He came abruptly to his feet.
There was someone in the alley, a cloak pulled over their head against the rain.
He was across the office and down the stairs in an instant. He moved as quickly as he could to the rear of the building, found the back door, and pulled it open.
Standing at the door, her hand lifted as if to knock, was Lydia.
He did not think, only reacted. He caught her about the waist—Christ, she was soaked, and the November night was frigid—and dragged her into the building, then slammed the door behind her.
“Is everything all right?” he demanded.
Her hood fell back from her face. Water ran in streams down her hair, plastering her cloak to her body. “Goodness. Yes, everything’s perfectly well. I asked Nora to keep watch for Jasper at the house.”
He had both his hands on her waist now. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you. I… was worried about you. You seemed upset.”
“You wereworriedabout me?”
She flushed at his words, a sunrise of colors in her skin. “I do not think it so absurd.”
“No,” he said immediately. He would not have her feel embarrassed—not because of him. “’Tis not absurd. Only I…”
Only he had not expected it. He could not think of the last time someone had said those words to him. He shook his head against the maudlin thought and tried again. “’Tis only that it’s the dead of night and teeming down out there. How did you come to be here?”
She lifted her chin. “I had a groom and footman bring me in the carriage. This is not the first time I’ve come to Belvoir’s alone, nor even the tenth. I—” She hesitated. “I could not sleep.”
“God.” He pulled her against him, pressing his chin to the top of her head. “You’re wet through.”
She wriggled. His body, fool thing that it was, reacted instantly and vigorously.
“Let me go before we’re both soaked, for heaven’s sake,” she said into his shirtfront. “Let’s go up to the office. I thought… I thought perhaps I could help you keep the watch.”
He had to force himself to release her. God, he did not know why her offers of assistance—so freely made, so generously given—should make his chest ache like a finger pressed to a bruise.
He let her lead him up the stairs, and when she entered the office, he followed and shut the door behind him.
“’Tis a proper Scots rain tonight,” he said, and crossed to the sideboard to pour her a glass of brandy. “In truth I don’t expect Jasper will come before the morning.”
When he turned, her hands were beneath her skirts. She’d shed her cloak and boots, and as he watched, she stripped one damp stocking off.
He bobbled the glass.
She looked up, face a little pink. “I like the weather. Even if it did ruin these stockings.”
“Aye,” he said. Her hair was dark from the rain, and the curve of her mouth was all sweetness. “I like it as well.”
He took himself to the cot, cupping her glass of brandy in one palm. She laid her stockings across the grate and then crossed to him, passing the desk.
As she did, her gaze flickered across the paper-strewn surface and she paused, arrested. “You read my pamphlets?”
He followed her gaze. He’d found the pamphlets here in the office as he’d prowled—Some Reflections upon Marriage;On the Equality of the Sexes;Remarks on the Incalculable Evils of Debtors’ Imprisonment—all attributed to H, the pseudonym he knew she’d used. He’d read every one.
He’d felt a hot flare of admiration as he’d read her words. Pride in her ability to make herself heard despite her own shyness, despite a society that pushed women’s voices to the margins. He could hear her in every line, dogged and persistent and devoted to the causes she believed in.
But it had not all been pleasure. As he’d read, he’d seen echoes of the conversations she’d had with Davis in their years of correspondence. And he’d feared—
All sorts of things, familiar and foolish. That he was clumsy and untutored. That he was no fit match for her clever, capacious mind, her clarity of vision. That he could not give her what she needed.
