He escaped, again flinging himself into the snowy cold but this time with thorough futility of purpose. He pretended he was looking for the shooter. He knew perfectly well the fellow was long gone. Men like that knew better than to linger, and the dogs had searched the place thoroughly the night before and brought up nothing.

Cox had departed before dawn, even before the mail coach came through, claiming he had an appointment he mustn’t miss. Pen, standing sentry at the time, said he had departed in an easterly direction. Yale had gone pale hearing the news. He’d been out of the parlor when the shooter attacked, it seemed. Leam plowed through knee-high snow-banks along the river anyway, his feet blocks of ice, his nose and head frosted. At least the dogs were stretching their legs. Cox might well be the fellow trailing him and the one who had tried to shoot him. Or he might not. Leam might have only suspected him because he flirted with Kitty. Because he himself had wanted her entire attention.

By God, it was a good thing he was no longer an agent of the crown. He wasn’t thinking straight.

Since the moment Kitty Savege had kissed him two days earlier, he hadn’t been in his right mind. He did not bed respectable ladies, even those who’d had lovers already. Neither did he haul them up against barn walls and maul them. The mere notion of some scoundrel doing that to his sisters or his cousin Constance had his fingers itching for a pistol.

He had put her in danger. Now he would leave her be, as he had last night with great difficulty.

And as soon as he had a particular word with her.

He rounded the smithy’s, tracking back to the inn along the rear yard. He found the others in the parlor. Wyn lounged by the hearth, dozing by all appearances. The attitude never fooled Leam. The Welshman was as alert as he with an assassin so close by. Likewise pretending—to read, on her part—

Madame Roche flickered Yale quick, interested glances. Lady Emily sat with her nose in a book, oblivious.

Kitty stirred a cup of tea. She lifted her dark lashes, her raincloud eyes as richly expressive as they had been in the intimacy of her bedchamber, then again in the stable when she told him good-bye. Just as she had done before with other men, she’d said.

He cleared his throat. “Lady Kath’rine, might A hae a maument o yer company beneath the eave?”

He gestured with her cloak laid over his arm. She stood and came toward him. He draped the cloak about her shoulders. The brush of her fingers as she grasped the collar went directly to his groin.

“Just without?”

He nodded.

The Frenchwoman looked on with undisguised interest. Leam motioned Kitty before him, and outside. He pulled the heavy door shut and followed her into the angle of sunlight cutting across the porch beneath the overhanging roof where a million heartbeats ago he had first held her and discovered her thundercloud eyes. Icicles made a jagged curtain above his head and she raised her face to his.

“Have you decided to tell me the truth after all?” she said without preamble, all soft curves yet sharp mind set on a single course. He scanned her face. Beauty. She was so beautiful the angels might have sculpted her from a fragment of the heavens.

“Nae.”

“I believe I made my position perfectly clear yesterday afternoon, my lord. I will have the truth from you about the shooting and poetry and what have you, or you will have nothing more from me.”

He could not respond.

“Well, then.” Her lips made a firm line. “I cannot imagine what you must say to me that merits this privacy.”

Anger prickled in him. She had insisted she was no schoolroom miss. Her touch in the dark of midnight had proven it. But, by God, she must have given herself to some extraordinary cads before him. At least one, Leam already knew.

“Lass.” He stepped closer. There was no easy way to say such a thing. “An ye find yerself wi’ child, A’ll dae the right thing by ye. Ye’ve anely tae tell me.”

By the acute glimmer in her eyes it seemed he had chosen perhaps the wrong difficult way to say it.

“That is gallant of you, my lord, and I daresay I should be comforted. But you have nothing to concern yourself upon that account.” She moved to brush past him toward the door. He took gentle hold of her uninjured arm. She halted. Her curvaceous mouth held aloof, yet her eyes could not hide her warmth. Candid need gazed up at him, though she mustn’t know it. She would not willingly reveal such a weakness, he now knew. Leam’s gut twisted. Perhaps she was no more than the girl he had imagined.

“A didna intend tae insult ye, lass.”

“I cannot fathom what gives you the idea that I think you have.”

He swallowed thickly. She had no idea how a man could be caught by that glance, vulnerability cloaked in sophisticated lucidity. That he could wish to drop to his knees and do her bidding whatever it be. She believed herself jaded.

He opened his mouth to reply. She spoke first.

“I cannot conceive a child.” Her gaze shifted away from his to the white blanket of snow. “I have not, although I have been foolishly careless. Quite foolish, really.” She seemed thoughtful on the matter. Leam hadn’t felt so ill in five years, lost in Bengal, a lead ball lodged in his shoulder and a fever to match the jungle heat.

“A see,” he managed.

“Yes. Now you do. So clearly you have nothing to worry over.” She took a step to move away, but he held her firm.

“A wisna worried.” Petrified. Sick to his stomach. But now, much more so, because he needn’t worry and he found quite abruptly that he rather wished to.

She only looked at him oddly, as though he had spoken out of turn although not grievously so.

This time she pulled her arm free with purpose, with control and poise and supreme nonchalance.

Leam’s brother, James, had perfected such firm insouciance, and he’d been no older than this woman.

He watched her go inside. He could not follow. He had won a reprieve he did not deserve.

He scowled. This was the way of callow fools.

But he wanted his hands all over her. He wanted her body, her mouth, and his tongue deep in her making her moan. He hadn’t had enough of her. Not nearly enough. He wanted to recite goddamned poetry to her in six languages. He wanted her so badly he could taste the words, taste her replies, taste the rain in her gaze.

She had cast off Poole without a backward glance, it seemed. Perhaps other men as well. She had been careless, she’d said. Careless.

A pattering on his shoulder wrested Leam from bemusement. Droplets of water made a puddle on his greatcoat cape with ever increasing speed. The thaw had come. He found his hands curled into fists.

Where was a Welshman’s willing jaw when a man needed it?

“I have devised un plan d’attaque!” Madame Roche announced in grand tones with a flourish of scented lace kerchief. It suited her dramatic pose on the sofa, all white and black with red lips and cheeks. Not above fifty, she was a handsome woman, already a widow to four husbands.

Lord Blackwood came into the chamber from the rear foyer. Kitty spoke so that she would not be tempted to look at him.

“A plan of attack to have us on the road shortly, Madame?” She did not take up her teacup. She did not trust in the steadiness of her hands, and in any event the tea had turned cold while he offered to marry her if necessary and she spoke aloud her secret for the first time to anyone. The secret only Lambert Poole knew. When she had discovered her barrenness, still so angry and vengeful, she welcomed it; no inconvenient pregnancy would send her into exile from society. She could continue to pursue her course of collecting information from him without anxiety.

At the time it had seemed ideal, because at the time she had ignored the ache inside her telling her it was all horribly wrong. Now she was sick with the woman she had been.

“Oh, no, no, Lady Katrine! The gentlemen will see to those arrangements tomorrow morning, will you not, sirs?”

The earl bowed.

“It will be our greatest pleasure,” Mr. Yale concurred.

“So kind, these gentlemen. And so very handsome! Which is how I have invented mon plan.”

“Clarice”—Emily raised her attention from her book—“what on earth are you talking about?”

“Only this: together we will all go to the Willows Hall where His Lordship and Monsieur Yale will court you assiduously, making love to you openly with the pretty words and gestures until your parents cast off the unconscionable program to wed you to le gros canard , Warts More.” She crossed her arms over her bosom and appeared all satisfaction.

Mr. Yale’s face went blank.

Emily did not bat an eyelash. “Is Mr. Worthmore really a fat duck?”

“Mais oui! All men three times your age that wish to wed ma petite are les gros canards. And he is

… how does one say? The dandy! The collars up to here.” She jerked the edge of her hand against her chin. “But how do you like my plan?”

“It will not go over,” Emily said, returning her attention to her book. “Everyone in society knows Lord Blackwood will never marry again on account of the tragic loss of his young wife shortly after the birth of their son, and Mr. Yale does not like me.”

“You are too modest, ma’am.” To his credit, Mr. Yale sounded sincere.

“And I don’t like him.”

“Haven’t the funds for a wife at present, in any case.”

“It wouldn’t matter. My dowry is grotesquely enormous. My parents wish to make a statement.”