Page 9 of Crying Wolfe
“Yes,” Morley answered wryly. “I’ve gathered you’re all about the economy of movement and output of effort.”
“We’re going to talk later about why that sounded like an insult.” Eli jabbed his finger in Morley’s direction. “But right now, we’re talking about why the hell this young trespasser was in my house to begin with.”
“I turned twenty-one quite some six months ago,” Rosaline piped in.
“Bullshit,” he spat, not sparing her a glance in lieu of keeping Morley’s direct gaze with one of his own.
“I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head around the ladies,” Morley warned sharply.
“My lack of a civil tongue is one of the many reasons you don’t want me married to one of your kin, Morley, and you know it.”
The Englishman’s eyes darted away, finding the ladies perched on the bed, clinging to each other’s hands. “Rosaline,” he addressed her in the gentle, measured voice one used for shy children and wounded animals. “I believe an explanation is warranted. Do you have anything to say in your own defense?”
Ever the lawman, Eli thought as he planted his boots, arms folded over his chest.
This ought to be good.
Rosaline’s gaze was affixed nowhere close to his. In fact, he caught it in the middle of a curious crawl up his torso, starting at the low, exposed waistband of his trousers and ending just below his clavicles.
Right. The undone buttons. Probably more man meat and body hair than she’d seen in her “twenty-one” years. The tattered vestiges of his decency mentioned that he might want to do up the rest of his buttons.
Decency be damned. Covering up felt like admitting some sort of wrongdoing. And his pride was having no part in that. None. She wanted to gawk at his big, ragged hide, she could be his damn guest.
Besides, despite the window being wide open to the encroaching winter, he was uncomfortably warm beneath her perusal.
“Rosaline?” Prudence prompted, nudging her with a gentle elbow. “What were you doing in Mr. Wolfe’s house?”
After chewing on the inside of her cheek for a second, she finally spoke. “I thought the house belonged to Lady Clarkwell. I’d no idea she’d passed on.”
“She hasn’t,” Morley replied. “But she sold Mr. Wolfe the place only yesterday.”
“That still doesn’t explain what you were doing there.” Eli’s patience had reached a limit he’d not known he possessed. And yet, something bleak in the curve of her shoulders kept him from losing what was left of his temper.
She directed her answer to Morley, as if looking at Eli caused her more distress. “I was there to modulate the Fraunhofer’s Dorpat Refractor so I could observe the meteor shower tomorrow.”
“The what?” both men asked in unison.
“The telescope,” she said as if patiently explaining to dense children. “It’s one of the only privately owned telescopes with a refractor that can see the Andromedids meteors that peak tomorrow in the boundaries of Andromeda.” Glancing about at the mystified faces of those gathered, she finished rather weakly. “That is…the Andromeda constellation…not the—the galaxy.”
The only thing that moved in the room for a full three seconds, was the kitten, who batted and gnawed at the end of the braid falling in a thick rope over Rosaline’s shoulder.
“There,” Prudence patted her sister’s slim hands. “That explains everything. She didn’t mean any harm.”
“That doesnot explainwhat you took,” Eli pressed. “I swear I felt something in your pocket when I had you trapped against the ladder.”
“When you what, now?” Morley asked darkly. “What the hell were your hands doing anywhere near her pockets?”
“It was my hips, not my hands.”
Morley reached for the rifle.
“Wait.” Eli put his hands in the air in the universaldon’t shootgesture. “Let me explain.”
“You have three bloody seconds.”
“Three?” Sarcasm oozed from his pores. “You’re too kind.”
Apparently deciding against the rifle, Morley began to roll up his sleeves. “Kindness has nothing to do with it. I’m about to relieve you of several teeth, and it’s easier for you to speak before that happens.”
