As she curled her hand around the banister and began to ascend the stairs on the very tips of her toes, the glow of the moon drifted through some upper window and poured a pool of silvery light across the ornate pattern of a carpet runner.

  And there, padding out of an open door with a massive yawn and a sinuous stretch—as if she had just woken from a particularly lovely nap—was Tansy.

  “Oh, you naughty girl,” Grace whispered as she started for the cat. “I’ve half a mind to let his lordship shave you after all.”

  Tansy, however, had other plans. The moment she realized she had been spotted, she twitched her tail in a contemptuous little flick and darted off down the hall, a streak of grey disappearing into the darkness.

  With a muttered oath, Grace hiked up the skirt of her wrapper and trailed after her. Tansy had headed deeper into the house, but each closed door which Grace passed narrowed the scope of her search and reduced the chances that Tansy had found some deserted room, some nook to tuck herself away within and wait out Grace’s pursuit.

  There. They had reached the end of the hall, and Tansy was fresh out of options. A dead end; the lone window at the end of the hall the sole source of dim light. Tansy wheeled around, cast about for an escape which did not involve darting past Grace.

  Grace fisted her hands upon her hips, standing arms akimbo in an effort to block as much of the corridor as possible just in the event that Tansy might perform an ill-advised leap for freedom. She pitched her voice to a low hiss. “I’ve got you now, you little terror—”

  A slice of light cut across the floor from somewhere behind her. There was the faint creak of floorboards, the muted thump of feet on carpet.

  At once, Grace realized that she had made a critical, careless error. She had scanned the windows at the front of the house for evidence of light within the house, the suggestion that someone might still be awake even at this hour. But she had not given a similar attention to those at the back.

  She froze, utterly and entirely. And Tansy—

  Tansy did what Tansy did best. She pitched herself forward in a sudden scrabble of claws on carpet, producing a magnificent tearing sound as she vaulted past Grace and back toward the stairs.

  “Christ!” The masculine oath split the air, and despite herself, Grace let her head swivel toward the sound. Lord Lockhart stood there in the doorway, leaning back against the frame with one hand pressed to his bare chest as if the furry missile that had streaked past had frightened ten years off of his life. “Tansy?” he muttered, his voice faintly slurry-sounding. “What the devil?”

  The fine hairs at the nape of Grace’s neck prickled as she watched the realization settle over his face—where Tansy was, she was sure to follow. Slowly, as if he hardly dared to confirm his suspicions, he turned his head toward her.

  A dozen thoughts raced across Grace’s mind at breakneck speed. She had been unceremoniously ejected from his garden too many times to count, but she had never—never—been caught entirely within his house before. She might have bargained for Tansy’s freedom to trespass as she pleased, but even then she had known that arguing for her own would have been too much to ask. And even if she had, extending such a request to his house would have been beyond the pale.

  “Grace?” The incredulous, baffled question wavered in the air, rife with uncertainty. As if he simply could not believe his eyes.

  Grace’s shoulders slumped as she let her arms fall to her sides. The time had come to pay the piper, she supposed. She had gotten herself into this mess—or Tansy had, at any rate. He might have some well-deserved words of recrimination for her, but at least he wasn’t likely to summon a constable to apprehend her, when one considered that he still required her assistance.

  With a heartfelt sigh, Grace turned at last. “Lord Lockhart, I can explain,” she said, clasping her hands before her in a gesture of entreaty. Half a dozen words climbed up her throat—and died upon her tongue the moment she lifted her eyes to his.

  A shiver slipped up her spine.

  I don’t like the way ‘e looks at ye, Uncle Chris had said only yesterday. And she hadn’t understood it, because until just recently he had never looked at her with anything but annoyance; with a sort of ever-present exasperation. As if she existed only to plague him.

  But it wasn’t true at all. She had just never caught him at it. Looking at her, as he did now, in this unguarded moment. She had blundered in this evening and caught him utterly unawares, and now he looked at her like—

  Oh. Oh.

  She knew now. She knew exactly. Uncle Rafe had said as much, too, only she hadn’t believed him. Lord Lockhart was looking at her like—

  Like Danny looked at Hannah.

  ∞∞∞

  Grace Seymour was in his house.

  It seemed impossible, like some sort of fever-dream Henry’s whisky-addled brain had conjured up. His fingers twitched at his side; he’d left the bottle on his desk, which was just as well because he had the feeling he’d had quite enough already this evening.

  Probably he should have shouted. Railed against the impropriety of her here, in his house, at this hour, in what appeared to be nothing more than her wrapper. Instead he raked his fingers through his disheveled hair and asked, “Can you?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Those wide, green eyes stared at him with something bordering on astonishment. Which was rather rich, given that only one of them had any right at all to be astonished at this juncture, and it was most certainly him. After all, he could reasonably be expected to be found within his house this time of the evening, and she most certainly ought to have been in her own.

  But she wasn’t. She was here.

  “Explain,” he clarified. “You did say you could.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes.” Her hands clasped before her, fingers flexing. “I, ah—I saw Tansy in your window.”

  “That explains the cat,” he said, bracing one hand upon the door. “Not you.”

  “Well—well—” A little furrow of frustration knit her brows. “I thought I could just…”

  “Break in,” he suggested mildly. Probably that was the whisky. Everything had gone just a bit fuzzy at the edges. Pleasant and warm. A bit softer all around than life had been just lately.

  “You weren’t meant to be awake!” Her hands wrenched themselves apart, and her fingers performed an agitated flutter. “The house looked dark. I thought for certain everyone would be asleep. And, truly, I only meant to retrieve Tansy.”

  “So you thought you could just slip into my house, recover your cat, and I would be none the wiser?”

  “You never have been before,” she blurted out, and jerked at the realization of what she had admitted, clapping one hand over her mouth to stifle the wild little gasp that slipped across her lips.

  In another time, another life—which was to say, a week ago on the outside—probably he would have been furious. He should have been furious, regardless. Instead he scraped his hand across his mouth to erase the shred of a smile that wanted to tug at his lips. “So you’ve done it before. How many times?”

  She gave a little lift of her shoulders; a dismissive shrug, as if the question was meritless on its face. “Only a few,” she said, in that sweet tone of innocence which he now knew to be false. And her nose had twitched; a tell that he suspected only he was truly aware of. Which meant she’d probably let herself into his home a dozen times or more. And he’d never known.

  A quizzical frown pulled the golden arches of her brows down. “What are you doing, awake at this hour?”

  “Drinking,” he said. “Seemed a proper time for it. Devil of a day, you know.” His fingers drifted down to tug at the knot of his cravat, which he abruptly recalled he was not wearing. Hell. He’d retired to his study directly after he’d returned from the dinner party. At some point during the remainder of the evening, he’d consumed a great deal of whisky and discarded certain crucial pieces of his evening wear.

  But she was here—in her wrapper. Fair was fair. He pushed himself away from the door, took another step toward her. She’d left her hair down, and the mass of it had turned silver in the low light. Probably she’d been preparing for bed when she had decided to embark upon her little housebreaking adventure.

  That dark velvet clung to every one of her ample curves as if it had been poured over her, practically inviting a touch. A caress.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and he thought he heard a sliver of offense within the threads of her voice. “I thought it went rather well, honestly.”

  Rather well? Rather well? “You were very nearly caught,” he said. “You threw yourself out of a third floor window—”

  “I did not,” she protested. “I climbed down a tree.”

  “Because the alternative was to be caught red-handed ransacking my uncle’s study.” A little flair of the fear and anxiety that had precipitated his drinking this evening sparked behind his ribs; a strange ache that had nothing to do with the potential of losing his title and everything to do with losing her. “I never meant for you to come so close to ruin,” he said. “Do you realize what would have happened if I hadn’t seen you there at the window? If I had left the room only moments earlier? How had you expected to re-enter the house once you’d left it?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she snapped waspishly. “The same way I entered yours this evening!” She shoved one fist into the pocket of her dressing gown and withdrew a long, thin piece of metal. The dim light slid along the length of it, a glint cast into his eyes. “I’m not so foolish as to go in unprepared,” she said. “I have always got a contingency. It was convenient to have you let me in, but not strictly necessary. This is a jemmy; it is very good for opening windows that people would prefer to remain closed, though sometimes it leaves a bit of damage in its wake. If you had not been there to let me in, I would simply have found an unoccupied room and let myself in.”

  But the danger had still been real. Real enough to have put the fear of God into him, to have sent him searching for a bottle with trembling hands the moment he’d returned home. Real enough that he had agonized for hours over what might have become of her, the consequences she might have suffered.

  On his account.

  That remembered fear sank its claws into some overly sensitive corner of his heart and yanked. “Be that as it may,” he said as he closed the gap between them. “Cemeteries are littered with souls who thought they knew best. Prisons are populated with people convinced they were untouchable.”

  She folded her arms over her bosom. That wrapper gaped at the neck, and the frilly lace lining the nightgown beneath was just barely visible.

  Henry passed a hand over his mouth, felt the fierce pant of his breath against his fingers, and couldn’t be certain to what he ought to attribute it—anxiety or arousal. “If something had happened to you—”

  The distant light of the lamp he’d left burning in his study painted her skin a luminous gold and shadowed her collarbones and the hint of cleavage revealed by the deep neck of her wrapper.

  Henry cleared his throat. “I will not have you—”

  Her bare toes peeked out from beneath her skirt, curling into the carpet beneath her feet.

  He tried again. “Grace, you cannot—”

  Her hair smelled like jasmine.

  Henry braced one hand on the wall beside Grace’s head, breathed deeply through his nose. A mistake. Good God, that dizzying scent scrambled his senses. “You’re not to—” Was he ever going to manage to complete a single thought?

  She tilted her face to his, and—no. No, he wasn’t.

  Chapter Twelve

  Grace had found herself embroiled in any number of risky ventures across her twenty-four years of life. She had pick-pocketed the well-to-do, had burglarized homes, had experienced a brief stint in jail. She and danger were old friends; they had walked hand-in-hand more times than she could count.

  But nothing had ever felt quite so dangerous as this—this ineffable attraction that sizzled along her skin as if she’d been struck by lightning. As Lord Lockhart towered over her, his broad shoulders blotted out the light, casting her into shadow. A muscle in his jaw flexed, as if his teeth were clenched behind the seam of his lips around some words of chastisement that he could not quite make himself speak. She could smell the faint astringency of liquor that clung to him, knew herself to be spry enough to evade him if she wished to. It would be easy. A simple duck beneath his arm, a pivot, and she would be free.

  But she didn’t wish to. Her heart fluttered like a caged bird, and her palms were hot and damp. Any moment now, he was going to kiss her, and she—she wanted to know what it would be like. How far, exactly, he had unraveled from the stern, starchy gentleman he had always presented himself as. How much of his leash he had slipped. How far she might push him still.

  She swiped the tip of her tongue across her lower lip. “You knew what I meant to do at your uncle’s house,” she said. “You can hardly complain of it now.”

  His brows lowered, dark slashes over the glacial blue of his eyes. “I don’t want you taking such risks again,” he said. “Is that clear?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No!” Grace unfolded her hands, threw them up in a wild little gesture. “Sometimes, there is risk involved in such things—”

  “Not your risk. Not on my account.”

  “But I wasn’t caught,” she protested. “And what’s more, I was successful. It’s true that I had only a few minutes to be about my business, but—”

  “I don’t care that you were successful,” he interjected. “I care that you were nearly caught, and it would have been my fault. That you were forced to climb down a damned tree during a dinner party to escape.”

  “It was the safest route to take!”

  “It won’t happen again.” His voice had pitched to a guttural tone, rife with agitation. “Or your involvement in this is at an end.”

  Her mouth dropped open in shock. “You can’t just—just unilaterally decide such a thing!”

  “I can and I am.” His head dipped. She heard his swift, sharp inhale near her ear. “Your hair smells like jasmine.”

  Grace’s heart tripped through a few frantic beats. “I have got a stack of correspondence pilfered from your uncle’s desk,” she said, her voice quavering. “You’ll never get it if”—had he sniffed her hair again?—“if you shut me out.”

  “I’ve already proved myself reasonably competent at sleight of hand,” he murmured. “I suppose I might as well add housebreaking to my criminal repertoire.”

  Criminal repertoire? Despite herself, a hysterical giggle fluttered in her throat. “You’ll never find them,” she said. “I have hiding places you could never dream of.”

  “I’ll just bet you do.” He lifted his free hand, and the tip of his finger traced a burning path across her collarbone. “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to give them to me.”

  Had a simple touch ever felt quite so evocative? A shiver slid down her spine as he nudged the shoulder of her wrapper aside. Grace swallowed hard, her mouth gone dry. “I am?”

  “Yes. And furthermore, you are going to agree not to take such risks in the future. If anyone’s freedom should be at risk, it must be mine.”

  Chill bumps broke out upon her flesh at the sensation of his fingertips grazing her skin as they meandered toward the nape of her neck. Her hair slid through his fingers like silk as he combed it away from her neck, catching up a handful of it in his fist to pull her head back gently. She pursed her dry lips. “Let’s—let’s discuss this rationally.”

  A low laugh. “God, no. You could talk circles around me. And half the time, you’re lying.”

  Grace gave an offended sniff. “Not half. I only—”

  “Not tonight.” His cheek scraped hers, the scant growth of beard that had bloomed upon his jaw in the hours since his last shave grazing her skin. “Not tonight, Grace.”

  The touch of his lips at the corner of her mouth seared her straight to her soul. Oh, she was weak—weak enough to turn her face to his, to invite further liberties. Her hands lifted, settling upon the wall of his chest, his bare flesh burning her palms.

  “Henry.” She had never called him by his name before. She’d never even thought of him by it. He had always been Lord Lockhart; he of unassailable dignity, of unwarranted feline disparagement, of stern demeanor and frequent disapproval.

  But now, with his fingers in her hair and his lips pressed to hers—he was Henry. His heart beat beneath the palm of her hand; an escalating pound. He eased closer still, and she felt a tremor ripple through the arm he slid about her waist. She knew well enough the flavor of whisky, and it wasn’t only that she tasted on his tongue.

  It was fear. Not that he had nearly watched his claim to his title go up like so much smoke, but fear for her. Probably he didn’t know it, but with one arm about her waist and the other raking through her hair, pressing her back to the wall, he had wrapped himself about her. Not like a cage to keep her prisoner, but like a shield to keep her safe.

  Somehow that realization curled around her heart and squeezed. That his overbearing demand had not come from a lack of faith in her abilities, but instead a place of concern for her welfare.

  “I don’t lie half the time,” she murmured as his lips parted from hers at last and blazed a path across her cheek.

  A huff of reluctant laughter. His warm breath coasted across her ear. “I know,” he said. “And I know when you are lying.”

  “You don’t. You couldn’t.” A shiver coasted down her spine as his palm slid over the curve of her bottom.

  “I do,” he insisted, bending his head to brush his lips across the curve of her shoulder. “You’ve got a tell.”

  Grace surfaced briefly from the sensual shroud that had fallen over her. “What? No, I haven’t!” Had she? “You must tell me what it is immediately.”