Page 24 of Lady of Charade
“What is this?” he asked, and she blushed even deeper.
“Nothing,” she said, beginning to squirm away from him.
He stilled her with a look, holding her tightly against him. Somehow her legs had come to wrap around his waist so that she was straddling him, and he had to take a deep breath to attempt to hold onto his control and not allow his desire to overcome all else. When he realized the object was beneath the fabric of her dress, he brought his hand to her ankle, then slowly began to trail his fingers up the smooth silk of her leg. He could see the pulse beating in her throat as his hand traveled over her calf, her thigh, and then finally came to her hip. Something was banded to her, something that fit quite delicately into his hand. It was—
“What are you doing with this?” he asked in shock as he unhooked the knife and slid it back down out of her skirts.
“You were worried about my protection, were you not?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “Well, as you can see, I am more than capable of taking care of myself.”
“How long would it take for you to get to that knife through all of those skirts?” he asked her.
“Would you like a demonstration?” she asked with a smile, and he swallowed hard.
“If you insist.”
He regretted his words as she squirmed backward off of his lap until her feet were touching the floor once more. Then she proceeded to quickly lift the one side of her dress and reach her knife — now unsheathed — in less time than he could count to three.
“Impressive,” he acknowledged.
“You see?” she said, flipping the knife in the air, panicking him, until she caught it neatly by the handle and he began to breathe once more. She looked across the room to the door, and after a moment in which she squinted one eye and took a deep breath, she threw the knife across the room, where it lodged itself perfectly between the door and its frame. David could only stare at her in shock.
“Who are you?” he asked incredulously, and she grinned.
“Who do you think I am, Mr. Redmond?”
“When I first met you, I thought you were a refined lady, related to Lady Alexander. Now… I have no idea.”
She looked to the floor for a moment before returning her gaze to him.
“Are you disappointed?”
“Not at all,” he said, not wanting to say anything further. For the truth was, far from being disappointed, he was in awe.
He avoided innocent women — which Miss Jones seemingly was — because he was always afraid they would fall for him and he would be forced to break off an attachment to them. But with her, the truth was that he was the one beginning to fall for her. It felt as though his heart was beating erratically in his chest, a feeling that he was quite unfamiliar with — and one he didn’t overly appreciate.
When he looked up at her as she walked over to the door, dislodging her knife, he longed to draw her down to him, to kiss her once more. He yearned to feel her softness beneath him, to know what it would be like to have her curves under his hands, to run his fingers everywhere he could find that silky skin.
But if he did so, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from going further, to the point where he would determine just what it felt like to be on top of her, within her. And then he would be exactly the man he was reputed to be, showing up at her rooms as her protector and then taking her to bed.
He wouldn’t be that man. Not tonight.
She stood there in front of him, light from the fire glinting off the steel of the knife that she twirled in her fingers, her eyes shimmering and her hair flowing around her shoulders. She was an ethereal presence, both angel and warrior mixed together.
He glanced over at the shotgun in the corner before looking back at her, suddenly needing to know more of who she was, where she had come from, how she had come to be this woman she was today.
“Where did you learn to use a knife?” he asked, and she raised her gaze back to his as she bit her lip in hesitation.
“A friend,” she said, and David nearly groaned in frustration as she continued to hide from him. She finally sighed as though she had come to a decision, one she was unhappy with. “When I grew up, we lived in a village where there were few children my age. He was the son of one of our neighbors. There wasn’t much to do where we lived, and so he taught me skills with weapons that he had learned from his father.”
“Did your mother care that you were learning such things?”
“No, she encouraged it,” Miss Jones said with a soft smile in memory of her mother. “She felt it was important for me to be able to protect myself, particularly in case something ever happened to her. Which… it did, though fortunately I was already grown.”
“What happened?” he asked softly, not wanting to pry, but sensing that she needed to speak of it. He hoped he wasn’t overstepping, as he knew he was wont to do. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to mind.
“She became ill,” Miss Jones said, sitting down upon the one other small chair in the room. “We never entirely knew what it was. She was a healer herself, much more skilled than I, and even in her most lucid moments, she couldn’t identify the illness. It was in her throat, her tonsils, chest pain… she had a persistent fever and finally everything just failed. I did what I could, but knew not how exactly to treat her, besides easing her pain as I could.”
She paused for a moment, rubbing her nose.
