Stephanie Laurens - It Happened One Night Anthology

Although he steeled himself, it didn’t help; awareness rippled through him, just because she was near.

Within arm’s reach.

She sat and he stepped away, forced his feet to the other end of the small table. He sat, helped himself to a slice of game pie, then looked across the table and fixed her with a steady stare. “So-what are you doing here?”

She’d thought about spinning him some yarn, but had-wisely-decided against it; he read as much in her serene expression, in the clarity of her fine blue eyes.

Hands folded before her, she met his gaze steadily. “I’m here to retrieve a letter of Tabitha’s that unintentionally went astray.”

He chewed a piece of pie, remarkably succulent, and studied her. She was going to make him wring the story from her, cryptic utterance by veiled truth. Tabitha was her sister, a year or so younger, a firebrand even when he’d last met her at fifteen. Now twenty-five, Tab was, so he’d heard, a bluestocking of quite amazing degree, one who controversially preached that women, ladies in particular, had little need for men-gentlemen in particular-in their lives, and should think very hard before surrendering their freedom and fortunes into said gentlemen’s hands.

Lydia, now twenty-six, six years his junior, had always been the quieter, the more reserved, the steadier and more reliable. Tab, it seemed, had become something of a female version of himself, a notorious and dangerous hellion, at least as far as the ton was concerned.

But what neither sister was, was weak.

He reached for the roast beef. “This letter-who has it, what’s in it that makes it a threat to Tab, and why are you here trying to retrieve it, rather than she?”

Lydia’s lips tightened fractionally, but she drew breath and replied, “The letter was one Tab wrote years ago, when she was seventeen.” She paused, her eyes searching his, then went on. “You remember Tab-you know what she’s like. How she throws herself into things, heart and soul, and the devil be damned?”

Reaching for his goblet, Ro nodded.

“Well, before she became a bluestocking propounding women’s rights, and especially our right not to wed…” She hesitated.

He finished for her. “She was seventeen-she fell in love.” Recalling Tabitha, nothing was more certain.

Lydia nodded. “Exactly. And she wrote to the gentleman involved, and being Tabitha, she wrote unrestrainedly . Without exercising the least discretion, and with an enthusiasm that…” She drew in a short breath. “Well, suffice it to say that if the contents of that letter became widely known now, she’d be the laughingstock of the ton .”

Ro raised his brows. “That bad?”

Lydia grimaced. “Actually, it’s worse. She’d be shunned by all her friends-the other women who think like her, and all that circle.” She paused, then added, “That’s her life now, and effectively, because of this letter, she stands on the brink of ruin.”

Ro frowned, toyed with a portion of beef. “Why, after-what, eight years?-has this letter surfaced now?”

“Because Tab remembered it, and asked for it back.”

Which suggested that the contents really were inflammatory beyond what even Tab, no wilting violet, could imagine facing down. “From the man she’d sent it to.” Ro narrowed his eyes. “And he wouldn’t give it back?”

“No-he agreed to give it back.” Lydia looked exasperated. “Of course he did. If Tab ordered him to jump through a hoop, he would.”

Ro blinked. “Who is he?”

Lydia studied him, then made up her mind. “Montague Addison.”

Ro opened his eyes wide, struggled to keep his lips straight. “Addison the spineless wonder?”

Lips tight, eyes like flint, Lydia nodded. “Yes. Him.”

“Well.” Ro pushed away his empty plate; lifting his goblet, he sipped. “That explains a number of things.” Including why Tabitha Makepeace no longer favored marriage. If as an impressionable seventeen-year-old she’d considered Montague Addison a pattern card of gentlemanly virtue, it was entirely understandable that she’d subsequently rejected wedlock. Especially to gentlemen.

“So”-Ro focused on Lydia-“Addison agreed to give the letter back. What went wrong?”

“After getting Tab’s note, Addison-the idiot -put the letter in its envelope in his coat pocket. He said he intended to find Tab at a ball and hand it over-even though, of course, Tab rarely attends balls. And it’s February, for heaven’s sake! There are hardly any balls in town, and if he’d bothered to read Tab’s direction on her note, he would have seen we were at home in Wiltshire. But Addison, being Addison, didn’t think of any of that. He went on his usual rounds to a few parties, then, not finding Tab, went on to some hell called Lucifer’s.”

Ro was starting to get a very bad feeling about what might have happened, and more specifically where Tab’s letter currently was. “I know it.”

Hearing his clipped tone, Lydia looked at him, momentarily distracted from her frustration with Addison. “Yes, I daresay you might.” She blinked, then returned to Addison’s shortcomings with a frown. “Addison lost heavily, as I understand he frequently does. He needed to write an IOU to…the gentleman to whom he’d lost, and-I presume he was thoroughly foxed by then-he pulled out Tab’s letter and wrote his note of hand on the envelope, and gave it to…the gentleman.”

And with that, Ro saw it all. “The gentleman being Stephen Barham, now Lord Alconbury of Upton Grange.”

Lydia stilled. She held his gaze for a long moment, then reached, slowly, for a grape. “Why do you think that?” She plucked a grape, popped it into her mouth, and studied him, trying to look innocent while she chewed.

Ro smiled-not humorously. “Because Barham is a regular at Lucifer’s, because Addison often tries to ingratiate himself with that crowd, because Upton Grange lies across the lane and through the woods”-with one long finger he indicated the direction-“less than a mile away, and because when you came in your hems were wet.” His jaw clenched. “You’d been traipsing about the woods during a downpour of biblical proportions in the dark of night…why?”

He’d managed through an effort of quite remarkable magnitude to subdue the emotions roiling and welling inside him-roused by the realization of what she was about-enough to make his question reasonably unthreatening.

She still eyed him warily. After a moment, she licked her lips. “You do realize, Ro, that you have no grounds on which to interfere.” She tipped up her chin. “My life is my own, and I will do as I please.”

He simply looked at her and made no reply.

She drew breath, then confessed, “I arrived this afternoon, before the rain started. I need to get the letter back as soon as possible, before Barham realizes what he has. You know how fiendish he is-once he discovers the letter it’ll be all over London.” On the table, her fingers linked, twisted. “And on top of that, Tab and Barham have crossed swords before, and Barham came out of it badly. He would like nothing better than to expose Tab and bring her down in the eyes of the ton .”

She tried to read his reaction in his eyes; he gave her a blank expression, but nodded.

Heartened, she continued, “So I went to look at the house-Upton Grange. To see how big it is, how hard it might be to get inside and search it. I didn’t know if Barham would be there or not.” Her lips turned down; she met Ro’s eyes. “He is-and he’s got a houseful of guests.”

Ro nodded. “Indeed.” He hesitated, then asked, “I assume that means you’ve realized you can’t, at least at present, search Upton Grange for this letter?”