“You think those claws and fangs nothing more than an elaborate costume, do you?”
“No! Although I… I suppose it is what I had hoped.”
“Unfortunately,” Ian said, “hope and reality are often at odds.”
The words settled like a shroud over the room. He regarded them for a moment. “I must ask a favor of you, Daisy.”
Gold curls coiled atop of her shoulder as she tilted her head. “What, pray tell, do you want?”
Ian crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I want you to refrain from telling anyone else what you saw.” He gave Daisy a small smile. “Given your reluctance tonight, I gather that you aren’t likely to say a word, but I need to be sure.”
“Consider yourself assured,” Daisy said with a touch of asperity. “I have no desire to be pronounced a raving lunatic.”
Her candor made him want to chuckle, and he wondered if this woman would ever hold back her opinion. “That is most sensible of you, madam. I have no doubt you would find the accommodations in Bedlam beneath your standards.”
Despite the insults she’d hurled his way earlier, Daisy slanted an amused look from beneath the bronze fan of her lashes, which set off an answering stir within Ian’s gut. Beside her, however, Miranda’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, and Ian fancied he could see the cogs turning in her brain.
“I well understand why Daisy would be reluctant to speak,” she said, “but it seems to me that your concern goes a touch beyond casual.”
Beneath the fold of his arms, his hands curled to fists, but he answered her easily. “Were the good people of London to hear that a werewolf is roaming the city, there would be panic. I don’t believe any of us want that outcome.”
“Understandable,” Daisy agreed, but she was frowning. “Only, well… ought they not be warned? What if
it…” Her pretty lips parted on a strangled breath and she went pale. “What if it bites someone, and… well, turns them into one too?”
Myths indeed. His mouth twitched but he kept a straight face. “You cannot be infected by a bite, luv. A man is either born with the capability to become a werewolf or he is not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” He could see the questions forming on the sisters’ faces; they gathered and brewed like clouds over a darkening sea. Ian stood, needing to quell the storm before it broke. “Look,” he said. “Go home, get some rest. All will be well. I swear to it.”
Daisy did not look so sure. Miranda, however, nodded as if his word, while not good enough for her, would have to do for now. Ian rather thought she would like to get as far away from him as possible. He did not like the Ian Ranulf that Miranda saw, but he had been that man for so long that he almost forgot who he had been before. The suffocating feeling was back, threatening to swallow him down. Because he did not know how to climb out of the abyss and walk with the light steps of his old, true self.
Miranda’s skirts rustled as she stood. “Well, then, thank you, Northrup, for looking after my sister. It was good of you.” Steeling herself, she offered him a hand in friendship.
Between her haughty look and Daisy’s earlier disdain, the devil in Ian could not resist coming out to play.
They thought him a cad, did they? Then he would be one for them
. He clasped Miranda’s hand and pulled her close. “Will you not call me Ian?” he murmured, bending over her hand to lightly kiss it. “After all we’ve been through? Together?”
He could hear her back teeth meet. He ignored it and leaned in until her scent surrounded him. A familiar, pleasant scent but surprisingly not enough to excite him anymore. “You know, the hero usually receives a boon in such circumstances. A kiss perhaps?”
Her mouth slanted. “Are you quite through?”
Ian gave her an innocent grin and let Miranda believe that he still wanted her. He didn’t, but bloody hell, her suspicions irritated. “Well, you know where to find me, sweet, should you feel the need to visit. Or perhaps I shall call on you.”
Daisy too had risen. The sight of her sent a qualm of disappointment through his gut.
Beastly man was he? She had no idea
. He turned his smile on her, refusing to look apologetic. He bent over her hand and murmured pretty words of some sort or other. It didn’t matter what he said; he just wanted them gone.
Miranda headed toward the door, her slim back straight and proud. Ian moved to follow when, through the buzzing within his ears, he realized that Daisy had not stirred.
He stopped, and seeing the action, Miranda did too. Daisy clasped her hands tightly before her. “I would like a private word with Lord Northrup.” Her blue eyes sought his. “If I may?”
Miranda scowled. “Daisy, it really isn’t necessary.”
Her sister’s expression was implacable. “I believe it is.” A soft blush colored her cheeks. “It may take more than a moment. If you do not want to wait, I will understand.”
Surprise had Ian rooted to the spot, but hearing those words spurred him out of his frozen state and he found the ability to speak. “She may take my coach home.” He made a small bow. “It is at your disposal, as am I.”
Daisy gave the smallest of smiles. “Good.” She turned
back to her sister. “See? It is all arranged. Now stop mothering me. That is Poppy’s manner of deportment. I am fine, really.”
Annoyance colored Miranda’s high cheeks and pinched at her mouth. “Of course I shall wait for you.” She gave Ian a glare that promised swift death should he try anything untoward, which made him want to laugh. He managed to appear benign as he escorted Miranda from the room, while inside his heart pounded.
What did Daisy want? And why had she stayed? He had a fairly good idea. A smile spread over his lips, one that he feared looked rather wolfish. As it should be, for the wolf had a delectable morsel of prey waiting in his den. It was time to play.
The door clicked quietly shut as Northrup returned to the library. In Daisy’s mind, it might was well have been the slamming of a cage door. She pressed her damp palms against her thighs and tried to steady her erratic breathing.
Northrup set his hunter’s gaze upon her, and her heartbeat tripped with a pained thud. She knew why he believed she had stayed behind, and damn if some small part of her didn’t agree with him.
“All alone, my dear. As requested.” He strode back to her, his gait loose-limbed and sure. A predator’s stride. One might try to run, but it would be useless.
She drew her shoulders back and faced him head-on. He noted the gesture, for a contented smile oiled over his features. She ignored it, and the little flutters that were running riot in her belly. “Thank you for letting me stay.”
He sat next to her on the settee, and the fresh, wild scent of him hit her anew. “I’ve never been one to deny a beautiful woman.” He looked her over slowly, as if
contemplating how to start a particularly fine meal. “Especially when she is so eager for a moment alone with me.”
He was so sure she would melt. And for some reason, that spark of confidence in his eyes made her want to take him down a peg. She ought to flirt. Flirting was a well-loved cloak that fit her perfectly. Only now, the very idea of flirting made her ill. Still, she would do it, if it laid a trap for him.
“Hmm. A penny compliment. I’m all astir.”
Sharp canines flashed in the firelight. “Immune, are you?”
“Only when flattery is given by rote.”
“Then I shall have to try harder.”
“Or give up.”
Northrup dimpled, his teeth clicking as his smile grew wolfish. “I never give up.”
He said it lightly, yet a flash of something dangerous, almost feral, lit his eyes, and Daisy wondered at the notion of truly being the object of this man’s obsession. A chill chased over her skin. Rather like being hunted, she thought.
She shrugged, lest he see her disquiet. “There is a fine line between persistence and being a pest, my lord.”
He chuckled, the wild light in his eyes shifting to genuine amusement. “Now why do I suspect you’ve crossed that line more than a few times, my dear?”
Daisy didn’t know whether to laugh or be shocked. “Perhaps you’ll find tonight to be one of those times.”
“Will I now? Then it is my turn to be stirred.”
He was making it too easy. A bubble of disappointment rose within, for she thought he’d be harder to lure, but then his blue eyes ran over her as heavy as a caress, and she became aware of the globes of her breasts straining against the deep V of the ill-fitting dressing gown.
“That gown is a tragedy on you,” he murmured in a low growl that rasped against her skin.
“So sorry,” she managed to say past the flush that left her oddly breathless. “You’ll have to take your objections up with the man who provided it for me.”
He grunted in amusement, his gaze not shifting from her body. “He is a fool. He is of a mind to take it off, lest it offend him further.”
Heat blossomed over her skin and settled between her legs. Such a shock, she almost choked on it. Her breasts rose and fell over the edge of her bodice in cadence with her breathing, and his eyes followed the movement.
“Oh, you are good,” she whispered as all that heat turned to delicate throbbing. Here was the excitement she’d craved earlier. Only now that she’d found it, she felt disoriented, as if she were a rider about to be unseated. Were he not possessing a tendre for her sister, she might have considered giving in to his charm. “I suppose this is you trying?”
One corner of his mouth kicked up. “Is it working?”
Yes.
“If you need to ask, it probably isn’t.”
A snort escaped him. “Probably?” His eyes lifted to meet hers, and she almost crossed her legs against the unwelcome onslaught of feeling. Good God, he was potent. She’d underestimated him entirely. In heavy silence, they stared at each other.
His nostrils flared as if scenting her, and he suddenly grinned outright, a wolfish grin that set off tremors of alarm in her belly. “Liar,” he said. “I can almost taste your wanting, it’s so thick in the air.”
And then she knew; he’d been toying with her as well. Her pulse jumped, but she merely returned his look with one of bland disinterest, refusing to lose this game. “You, sir, are a bore.”
Something near a growl rumbled deep in Northrup’s chest. “If this is you bored, I cannot wait to see you excited.”
Slowly, oh so slowly, the blunt tip of his finger lifted to trail under her sleeve and along the bare crook of her arm with infinite care. Goose bumps rose in its wake, a pleasurable chill that had her yearning to lean into the warmth of his lean, strong body. Why did it have to be this man who made her breath quicken?
She smacked the finger away and stared into his too-blue eyes. “Do not mistake me for some witless hen who follows whatever cock is thrown into the roost.”
His chiseled features froze for a moment and then a smile slowly spread over his mouth, lighting him up from within. Dimples pulled at his cheeks, and Daisy caught her breath.
No, she would not be moved.
“Cock?” he intoned, a hairbreadth from laughing. Blue eyes twinkled. “My dear, I’m the wolf.” He leaned in, bringing all his tempting warmth and masculine strength closer. His voice rumbled over her skin. “I eat the hen,” he murmured, “before I carry off what’s left of her.”
She laughed. She hadn’t meant to, but she could not stop it from rolling out, full and thoroughly unladylike. Lord Northrup scowled down at her, his expression so put out that she laughed again.
Daisy fought for a breath. “I’m sorry. It’s only… You are so… practiced.”
“Practiced,” Northrup repeated faintly, his fine features twisting into a male glower. He wiped a tired hand over his face. “Well,” he muttered as he slumped back against the settee, “if that doesn’t drive the final nail in the proverbial coffin.”
Her laughter died as abruptly as it had started, and she
turned away from him. Daisy blinked up at the ceiling and suddenly a tear leaked from her eye. She whisked it away but he had seen. Something shifted in his eyes. “Ah, now, lass,” he whispered.
“You must think me a lunatic,” she said.
His voice stayed soft and soothing. “You have no idea what I’m thinking.”
She continued to gaze up at the coffered ceiling. “I always do that. Laugh when I ought to cry, cry when I ought to laugh.” She shook her head and a curl fell over her eye. She was too weary to bat it away. “My father died last year. When I heard the news, I just laughed and laughed.” A sigh left her. “I loved him, despite his faults, but I…” Daisy turned and gave Northrup a watery smile. “It wasn’t until a week later that I cried. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
How she wished she could truly cry now, the messy bawling sort of cry. She felt it bottled up within her throat, but it wouldn’t break free. The dead deserved tears. She was making hash of everything this night.
Northrup settled down in a comfortable sprawl of long limbs and then looked up at the ceiling as she had done. “Oh, I don’t know. My father was murdered. When I heard the news, I did not cry, didn’t say a word actually.”
Northrup’s words tugged at her memory. Archer had known his father. The mad woman who chased after Archer had killed old Lord Rossberry, Daisy realized with a jolt. She cleared her throat and tried to sound calm. “What did you do?”
Northrup turned his head to peer at her. “I shagged a dozen whores.”
“All at once?” she muttered, which made him laugh. Flushing, Daisy looked away, but she could feel his
knowing smile. Unfortunately, his nearness and the heat of his body made him impossible to ignore, or to stop from picturing him engaging in the act. She flushed again.
“No, luv.” His eyes crinkled at the corners as he watched her, but his voice was soft and serious when he spoke. “And it wouldn’t have mattered. Distraction works for only so long, you know.”
The room blurred before her as the tears finally came. Slowly, as if he feared startling her, Northrup reached out and took her hand. It was a shockingly intimate thing to do, and yet she felt comforted. His palm did not possess the smooth, cool skin of a gentleman but was rough and very warm. All that warmth seeped through her arm and up into her chest, and she found herself lacing her fingers with his. With his free hand, he passed her his kerchief and sat silently while she wiped her tears.