Page 21 of The Scandalous Spinster

“Where are you going?”

Oh, right. She was supposed to be skulking. Sneaking. Not yearning.

Mortifying.

“To the main house, of course,” she replied. A little too breathlessly, but not embarrassingly so, all things considered.

His eyes narrowed. “Alone?”

“As you see.”

“No.”

She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“You don’t sneak around that house alone.”

She blinked again. “That is quite literally why I am here.”

“You wake me.”

“At three in the morning?”

“Anytime. Every time. Promise me.”

She frowned. “I can’t possibly make that sort of promise.”

“Please.”

“I promise to wake you.” She paused. “Whenever possible.”

“Damn it.”

She smiled. She couldn’t help herself.

“Amused, are you?” he asked quietly. “I knew you were trouble.”

She smiled wider. With her whole entire soul. She had never been called trouble before, not in that soft, knowing tone with a hint of fondness and more than a hint of warning. It made her want to do reckless, inappropriate things. With him.

To him.

“We should go,” she said, suddenly very, very awake.

“At your service, Captain.”

Very awake.

*

They crept through the house, navigating by the moonlight streaming through the windows. Clara did not dare light a candle, even though she stumbled. Bram, naturally, moved as though he could see in the dark. Her eyes watered with the effort to sort out shadow from furniture, carpet edge from floorboard. She stumbled again. Bram steadied her with one big hand and not a single word. He nodded down the hall when she reminded herself not to lean into his touch like a woman who did not write “torrid and deviant tales” for a living.

She had once written about a couple and their valet doing things no valet was hired to do. A lot. In every room of their Mayfair townhouse. And once in the back garden. Twice in the carriage.

She ought to be composed. Nonchalant.

She was not.

Right. Back to the marquis’s study.