Page 116 of A Perilous Passion

“Lord Beckport?”

“Hmm?”

“You can stop touching me now.”

“I just…”

He seemed to be in a daze, gazing at her mouth. His thumb came up and stroked along her lower lip, sending flickers of excitement up and down her spine. She parted her lips in surprise.

Abruptly, he stiffened and pulled away.

Had he been thinking about…kissing her?

Good heavens. Had she been about to let him?

“I should leave now,” he said. “Please accept my apology for using such crude methods to persuade you, but lives could be at risk if you reveal what you know of me. It might, indeed, be safer for you to go away until the danger is past. If you have family you could visit, I strongly advise you to do so.”

He kept speaking of danger. What danger? She wasn’t afraid of smugglers, although she daren’t tell him why. But before she could frame her next question, he stood up and blew out the candle.

His voice sounded like velvet in the darkness as he said, “It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Allston. Mayhap one day we’ll meet again under better circumstances. I’m going to close your window behind me, in case someone less gentlemanly should notice it open.”

“I can’t think of anyone less gentlemanly,” she muttered, but the window had already closed. She climbed out of bed and padded across the room to look outside. Nothing moved in the garden, not even a shadow. The man was certainly good at passing unnoticed.

Should she lock the window, lest he return? Heaven knew what might happen if he did. She was far too easily affected by his touch and the nearness of his body. Good lord, the thoughts she’d entertained! The only protections she had against him were carefully chosen words, a detached expression, and keeping at a considerable physical distance.

None of which she’d managed while sitting next to him on her bed.

She’d trembled…and not from fear.

Lying back on the sheets, she pondered over what he’d said and done—and not done. Like that kiss. She was sure he’d been looking at her lips and thinking about kissing her, the shameless rogue. Now there’d always be a question in her mind, and almost certainly some feverish imagining of what it might be like to be kissed for real by a far more experienced man than Justin.

She punched her pillow in frustration. What was she supposed to do now, after all his dire warnings? Infuriating man! Was she expected to lock herself in, with a knife under her pillow and the copper warming pan within easy reach, in case the smugglers took it into their heads to climb the creeper in the middle of the night and put an end to her?

Unacceptable.

It simply wouldn’t do. Her freedom had already been curtailed once, for far too long, and she wasn’t about to let that happen again. She would be the one to decide if it was safe to walk around Fortuneswell, not Lord High-and-Mighty Beckport.

Besides, it would be interesting to uncover more about the free traders working this little piece of the Dorsetshire coastline. And maybe by doing that, she could find out what exactly Rafe Seabourne, or rather, Rafe Pomeroy, Earl of Beckport, was up to.

What if he was working for the revenue men, sent here to catch smugglers? Should she help or hinder him? Could she, in good conscience, help send men like her father to prison? True, some of the ringleaders might be driven by greed and avarice, but the poor sailors and local men were probably simply trying to feed their families.

And it might be rather fun to get in Beckport’s way. He was far too toplofty, thinking he could order her around and blackmail her family with impunity.

She had an advantage he was unaware of. Because of her father, she was acquainted with the business. The easiest way to track down smugglers was to work out who their customers were—which gentlemen kept a stock of unusually fine brandy or were profligate with tobacco or snuff, and which ladies were sporting Brussels lace on their newest caps.

Rafe Seabourne couldn’t enter the houses of the gentry lest he be recognized as Lord Beckport. She, on the other hand, could.

It would also be vastly reassuring to make sure none of the smugglers around Fortuneswell knew who her father had been. There could still be some of his former associates who were out for revenge over his intended betrayal to the crown. They might well believe like father, like daughter.

She, like Beckport, could not afford for her true identity to be discovered.

Chapter Seven

The morning after Rafe’s ill-advised clandestine visit to Miss Allston’s bedchamber, he decided to pay her another unofficial call. Had she taken his warnings to heart or not?

He didn’t like loose ends.

In the hour before noon, he stationed himself beneath the parlor window of her aunt’s ancient cottage, shrouded in shrubbery and decidedly damp. The weather had broken and rain trickled down the back of his neck, but he daren’t move. Miss Allston was sitting with two other young ladies just the other side of the diamond-paned window, their morning gowns bright blurs of color beyond the glass. The lead flashing had crumbled around some of the mullions, creating chinks through which he could hear their conversation.