He looked amused and far too sure of himself. “Miss Smith, you should show more respect to your betters.”
“You’re not my better,” she snapped before she remembered with a pang just who she was. No longer the pampered daughter of Lord Aveson. No longer Lady Antonia Hilliard, with a brilliant match ahead of her.
He laughed again. “No, I doubt I am.”
He paused, still staring. Wariness skittered through her veins. He wasn’t just decorative, he was clever. She feared the cleverness more than she feared the beauty. As if to prove her right, he continued, his voice dispassionate. “Antonia’s a damned incongruous name for a lowly domestic.”
Fresh terror slithered down her backbone. A terror that he might discover just who drab Miss Smith was.
Never let your enemy see his advantage. Never let him think he’d won.
Hilliard pride injected a chill into her tone. “Lord Ranelaw, charming as I find this conversation, you must leave. If the servants hear a man in my room, or worse, see you, my reputation will be ashes.”
He tilted one shoulder against the wall and folded his arms with a self-assurance that made her grind her teeth. “Nice try, my dear. But this room is a long way from the other bedrooms. Unless you scream, we’re safe.”
On unsteady legs, she stepped away from the dressing table. “My maid will arrive any moment.”
“You look after yourself. My sources of information indicate you’re an independent baggage.”
“They indicate . . .” She faltered into appalled silence.
Nervously she pushed her glasses up her nose. Sweet heaven, she’d been wrong to disbelieve him earlier. He hadn’t wanted Cassie’s room. He’d wanted hers. He’d taken the trouble to discover she had no maid. The dissolute marquess had targeted her. Fear of scandal became a sharper, more primitive fear of the male. And of her female weakness.
“When I pursue a woman, I leave little to chance.” He spoke as if he considered the admission unimportant.
She wouldn’t cower. And she wouldn’t surrender. Somehow he’d learned the household’s secrets. Dear God, save him from learning her other secrets. Painful, destructive secrets that would put her in Lord Ranelaw’s power.
Reminding herself she was a survivor, she tamped down alarm. If Ranelaw expected an easy conquest, he’d be disappointed. She stiffened her backbone and glared, fighting because fighting was all she knew. Once she’d been defenseless as a kitten. That was many hard years ago.
“Except you’re using me to get to Cassie.” Antonia’s tone slashed like a razor. “You imagine if you scatter a few crumbs of attention my way, I’ll become your cat’s-paw.”
His eyes traveled over her, from her feet—in their sensible shoes, curse him—to her unflattering cap. For the past ten years, she’d dressed like this, plainly, unappealingly, shabbily. Like someone a good thirty years older. Surely it was her imagination that those perspicacious eyes sliced through the unbecoming garb to the real woman.
In spite of her roiling resentment, that long, thorough survey was astonishingly arousing. Heat pooled between her thighs and her nipples peaked against her shift. Thank goodness thick wool hid how he affected her, although a rake would recognize she was far from indifferent. Perhaps he pursued her not only because of Cassie but because he scented her arousal. A man of his experience must also scent her loneliness, her desperation, her repressed passion. She loathed to think he read her most shameful desires and schemed to manipulate her through them.
“You’re hard on yourself,” he said in a musing tone.
“I’m realistic.” Her heart cramped with regret, even if he was worthless and dangerous and would come to a bad end. It was ten years since a man had looked at her with desire. Now that one did, he lied. She injected a taunting note. “I’d have credited you with a more subtle plan, my lord.”
He shrugged, unabashed by her candor. “When the obvious promises success, why not use it?”
“If I’m awake to your plot, you have no chance of success.” It shouldn’t sting that now she challenged him, he no longer pretended interest. To her everlasting regret, Lord Aveson’s vain, empty-headed daughter still lurked in her soul.
“I imagine the antelope knows the lion wants to devour it. That doesn’t alter the outcome.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m far from a defenseless deer.”
“Perhaps. But you’re no match for me.”
She ground her teeth. What luck that he reminded her he was an arrogant ass. It helped combat this impossible physical attraction. “We shall see, my lord.”
He flung his head back and laughed. She’d heard his unfettered laughter once or twice before. It was a free, joyous sound and seemed incongruous for such a world-weary rogue. The problem was the laugh was male and it echoed around her bedroom where no man had the right to be.
“My lord, I beg you . . .” Panic made her leap forward to silence him. As she raised her hand to his mouth, she realized who he was, who she was, and she hesitated.
His arm snaked around her waist, although he didn’t bring her against his body. Through tinted spectacles, she met eyes as black as pitch. Eyes that glinted with predatory awareness.
“The noise . . .” she said, flustered. His grip felt immovable.