A Daring Liaison(17)

Ah, so contrary to their assertions, he and Lord Wycliffe actually did suspect there was something sinister in the wind.

Mr. Hunter took her arm and led her from the theater as the performance resumed. On the street, he signaled a hackney, handed her up and followed her in. The jarvey cracked his whip and the carriage lurched forward, propelling Mr. Hunter into the seat beside her instead of across from her.

“Beg pardon,” he murmured as he settled next to her.

She gave him a sideways glance and arranged her skirts to keep them from wrinkling, then folded her hands in her lap, trying to give the appearance of sublime unconcern. She did not want him to know how acutely aware of him she was—of his warmth, his size, his sensual mouth or the devastating effect he was having on her senses.

“I have a vague recollection of glimpsing you last fall, Mrs. Huffington. Were you in London as late as September?”

So it was to be inconsequential conversation, was it? And a tacit agreement to ignore their earlier acquaintance? But she couldn’t ignore the fact that he smelled utterly masculine—like good shaving soap and starched linen.

She gave herself a mental shake and turned her thoughts to the conversation. “Yes. In fact, I believe I saw you at the Argyle Rooms the night my...Mr. Booth was shot.”

“Did anyone ever mention to you that someone else had been shot that night, too?”

“I believe so. One of his friends, I was told, but the injury was not life threatening.” She looked at him and surprised an almost incredulous look on his face. But she had told him about Mr. Booth before, hadn’t she? Why should he be surprised?

A muscle jumped along his jaw and he took a deep breath. “You were saying, Mrs. Huffington?”

“Oh, yes. That we left for home a day or two after that. There seemed no point in staying and Aunt Caroline was never very comfortable in London.”

“I understand. London, for all its glamor, can be an unsettling place.”

She smiled. “I would never call it peaceful.”

He shifted to face her, and a small smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “Somewhat of an understatement, that.”

She looked into his deep violet eyes and wondered where her wits had gone. Two husbands and a fiancé, and it had taken Charles Hunter and a vow of celibacy to make her heart beat faster—the very definition of irony. He had, in fact, been the only man who ever had ever made her heartbeat race. The only man who had ever made her lose her wits with a single kiss.

Her little voice, the one that whispered good sense when her heartbeat tripped along a wayward path, told her to demur. Told her, in fact, to run home as fast as she could. Charles Hunter could have her rushing headlong into a relationship she’d sworn never to have again.

“But I must say, Mrs. Huffington, that you have a very cool head. Not many women could be shot at and then dust themselves off and get on with their lives.”

“If there was another choice, sir, I missed it.”

* * *

Charles laughed at her attempt at irony, then grew sober. Perhaps it was just as well that she didn’t know he was the other man shot last fall. That knowledge could put her on her guard and he wanted her as unguarded as possible. He reached out to tuck an escaped lock of hair behind her ear. The strands felt like silk against his fingers. “I gather you’ve learned to cope with shocks.”

A shadow passed over her face, and her dark lashes lowered to shield her eyes at his reference to her husbands’ deaths. Was she hiding something? Preparing to lie? “When you are at fate’s mercy, Mr. Hunter, there is little else you can do.”

“Fate?” he echoed. “Is that how you define your ill fortune with husbands?”

Her gaze, half angry, half bewildered, snapped upward to meet his. “Or that I am cursed. What else can it be?”

“Coincidence?” he ventured.

She relaxed and shrugged. Had she thought he was making an accusation when he’d only meant to open the discussion? Mention the elephant in the room that everyone seemed intent on ignoring?

“’Tis just that I hardly know what to say. How can I explain such odd occurrences? And how shall I explain my late fiancé? Mr. Booth had just signed the contracts before he was killed. Am I supposed to believe that, too, was coincidence?”

Charles gritted his teeth. Booth. His head spun with Wycliffe’s unsubtle suggestion that the shooter hadn’t been Dick Gibbons. Had, in fact, been Georgiana Huffington. He fought the impulse to ask her where she’d been when those shots had been fired.