Page 59 of A Rogue at Stonecliffe

“Yes. He’d have sealed his fate if he had killed you.” His voice hardened, and Annabeth thought that no one could have seen the look on Sloane’s face now and not felt a quiver of fear. “But I don’t know that he realizes that.” After a moment, he said, “I think you should stay with your mother instead of at Lady Lockwood’s.”

“I don’t want to stay with them. And I’d need more clothes.”

“I’ll take you home first so you can pack a trunk,” he replied. “I know you dislike Edgerton, but Lady Lockwood’s house is the first place anyone would look for you. You wouldn’t have Verity to protect you because she’s at Stonecliffe.”

“Or Grandmother and Petunia,” Annabeth said, a smile curving her mouth, and Sloane sent her an amused glance. “But there will be servants there, and everyone will be on the lookout. The servants at Lord Edgerton’s wouldn’t be half as alert, and Lord Edgerton doesn’t strike me as much of a brawler. Besides, if they didn’t find me at Grandmother’s, my mother’s house would be the next logical place to look.”

He sighed and was silent for a long moment, then said, “The safest place is my house.”

The air was suddenly charged. Sloane kept his gaze firmly on the road ahead. Annabeth’s voice seemed to stop working—which was just as well, for her mind seemed to have stopped working also.

Finally she said, “Your house? Sloane, that would be... My reputation would... It was one thing going to the Haverstocks’ together, but this would be irredeemable.”

“No one will know,” he told her. “As far as anyone in London is aware, you have gone to Stonecliffe with your grandmother. It will be dark by the time we arrive. You’ll put up your hood, and we’ll go quickly inside. There’s a small bit of greenery in front with a hedge that shields it. Two steps from the curricle, and you will be out of sight even during the day.”

“But your servants will know. They’re bound to.”

“They won’t,” he said flatly. “You forget my checkered past. I am a man who relies on secrecy. No one comes into my personal suite of rooms upstairs without my permission or that of my butler. My butler is the only servant who resides there, and I would trust him with my life. Indeed, I have. A maid and a cook come in daily, but I have given them this time off while I’m gone, and I shan’t reinstate them while you are there. I sent my father to Cornwall.”

It wasn’t the servants. It wasn’t his father. It wasn’t even the fear of scandal. No, what tightened her throat and zinged through her nerves was the same thing that started heat deep in her abdomen: the thought of being alone with Sloane. Indeed, it would have been better if there were a slew of servants or his father, anyone to make it not the two of them alone.

“I have no designs on your virtue, if that is what worries you,” Sloane added caustically.

“I didn’t think you had.” She wasn’t afraid of Sloane or his powers of seduction. What she feared was inside herself—the flame that burned in her when she was with Sloane, the hunger that had driven her into his arms yesterday, the dizzying freedom to do whatever she wanted. She should go to her mother’s, as he’d suggested. She should remove herself from temptation. “Very well. Then we shall go to your house...after we stop at my grandmother’s house so I can pack some clothes.” Annabeth’s tone made it clear that any arguments from Sloane about her reputation should they be seen together would fall on deaf ears.

The rest of the ride to London was awkward. All Annabeth could think about was the night ahead. She wondered why she had agreed. Was it because she wanted to prove that she could resist Sloane? Or because she wanted to give in to the temptation?

Sloane was equally quiet, and though one could never see unease on his face, the way his eyes avoided hers spoke volumes.

They reached London in the evening dusk, and by the time Annabeth had finished at Lady Lockwood’s, it was dark. “Here we are.” Sloane stopped his team in front of his house.

Annabeth didn’t know what she had expected of the place, but it was not this narrow brown brick building in an ordinary part of the city. It was not large, and there was no ostentation about it, nothing that spoke of great wealth or an aristocratic name. She certainly did not expect the hedge of holly that ran decoratively across the front or the window boxes that hung at both levels, so stuffed with plants that they spilled over the edges.

Though the houses were not uniform in style, all of them were set a few feet back from the street, providing small patches of grass or gardens in front of the houses. A black wrought-iron fence separated the house from the street, but the gate stood open, a short walkway leading to the front stoop.

It was indeed a sheltered place, as Sloane had told her, for the walkway was shielded on one side by a tree just inside the gate, and on the other side, a hedge bordered the boundary between the neighbor’s house and Sloane’s.

Annabeth pulled her hood forward to conceal as much of her face as possible, and Sloane whisked her up the path and through the front door. “I must go down to tell Antoine we are here and then take the curricle round to the mews. Feel free to roam about the house as you like. Pick out a room to stay in, perhaps.”

“Where do you want me to sleep?” Annabeth asked.

His eyes glinted, and she realized the underlying innuendo of her question.

“That is—I mean—”

He smiled faintly. “I know what you mean. Choose whichever one you like.”

Sloane turned and headed toward the servants’ stairs in the back. Annabeth stood for a moment, looking around her. It felt odd being in Sloane’s house, as if she were in some forbidden place...which, she supposed, she was. But it wasn’t the social solecism she was thinking of.

It was that this house belonged to Sloane’s world in which she had no part. It was all new to her, with none of the memories there had been in her parents’ homes or the Haverstocks’. This was the part of Sloane that was a stranger to her, the man who had risked his life, who had built a business and made a fortune.

Annabeth walked through the house, looking into the drawing room and dining room, the office in the rear of the house. She felt a little guilty at snooping, but Sloane had told her she was free to do so. These were the furnishings he had bought himself, the art he had chosen, and yet there was a certain unlived-in feeling to it. Annabeth wondered how much time he spent here.

Annabeth climbed the stairs to the next floor. She stopped at each room along the hall, looking in. The first one she took to be the one Marcus must use when he was here, for there were a few possessions scattered here and there. The one next to it looked as if it had never been occupied, bare of all but a basic bed, chair, and dresser.

She moved on. This clearly was a sitting room, uncluttered, with comfortable chairs by the fireplace. There was a door on the interior wall. Going over, she opened it and saw another bedchamber.

This obviously was his bedroom—a jacket thrown carelessly across a chair, his brushes scattered across the dresser, along with a set of cuff links, a book open on the seat of a chair. The smell of his shaving soap still clung to the air, mingling with the scent that was uniquely Sloane.