That gave him pause. “Someone out for a stroll, surely. Mayhap he—”
“No. Goddamn it, I know surveillance when I see it! I’ve had the feeling since yesterday that someone was watching us, but today I saw him. I couldn’t see his face. He wore a cap. But he was definitely watching the Duke’s house.”
He stared at her in amazement. If he was angry before, now he looked livid. “And you thought you’d confront the villain? Alone?” He swore rather colorfully in Italian. “You bloody fool! What if he was Cordelia’s killer?”
Her jaw tensed. “Then we’d be able to wrap up the investigation damn fast.”
He grasped her arms, his fingers digging into her flesh. “Or you’d be dead. Have you no sense?”
“I’m not that easy to kill.”
It was partly bravado, a flippant response meant to diffuse the tension. But she had been trained in self-defense, including the more brutal hand-to-hand combat of Krav Maga. She wasn’t the defenseless woman of this era.
His hands around her upper arms convulsed. “Devil take it. That is that kind of arrogance that gets men killed on the battlefield.”
He had a point. But she refused to give ground, twisting out of his grasp and meeting his glare with one of her own. “Stop it! Stop telling me what to do, Alec! Stop lecturing me. Stop trying to fucking protect me! I’m not an idiot. I can take care of myself. I’ve taken care of myself for a very long time.”
“Kendra—”
“I was the youngest recruit at Quantico. You know that. I’m damn good at what I do . . . did. Shit.” Her breath hitched unexpectedly. She felt like a piece of driftwood caught on a tidal wave that was taking her further out to sea, away from everything that had been familiar. She’d never considered herself an emotional person. She’d prided herself on using her brains and cold logic to keep her world sane. It had been her survival mechanism since she was fourteen years old, cut adrift then as well. Yet it had all gone to hell since she’d ended up in the nineteenth century. Not only was she in the wrong time, she felt as though she were in the wrong skin. The tears that pricked her eyes now left her aghast.
“I don’t belong here, Alec,” she whispered.
He’d been watching her carefully and now reached for her, this time not in anger but comfort. “Why are any of us here?”
She gave a watery laugh, and rested her forehead against his chest. She could hear the strong beat of his heart. “Don’t you dare get philosophical on me, Alec.”
“Maybe Duke is correct, and your purpose here is to save me.”
“He thinks we’re all linked on some cosmic level.”
“Normally I would leave such romantic ideals to poets like Byron,” he murmured and gathered her closer, allowing his hands to caress the line of her spine. “However, you cannot deny there is something between us, Kendra. I have never felt this way before.”
“Temporary insanity.”
“Love and lunacy have been linked, but I don’t think there is anything temporary about how I feel.”
“Don’t.” Kendra pulled away to regard him with dark, somber eyes. She didn’t know if she was telling him or pleading with him. “Don’t, Alec. I can’t think of . . . of that right now.”
He gave her a crooked smile and lifted his hands to cup her face. “What are you so afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid.” But she was. She was terrified.
“I promise not to hurt you.”
“I still plan to go home.”
“How do you propose to do that? Are you going to go into the stairwell at Aldridge Castle every month when there’s a full moon and hope your wormhole magically appears?”
Put like that, it sounded stupid.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “It shouldn’t have appeared in the first place!”
“Is your life so perfect in the twenty-first century, Kendra? You have told me that you are estranged from your family, that you have no husband.”
Kendra had to laugh. “Believe it or not, where I come from, women aren’t always looking out for a husband.”
“I only meant that you are free . . .”
Free to leave the twenty-first-century behind, perhaps. But I’m not free here. She wanted to remind him of that, to make him understand everything he was asking her to give up. But her thoughts scattered when she met his gaze, and she read the intention in his eyes even before he leaned closer.
She knew it was a mistake, but she didn’t move away. Instead, she leaned forward to meet his kiss.
“Oh, ho! It looks like we’re interruptin’ somethin’, lads!”
The booming voice made Kendra and Alec jerk away from each other. For the second time in less than twenty minutes, Kendra found herself adopting a defensive stance as she turned to meet the three approaching figures.
“A lord and his doxy, by the look of it,” one of the men said. “Ain’t that right, Ned?”
“Aye, that it is, Tom. That it is,” Ned replied.
Alec took a step forward, positioning himself in front of her, which would have annoyed the hell out of her if she hadn’t been so intensely focused on the three strangers. Two were men, average height, possibly late thirties, but they could have been younger, their hard lives adding phantom years to their faces. The one called Ned had sandy hair and a wiry build. The other one—Tom—was darker and more muscular, except for the slight paunch hanging over his belt.
Thugs. That’s what they were, Kendra recognized. Not because of the rough, filthy clothes they wore, but because of the flat, mean expression in their eyes.
Her gaze cut to the other person in the trio. She knew from his clothes and cap that he was the one who’d been spying on the Duke’s residence. But with a start of surprise, she realized he was only a boy. The angle and distance when she’d spotted him from her upstairs window had distorted her perception. Now, as she regarded his round freckled face beneath the wool cap he wore, she estimated him to be about ten years old.
“I’m not carrying a purse,” Alec said in a low, cold voice. “You shall have to look elsewhere for your gold.”
“Ack. Ye insult me, m’lord,” Tom said, and spat a large wad of tobacco on the ground. “He thinks we’re footpads, Ned.”
“Yeah.” Ned grinned, revealing teeth that had never seen a dentist, crooked and stained. “Damn insulting, ye are.”
“We ain’t no footpads, Lord Sutcliffe.”
Alec’s expression became shuttered and Kendra fought to keep her own face impassive. Their knowledge of Alec’s identity meant this was no random attack, no crime of opportunity. The child hadn’t been keeping an eye on the Duke’s residence to rob it; he’d obviously been assigned to watch for Alec.
“Nay, we ain’t ’ere ter rob you,” Tom continued. He and Ned brought up the flintlock pistols that they’d been holding. Now they aimed them right at Kendra and Alec’s heads. “We’re ’ere ter get justice.”
12