Mr Carter could Miss Winterley rely on to pass through the servants’ hall at this time of night with little more than a raised eyebrow if they were caught?
She made a fine serving wench, he admitted numbly, as the fact he had been on hand at the right time and dressed more shabbily than any other male of her acquaintance stung more sharply than it should. Any doubts he had about her clever cover failing them when they got to the public rooms faded when she scooped up a discarded mask as if she was diligently tidying the chaos, then unearthed a domino from behind a classical statue. Thrusting both at him as if he ought to know what to do next without being told, she went to forage for her own disguise whilst he gathered his wits enough to meekly put them on. Who am I supposed to be this time? he silently asked his reflection in a nearby mirror. A somebody pretending to be a nobody, the false image mocked back at him. He looked almost like the man he could have been—a rich idler who thought it amusing to ape a clerk when he had never done a decent day’s work in his life.
A loud bellow sounded along the corridor he had seen Miss Winterley disappear into just now and it was echoed by another drunken sot who sounded far too castaway to move very fast. He should have remembered what happened to the confounded female when she wandered about once-grand houses on her own. Cursing himself for being so glum about Miss Winterley’s uses for him tonight, he had let her go by herself. Colm was halfway along it, and bad leg be damned, when she came dashing towards him as if the hounds of hell were on her tail.
‘Hide me,’ she gasped as heavy treads sounded behind her.
There wasn’t a niche big enough to hold a classical statue or a handy cupboard, so he tugged her into his arms and put his body between her and whoever was trying to chase her down this time. He pushed her against the nearest marble column as if they had been aiming for the right place to dally with each other ever since they stumbled out of the ballroom frantic for one another only moments ago.
‘Not like tha—’ she was saying even as he kissed her passionately.
She struggled fiercely for a moment, then gave in with a huge sigh, went gloriously responsive and kissed him back as if she had been starving for this since the night they met as well. For a moment he let himself dream she wanted him as urgently as he did her. Her mouth first softened, then seemed to ask for impossible answers under his. Are you my special he? she might as well be asking as she explored his mouth with an edge of wonder under the inexperience. Could you be the lover I have dreamt of since I was woman enough to ache for him?
Yes, yes, to all of it. To every question you could ever ask of that man, yes, the true Colm under all his careful defences whispered back. He forgot where they were and what the world would say if it knew who he was and simply kissed her and let his senses drown in blissful unreason.
‘Tally-ho,’ the less drunken of the two voices bellowed almost in his ear.
Colm cursed reality and tried to think straight when all he really wanted to do was go on kissing Eve Winterley and feeling something beyond his wildest dreams for this dear enemy of his. He raised his head as if bitterly offended and impatient of any interruption of that soul-stealing kiss and it wasn’t any effort at all to glare at the swaying idiot as if he hated him.
‘I saw the pretty little vixen first,’ the buffoon had the audacity to say, as if Colm would apologise and politely step aside then leave him to do his worst. ‘Don’t think we’ve met, I’m Louburn, y’know?’
‘I don’t think we have either, but my wife avoids drunken fools whenever she can and I am not about to introduce you to her,’ he said and felt Eve shaking with nerves in his arms as he cursed the nearest buffoon virulently under his breath.
‘You claim you’re my sister’s guests, yet you’re married to a servant girl? That don’t sound right to me,’ the second drunk managed, and now Eve had two of Lady Warlington’s notorious brothers on her tail. A flutter of panic joined the butterflies Mr Carter had set spinning about inside her with that heart-stopping kiss. If she was desperately unlucky one of these fools would be sober enough to realise who she really was and that she wasn’t married to anyone, especially not to Mr Carter, usually to be found in the latest Duke of Linaire’s library.
‘Even cast away you should be able to recall you’re doing your best to spoil your sister’s masquerade and not in some dockside tavern, Louburn,’ Carter told the elder Louburn brother so brusquely she wondered why she’d ever have thought him too withdrawn and mild-mannered to be an effective officer.
‘We ain’t met before, have we?’ the slightly less drunken brother asked blearily.
‘Let’s just say your reputation goes before you and leave it at that, shall we?’ her brave cavalier said icily and Eve wondered how the menace under that weary comment could pass these idiots by when it made her tremble and it wasn’t even directed at her.
‘Wife or not, she ain’t wearing a mask, is she?’ the more eager Mr Louburn asked, as if his stinking reputation was something to be proud of and he wanted a woman right now, so one ought to be instantly available—willing or not. The more she thought about Verity wandering unprotected about such a house on such a night the more anxious Eve was to find her and get them all out of here before tonight went even more disastrously wrong.
‘No, and that’s because we were looking for privacy and you interrupted us. Why would my lady need a mask when I know every inch of her and can recognise her even in the dark? Not that I need explain myself to a sot like you.’
Even Eve believed in the outraged aristocrat Mr Carter was pretending to be at the moment. He had put aside the would-be humble and workaday Mr Carter and spoken with such authority it almost seemed rude not to believe every word he said. She shivered at the thought that here was the true man under his mild disguise and decided it was a good idea to go along with him and pretend she was his modest wife, caught in not very modest circumstances. She buried her head against his shoulder for good measure and to stop the wretches from taking a second look at her and realising where they’d seen her before.
‘Come on, Bart, there’s far better sport to be had elsewhere without having to mill him down to get to it and I’m thirsty,’ the less amorous brother said with fading interest in anything but his next drink.
‘Two of us, don’t you see? We can easily take him on between us, Rolly. Nobody’ll be any the wiser if we throw him outside, then I can tup his wife in peace and they won’t tell anyone, will they? Scandal as much on them as us, see?’ he said, tapping his finger where he thought his nose ought to be.
Eve felt the tightly wound tension in Colm’s surprisingly powerful body at that despicable threat to treat them both as if they’d been put on this earth to meet a lusty drunkard’s convenience. The pent-up violence crackled in the air all around them now. Suddenly this farce had threatened to turn very dark and she didn’t want Mr Carter to get hurt, any more than she wanted to be violated herself.
‘And there are only two of you?’ Carter drawled with such terrible confidence she wanted to cry out a warning that they were notorious brawlers and he must find a safer way to stop this threat to their safety and sanity. ‘Hide your face,’ he whispered to her as he pushed her behind him, then turned on his latest adversaries with such calmness her hands did as they were told before her mind could argue. She peeped at what happened next through shaking fingers and for a moment was quite sure her eyes were deceiving her.
It was over too fast for her to have time to pile into the mêlée and never mind Carter’s high-handed efforts to keep her out of it. She would have kicked and bitten and clawed against the casual brutality of these two so-called gentlemen, except they were dealt with so swiftly and efficiently she had no time to form her hands into claws and spring into action. A sporting man might call it as pretty a display as he ever saw outside a boxing ring, she decided in dazed shock. Perfectly flush hits to the jaw one after the other and there was nothing left for either of them to do but stare down at a heap of unconscious Louburn brothers, until Carter shook out his protesting hands in brief agony and