A Daring Liaison. Gail Ranstrom

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Long adept at covering his emotions with innocuous expressions and meaningless banter, Charles did nothing to betray his anger and suspicion. If Mrs. Huffington had been responsible, in part or whole, for Adam Booth’s death, what had she hoped to gain? Without the nuptials, she was not entitled to anything more than the small settlement her aunt had negotiated. Could she have done it to preserve her freedom rather than for gain? Did she not like her aunt’s choices? Or was she a secret man-hater who disposed of any who threatened her freedom? If so, he sure as hell knew how to find that out.

      “Rational explanations or evidence aside, Mrs. Huffington, what do you think is behind it?”

      Her bewilderment looked genuine enough. “Fate is as good an explanation as any I’ve pondered. Unless …”

      “Pray, enlighten me.”

      “If … if it is not a curse or coincidence, then it has to be deliberate. And if it is deliberate, then it must be personal. And if it is personal, then someone, for some unknown reason, wanted Mr. Allenby and Mr. Huffington dead—perhaps even Mr. Booth. And if that is true, then I am the common thread between them. But if that is so, then why hasn’t an attempt been made on my life?”

      “Aside from tonight, you mean?”

      She turned her lovely face up to his, and her expression was one of bewilderment. “To make me suffer? Or to hang for the crimes? Or could that person simply be taunting me until he is ready to kill me, too?”

      Ah, she was good. He almost believed her. “Why? Who would despise you so much?”

      “I cannot think of anyone I’ve wronged deeply enough to warrant such hatred.” Something of her desperation reached him. If she was telling the truth, she would be frantic, indeed. Her eyes were luminous in the dark coach. “That is why I must get to the bottom of this before something else calamitous can happen.”

      Better and better. She was falling like a ripe plum into his open palm. “I collect it wouldn’t be much of a life if you feared any man you showed an interest in could die, and that you must always watch over your shoulder.”

      She cocked her head to one side and her lips quirked in a sardonic smile. “Was that supposed to be comforting, Mr. Hunter?”

      “Were you looking for comfort or honesty, Mrs. Huffington?”

      “Honesty,” she conceded.

      “I am prepared to help you, if you desire it.”

      “Help me what?”

      “Find out if there is anything sinister behind your ill fortune and the odd things that have been happening to you. That gunshot tonight, for instance.” Could have been Dick Gibbons targeting him, but she did not need to know that. “Apart from that, I think you will be needing a male escort. Delightful though they are, I doubt the Misses Thayer can offer you much protection.”

      Her deep shudder told him that she’d feared the same thing. Mrs. Huffington was not just in fear for the lives of men who knew her, but in fear for her own life—unless this was an act to disarm him.

      “I am nobody,” she murmured. “I cannot in my wildest imaginings think why someone would want Mr. Allenby or Mr. Huffington dead. Or Mr. Booth, for that matter. Nor is there anyone who might wish me dead. It has to be something else. And that is why …” She blinked and pressed her lips together as if she’d said too much.

      “Why it is a mystery you are compelled to solve?” he finished for her. “Again, one with which I am prepared to help you.”

      “I scarcely know what to say, Mr. Hunter. I appreciate the sentiment, but you would be putting yourself in danger.” СКАЧАТЬ