“Who are you to decide what I would or would not believe?”
She pressed a hand to her churning stomach and simply shook her head.
“Are you an American spy?”
That made her blink. “What? No. That’s ridiculous.”
“A spy for the Irish rebels?”
“No!”
“Working for the French?”
“Oh, for God’s sakes, no. No, I’m not working for any government.” Not any longer. She’d left the FBI. Gone rogue—more than two hundred years in the future.
“Then I do not comprehend the secrecy.”
She doubted he’d comprehend time travel any more.
“What are you hiding?” he asked softly.
Kendra had nothing to say to that. What the hell could she say? The truth? He would think she was crazy. She shuddered to think where she’d end up—a nineteenth-century mental hospital, probably. She had visions of screaming patients chained to beds, locked in deplorable conditions. She couldn’t risk it.
The silence between them lengthened. Alec looked frustrated. Then he moved forward, handing her the book.
Kendra frowned, automatically taking it. Glancing down, she saw the title. Pride and Prejudice. Puzzlement mixed with the nerves that were leaping in her belly.
“Jane Austen. That is what you said, is it not? The authoress of that book?”
“Yes.” Once again she was baffled by the intensity of his gaze.
“How did you come to know the authoress’ identity?”
“What? Well, because . . .” Kendra’s fingers trembled as she studied the hardcover, which was in pristine condition. Completely natural, she realized, for a book only a few years old.
Pride and Prejudice was engraved in gold letters on the red leather. Below that was inscribed: By A Lady.
Even though she knew what she’d find, she opened the book and scanned the inside page.
Pride and Prejudice
A Novel
In Three Volumes
By The Author of “Sense and Sensibility”
Nowhere on the cover or in the book was the name of the author.
Lies had a way of catching up with people, she knew. In the FBI, she’d always counted on it. Still, she’d never figured it would be something as innocuous as Jane Austen that would be the thing to trip her up. She lifted her gaze to Alec’s eyes. “I can’t explain.”
“Cannot . . . or will not?”
She sighed and looked away. His hands came down on her shoulders, surprising her into swinging her gaze back to his.
Too close, was all she could think.
His green eyes bored into hers. “Do you fear someone, Miss Donovan? Are you in hiding?”
He was giving her a way out. She only wished that she could take it, spin a believable tale, but her mind was blank.
“My uncle shall protect you, Miss Donovan. I shall protect you.”
“You thought I was a thief and a liar.”
He frowned. “’Twould appear I was correct in half of that assumption.”
Kendra realized that she had no right to feel insulted at his words. Or hurt. But she did.
“I will not judge you, Miss Donovan.”
You say that now, Kendra thought. Regretfully, she shook her head and handed him back the book. “I’m sorry . . .”
He drew in a sharp breath. “You ask us to trust you with your unorthodox theories, and yet you cannot extend us the same courtesy.”
“It’s not the same.”
“I do not agree with you, Miss Donovan. I believe it is very much the same.”
The silence pooled between them again. He looked at her, and then his eyes dropped to her mouth. When he lifted his gaze, her heart was thumping with an awareness she didn’t want to have. Deliberately, she took a step back.
“I should go to the study. Review my notes again.”
“Escaping?”
“I need to work,” she said, but they both knew it was a lie. Still, he didn’t try to stop her as she walked to the door. She didn’t run, even though she wanted to. It probably took five seconds for her to leave the library, but it felt like an empire could’ve risen and fallen in the time that it took her to reach the hallway.
She was half afraid that he’d come after her. Her heart raced. It continued to race when she reached the study alone. Her hand shook as she went about the task of lighting candles. She finally had to stop and do a couple of deep-breathing exercises to calm down. She had to focus. She didn’t know how she’d come here—vortex, wormhole, whatever. But she’d begun to believe in the why. She was here to catch a killer. This was her purpose.
Catch the killer. Go home. The two had become firmly interwoven in her mind. She couldn’t afford a distraction like the Marquis of Sutcliffe.
38
“W’ot’s wrong, miss?”
Kendra was sitting on the bed, allowing Rose to practice her hairdressing skills by pinning up her hair. But her mind was replaying what had transpired the night before when Alec had neatly trapped her through her own words, and revealed that the Duke was aware that she’d lied to him. Odd how that bothered her the most.