Page 12 of Who’s That Earl

A side of herself she chose no longer to show.

To Jane’s surprise, he did not bother to try to brush it away, futile though the gesture doubtless would have been. She supposed it was consistent with his general devil-may-care attitude.

He did, however, grimace slightly as he sank down. The cushions were soft, too soft for anyone but a child or a small pet to feel comfortable, which was precisely why she’d offered that seat to him. It wouldn’t do to make him too comfortable here. Nevertheless, a slight twinge of regret passed through her. She hadn’t considered that a man of his size might go right on sinking to the floor.

In the end, the sofa held, though not without a creak of protest from its frame and a bit of awkward shifting about on the part of Mr. Sutherland, who no longer enjoyed the advantage of height. When he met her gaze again, his was still steadfastly amused and, yes, knowing. “Were you hoping to put your opponent out of sorts, Mrs. Higginbotham?” he murmured. “I shall remember that.”

“Opponent? Why, whatever do you mean?” She straightened a bit in the overlarge leather chair she’d chosen, which had the unfortunate effect of lifting her feet from the floor in a most undignified fashion.

To hide a laugh, he passed a hand over his mouth and jaw, lingering just a moment to rub that bristle she found so fascinating, then stretched out his arm along the back of the sofa, looking far too much at his ease. Too late, she remembered her vow not to invite him to sit down at all.

“I’ve been in the West Indies, ma’am, doing most of what my commanding officers ordered,” he answered her question at last.

Her lips quirked in reluctant amusement. “Only most?”

“It wouldn’t do to raise their expectations.” He winked. “Why, on six days out of seven, I did nothing at all.”

That wink caused her stomach to perform a curious flip-flop, but she calmed it with an even breath and said, in that prim voice that almost always worked with Agnes, “What happened on the seventh day?”

“Oh, I did a bit of beachcombing.”

She hadn’t the faintest notion what he meant, except that it sounded idle and pointless but almost certainly wasn’t. After all, everyone knew that the French and British had long been battling for supremacy in the Caribbean, which required any number of sailors and soldiers and ships.

She might not know what beachcombing was, but she was intimately familiar with the process of trying to persuade someone that she was what they believed her to be: merely a widow who wrote a neat hand, employed to turn a famous author’s manuscripts into clean copies for the publisher. What, then, might Mr. Sutherland really be? It was fascinating to watch him spin and knit the wool before he pulled it over her eyes. Or tried to.

“No wonder you’re so, er, brown.” Dreadfully brown. More brown than a proper gentleman had any right to be. She certainly did not find herself wondering whether his sun-kissed skin felt as warm as it looked, or whether his chest and shoulders were as tanned as his face and hands. “I confess, when I said that your service had given you the skills necessary for this job, I was thinking of something quite different.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows shot up. “Were there particular skills of mine you intend to put to the test?”

This time, she somehow managed not to blush. “Well, if you are here to investigate a death threat, Mr. Sutherland, doesn’t that rather presuppose that there’s a killer about? Given that we may all be in danger, one hopes you’re a skilled marksman, or swordsman, or—” The customary steely note in her voice grew thin at its edges.

“Never fear, ma’am,” he spoke across her. “I can handle my weapon.”

She found his lazy, suggestive smile oddly reassuring, as if he believed the matter required no defensive tactics more substantial than witty repartee. She’d meant to sound skeptical, even dismissive of the prospect of danger. Somehow, however, the act of speaking the threat aloud made it far more real than the letter writer’s poor penmanship had done. What if...what if someone really wanted Robin Ratliff—her—dead?

“But the goal,” he continued, more seriously, “is never to need to outgun your opponent. If his weapon is drawn, the battle is already half lost.”

She supposed that made a certain amount of sense.

“It’s my job to anticipate his moves,” he continued. “To be quicker. Cleverer.”

“And all that—that beachcombing has made you quick and clever, has it?”

His arm dropped to his side, and he pushed himself up, onto the edge of the seat, closer to her. In the firelight, his eyes gleamed like whisky in the glass. “I’m still alive, lass. That’s all you need to know.”

She parted her lips to retort, but no words came.

It went against her nature to let someone else have the last word. Books were easier. The perfect line always came to her eventually, so that her characters were never at a loss. But right in this moment, she felt neither quick nor clever.

She felt afraid. Frightened of being forced to leave Dunnock, by fair means or foul.

Pushing to her feet, she said, “I’ll ring Mrs. Murdoch to show you to your room.” Mr. Sutherland had to be tired. Surely, tomorrow morning would be soon enough to begin figuring out what they really wanted from each other? She needed to be alone, to think. This ordinary January day had taken twists and turns even Robin Ratliff’s readers would have decried as improbable.

But no sooner were the words out than she swayed unsteadily and found herself sitting down again. The room swam at the edges of her vision. Oh, this was patently ridiculous. She had never fainted before, and although she had once wondered whether it wouldn’t be useful to experience the sensation, for research purposes, now was not the time.

Despite the horsehair sofa’s effort to keep him prisoner, Mr. Sutherland had leaped up the moment she offered to rise, a more gentlemanly act than she had expected from him. Though that wasn’t entirely fair, either. She had no reason not to think of him as a gentleman. But it wasn’t improving her equilibrium to have him looming over her. A man who’d been traveling for days, wearing damp clothes, hadn’t any right to smell so enticingly crisp and spicy.

Then he picked her up her limp hand from the arm of the chair and began to chafe her wrist. One broad, slightly callused thumb slipped beneath the fine lace edging her sleeve and passed over the delicate skin that guarded her pulse. “Mrs. Higginbotham? Are you all right?” She peered up at him, saw worry creasing the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, read concern in his wry, crooked smile. “Perhaps I ought to help you to your room instead.” He bent lower, as if he might just lift her into his arms.