By Arrangement (43 page)

She walked to the dressing table and bent to see her reflection in the looking glass. Not really pretty, but hopefully pretty enough.

She removed her bonnet and set it on the table. She pinched her cheeks to make them flush.

“Primping for me, Miss Montgomery?”

The voice startled her. Her gaze shifted from her own reflection to that of the room behind her.

She saw high black boots and snug breeches in the shadows near the door. She dipped her head until the white billows of a shirt came into view, then the ends of very dark hair. The man who had intruded appeared to be a servant, and a lowly one at that, if he worked in such informal garb.

Only he wasn't a servant. His confidence clothed him in nobility more than any garments could. His body stood in lithe relaxation, exuding assumptions regarding his rights in this chamber, and in the world outside its walls.

She straightened and sought the kind of poise that might impress such a man. She turned to greet him with calm grace.

“Are you Lord Easterbrook?”

“I am.”

“Your invitation was unexpected, Lord Easterbrook, but I am delighted to meet you all the same.” She made a little curtsy.

He appeared to be waiting for something more. She could not imagine what it might be. Her smile began to feel odd and stretched.

Goodness, he looked for all the world like a pirate, now that she saw him from head to toe. The boots were high-quality, but his general appearance was not fashionable. His hair fell in long, lazy waves to well past his shoulders. They framed a face that, from what she could see, was younger than she had expected, and handsome enough to make his lack of coats and cravat romantic rather than crude. His dishabille was an insult, as had been her abduction and her entry up the servant's stairs, but she could not afford to dwell on that now.

He finally made a cursory bow. “Please forgive the rude way that you were brought here. My only excuse was my impatience to see you alone.”

He walked toward her, and the light from the windows found him. It made the black boots blacker and the white shirt whiter. His face also became distinct. Dark eyes appeared hawkish in their intense focus on her. An unexpected elegance softened the strong bones of his face. His wide mouth curved into a vague smile that could easily turn hard.

A strange sensation stirred in her. It carried dark, deep caution, but not without a thrilling note. The way his body moved in his stride … the tone of his voice… those eyes…

Suddenly her mind saw him with short hair and more proper garments and a younger, less severe face. Her confusion crystallized into shock. She squinted at him, peering hard.

“Edmund?”

H
e enjoyed her astonishment. It amused him. Maybe she would slap Easterbrook after all.

Just how big a scoundrel are you?

A very big one, it seemed.

“I always guessed that you had deceived us. I did not realize the depths of it, however.” Her voice snapped with her anger. She felt a fool in more ways than she could list. Humiliation almost buried the girlish elation at seeing him again. Almost.

His amusement disappeared. “You know why I could not reveal who I was when I arrived in Macao.”

She knew, but there might be more to his deception than what he alluded to. The potential implications of his true identity, to the past and future, to her plans here in England, jumbled together in her mind. They evoked a chaos of emotions, but nostalgia threatened to submerge every other reaction. She struggled to hold it at bay.

An awkwardness settled between them, one created by distance and time and the questions shouting in her mind. The silence made it worse. His proximity made it excruciating.

What a sight he was. That long hair made him look like a Tartar. The years had hardened him in all kinds of ways too. Echoes of his youthful brooding still spoke to her, but Easterbrook exuded none of the soulful pain that Edmund had carried.

“You have changed,” she said.

“So have you.” His appreciative gaze indicated that he found her changes pleasing.

He had always been too obvious about that. He had never had the courtesy seven years ago to pretend there was no attraction between them. He had deliberately made her blush and fluster. He still did, even if she refused to show her reactions. She warmed all over, as if he caressed her body with his gaze.

Her heart beat rapidly. The memories broke free. They flowed and an old, secret wistfulness soaked her.

It all came back. All of it, as if she were nineteen again and her womanhood was blossoming under the wayward traveler's seductive attention. Only she was not nineteen now, and the traveler had not been what he claimed, but a marquess. That changed everything about their friendship back then. It meant that he had toyed with her most ignobly.

Fury spiked fast and hot, and she surrendered to it. “You unforgivable bastard.”

He reached out and rested two fingertips on her lips. “Such language. What would Branca say?”

Her lips pulsed beneath his touch. A terrible, wonderful shiver slid down to her heart.

She turned her head to break the contact. “Branca is dead,” she said. “Two years now.”

“I am sorry. She was a good duenna, even if I found her inconvenient.”

She could not believe that he referred to his cynical pursuit so casually. “My father is also deceased. He died the year after you left Macao.”

“I know. Word came to me through the Company.”

“Yes, I imagine a marquess can get whatever he wants from them. Is that how you traveled back then? Other men might have to pay their way or work for their berth. I expect a marquess need merely present himself to the captain of an East India Company ship to obtain passage.”

He shrugged, as if such privileges were of little account. “I was surprised to hear that you are using the name Montgomery. You did not marry Pedro after all.”

“When the financial condition of my father's trading house became apparent upon his death, Pedro withdrew the proposal. Everyone understood.”

“You must have been disappointed.”

“Saving the business from total failure occupied me. I was able to preserve it for my brother. After he reached his majority and was allowed into Canton, it improved significantly.”

He smiled. For that brief moment he looked much like Edmund, whose rare smiles made her heart rise with both joy and relief. “I think, Leona, that the trading house improved under your own hand. Your father relied on you, and I suspect that your brother does too.”

“My brother has proven most capable. I do help him when I can, of course. In fact, that is why I am in London. I intend to meet with shippers and traders based here, and convince them to forge associations with Montgomery and Tavares for their intercoastal trade in the East.”

He assessed her again, with a gaze both curious and admiring. She clung to her pose of friendly but casual interest.

His dark, deep-set eyes showed humor and warmth and disconcerting familiarity. His countenance subtly shifted from handsome to beautiful as his thoughts allowed the softening elegance to have its way.

Her instincts reacted the same way that they had when he watched her in Macao. She sensed something emanating from him, something both dark and dangerously alluring. His aura became possessively invasive. His attention tried to compel her to explore a mystery that would be her undoing.

Her inexperience had sent her running seven years ago whenever that power sought to absorb her. Now here she was, a grown woman who had seen the world, and she still wanted to hide.

Instead, she retreated within herself. She pulled walls around her soul so that it would be safe.

Immediately, his softness disappeared. His gaze turned searching, as if he was trying to see through that barrier.

“So you traveled all the way to England to serve as your brother's agent? You came for no other reason?”

He was very close to her. Too close. She had to look up to see his face. “There was no other reason to come.”

“Wasn't there?”

“None at all.”

“I think that there was.”

“Goodness—do you think I journeyed all this way to find
you
?” She feigned astonishment. “Of course, if I had known your true identity, I would have. I daresay you can arrange introductions in a day that it will take me weeks to obtain. If I had known that Edmund was really Easterbrook, I would have sought you out immediately upon arriving in London.”

He responded with a lazy, devastating smile designed to disarm her. She could feel his aura sliding around her in a curious caress, seeking any gaps in her defenses. “You would have done no such thing. Whether I was Edmund or Easterbrook, you would have run away and hid from me, no matter what benefit I might bring to your missions here.”

“Hid from you? Why would I do that?”

“Because I frighten you. I terrified the girl, and I still alarm the woman.”

He guessed her reaction so confidently that it irritated her. She squared her shoulders. “You are a little peculiar, and you are somewhat rude, and you have been insulting today, and you were too brooding then, but you have never been frightening.”

He abruptly stepped closer. She almost jumped out of her skin.

He laughed quietly. “See?”

She stood her ground, facing him down almost nose-to-nose. “Startled is not the same as frightened, Lord Easterbrook.”

“You would never have sought me out here in London, because you were relieved that I had to leave Macao. You could not get me on that ship fast enough.”

“There was no choice but to get you on that ship, or have you forgotten that?”

“There was unfinished business between us, and you were not sorry to escape the reckoning. You were too innocent and unawake to understand that you wanted me as much as I wanted you.”

“You are wrong, but that is all in the past anyway. I am no longer an ignorant girl, and you are no longer Edmund. Those two differences change everything.”

“Actually, Leona, I have learned since entering this chamber that time, place and names change some things not at all.”

No, they did not. Damn it. Damn
him.

He loomed over her, close enough to subtly dominate her. Near enough that he might hear the stunning way her heart beat.

The hard curve of his mouth matched the arrogant confidence in his eyes. He could tell that she was too much affected by him. He knew that he could still turn her into the nineteen-year-old girl who was promised to a fiancé who did not excite her nearly as much as the handsome stranger taking hospitality in her father's home.

However, one thing
had
changed. As a woman, she understood his appeal in ways the girl had not. She recognized her response to his mysterious allure for the sexual arousal that it was. She worried that he knew that too.

She tried to move away. He caught her arm, stopping her. He pulled her toward him. His boldness stunned her.

His hand touched her face, commanding her to be still. His gaze demanded obedience. Her thoughts spun into incoherent objections when he tilted her head back.

His warm, dry lips touched hers and lingered, then began proving that he could still mesmerize her.

Warmth. Intimacy so immediate and deep that it seemed unnatural. Sly, sensual shivers and expanding wonder and astonishment. The years fell away, and she was being kissed for the first time ever by a reckless young man with a dark, chaotic spirit—a dangerous man who offered adventures of the body and heart that she dared not accept.

The kiss banished suspicions while it lasted. Youthful emotions refreshed her like a coastal breeze. Arousal tingled at her breasts and tightened her womb and teased one devilish spot very low in her body. Low, long waves of pleasure lapped through her.

She restrained herself from showing how powerfully he stirred her. One sigh or gasp and they would probably end up on that apple-green bed. She did not fight him, however. The sensations so stimulated her that she lacked the strength for that.

“You are an enigma, Leona,” he muttered. His hand remained on her cheek and his breath warmed her ear. “You always were. Perhaps that is the fascination.”