Page 17 of Forgery, Love, and Other Lies
The interior of the house was as dark as the alley and musty, and she stood for several moments, arms outstretched, as her eyes became accustomed to the dark. When she could see enough to move forward without risk of collision, she did so, finally finding the bright entryway since sunlight flooded through the fanlights above the door.
Now, where did he hide?
Something fell in a room down the hall, and she heard the dull thud of something hard hitting carpet. She whirled with a gasp. What if… what if it was not Lord Lysander inside? What if someone far more nefarious awaited her, and Lord Lysander had left as soon as he’d found the baroness still missing?
She clenched her fists in her skirts and backed up until her shoulder blades hit the door. She’d done something stupid again, hadn’t she?
“Bollocks,” a man said from a room down the hall in a voice she began to find familiar.
She set her steps toward the room and flung the door open. And found Lord Lysander. Just as tall and straight and strong looking as she remembered him from the two times they’d spoken, from the two weeks he’d watched her from across the street. Watched her father, really. But he’d felt like her ominous stranger, and even though she had the truth of the matter now, he felt even more hers than ever. His hands sat at his slim hips, drawing his trousers tight against his thighs, and his dark, wavy hair slicked back from his forehead.
He seemed like a cravat pin with an onyx stone at the top, sucking all the light from the room. He did not sparkle like a diamond or draw the eye like an emerald. But he had a sheen about him all the same, beckoning the viewer closer because closer was where the hidden depths and beauty lay if you looked long enough.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he demanded.
“You, sir, gave me a fright,” she said, hands on hips, because she couldn’t very well tell him she’d been imagining him as a piece of men’s jewelry. But maybe she wouldn’t imagine him as that because that was lovely, and he had a decidedly offensive edge to his voice.
“What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded. Offensively. Again.
“I heard something. Then I heard you, and I came to investigate.” She could be polite, though, despite it all, despitehim.
In the dim light of what she now knew to be the dowager’s parlor, she saw it—he rolled his eyes. “Yes, but why are you here at this address?”
“What did you drop?” she countered.
“Not that it matters, but I dropped a tumbler.” He fell to his knees and stretched a hand beneath a drop cloth, waved it around a bit, then said, “Ah-ha.” When he stood once more he held a crystal tumbler in his hand. He turned and grasped something on the cloth-covered table, and though she could not see what he did since his back was to her, she heard the familiar pour of liquid into the glass. When he turned back around, he held an amber-filled glass.
“Spirits so early in the day? You are a reprobate.”
He winked. “Whatever you wish, love. I’m tired is what I am.” He tilted the glass at her. “Cheers. Now go home.”
“Absolutely not.”
He sighed. “I suppose saying please won’t work.”
“Absolutely not. Why are you here? And inside? How did you get in?”
His hand not holding the tumbler fumbled at his waistcoat pocket before his fingers slipped inside. He pulled out something small and held it up between them.
“A key?”
He took another sip. “Excellent observational skills, Miss Fiona.”
She’d grind her teeth to nothing talking with him. “A key to this house? Did Lady Balantine give you that?” Impossible to believe. She’s a private sort of woman. Unless… “Are you her lover?”
His grin died a swift death. “No! Why in hell would you think that?”
“You have a key.”
“I made it, if you must know. Without Lady Balantine’s prior knowledge or consent. Bribed a footman to make a wax mold. And I suppose I’d rather you know all those sordid details than have you think me the old woman’s lover.”
Andshewas supposed to be the criminal? “Your shame is misplaced, Lord Lysander. And your funds are misapplied. If you spend your money on things other than criminal activities, you’d perhaps not be in this situation.”
“I do not misuse my funds.” His body, which had been languid and long and lazy before, turned hard. “As you can see, I’ve benefited from having the key.”
“But why do you need it?”
“To get inside.” He finished his drink and snapped the glass down on a nearby table.
