Page 10 of The Runaway Heiress
It took a couple of steps for Gray to realize she had stopped, and when he did, he was smiling as he walked back to her. A wicked smile that caused a shiver of foreboding to travel up her spine. “Too late for that. You should’ve thought of the consequences before running away.”
With that, he grabbed her arm in a firm grip and pulled her around a corner where he urged her up a rickety flight of stairs affixed to the side of a mercantile store. At the top he stopped to unlock the single door before pushing her into the dark room beyond.
Chapter Seven
The door closed behind her and the key turned in the lock with a click of finality. For one tense second, Sophie wasn’t sure if he had locked her in alone or if he was here with her. But she could feel him behind her. His presence as strong and steady here as it had always been back home.
She took a deep breath to calm herself and was enveloped by the soothing embrace of his scent. Why she would find his scent soothing or even recognize it so readily left her shaking her head. It was completely illogical and really very presumptuous, but the tension that had made her shoulders so tight since she’d left Martine’s began to ease. She wasn’t afraid.
This was his home. It smelled of leather and something else. Probably his cigarillos. Not the pungent, heavy smell she associated with Jean’s cigars but a clean, sweet scent. Like freshly cut grass in summer, only richer. His mouth had tasted of it faintly the night of their kiss.
The sound of a match striking drew her attention across the room and soon Gray’s profile was lit by the glow of an oil lamp.Her eyes widened when the light also illuminated the bed beside him.
His bed. It was small. Little more than a cot, but neatly made with clean linens.
A strange tingle began to flicker within her, much like it had the night he had taken her home. Unlike her room, which had been decorated from catalogs and christened with the comings and goings of maids and occasionally her uncle and Monsieur Sinclair when he retrieved her jewelry, Gray’s room was intimate in its scarcity and isolation. Everything in it had been imbued with his essence, free from the dilution of other hands.
It wastoointimate.
He seemed to feel it, too, and avoided her gaze as he straightened and removed his coat and hat. Then he walked around her and hung both on a set of pegs by the door. Bereft of words, she followed his lead and removed her hat with its annoying veil. It didn’t seem to belong on a peg, though, so she walked the few steps necessary to reach the small table near the single window and set it there. The window was completely covered in a heavy, dark fabric that eliminated all light and most of the sound from the street, further adding to the feeling of intimacy.
“Here.” He turned with his hand outstretched to her.
“Oh.” She recognized the bills that Jeb had pushed across the table. “Thank you.” She managed to take them without touching his hand and was about to push them uncounted into her reticule but thought better of it and slowly spread them out in her hands. “That bastard.” She muttered, thinking of Jeb, and stuffed them in. It was less than half the amount she’d started with.
“For what it’s worth, you’re a damn fine player. You won the first game fairly.”
Sophie looked up to see him smiling at her in a way she had never seen from him before. Relaxed in his own environment, his even, white teeth shone brightly in contrast with his golden-brown skin and his eyes softened, losing a good bit of their usual solemnity. The effect quite literally made it difficult for her to breathe, so she looked back down under the pretense of tying the drawstring closed on her bag. “M-Monsieur Sinclair taught me to play. Last winter was so cold there was plenty of time—” The full meaning of his words registered. “Wait? You were there, in the gaming hall, from the beginning?” Her gaze flew up to his, suddenly recovered from her temporary bout of bashfulness.
He nodded, looking a bit too smug for her taste. “I followed you from the dress shop.”
“Why did you let me get so far then?”
He sobered a bit and seemed reluctant to speak, the muscles of his throat working before he finally answered. “Because I wanted to watch you.”
The statement touched her like a caress, stealing her words again. It could have been benign, a simple curiosity to know how she played, but the nuance of his tone suggested it wasn’t. She felt cowardly as she did it, but she looked away again, her eyes flitting between the single chair, the neat row of hooks that held his extra shirts and pants, the bedside table, the bed.
“You’ll be safe here.”
She blushed because she knew he saw her looking at the bed and guessed he was thinking about their kiss. “Why am I here?”
“Beaudin’s men. We didn’t think they saw you leave the dress shop, so Sinclair took Martine home in your place. We can’t risk sneaking you back tonight. We’ll go back to the dress shop in the morning, and you can leave for home from there.”
They were helping her hide this transgression from Jean. A moment of giddiness overcame her and almost escaped up herthroat in a laugh. She covered her mouth with her hand to keep it in.
Martine was only a few years older than herself with similar coloring, so she hoped the plan would work. But she thought of the other woman alone with Monsieur Sinclair and prayed that he wouldn’t deal too harshly with her. But then she realized Gray’s words meant she would be spending the night with him and her stomach twisted. It also put an end to her inexplicable giggles.
“Does that mean you won’t tell Jean about this?” she asked.
“You deserve to have your arse tanned, but we won’t tell him.” He grinned.
“Then let me go now. Tell Monsieur Sinclair you couldn’t find me.”
“You won’t get far if that’s all the money you have.” He gestured to her reticule, the teasing light vanished from his eyes. She was sorry to see it go.
Sophie opened her mouth to argue that she might have had more without his interference but recognized it for the childish inclination it was. He had probably saved her and the knowledge chaffed. Those men wouldn’t have let her leave the gaming hall.
“Then help me get more. With you backing me up, Jeb wouldn’t have tried to renege. I could get enough to go to Chicago and find my brother.”
