Page 24 of A Wicked Game

She kept an eye out for Morgan, looking for the chance to return the timepiece, but didn’t see him for the rest of the night. She could have given it to one of his brothers, of course—both Gryff and Rhys were in attendance—but then she would have had to explain why she had it, and her brain wasn’t up to dodging such questions.

She would just have to wait until she saw him again.

Her heart pounded at the thought.

Chapter Ten

Morgan suppressed a wicked thrill of anticipation as his hackney carriage rocked to a stop in front of 18 Bury Street in Bloomsbury.

He’d visited Harriet’s printshop only once before, years ago, when his curiosity had got the better of him and he’d sauntered inside on the flimsy pretext of wanting a map of Glamorganshire. Harriet hadn’t been there—he’d made sure of that: He’d deliberately waited until he knew she’d be walking in Hyde Park with her cousin to do his snooping.

He’d been burning with curiosity to see where she spent her time when she wasn’t visiting Newstead Park, the Montgomery residence adjacent to his own beloved Trellech Court in Wales.

It was much the same as he remembered. Two bulging bay windows flanked the door, and the dark green façade bore the gilt lettering: “H. Montgomery, Maps & Prints.” Harriet and her father occupied apartments on the two floors above the shop, nothing large, but still neat and elegant.

The bell above the door jingled as he stepped inside and his stomach tightened as Harriet glanced up from behind the large wooden desk that served as a counter.

Her expression of surprise was delightful, almost as delightful as the look on her face when he’d kissed her last night. His cock twitched in memory. Her eyes had been dark with both shock and desire and it had taken everything he had not to pull her into his arms and keep on kissing her until they both forgot their names.

There’d been a slim chance that kissing her would have been an anticlimax. That his years of fantasizing about it would have created an impossibly unrealistic expectation.

They hadn’t. If anything, he’d underestimated the effect she’d have on him.

Kissing her had been extraordinary. The taste of her, the smell of her skin, had turned his brain to mush and his cock to iron. And what he hadn’t expected was the surge of possessiveness, the soul-deep feeling ofrightness: the sense that after all his years of travels he’d finally found his way back home.

“Captain Davies!” Harriet’s cheeks turned a delicious shade of pink. “I didn’t expect you to come so soon.”

He raised his brows. “You were expecting me?”

“Well, yes. I sent you a note.”

“What note?”

She frowned. “I sent a note to your house an hour ago asking you to come.”

“Ah. I haven’t seen it. I went to breakfast with Carys and Tristan. Why did you want me? Eager for kiss number two?”

If possible, her cheeks turned even pinker. “Shhh!” she hissed fiercely, glancing over her shoulder toward the back of the shop. “Father’s in the back room! And no, that’s not why I wanted you at all. That Frenchman we discussed with Lord Melville was just here, in the shop.”

Morgan’s good mood evaporated.

“De Caen? Are you sure? What did he look like?”

Harriet shook her head at his disbelief. “Of course I’m sure. There can’t bethatmany Frenchmen limping around London looking for maps. He used a silver-topped cane. He was about fifty years old, with dark hair, cut short. Ruddy complexion. Slightly bulging eyes.”

“Hell, that’s him all right. What did he want?”

“He asked for a map of the Caribbean. I showed him a few, including that one.” She pointed to one of the framed maps that covered every square inch of the shop walls.

“That’s an accurate, Montgomery version of the area drawn by my father, but your Frenchman rejected them all. He specifically asked for one made by Crusoe. Said he was buying on behalf of a wealthy collector obsessed with compiling a complete set of Crusoe’s maps.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him that Crusoe was an excellent mapmaker, but that we didn’t have any of his in stock. De Caen was clearly irritated, but he left without incident.”

Morgan frowned. The thought of a sadistic, unpredictable bastard like De Caen being within a hundred yards of Harriet made his blood run cold.

“You must tell me immediately if you see him again. Promise me. The man’s determined, and capable of extreme violence.”

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