Instead, she was standing behind a chair, feeling ridiculously childish and terribly spinsterish …so much so that she sighed and let go the chair, wearily walked around and fell into it, across from Ardencaple, sullen and gloomy.
He, too, had given up all outward appearances of decorum, and had turned in his chair, slung one muscular leg over the arm, and had propped his chin on his fist as he stared blankly into space. He looked rather ragtag, really, what with the blood and bruises, and his square jaw was shadowed by the growth of his beard. But he also looked potently masculine; his body, all long and muscular legs and arms, seemed almost animal-like in its strength, and now Anna wondered what in heaven’s name she’d gone and asked this lusty, robust man to do. Perhaps she was mad.
A soft groan escaped her; like a wild animal, he jerked his head toward the sound. “How did ye find it, if I may ask?” he said, the shock and fury gone, replaced with something like surrender.
“I’ve heard you ask after Lady Battenkirk and someone named Amelia. And…I knew that Lady Battenkirk was abroad, so I paid a call to her niece… and that was when I saw it.”
“Saw it,” he repeated, shaking his head. “And how, then, would ye know what it was?”
“Because,” she said quietly, “during the Season just past, I had occasion to meet Captain Lockhart—at the Lockhart ball, actually. I, ah…found him in a small study, where he was… well, standing before an open armoire looking at the contents, and… and I saw it then. And when I saw it again in Mrs. Merriman’s house, I recalled it immediately, because it was really rather…grotesque,” she said. “Mrs. Merriman had taken possession of it when Lady Battenkirk’s good friend, Amelia Litton, died last year. She was more than happy to sell it to me for a few crowns.”
Ardencaple sighed wearily.
“And I knew instantly what you’d come for—”
“And why, exactly, did ye ever think I’d come for anything?” he sharply interrupted her.
“Because,” she said softly, “you resemble Captain Lockhart. And you wouldn’t tell me where Ardencaple was—as if I were incapable of understanding…so I was quite determined to find it on my own, in my books. But I couldn’t find it, and when I researched the name Ardencaple in my father’s peerage papers, I discovered that the name was no longer in use—that it had been subsumed by the titles of the duke of Argyll.”
For some strange reason, that made Ardencaple— or whoever he was—laugh. It was a bitter laugh, and he swung his leg off the arm of the chair and leaned forward, his arms braced on his knees, his hands dangling between his legs, and smirked at Anna. “Have ye any idea, then, how hard we endeavored to establish that name?”
“Who?”
He laughed again and stood abruptly, and walked to the window. “What, did ye no’ determine who in all yer nosing about?”
“No,” she said truthfully. “Not entirely, that is.”
“And ye thought, did ye, that ye’d stroll into me house, and casually barter with what rightfully belongs to me and mine?” he asked, turning partially to see her.
Actually…in a word, yes. She nodded.
He was suddenly moving toward her, and Anna instinctively jumped up, tried to get away, but once again, he was far too quick, and grabbed her upper arm, jerked her around to him, and then grabbed her nape with his hand so that he could force her face close to his. “And ye thought, did ye, that ye’d practice yer bloody seduction on me, aye? Are ye so pathetic that ye must stoop to this?”
It sounded so contemptible, so reprehensible, that it sparked a flash of anger in her. What she’d done was ill-advised—all right—perhaps the most ridiculous thing she’d ever done—but it didn’t change the way she felt about Drake, or her sense of desperation that he’d offer for Lucy if she didn’t somehow prove herself to him, and she felt a shock of indignant outrage that this… this liar would judge her.
“Yes!” she cried, and tried to jerk her arm free of his grasp.
He tightened his grip on her arm as he moved her head closer to his face. His gaze dipped to her lips and he whispered, “Are ye certain ye know what ye ask?”
That question stoked something wildly hot inside her; she looked into his glittering eyes and answered breathlessly, “No.”
He laughed and put his mouth against her cheek. With a soft, long sigh, he held her tightly and moved, slowly and languidly, grazing her ear with his lips, flicking his tongue against her lobe.
Heat rapidly spread through her; Anna gasped at the sensation, but that only made him chuckle coldly, and he dipped his head lower as he forced hers to one side. His lips touched her neck—burned it, actually— moving slowly to the line of her jaw while Anna shuddered in his grasp. Her breath was coming faster, in little shallow pants, as his lips moved closer to hers, dangerously close to hers, and her head filled with the memory of that kiss on the veranda.