“You did,” she said, linking her hands before her. “And I did.”
“But you did not then stay there.”
“No.”
A bark of incredulous laughter, harsh and biting, eked from his throat. He hooked a finger to tug at his cravat, as if it had begun to strangle him. “I believe I explained to you, quite clearly, that it is not donefor a woman to leave the house alone at such an hour. Which part of my explanation did you fail to comprehend?”
“None of it,” she said, with a blasé shrug of her shoulders. “I simply disagreed.”
“Youdisagreed.”
The scathing tone with which he had issued his response might have blistered a lesser woman’s ears. “Was I unclear?”
“The rules which govern proper behavior are not something with which one is permitted to disagree. They are what they are.” There was a tiny twitch of a muscle beneath his eye. At this rate,come sunrise he might well be twitching every muscle in his whole body.
“That’s as may be,” she said, “but seeing as they are often ridiculous rules, I have elected to ignore them.” She raised her hands in what she hoped he would interpret as a conciliatory gesture. “Thomas, I can see that you are angry—”
“Angry! Mercy, you climbed a bloody trellis down the wall from your window on the fourth floor!”
“Oh, well,” Mercy said dismissively, with an unconcerned roll of her wrist. “It’s hardly the first time.”
“That does notcomfort me.”
“And I would have made it back safely to my bedchamber,” she said pointedly, with a haughty lift of her chin, “if you had not latched my window against me!”
“You climbedback up?” It was not quite a roar, but something even more feral which resounded around the room, curled into corners, and vibrated with its intensity.
“And back down again.” Mercy canted her head in confusion. “How had you expected me to return if not through the window from which I left?” she asked.
“Foolishly,” he said, in what was very nearly a snarl, “I had expected you might behave like someone of reasonable sense and sound mind, and to use the damned door.”
“I might have done, if I hadn’t forgotten my key. Had you not stopped me on the stairs to begin with, I’d have noticed it missing from my reticule straight off when I tried to lock the front door behind me as I left.” That muscle in his cheek persisted in its twitching; a strange, regular rhythm. “Really, Thomas, I wouldn’t have had to leave through the window if you had not been so—so pigheaded about it.”
The firelight glinted off the lenses of his spectacles, lending his eyes an unholy gleam in the dim interior of the drawing room. His fingers flexed, knuckles popping with the odd, sharpmotions. Rather like he was imagining strangling someone.
Her, most likely.
Instead he thrust them into his hair, ruffling the once perfectly-order strands, and made a garbled sound of aggravation deep in his throat, which Mercy thought was a bit overly dramatic, since she had made it back home safe and sound.
“I have been sitting in that chair,” he said, his voice pitched to a guttural growl, jabbing a vicious finger in the direction of the object as if it had personally offended him, “for three fucking hours. While you have been gallivanting about—where, exactly?”
Mercy swallowed hard. “Cheapside.”
“Cheapside!”
“Thomas,dokeep your voice down. We have got neighbors.”
A hoarse rumble of a laugh seared the air between them. “What the hellwere you doing in Cheapside? How did you even get there?”
Mercy folded her arms over her chest. “Naturally, I took a hack. I wasn’t foolish enough to walk all that way on my own at midnight.”
“But youwerefoolish enough to leave the house unaccompanied at such an hour,” he said scathingly. “What were you doing in Cheapside, of all places?”
“That is quite a personal question, don’t you think?”
“No, I do not think.” He gave a wild little gesticulation of his hands, wagged a finger in her face like a stern, disapproving father. “You looked me in the eyes and said you would return to your room—”
Oh, now,really. “I never did! What you assumed is your own responsibility. I simply did not see the point in arguing the matter any further when it was always my intention to go. I took a calculated risk—”
