down on the hard terrazzo floor downstairs. He was an old man, and he died of his injuries. That criminal seems to have his sights set upon you for some reason. Twice now he has gained access to your apartments, and I have no doubt that he will try again. Now do you begin to see the necessity of taking precautions and realize the dilemma I find myself in? I dare not leave you alone, and I have none to tend you. It is personal only in the regard that I have never permitted—nor will I ever permit—a lady to come to harm in my presence, much less my keeping.”
    “Who was that man?” Cora demanded, “And what does he want with me?”
    “That is what I am hoping you can tell me.”
    “How me? I have never set eyes upon that object before this very night, sir.”
    “Then I need to know what went on in that coach before it bogged down in the snow . . . and after. I know recalling will be painful, but I beg you to indulge me. Lives could well depend upon the conversation that takes place in these apartments tonight—yours and mine among them.”
    Cora hesitated, moistening her lips. How he wished she hadn’t done that. Since he’d first set eyes upon her he’d been fantasizing about what those pouty lips would feel like beneath his own. The image of his fangs killed that air dream, but not the arousal it caused. He was hard against the seam.
    “The painful memory goes back beyond that dreadful day,” she said absently, “but you need not be privy to that. . . .”
    “As you wish,” Joss said. “Whatever you are inclined to impart will be met with the utmost appreciation. I am trying to discover when it was that this man entered your entourage. Are you certain you had not seen him somewhere before—at a coaching inn perhaps, or a changing station?”
    Cora hesitated. “My father was most anxious to reach Gretna Green before the snow. We stopped but twice to change horses, trying to outrun the storm. I only left the coach once. No, I don’t recall seeing the man.”
    “The young man in the carriage was your intended, then?”
    She nodded.
    “And the other gentleman?”
    “Clive Clement, Albert’s father.”
    “Both fathers in attendance?” Joss prompted. “Is that usual?”
    “No, it is not usual, sir,” Cora snapped. “Suffice it to say that they were giving us . . . safe conduct.”
    “That’s rather ironic given the outcome, don’t you think?”
    “The outcome would have been an answer to prayer, if it had not ended in death, sir.”
    “I see.”
    She did not soften. “You do not ‘see,’ sir, but you do not need to see. It has no bearing upon the situation at hand, and it is personal—something private, the painful details of which I do not choose to share with a virtual stranger. However, if I have come to this pass from observing proprieties, whatever next, alone with you here without them? It seems I have a genuine penchant forbeing compromised.” She surged to her feet. “Oh, pishposh!” she said. “You may as well have it. I am a ruined woman, sir, through no fault of my own, and proprieties no longer signify except in my mind—though in that quarter I am as pure as the driven snow outside, and mean to stay so. You would do well to take that to heart. I may be only twenty summers, but life has singled me out