Page 28 of Sir Durham’s Disarming Asset

“Buy me a present.”

“What shall it be?” She was at once her sweet self again. “A cozy for your teapot. Or shall I go to a barber’s and buy a jar of good shaving cream?” She glanced at his hair, and her shoulders flexed.

He had the insane impression she wanted to put her fingertips through his waves. Also impossible.

“Surprise me.” He had to touch her. So he fixed the collar of her cape, avoiding her jibes that sounded like she accused him of being an old man with ancient ways. “Go. And please come home with this attitude.”

“I am burdensome to you,” she crooned, but laughter stood in her gaze.

He chucked her under her chin. “Never. You know it. Now leave me. I have work to do.”

“Today marks one day since we visited Carter. What is the man doing?”

Rafe grumbled. “If he does not hurry, he will need his own will done when you and I appear before him and threaten his imminent demise!”

*

16 S Audley Street

Mayfair, London

Zeph’s journey to the home of Inès Bechard, now the Countess of Halsey, was only a few minutes. She climbed down from the coach and told herself that the next time she came here, she would walk. She would enjoy the crisp wind on her cheeks, the sun on her nose—and the freedom.

“Enjoy yourself,” she murmured to James, then watched him depart for the servants’ parlor downstairs.

“This way, Miss Butler.” A painfully thin man with warm but royal forbearance and glasses perched on the tip of his nose had introduced himself as Davis, the Halseys’ butler. He led her up the stairs to the first-floor salon, past one pastoral landscape and a medieval tapestry.

The white-plastered walls shone in the sunlight that streamed through three glass cupolas in the ceiling.

“All the ladies have already arrived,” he told her as he opened the double doors to a room filled with feathers and pearls and laughter. Zeph paused, dizzy. Grabbing at the railing, she fought a swoon, the sounds of women and children crying, afraid and in pain, rising with a surge of bile. But no, no, this was the opposite.

Zeph forced her nauseating memories back. She entered the salon and at once was amidst such happy women here, she allowed a grin to grace her lips.

Inès, whose oval face was flushed with delight, pushed herself up from her wing chair to greet her. She was very great with child, and Zeph rushed toward her, arms open.

“You must sit down, Inès.” Zeph hugged her and kissed both cheeks, then laughed that she could not get her arms around the woman whose help in rescuing her from the Conciergerie she would never forget.

Inès kept hold of her hand and led her toward others. “I am so happy to see you. And looking so very well, too.”

Standing to greet her were three ladies whom Zeph had not seen in many years. Each one—lovelier than years ago, when youthful girls—was a vision of perfection. Zeph embraced them each in turn.

“Oh my,” she managed, tears clogging her throat. “You each are so beautiful. How can I tell you how very happy I am to see you well?”

The one nearest was Augustine Bolton, now a countess. Zeph had known her as Gus, and Zeph knew from Countess Nugent, who had raised her, that her friend was still using that endearing name. But so much had changed about the girl who was two years older than she. Gus had the maturity of years on her; motherhood, too. Rafe had told her that her friend had three children gracing the nursery of her and her husband, Kane, the Earl of Ashley. Once a pudgy girl, Gus stood slim and tall, inches taller than Zeph and more than she remembered. Gus had sharper eyes, hollowed cheeks, fuller lips, her black hair swept up in a fashionable coif. She was aware, assessing all before her.

And she admired Zeph with a knowing and broad smile. “Hello, sweet girl. I am so pleased to see you well and here in London with us. We worried.”

“Did you know I was in prison?”

Gus lost her smile, her expression serious. “My husband hears much from Paris.”

Zeph did not know the details of how or why that was, but she would ask Rafe. “Did you know Vaillancourt had ordered me there?”

“We did. We had many letters smuggled over to us from Countess Nugent that he had taken you. We did not know how or why, but we were mad to figure out how to save you. No sooner did we have the first letter from the countess about your incarceration, Lord Halsey and Sir Raphael sent word privately that they were off to do that service. Of course, we had no idea our Inès would go as well.” She sent a playful look of reprimand to their hostess.

To which Inès laughed and said, “But look here, more of your old friends wish to greet you.”

At her side stood a voluptuous redhead, she, too, taller than Zeph, but as overjoyed to put her arms around her and hold her close.