The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(66)

Cleopatra was giving her head an imperceptible shake when the faint click of the door closing registered. She spun about.

“I must confess,” Lord Landon murmured, “this is all rather unexpected.”

She stiffened as he strolled over, but he avoided her altogether and cut a path over to the well-stocked sideboard. “And what is that?” she asked, the blade strapped against her lower left leg reassuring in its weight and presence. Though they’d never exchanged so much as a passing word at the Devil’s Den, they’d both moved around the gaming hell floors at the same time. Lord Landon had never put a hand upon the whores and was oftentimes sought out by the women inside the Devil’s Den, but she knew better than to trust a lord.

The young marquess glanced briefly away from his task of drink selection. “Why, it is not every day a young lady considers jumping from a townhouse window to escape my company.”

Despite herself, a wry smile pulled at her lips. “You’re a pompous one, then.” Then, was there another sort?

He flashed another wolfish smile, displaying perfect pearl-white teeth. “With good reason.”

A woman learned to survive in the streets by paying attention to every last detail about a man. The way a man carried oneself, the type of grin he affected, and the words he used and how he used them, told one all one needed to know.

This golden-haired nob, with his wiry frame accentuated perfectly by finely tailored dark garments, whose careless grin marked him a careless rogue to be avoided at all costs. That’s the precise type of gent Broderick would see you marry . . . and likely the only one who’d give a match with you any real thought. “I’m not a lady,” she said tightly, annoyed that she’d conceded so much as a smile for the arrogant lord. Hating Broderick all over again.

“No,” he said easily, not taking his gaze from the brandy he now poured. “Had you been, it would have been me contemplating a jump from the windows.” Setting the pilfered decanter down, he looked up, his enigmatic gaze searching.

Cleopatra shuttered her features.

“I’ve insulted you,” he said matter-of-factly, absent of an apology.

“I’d have to give a rat’s arse about you and what you said to be insulted,” she said evenly.

The marquess choked on his swallow, and those gulping gasps of air bore the traces of laughter. “Brava, Miss Killoran,” he managed to strangle out after he’d regained control of his breathing. He lifted his glass in salute.

Presenting him her back, Cleopatra made a show of closing the crystal windows and searched for Adair’s familiar form in the shadows. Gone. She turned her attention to the stranger sipping his host’s brandy at the same table Adair had her upon a short while ago. Through the reflection in the glass, she studied Lord Landon’s every movement.

“You know, I really didn’t mean it as an insult,” the marquess went on, erasing the long stretch of silence. “I truly prefer the company of someone who has something to say about topics other than the weather.”

Abandoning her post at the window, she let the curtain flutter back into place and moved cautiously about the room. “You don’t know what topics I talk about,” she said derisively.

The marquess winged a golden eyebrow up. “Would you make mention of our fine London weather?”

She met his question with silence.

“I did not believe so.” He tossed back another long swallow. “Nor would you be in here even now with one slipper up on a windowsill if you were the same as the ladies inside that”—he pointed his glass to the doorway—“ballroom.”

Cleopatra slowed her steps, halting her exit. “And you find your worth greater than those women you disparage?”

“My worth greater?” he echoed. A mirthless chuckle left his hard lips. “Miss Killoran, I know precisely what I am, and it’s certainly not one who sees my worth greater than those around me.” There was an unexpected somberness underlying his melodious baritone that belied the affected air of rogue he’d mastered. “I’m merely a man as bored here as you yourself.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said tightly, “I should go.” As it was, in being discovered by this gentleman, she’d already been ruined, and that realization only proved her selfishness. For, help her, she couldn’t muster a single regret that she’d be ruined.

I’ll be free . . . and one of my sisters will make the ultimate sacrifice in my stead.

Feeling Lord Landon’s stare on her, she flattened her lips. “Do you intend to say anything?”

“About our being alone here together?” he countered, not even pretending to misunderstand. He finished his drink and discarded it on the side of the billiards table. Hitching his hip onto the edge, he swung his leg in a lazy back-and-forth rhythm. “That would depend, Miss Killoran.”

The blighter would bribe her. Cleopatra’s fingers twitched with the need to form a fist that she could bury in his face. “Oh?” She lifted her skirts slightly, exposing the vicious dagger strapped against her leg. “On what, my lord?”

For her wariness of the cocksure lord, it was hard to not approve of a fancy gent who merely eyed that jewel-crusted dagger with amusement. He swept his lashes lower, in a rakish leer that she’d wager he’d practiced since his university days. “A dance, Miss Killoran. I’d like a dance.”