Chapter 13
The Orient, the Gorgeous East, exotic islands…how shall I count my life well-spent unless I see them with my own eyes? I must concentrate on that which I want most of all. Trade winds, fragrant spices, dark eyes, a smoky baritone—dash it all! That man invades even the sanctum of my diary!
—from the diary of Lady Caroline Lovell
“Here he comes, my lady. Looks like he got your reticule back, too,” Alice said, giving a little clap. “I told you Mr. Sinclair would see to things.”
“I’m more concerned he’ll see that we’ve been following him since he left Lovell House this morning,” Caroline hissed. It was one thing to trail Lawrence to see where he went. It was quite another to be caught doing it.
“Well, we can say you’re shopping, but a lady such as yourself patronizing a bakery in this neighborhood might strike a body as odd, you must admit.” Alice waved hugely to Lawrence as if he wasn’t already headed their way.
“Stop that!” Caroline was feeling exposed enough. “You’re making a spectacle of us.”
Chastised, Alice dropped her hand. “Truth to tell, I didn’t think old Sedgewick could make the carriage go so slowly or head down so many stray side lanes without us losing Mr. Sinclair entire.”
Caroline had been afraid she’d already lost him. Once Lawrence disappeared into that house on Rathbone for better than half an hour, she realized she had pushed him away for good. He was doing as he’d said he would. He’d found other lodgings.
“My lady.” Lawrence gave her one of his nodding bows as he drew near. “I trust you were unharmed during this unfortunate incident.”
“I’m fine.” She tried to keep her tone light, but that lump of tenderness inside her felt as if it weighed the earth. “Just surprised by the theft, I think.”
“I understand perfectly. Such things don’t happen in St. James Park.”
“Well, no, they don’t seem to,” she admitted, not sure why that was important. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Sinclair.”
He handed back her ruined reticule. “I regret that the laces have been cut, but the contents appear to be intact.”
“No doubt Alice can mend it,” she said, handing the bag to her maid. “See if you’ve a needle and thread in the carriage.”
“My lady, I don’t travel with—oh!” Alice’s eyes widened as she belatedly realized Caroline wanted a word alone with Mr. Sinclair. “Yes. Now that I think on it, I might have brought a bit of something what would be useful. I’ll see to it right away, my lady.”
The coach was only a few yards distant, but it would give Caroline and Lawrence a bit of privacy to speak while maintaining perfect propriety.
“So, I gather you apprehended the thief?” she asked.
“I did.”
“I hope you didn’t hurt him. He was only a boy.”
He cocked his head at her. “Do you really think I’m the sort to savage a child?”
“No, of course not.” Is the man looking for ways to be offended? “I only meant, well, you let him go, didn’t you?”
“I did. No doubt the magistrate’s docket is full of criminals far more sinister than our young cutpurse.” He clasped his hands behind him, assuming a rigid military stance. His hair had been blown back, and that thin scar at his hairline was exposed. Caroline’s fingers itched to trace its length. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No. I’m glad you showed the boy mercy.” Caroline could use a little herself. She wished he’d smile. He looked so very stern when he didn’t, and she feared he was still cross with her for prying into his past. “After all, the lad wasn’t so very terrifying, even though Alice did scream blue murder when the knife flashed. It all happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to be frightened.”
“He intended for you not to realize your purse was gone until it was time to pay for your purchase. But the boy is not that good at his job.”
“His job?”
“Thievery is how he feeds himself,” Lawrence explained. “I don’t think he’s bad at heart. Only hungry.”
“Then God be thanked, for I have never been that hungry.”
“Amen. None of us knows what we might do if we were,” Lawrence said. “But I have to ask, why are you here, my lady?”
“Even a lady can be mildly hungry from time to time.” She waved vaguely toward the shop behind them. “I understand this is a very fine bakery.”
“And you passed a dozen or more such establishments between here and Lovell House. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you were following me.”
Her first impulse was to deny it, but when she met his dark eyes, she knew only the truth would serve between them.
“Very well; if you want me to say it, I will. Yes, we were following you,” she admitted. “But only because I feared you were leaving us.”
“I told you I would.”
Caroline sighed. The man was constantly dragging unladylike admissions from her. The words stuck in her teeth, but she had to say them. “I hoped to convince you not to.”
“Why?”
Just knowing there was no chance she’d meet him on the stairs or see him across the supper table made her chest tighten. Already there was a hole in her life where he’d been. But she couldn’t very well tell him that.
“I…my…my brother…he’ll be upset. Your friendship means a good deal to him, you know. Teddy will take it hard…your leaving, I mean.” Drat the man! What is it about him that makes it so difficult for me to construct a coherent sentence? “Did you even tell Bredon good-bye?”
“I plan to drop him a note of thanks this afternoon and explain my new situation to him,” Lawrence said. “Just because I am no longer enjoying your family’s hospitality, it does not follow that Bredon and I will fail to spend time in each other’s company.”
It didn’t seem to trouble him that he’d no longer spend any time in hers.
“But…you didn’t…I mean, if I hadn’t been looking out the parlor window…” Plague take the man! I may as well admit what’s bothering me. “You didn’t say good-bye to me either.”
“Yes, I did. Last night. After you so kindly instructed me in the waltz.”
“That wasn’t good-bye. It was…” A dismissal. A set-down. If anyone had been watching, it was a cut direct of monumental proportion. “You very nearly threw me out of my own ballroom.”
“If I seemed discourteous, I apologize.”
“You didn’t seem so, you were so.”
“If I’m such an unpleasant fellow, why are you following me?”
She didn’t know. Her mind had never been so…untidy over a man before. She despised herself for it, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Caroline had done so many ridiculous things over Lawrence. She’d have thoroughly castigated Freddie or Horatia if they’d even contemplated following a man through the streets of London in their family’s carriage.
“I was concerned for you,” she finally said to fill the uncomfortable silence that stretched between them.
He raised a skeptical brow.
“As far as I know, you have no family, no other acquaintances in Town with whom you might lodge. Why, for all I knew, you might have ended up in a dreadful neighborhood. There are parts of London where a decent person may not walk unmolested, you know,” she explained, fearful she sounded just like Freddie when she started nattering on, but, like her friend, she was unable to muzzle herself. “As we discovered, even Leicester Square has its miscreants.”
“I assure you, no one will slash my purse strings,” he said dryly. “Is that the real reason you followed me?”
“Can’t I be concerned about my brother’s friend?”
That smile of his—how would she live without it?—lifted one corner of his mouth. “How did I ever manage to roam the Continent and find my way back to England without your concern?”
When he put it like that, she had to laugh. “Very well. You’re right. No doubt you are capable of looking out for yourself.”
“Thank you, my lady.” His smile grew wider, reaching his eyes now.
“Caroline, please,” she corrected. She loved the way he said her name and longed to hear it. When he called her Caroline, she was tempted to arch into the deep, rich sound, like a cat demanding a more thorough petting. “No one can hear if you use my Christian name now.”
“I can hear.” His smile faded. “And calling you my lady is what’s right. I took too many liberties when I was at Lovell House.”
She bit her lip. “I seem to recall one you did not take.”
His voice turned even more husky. “No one regrets that more than I.”
“What do you regret, Lawrence?” He might not call her Caroline, but his name passed her lips with such rightness, she wouldn’t maintain formality with him.
“You know full well. Or if you do not, you are not as intelligent as I believe you to be.” He inclined toward her by the smallest of degrees, but the heat in his gaze was so intense, she was reminded of her initial impression of him. A caged lion, with a predatory gleam in his eye. She was certain he wanted to kiss her. She’d never felt surer of anything. He’d been so close to it in the ballroom. Even now, he might have done so right there on the street, in front of God and everybody, but for his own strong will.
What a curse to a woman is a stubborn man!
Then he straightened to his full height and his cool military reserve was back in force. “My lady, I have more regrets than I wish to share or than you could bear to hear. But what I regret most of late is that I may have caused you pain.”
She shook her head. “Frustration, yes. You’ve definitely left a good deal of excitement in your wake, and no end of confusion. But no pain.” At least, none but the strangely pleasurable ache of longing to have what one does not. “Put your mind at ease, Mr. Sinclair. You have not injured me.”
Not in a lasting way, in any case. His refusal to act on his feelings still stung.
“Then I am gratified to have been of some small assistance to you today,” he said. “Will you be needing an escort back to Lovell House?”
She was tempted to say yes, but once they rejoined Alice in the carriage, their conversation would become more horribly stilted than it already was.
“No, thank you,” she said, determined to keep her tone bright. “However did I manage to find my way about London without your concern?”
“Touché, my lady. But perhaps you’ll allow that I may be concerned for my friend’s sister?”
That made her smile as he took his leave. Tall, lean, and possessed of a warrior’s posture, the man was very fine to look upon, even when he was walking away.
Caroline sighed. She hadn’t succeeded in convincing him to return to Lovell House as Teddy’s guest. However, she viewed this unsatisfactory turn of events as but a momentary setback. She was more determined than ever to know the real Lawrence Sinclair.
Still waters run deep.
If just once she could see the lion uncaged and learn who Lawrence was under that deceptively calm exterior. If she could puzzle out why he held himself in such tight control, and help him loosen his grip, she’d count it a grand accomplishment.
Back when she first began to contemplate having adventures instead of living a pattern sort of life, she’d come across an account of one Antoine de Ville. In 1492, he’d been charged by the king of France with climbing Mount Aiguille. The mountain was said to be impossible to scale, but through great effort, M. de Ville did it, planting his king’s flag on the peak.
Learning Lawrence Sinclair from the inside out would be an adventure without equal. Caroline was just the woman to conquer this man’s inaccessible soul.
Then she’d see about whether she wanted to plant her flag.