Twenty
Joshua waited until the door of Beatrice’s bedroom closed and then he made his way back down the old staircase to the ground floor. He winced at every step. Going down a flight of stairs was always more painful than climbing them in the first place. Worse yet, he did not have Beatrice to distract him now.
At the bottom of the staircase he stopped and opened the door. There was no one about in the hall. The house was quieter now. Traffic would pick up again just before dawn. There was nothing more predictable than the nightly routine of a country-house party.
A short time later he let himself into a small chamber that looked as if it had once been a monk’s cell. The little room was empty save for two old steamer trunks that someone had stored there years ago and evidently forgotten. With the door partially cracked he had a clear view of the heavy doors that guarded the great hall at the far end of the gallery.
He sat down on one of the trunks and took the small medicine bottle out of his pocket. For a moment he examined it in the narrow band of light that seeped through the doorway.
He was not sure how he felt about the tonic or the fact that Beatrice had given it to him. Certainly part of him was irritated. He did not like it that Beatrice was aware of his pain. Another part of him was oddly touched by the gift.
But it meant that even though she had been acquainted with him for only a few days, she knew him well enough to be able to discern those times when the leg plagued him. That alone was sufficient evidence that he was not doing a proper job of concealing his emotions.
It was the heated embrace in the hallway, however, that ought to alarm him the most. He had not intended for the kiss to get out of hand. It was to have been a charade, nothing more. But the instant he had crushed her against him, inhaled her scent and felt the sweet, soft, gently rounded form of her body beneath the fabric of the gown, something inside him had threatened to break free.
He had spent much of his life learning to control the powerful tides that threatened to wreak havoc on his carefully ordered world. The rigorous physical and mental training he had practiced for years had taught him to channel the fire inside. He had learned the hard way that when he violated his own rules, bad things happened.
A year ago he had slipped the bonds of logic in the course of an investigation and he was still paying for it. He still woke up in a cold sweat, wondering how he could have been so wrong about Clement Lancing.
The answer was always waiting for him. He had allowed himself to be ruled by his emotions, not logic.
Tonight, downstairs in the shadowed hallway, he should have been concentrating on the investigation. Instead he had been pulled into the sensual fire of Beatrice’s kiss.
In that moment he would have been willing to consign his powers of self-mastery to hell if it meant that he could have Beatrice for even an hour in exchange.
After all, what good had all of his training and focused meditation done? In the end, when it had mattered most, he had made the biggest mistake of his life. He had trusted the one person he should never have trusted.
Now a redheaded woman with incredible eyes, and a shady past—a woman who had a talent for deception—was asking him to trust her. She wanted him to drink some mysterious potion she just happened to have in her pocket tonight. This would be the same amazing female who carried a stocking gun and a vinaigrette filled with some vile concoction that was capable of bringing a man, sobbing, to his knees.
He would have to be a fool to risk even a single swallow of the tonic. The leg was uncomfortable tonight but it was not intolerable. He had known far worse nights.
Trust me, Mr. Gage.
He opened the bottle and swallowed some of the tonic. It tasted slightly acidic but it went down easily enough.
He put the cap back on the bottle and thought about how he had just broken the most important rule in an investigation. He had trusted someone connected to the case, a lady who no doubt had any number of secrets to conceal.
He had a feeling he would be breaking a few more rules for Beatrice Lockwood. He wondered why he did not find that prospect alarming; why he was filled with anticipation instead of deep concern.