Page 31

She smiled, because they were safe under a tree where no one would whisper about her behind their fans. And because he made her want to smile, with that glower, the arch of his brow. “Not anymore.”

He grunted.

Amiably, she liked to think. It felt like a sonnet.

The abandoned cottage, on the other hand, was a ghost story full of warning. It was wattle and daub with a thatched roof and a red door hanging crookedly off its hinges. Dandelions bloomed in a tangle under the window. A black dove had been scratched into the doorpost.

“And who told you Miss Taunton came down this way?” Bram asked.

“Granny Mab.”

He looked briefly flummoxed. “Granny Mab.”

“Yes, for a basket of pastries.”

“Now he’s better than decoupage!” Granny Mab hollered as she ambled past. Her timing was impeccable. She ought to have been on the stage.

“That Granny Mab, in point of fact.”

He just shook his head. “I’ll go in first.”

“Do you expect to find pirates or French soldiers?” Clara asked archly. “It’s just an old cottage. I don’t expect Sybil to be hiding out in there.”

She stayed close behind him. This was her investigation, after all. He halted on the doorstep. She bounced right off his wide back with an “oomph.”

“All right back there?” he asked, amused.

She rubbed the tip of her nose. The man must be made of stone. And why did he smell so good, like lime candies? “I’m fine.”

“I said I was going in first.”

“And there you are, first.”

He huffed a sigh. “You’re supposed to wait out here until I give the all-clear.”

“I am waiting out here.”

He turned, closed his large hands around her shoulders, and lifted her bodily off the ground. Her toes dangled. Their gazes collided. That electricity again, a current of awareness prickling between them. She could practically taste it on her tongue like the most decadent of chocolates. The moment lasted longer than was strictly necessary. Hot, hungry, and strangely prophetic.

His jaw twitched.

And then he deposited her very gently back on the ground, several feet away from the front door. She was practically across the street. “This is ridiculous.”

“If you put yourself in danger, I really will put you over my knee,” he muttered.

She flushed, head to toe. No one much cared about her safety and comfort. She was not someone who was automatically considered. Certainly, she was not someone who was teased and flirted with. Was he even flirting with her? He had muttered it as though she was not supposed to hear.

Which just made it better, for some reason. She felt it in her breasts and the intimate flesh between her thighs, suddenly hot and thrumming with awareness.

“All right now,” Bram said from the doorway. “No pirates.”

And yet she felt thoroughly plundered.

She nearly giggled. Miss Vinegar did not giggle.

Bram’s expression softened, but it was so brief she might have imagined it. She crossed the dirt road and followed him inside, her pulse beating thickly in her throat, her belly, her puckered nipples. She closed her pelisse tighter, willing herself not to act like a goose. Even as she wondered if he would mind very much if she fashioned her next hero after him. Made him do wicked things. Delicious things.

“Are you giggling?” Bram asked, turning to stare at her.