Page 27 of An Extraordinary Lord

“Let me go!” Her hips were pressed so tightly between his and the door that she couldn’t find the room to lift a leg to kick him. “He’s getting away!”

“Good.”

“Good?” She strained to look past him at the carriage, but she couldn’t see around his broad shoulders.

Yet she heard the quick clip-clop of horse hooves against the pavement as the carriage sped away into the night. Frustration pounded just as loudly inside her.

“I have to stop him,” she seethed through gritted teeth. “You’re getting in my way!”

“Because all you’ll do is catch him.”

“A pretty damn good start, if you ask me.”

“Someone’s funding those rioters. A man like Smathers doesn’t have the money for it, which means he’s working for someone else. Whose carriage did he get into?”

She glared at him, unable to answer.

“The Earl of Malmesbury’s,” he answered for her. “And no, we wouldn’t have caught both him and the earl together. So I had to stop you before you gave our plans away and before you got yourself hurt.” He lowered a pointed gaze down their bodies as they were pressed together against the wall and added huskily, “Any way I could.”

His velvety drawl wrapped itself around her, spiking both her pulse and the stirring ache at her core. She thanked God that he couldn’t read her mind, or she would have embarrassed herself with the wanton thoughts roiling around inside her head at that moment. None of which was helped by the delicious sensation of his body held against hers, the tension rippling through the hard muscles of his shoulders and arms, the wicked press of his hips into hers.

“I know the Earl of Malmesbury, and believe me when I tell you the earl’s not inside that carriage.” Every breath he took brushed his rising and falling chest scandalously against hers. “It’s October, and Malmesbury is a hundred miles away at his country house, gleefully blasting to death every bird in a ten-mile radius. So who else has been giving Smathers money, who was in that carriage—” His gaze fell to her mouth, and despite the beard, he stared at her with a heated longing that spilled through her like liquid fire…until he frowned. “And why on earth are you dressed like a man?”

“You wear a gown and wig to court,” she shot back. “Why doyoudress like a woman?”

He wisely ignored that, if not for the irritated twist of his lips. “You almost pulled off your disguise. Anyone else in that tavern would never have noticed.”

That he’d figured it out irritated the blazes out of her. Her disguises always worked, always kept her safely hidden—until him. “How did you know?”

“I would know you anywhere. Even as a man.”

He shoved his hand inside her breeches, and heated longing flared instantly between her legs, so strongly that she bit back a rising moan. But instead of caressing her as her traitorous body yearned for, he fished out the rolled-up cloth and tossed it away.

He lowered his head until his eyes were level with hers. Warning announced in their blue depths that he wasn’t in the mood for games. “What the hell were you thinking, coming here alone?”

As Merritt waited for her answer, his mouth lingered so close to hers that the short hairs of her fake beard tickled his chin. How he’d managed not to give himself away tonight when he’d first spotted her he’d never know. He’d almost missed her beneath the beard and large hat she’d used to cover her copper hair and with the way she’d seemed as at ease as any other man in the tavern. But her eyes gave her away—cat-like green pools that shone brightly enough to pierce even in the dimly lit tavern. Eyes that had haunted him from the moment he first saw them.

Even now, they burned like brimstone.

“If you had let me catch him, we could have stopped the riots,” she protested. “Isn’t that what you want from me?”

“They’d be stopped only temporarily.” He couldn’t bring himself to step back. The magnetic pull of her was beyond his understanding. “A man like Smathers is easily replaced. We have to find out who’s been paying him, and we can’t do that if he’s in prison or swinging on the gallows.”

“He can be questioned if he’s in prison. He can be bribed with a lesser sentence if he cooperates.”

She explained that as if he knew nothing about the law, rubbing at his lawyerly pride. “In my experience, a man like Smathers will die before he willingly volunteers information, because he knows the men he works for will kill him if he does.”

“And inmyexperience, a man will do just about anything when he’s desperate.”

Without warning, she shoved against him with all her strength, twisted him around in a circle, and pushed him back against the door. She pinned his arms at his sides and leaned in to press her hips against his, the way he’d done to her.

Electricity crackled through the damp night air around them, so palpable that it stirred the hairs at his nape. He could easily push her away—he had the physical advantage. Just set her back, move her away…except he didn’t want to. Especially when she tilted her face up toward his, when he heard the quickening of her breath and felt the tightening of her fingers around his wrists.

“What about you?” The husky challenge transformed her voice into a low purr as she stared longingly at his mouth. “What are you desperate for, Merritt?”

The truth tore from him—“You.”

She rose up and seized his mouth in a blistering kiss.