Hello Stranger

Thinking of the way she’d put Gamble in his place, he said a touch sheepishly, “The lump on Gamble’s throat . . . I may have been responsible for that.”

“How?”

“The other night, when I found out he’d been following me and reporting to Jenkyn, I caught him in an alley and put a stranglehold on him.”

Garrett made a few little clicking sounds of disapproval that he secretly enjoyed. “More violence.”

“He put you at risk,” Ethan protested, “and betrayed me in the bargain.”

“His actions needn’t have turned you into a brute. There are choices other than retaliation.”

Although Ethan could have made an excellent argument in favor of brutish retaliation, he hung his head in a show of penitence and covertly assessed her reaction.

“Nevertheless,” Garrett said, “you didn’t cause the lump on Mr. Gamble’s throat. It’s almost certainly a goiter.” She leaned into the hallway to make certain no one was approaching, and turned back to him. “Did you leave any evidence behind in the study?”

“No. But they’ll realize the safe was breached when they try to open it. I scrambled the combination to protect the account ledgers.”

Garrett moved closer to him. “What about the information you took?” she whispered.

The stolen pages inside his coat seemed to be burning their way through to his skin. Just as Nash Prescott had told him, the ledgers contained information beyond price. The secrets in his possession could end or save lives. At least a dozen people would have been willing to shoot him on the spot if they knew what he’d just done.

“I found proof that Jenkyn, Tatham, and others in the Home Office have been conspiring with political radicals to commit bomb attacks against British citizens.”

“What are you going to do now?”

Ethan had told her far too much already, and involved her to an extent that appalled him. But if he moved quickly to deliver the information into the right hands, it would prevent her from becoming a target. “I’ll bring the pages to Scotland Yard,” he said. “The commissioner will leap at the chance to be rid of Jenkyn. Tomorrow, hell will break loose at Whitehall.”

One of her hands came lightly to his coat lapel. “If all goes as it should, will you and I be free to—”

“No,” Ethan interrupted gently. “I told you before, I’m not for the likes of you.” Seeing her bewildered expression, he floundered for a way to make her understand his limitations, the things she would want that he couldn’t give. He would never be civilized enough for her. “Garrett . . . I’ve never had the kind of life with dinner bells and mantel clocks and tea tables. I roam half the night and sleep half the next day. I live in a rented flat on Half Moon Street with an empty pantry and a bare wooden floor. The only decoration is a picture of a circus monkey wearing a top hat and riding a bicycle. It was left by the man who lived there last. I’m too used to being alone. I’ve seen some of the worst things people can do to each other, and I carry it with me all the time. I don’t trust anyone. The things in my head . . . God help me if you knew.”

Garrett was silent for a long moment, her gaze thoughtful. “I’ve also seen some of the worst things people can do to each other,” she eventually said. “I daresay there’s little left in this world that would shock me. I’m aware of what kind of life you’ve led, and I would hardly try to turn you into a tame man about the house.”

“I’m too set in my ways.”

“At your age?” Her brows lifted.

Ethan was simultaneously amused and offended by the way she spoke to him, as if he were some cocksure lad who considered himself more worldly-wise than his experience merited. “I’m nine and twenty,” he said.

“There,” she said, as if that had proved something. “You can’t be such a hardened case as all that.”

“Age has nothing to do with it.” The conversation was a thin veneer over the real discussion taking place between them. Ethan felt his insides tighten with yearning and dread as he let himself think of what she might ask of him, what he might promise in a moment of insanity. “Garrett,” he said brusquely, “I’ll never fit into a conventional life.”

A curious smile edged her lips. “Do you think my life is conventional?”

“Compared to mine.”

She seemed to look inside him, taking his measure. Ethan stood there helplessly, more bound by those green eyes than by forty fathoms of ship’s chain. He was filled with regret for all the moments he would never have with her. God, his desire for her was intolerable. But there was an inescapable reckoning laid up for men like him.

“Then I’m to have nothing of you?” she asked. “A few pressed violets in a book and a new front-door lock—that’s all I’ll have to remember you by?”

“What would you like?” he asked readily. “Name it. I’ll steal one of the crown jewels for you.”

Garrett’s eyes softened, and she reached up to stroke his cheek. “I’d rather have the monkey picture.”

Ethan looked at her in bewilderment, thinking he hadn’t heard right.

“I would like you to bring it to me after you’ve taken care of your other business,” she said. “Please.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

Ethan was thunderstruck. She looked so innocent, as if she weren’t proposing something that went against every social and moral principle. “Acushla,” he managed to say, “I can’t spend the night with you. That right belongs to the man you’ll marry.”

Garrett leveled that direct, disarming stare at him. “My body is my own, to be shared or withheld as I choose.” Standing on her toes, she pressed a soft kiss to his lips. Her slim hands framed the sides of his face, her thumbs on his taut jaw. “Show me what you can do,” she whispered. “I think I might like to try a few of those one hundred and twenty positions.”

Ethan was almost too aroused to stand upright. His head lowered until his forehead rested against hers. That was the only place he could touch her—if he let his hands take hold of her, he would lose control entirely.

His voice was scratchy. “They’re not for virgins.”

“Then show me how you make love to a virgin.”

“Damn you, Garrett,” he muttered. There were things about her he didn’t want to know: the curve of her naked back, the secret scents and textures of her skin. The intimate colors of her. The rush of her breath against his neck as he entered her, the quickening pleasure-rhythms of their joined bodies. Knowing such things would turn the pain of leaving her into agony. It would turn living without her into something worse than death.

On the other hand, chances were he’d end up in a weighted sack in the Thames before the week was out.

Garrett stared up at him, her eyes bright with challenge. “My bedroom is on the second floor, to the right of the stairs. I’ll keep a lamp burning.” Her lips curved slightly. “I would leave the front door unlocked . . . but since it’s you, there’s no need.”

Chapter 14