He should keep her as far removed from all this as he possibly could.
He should bind and gag her, toss her into a carriage, and send the stubborn woman back to Haldon, that’s what he should do.
This was a mission, he fumed, not a Mayfair dinner party. And this wasn’t the same as digging through trunks in the middle of the day. Had they been caught, he could have readily fabricated a believable explanation for why the two of them were in the attic.
He was helping her find a portrait of her mother, or she was helping him find an extra blanket for his room. There’d been dozens of perfectly good excuses available.
But there was no good excuse for two people to be snooping through a room in the dead of night.
Thoughts of what could happen to Mirabelle if they were found out made his hands ball into tight fists.
He wasn’t having it. He wasn’t going to be worrying over her instead of worrying over the mission. He sure as hell wasn’t going to spend the remaining nights of the party, standing in the hallway, arguing with himself.
She’d see reason, damn it, or he’d make use of that bind and gag.
Temper firmly established, he knocked sharply on the door.
At the quick rap on her door Mirabelle rose from her seat by the window and, out of habit, grabbed the heavy candlestick she’d pilfered from the library ages ago. The bolts on her door were sturdy, but still…
“Open the door, imp.”
Relieved to hear Whit’s voice, she set down the candlestick and opened the door.
“Are they all asleep, then?” she asked as she slipped out of her room.
He took her arm and promptly escorted her back inside.
“You’re staying here.”
Taken aback by the brusque command, she did little more than stare at him while he closed and rebolted the door.
“Three locks,” she heard him mutter. “Chit has three locks on her door, but can’t see the sense in staying behind them.”
The insult broke her stupor. She’d had the sense to have them installed, hadn’t she? And it had been no easy feat to time that around her uncle’s comings and goings.
She crossed her arms across her chest and glared at his back. “What the devil has gotten into you?”
“You,” he snapped, whirling around and jabbing an ac-cussing finger at her. “You’ve gotten into me.”
Later, she would think that a very lovely sentiment. At present, however, she just found it baffling. “What on earth are you talking about?”
He raised his finger up an inch, much in the manner of someone about to deliver a vehement lecture. Willing to indulge him—a little—if it meant getting some answers, she waited. And waited…
“Whit?”
He dropped his finger. “I was going to yell at you.”
“Yes, I could tell. Care to tell me why?”
He hesitate before answering, his brow furrowed in thought. “I can’t stand the idea of something happening to you,” he finally admitted softly.
She didn’t need time to appreciate that particular sentiment. She could have used a bit of it to come up with an appropriate response, however, because all she could think to say was, “Oh.”
“The very thought of it, of you coming to harm, had me standing outside your door for the last ten minutes, arguing with myself like some sort of lunatic—”
“You’ve been fuming outside my door for the last ten minutes?” She found herself grinning, rather pleased with the image. “Really?”
His lips twitched and the lines across his brow disappeared. “Yes, really. And I—”
“Were you pacing?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Were you pacing?” she repeated. “Or were you standing still, clenching your jaw at the door?”
He ran his tongue across his teeth. “I can’t imagine why it would matter.”
“It doesn’t, particularly,” she replied with a shrug. “Except that I’d like to have a clear picture of it in my mind, to use later when you’re laughing over my hand in the jar.”
He laughed softly now, as she had hoped he would. “I wasn’t pacing. I was standing quite still, thinking I should storm in here and shout at you.”
“But you didn’t,” she pointed out. “Didn’t shout, anyway.”
“No,” he agreed and crossed the room to stand in front of her. “How could I? I’m angry with your uncle, not you. And you were just standing there, looking so quiet and patient, and—”
“Confused,” she added for him.
“Lovely,” he corrected and reached up to cup her face. “How is it I never before noticed how lovely you are?”
She opened her mouth…closed it again. “You say these things at random intervals just to unnerve me, don’t you?”
“It is fun to watch you flounder,” he admitted. “But I say them at random simply because they occur to me that way.”
He caught a lock of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. “Soft. I thought of it on our walk around the lake, the way the darker strands blend into the softer browns.”