Her flattened palm skimmed from his shoulder to his elbow, idly tracing the contours of his arm muscles. Despite his better judgment, he flexed.
She noticed.
A surge of raw male pride set his blood pumping.
Who’s all wrong for you now, darling?
“Let’s be going,” he said. “Follow me. And stay close.”
Charlotte sent up a brief, silent prayer and followed him into the corridor, carrying her boots in one hand. He held her other hand firmly tucked under his arm. In relative terms, it was a short journey to the door of her bedchamber, but it felt like a mile.
He gave the latch an experimental rattle, having put his ear to the door.
“You said you left the key in the door?”
She nodded.
“It’s not there anymore.”
“That’s odd.”
Charlotte suddenly realized he’d known which door was hers without asking. She wondered if there was anything to make of that, but other concerns quickly took precedence.
Such as the sound of distant footsteps coming from the bottom of the servant stairs.
“Someone’s coming,” she whispered. “We should go back to your chamber.”
He didn’t react. “It’s a moment’s work.”
Working in quick movements, he removed an onyx stickpin from his pocket, bit the pointed end to give it a crook, and inserted it in the keyhole with a firm push. He worked the bent stickpin like a lever, testing it at different angles to work the lock.
As she watched breathlessly, Charlotte wondered if gold and onyx had ever been employed in such a venial occupation. To say nothing of the Marquess of Granville’s aristocratic hands.
The footsteps on the servant stairs had grown louder. At any moment, one of the housemaids would appear at the end of the corridor. Charlotte could hear her humming a tune.
“Hurry,” she whispered.
He didn’t acknowledge her plea.
His lack of urgency was maddening. They couldn’t be caught like this. There was no way to explain how Charlotte had gone from nursing a headache in her room to standing breathless and disheveled in the corridor, outside her own locked door. Worst of all, in the company of Lord Granville.
She would never be able to escape marrying him, in that event.
Oh, no.
A horrid thought struck her. Perhaps that was what he wanted. Perhaps he wasn’t even trying. Perhaps this entire stickpin nonsense was a mere charade.
The footsteps reached the landing of the stairs. Charlotte caught a glimpse of black linsey-woolsey skirt rounding the far end of the corridor.
She wanted to bolt, hide. But where? This corridor suffered from an unforgivable lack of alcoves, potted plants, and marble statuary.
Her heart was in her throat.
“There,” he murmured.
With a soft click, the lock opened.
In a single motion, he drew her into the room, shutting the door behind them—and leaving nothing but her startled gasp on the other side.
He flattened her against the closed door, pinning her with his body weight.
They remained still and silent until the maid’s humming passed Charlotte’s room and continued down the corridor.
“I told you I’d have it in time,” he said.
“Yes. You did. All that and your hair isn’t even mussed. What does your valet put in it?”
“Nothing. No one touches my hair.”
“No one?” She tilted her head, regarding his thick, dark hair. “What a shame.”
His heart still thumped against hers, but his expression—difficult as it was to read—didn’t appear to be concern.
It looked like amusement.
Could it be that while skulking about corridors and picking locks with his stickpin, the proper, restrained Marquess of Granville was actually having fun?
How interesting. Perhaps there was something about the hint of danger that made him come alive in new ways.
Charlotte felt it, too. Not only the lingering excitement of their near escape, but the closeness they shared now.
His strong, sinewy forearms braced on either side of her body promised to protect her.
But the dark intensity in his eyes was perilous.
“You should go.” She slid out from between his arms. “You’ll want to finish dressing for dinner.”
“Wait.” His hand closed on her arm, holding her in place. “I’ll check your rooms first. Someone’s been in here while you were away.”
“Really? How can you tell?”
“Aside from the key being dislodged?” He looked under the bed and inside the closet. “Obviously it’s been ransacked.”
She looked about the room. “No, it hasn’t. It’s exactly as I left it.”
“You left it like this.” He picked up a shawl from the floor, holding it by one bit of fringe, and as he lifted it into the air, it pulled with it a tangle of stockings and the stray bootlace.
“I’m not the tidiest of ladies,” she said defensively.
With a chastening arch of one dark eyebrow, he turned away and went about checking behind the closet door.
For Charlotte’s part, she crossed to the window. “But someone has been in here. This window’s not only shut, it’s latched. How strange. I suppose it must have been the maid.”
“The maid?” He emerged from her closet, plucking stray yellow feathers from his shoulder and wearing an irritated expression. “Believe me, no maid has been in this room.”
“It couldn’t have been my mother. She would have raised an alarm the whole house could hear. But if not a servant or Mama, then who?”
“Perhaps someone knows you’re up to something,” he said. “And that someone wants you to stop.”
“One of the mystery lovers, you mean?”
“Listen to me, Charlotte. You don’t know what kind of secret you could be poking at, or what the mystery tuppers might do to protect it. It’s time to let this go.”
Let it go?
She couldn’t let it go. Giving up on the search would mean giving up on the rest of her life.
“Well, while we’re giving one another advice, my lord . . . I think you ought to give more consideration to love. You might be good at it.”
“I can’t imagine what makes you say that.”
She shrugged. “You seem to be good at everything else. But then, perhaps you became good at everything else because you worry you’re not good at love. Do you lack for confidence?”