Page 32 of Their Master

“Moira?” Smith called out, louder this time and undeniably Smith. Another knock. “I know you’re in there.” There was a pause, and then, “The spies told me so.”

Byspieshe meant all the children who floated around the filthy courtyard below like bits of paper on the breeze while their mothers and fathers were off at work—or engaging in criminal activities.

There were dozens of them and they would have seen Smith’s expensive clothing and equipage and come running like wild dogs to fresh meat.

Moira glanced again at her reflection in the filthy water; she didn’t want him to see her this way, but she’d be a bloody fool to send him away.

“Open the door, Moira.”

Moira sighed and tossed the tin plate onto the table with a dullclang. She removed the bar from the door and opened it.

There he was, dazzlingly clean and mesmerizing handsome, like a perfectly polished jewel dropped onto the dung heap that was Moira’s life.

“Well,” he said, brown eyes gleaming with triumph and a faint twist of a smile on his full, wicked lips. “Here you are.”

She’d only ever seen Smith indoors, under gaslight. In the cruel light of day—albeit a polluted, brownish-tinged light—she saw the lines around his mouth and eyes were deep. His skin, however, was even lovelier, more burnished. His eyes, which had always looked almost black, were actually the rich brown of strong French coffee.

As always, his exquisite body was clad in black and he emanated such power, wealth, and confidence that the hairs on her body stood on end, as if he exerted some sort of electrical pull.

He held a cane in one hand and a large wicker basket over his other arm.

“Are you going to invite me in, Moira?”

As if in a daze, she stepped back and he entered; Moira closed the door but didn’t bar it. When she turned, he held out the basket. “I thought you might be hungry.” When she didn’t reach for it, his smile just grew larger. “Youdoremember me, don’t you?”

She shook herself from her fugue and took the basket. “Yes, of course. Thank you. Why are you here?”

He laughed at her abrupt question and her face heated.

“Not that I’m not glad to see you,” she added, and then grimaced at how unconvincing that sounded.

But he just smiled and shrugged, his powerful shoulders shifting the fine fabric of his coat as if it were another layer of skin. “I’m here because you intrigued me and then you were gone.”

It wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. Not at all.

“If I intrigued you so much then why did you suddenly disappear?” Moira clamped her jaws shut; furious that she’d let such telling words slip.

His heavy lids lowered and he stepped toward her and it took all the courage she could muster not to step back.

“I was called away on business for longer than I anticipated. Did you miss me?” He reached out a black leather sheathed hand and stroked her jaw, the touch warm and smooth and bizarrely comforting.

Quite suddenly—and irrationally—Moira wanted to push her face into his palm and sob out all her fears and worries.

Instead, she jerked back from his touch. “Why are you here?”

“I thought you might need a friend.”

“We’re friends?” Moira felt as if she were reading a novel and had suddenly skipped several pages.

“If you like.”

She held his gaze, almost sweating with the effort; he was not an easy man to stare down.

Why are you repelling him? Now is your chance to lure him in.It was Marie’s voice, again. When would Moira stop hearing her mother in her head?

Except this time the voice was right.

Moira was behaving like a fool but couldn’t seem to stop herself. Something about him seeing her amid such squalor, and looking like death, damaged her bruised, broken pride.

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