Alex headed toward the balcony without bothering to reply. Whit’s little joke had struck a nerve. His obsession with Sophie was becoming absurd. It was one thing to look forward to seeing her, but chasing her like a hound after a fox was another thing altogether. It was ridiculous, laughable. Damned humiliating. And he fervently hoped no one else would notice, because he had no intention of stopping until he ran her to ground.
It wasn’t going to happen on the balcony. Just as Whit predicted, Sophie had already abandoned that sanctuary. In his frustration, Alex began making wild plans to storm the retiring room—most of which would have involved taking out his temper on the door—but eventually the cool night air managed to clear his head, and he decided on the more tactful, and infinitely less embarrassing, approach of asking Mirabelle to go in and have a look.
Alex turned to leave, but a movement in the darkness below him stopped him short.
Sophie. Alone in the garden and looking rather lost. Alex smiled slowly and wondered if he looked anywhere near as predatory as he felt.
“Tallyho,” he whispered. Then with the grace of a large cat, he slipped over the side.
Sophie heard the whoosh of air just before Alex hit the ground not three feet in front of her.
“Good Lord almighty!”
“Hush, someone will hear you.”
At the moment, that possibility seemed much less important than willing her heart back to its natural rhythm. It took several moments to accomplish this. Her next priority was to beat the laughing man standing before her to a bloody pulp.
“Ouch! Stop that!”
“Stop that?” Whack. “Stop that!” Thump. “That’s all you can say?” Whack. “Hush and stop that?” Thu—
“Enough,” Alex laughed, grabbing her flailing wrists in his hands.
“You nearly scared me to death!”
“I don’t think that’s possible. Unless you have a weak heart. You don’t, do you?” He didn’t look overly concerned by the notion. Amused was more like it. And tidy, the bastard. He had landed on his feet as if jumping off balconies were routine exercise. She had rolled right into the hedge grove.
And all for what, exactly? She hadn’t found a blasted thing in Mr. Patton’s study. She had climbed through the window, gone through every drawer and cabinet, and come up empty-handed. Then, she’d had to climb back out the window only to discover the two ser vice entrances at the back of the house had actual servants milling about on the other side. And that had forced her to come all the way back around—
“Sophie?”
She glanced up. Alex looked a little anxious now. Good. She should let him stew a bit, it would serve him right. She stifled a sigh. No, it wouldn’t. For all she knew, his mother might have died of heart failure.
“Soph—”
“No,” she snapped, pulling her wrists free, “I do not have a weak heart. Although you should have considered the possibility before leaping out at me like some sort of crazed orangutan.”
“Crazed what?”
“Orang—”
“I heard you actually. I was just surprised. Most young ladies have never even heard of an orangutan, let alone used one in a simile.”
“I am not ‘most young ladies.’”
“So I’ve noticed,” he said, rubbing his chest ruefully. “Who taught you how to throw a punch?”
“Mr. Wang.”
“He must be a quite an instructor. That thing you did with your knuckles…impressive.”
“He’s a master, and he had a dedicated pupil. If I had really wanted to hurt you,” she sniffed, “I could have.”
Alex grinned at her. “I don’t doubt it.”
It took considerable effort to force her face into a scowl.
Now that the shock of his dramatic appearance was wearing off, it was becoming difficult to stay mad at him. There was something delightfully wicked in being alone in a garden with a known rake. Especially when that rake was doing his best to charm her.
And she was rather proud of the skills Mr. Wang had taught her.
“So, tell me, my little pugilist, what were you doing all alone in the garden?”
A little devil whispered in her ear at just that second, and it must have been persuasive because she schooled her face into a slightly haughty expression and, in an uncharacteristically coy voice, said, “How do you know I was all alone?”
Alex’s grin was gone in a flash. “Weren’t you?”
She shrugged nonchalantly and, turning her back to him, walked a bit away to inspect a rose bush. It was a silly affectation in a silly game, but it garnered the most interesting results.
“Answer my question, Sophie,” he snapped.
Ooh, but this was fun.
She shrugged again and bent down to smell one of the blooms. “Maybe I was, and maybe I wasn’t. What concern is it of yours?”
She thought she heard him growl something that sounded like “good question,” but she was too intent on acting disinterested to insist he speak up.
She did hear him swear though.
“Who is he, Sophie?” he barked from behind her. “One of those ridiculous fops, or that libertine Lord— Stop shrugging your shoulders at me!”
He was upon her in two quick strides. She hadn’t even time to fully straighten before he grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her around, and pulled her roughly against him.
“Who?” he demanded.