The loud knock at the door made them both jump. Belle looked up at Hew, who looked back down at her, his expression mirroring her confusion.
“The maid coming for the dinner tray?” she suggested.
“Yes.” Then he turned to the door. “Go away. We’re not finished.” He lowered his mouth to hers. “Not finished at all,” he murmured against her lips.
“I’m not the staff, Arundel,” said a male voice with an upper-class accent. “Open the bloody door before I knock it down.”
Chapter Nineteen
Hew knew that voice. He knew that tone, and it didn’t bode well. There was only one reason another agent of the Royal Saboteurs would seek him out here and now, and that was to end his mission. Belle scrambled out from under him and collected the ends of her robe, wrapping it around her body. Hew might have been angry at the interruption, but it had probably saved Belle Howard’s virtue. He certainly didn’t have the willpower to wrap her back up after having her naked.
“Arundel!” The pounding on the door started again.
“One moment!” Hew called. Then he lowered his voice. “Go into the bed chamber and close the door.”
Belle blinked at him, her dark eyes huge in her face. Hew tried not to notice her pink cheeks and her swollen lips. He tried not to think about how he wanted to lay her back down on the rug and finish what they’d started.
“You know this person?” she asked.
“He’s a friend.”
She nodded and hurried past the dining table to the bed chamber, closing the door with a soft click.
“Sometime this century, Arundel,” came the voice through the door. Still, Hew took a moment to lift his shirt from the floor and drop it over his head. On the way to the door, he combed his hair back into place with his fingers. He unfastened the bolt and opened the door to Willoughby Galloway—friend and fellow Saboteur.
Will pushed his way into the suite. “Took you long enough. The lady down the hall threatened to call the footmen and have me thrown out.”
“Perhaps standing in the corridor and yelling for me to open up was not your best tactic.”
Will grinned. “Perhaps not.” His gaze swept over Hew, and his grin faded. “You look...different.”
Hew resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder at the closed door of the bed chamber. Will couldn’t have any idea what he was doing just a few moments before or with whom. “I’m still recovering,” he said.
“Ah, that’s right. You were wounded.”
“How the devil do you know that?”
“Baron sent a courier with a missive. The man looked ready to drop dead from exhaustion. He’d received no reply from you and a disturbing message from Lady Keating, and since I was in London, here I am.” Will’s light brown eyes narrowed. “What exactly were you doing when I knocked on that door? Who is here with you?” Will walked to the dining room table, studied the meal set for two, and gave Hew an inquisitive look. “A woman?”
Hew didn’t ask how Will knew that. He’d trained in surveillance as well. Belle had hardly touched her plate of food, and the bites she’d taken had been small and dainty.
“When I was mulling over marriage to Emily, you said women were fickle and not to be trusted.”
“It’s not like that. Miss Howard and her father took me in and nursed me back to health. Now her father has been taken and is being used as bait for me.”
“Yes, I know something about Mr. Howard’s abduction.”
The bed chamber door swung open, revealing Belle, dressed now in the borrowed clothes she’d been wearing earlier. “What do you know about my father?”
Will seemed completely unsurprised to be confronted by a woman he hadn’t known was in the suite a moment before—but then he probably had known. Will was extremely perceptive. “Miss Howard, I take it?”
“Where is he? Is my father well?” she demanded.
“I don’t know, and I don’t know,” Will said, then turned to Hew and gave him a look. His expression said, so-this-is-what-you-were-doing. Hew cleared his throat.
“Miss Isabelle Howard, might I present Mr. Willoughby Galloway.”
“I don’t care who he is. You have information on my father?”
