Page 59 of My Rogue, My Ruin
It was barely noon, but Archer desperately needed a drink. He left the library and started for the dining room, where the footmen would likely be replacing the white table runner with a long strip of black crepe. Hadley Gardens would be plunged into mourning and paired with the agent’s probing questions, a whiskey or two at noon did not sound so unreasonable.
His attention fell on the newssheets, ironed flat and crisp by Heed that morning, lying on the sideboard beside the decanter. He scanned the headlines. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse—there had been another heinous attack by the Masked Marauder, and this time in town. Yesterday afternoon. It could not be a coincidence.
Archer considered all three of the strange notes again as he entered the dining room, already draped in black. No desperate thief had broken into the townhouse. Someone had wanted the duke in his study, alone. This was no petty crime. This was premeditated murder. And it had to do with Archer’s secret identity. Nausea stole over him, and he had to lean against the sideboard.
This was his fault. His father had died because ofhim.
Chapter Sixteen
Brynn had not expected to be back at Madame Despain’s so soon. She stood in the center of the back room in a semi-stupor as the modiste’s assistants fitted her with a somber dress, appropriate for the duke’s funeral.
Her mother and Madame Despain were whispering in the corner, not paying anywhere near as much attention to the fitting as they had the day before when it had been for the golden gown. The whole town was whispering, it seemed. A member of the peerage had been slain in his own home, his guests from that evening all questioned by Bow Street, and the murderer was still at large. Things like this did not happen in London—at least not to the people in Brynn’s part of London.
She closed her eyes to the mirror’s reflection of the ready-made crepe dress being pinned and tucked by two of Madame Despain’s girls. Fashion did not matter. Everyone would be wearing the same color and cut to the upcoming funeral. What did matter, to Brynn at least, were the terrible questions the Bow Street agent had pressed her with earlier that morning. She closed her eyes as the floor wavered unsteadily.
“What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?”
Gray touched her hand, his fingers warm in comparison to her icy skin. He had insisted on accompanying them to Bond Street, and Brynn knew it was out of pure concern for her health.
“As I already told you, I am fine,” she answered, though her throat was tight and it turned her words into a whisper.
“You were in the same house as a murderer last evening,” he said, the pronouncement drawing widened eyes from the two assistants. They were well trained, however, and continued to pin the cuff on the overly long sleeve. “You are not fine.”
“Yes, well, I am lucky enough to still be breathing, so I cannot rightfully complain.”
He tapped the hat in his hand against his leg, his eyes darting around the space usually reserved for women.
“You should not be in here,” Brynn whispered.
There were bolts of lace and satin and silk and, she noticed, an open box of some lacy underthings half wrapped in tissue.
“Do not be ridiculous. I am your brother,” he said stiffly. “And besides that, I am furious. Father told me what that inquiry agent insinuated with his questions.”
Brynn’s stomach soured. Mr. Thomson had certainly seemed suspicious of her. As if he’d known she had been lying about her hem being mended by a maid. All he needed was the account of the maid in question saying she never mended the torn hem, and never saw Brynn in the sewing room at all, and Brynn would be in scalding water.
The inquiry agent would assume she had been skulking around Hadley Gardens on her own. Perhaps sneaking into the duke’s study to lie in wait for him.
It was a disaster. She should never have allowed Archer to lead her into his mother’s sitting room. Or kneel before her and mend her torn hem. Or kiss her.
“Mr. Thomson was simply doing his job as investigator,” she said, attempting to sound as if she could care less.
“That or ignite a scandal,” Gray mumbled.
“There you are, my lady,” one of the assistants said, placing one last pin. She turned her eyes to Gray, who was still brooding. Brynn sighed.
“Dear brother, this is your cue to exit, as I am about to undress.”
He snapped to attention, the girls twittering as he bowed and left to wait at the front of the shop. Brynn smiled, the expression feeling so odd and out of place it almost instantly crashed.
Her mind had been spinning with all the theories the inquiry agent might have been formulating, and as the girls removed her from the black bombazine dress, she couldn’t help but get stuck, yet again, on the one that would not leave her alone.
It was not that she herself might be implicated in a murder.
It was that Archer might be.
He had slipped away from the dinner guests as well and then away from her in the sitting room. He had not said to where he was going, but it had to have been urgent. She had felt the overwhelming desire in his kiss. He had been slowly, but effectively, grinding her resistance and hesitation to a fine pulp with every stroke of his tongue and every touch of his hands. As improper as it had been, and as dangerous, Brynn had not been able to stop him. She had notwantedto. He’d admitted to being the masked bandit, and the confession had made her confused and furious, even as it had inflamed her every sense. If she were being true to herself, it had always been Archer behind the mask.
Archerwas the man she had not been able to stop thinking of.Archerwas the one she had, in her most private and reprehensible thoughts, imagined drawing her into a kiss.Archerwas the man she had lost her wits over that night in the forest cottage.
