The Lady By His Side(85)
He turned and followed Antonia and the Featherstonehaughs into the east wing.
* * *
Sebastian dawdled in the corridor outside his room until Hadley and Georgia had gone into theirs, and the door had shut behind them. The instant it did, he turned and walked silently back along the corridor, scratched at Antonia’s door, then opened it and walked in.
She was seated at the dressing table, her arms raised as she pulled a pin from her hair. She leveled a look he couldn’t quite read at him.
He ignored it and quietly shut the door. “Have you rung for your maid?”
“No—not yet.”
“Good. Don’t.” He crossed to where a straight-backed chair stood against the wall, lifted it, turned it, and set it down behind and a little to one side of the dressing stool, so when he straddled it and sat, resting his forearms on the raised back, he could see Antonia’s face in the dressing table mirror.
She arched a haughty brow at him. “You presume.”
He snorted softly. “Did you really imagine I would allow my de facto affianced marchioness to sleep alone and unprotected under the same roof as a murderer?”
She looked at him, then lightly shrugged. “Put like that…I suppose not.”
He had the distinct impression that, despite her neutral expression, she was laughing at him. She was amused, at the very least.
She returned her attention to freeing her long hair. “Did you hear anything useful?”
“Nothing at all. You?”
“Likewise. But while no one has actually said the words, and despite the ladies’ earlier talk of gypsies or an itinerant being responsible for killing Ennis, it’s clear the realization that there’s almost certainly a murderer among us has started to sink in and take hold.”
“Ah. That was what was behind the men sticking by their wives’ sides, and the company as a whole acting like a herd.”
“I daresay such behavior is natural in the circumstances.” She withdrew a last pin, and the mass of her hair tumbled free. A rippling wave of black silk, it reached down her back, almost to her hips.
His palms itched; his gaze had already fixed on the black-as-deepest-night waterfall.
She reached for her brush. He watched as she raised it and set the bristles to that silken mane and, slowly, drew the brush down.
Hypnotized by the unbidden, innocent sensuality of the repetitive, rhythmic movement as she continued to brush the long tresses, his gaze remained transfixed, his senses flaring, even as he wondered. Pondered.
Control.
How effortlessly she tried his. How she challenged it—even unintentionally, as now.
On a flash of insight, he realized why—why she and only she had always possessed the power to deflect and distract him.
Because he couldn’t control how he felt about her, how he reacted and responded to her, over her, about her.
When he was with her, not only in a bedchamber but wherever they happened to be, there was no such thing as control—as his customary absolute and inviolable mastery over himself and all he did.
When he was with her, control faded and lost its hold; when he was with her, he was driven by instinct, by reactions and feelings.
Feelings engendered by an emotion too powerful to deny…
He blinked back to the present, to the faint shush as she plied her brush.
And frowned.
In the mirror, her gaze flicked to his face, then fastened on his eyes.
To excuse the frown, he said the first words that slid into his mind—into the space vacated as that too-powerful emotion eased its hold on his wits. “Where the devil is Ennis’s gunpowder?” His frustration had bubbled up and infused the words. He crossed his forearms on the upper edge of the chair’s back and leaned his chin on them. “More—what’s the damned stuff for? Who organized for it to be here—wherever here is? And is it still here—wherever here is—or has it already been spirited away?”
She switched her gaze forward. Staring into the mirror as if focusing on some distant point beyond her own reflection, she continued to steadily wield her brush. “It was only two nights ago that Ennis used his last words to tell you the gunpowder was here. There’s been no evidence of any relevant activity around the house and grounds, so taking the simplest interpretation of his words, presumably the gunpowder is still here—wherever here is.”
He grunted. Grumbled, “If they—whoever they are—learned Ennis was about to betray their plot and were in a position to kill him before he could, then surely they would also have moved the gunpowder at the same time—on that night.”
“Only if they could. If they could arrange to move it—and could risk moving it—immediately.” She paused in her brushing, head tilted as she thought, then she resumed the slow, evocative stroking. “And only if the gunpowder was already here. Ennis might have meant the gunpowder was on its way here. If it had already been moved on, he would have told you—or at least tried to tell you—where it was going.”