“Aye, sir. Go right in.”
Del did, shutting the door behind him.
With white plaster walls and heavy timber beams crossing the ceiling, the parlor was neither overlarge nor cramped, and boasted one of the wide bow windows looking out on the street. The furniture was heavy, but comfortable, the pair of chintz-covered armchairs well-supplied with plump cushions. A highly polished round table with four chairs stood in the middle of the room, a large lamp at its center, while a crackling fire sparked and flared in the grate, throwing welcome heat into the room.
Gravitating toward the hearth, Del noticed the three watercolors above the mantelpiece. They were landscapes depicting green pastures and meadows, lush fields and richly canopied trees beneath pastel blue skies with fluffy white clouds. The one in the middle, of rolling heathland, a vibrant patchwork of greens, caught his eye. He hadn’t laid eyes on such landscapes for seven long years; it seemed odd to gain his first sense of home via pictures on a wall.
Glancing down, he drew out the letter from his aunts; standing before the fire, he scanned it anew, searching for some insight into why the devil they’d thought to saddle him with the duty of escorting a young gentlewoman, daughter of a neighboring landowner, home to Humberside.
His best guess was that his doting aunts had some idea of playing matchmaker.
They were going to be disappointed. There was no place for a young lady in his train, not while he was a decoy for the Black Cobra.
He’d been disappointed when he’d opened the scroll he’d selected and discovered he hadn’t picked the original letter. Nevertheless, as Wolverstone had made clear, the missions of the three decoys would be vital in drawing out the Black Cobra’s men, and ultimately the Black Cobra himself.
They needed to lure him into striking, and for that they needed to reduce his cultists sufficiently to force him to act in person.
Not an easy task, yet by any reasonable estimation it should be within their collective ability. As a decoy, his role would be to deliberately make himself a target, and he didn’t want any extraneous young lady hanging on his arm while he was so engaged.
A tap on the door had him hesitating, then he called, “Come.”
It was Cobby.
“Thought you’d want to know.” Hand on the knob, his batman hovered by the door he’d closed. “I ducked back down the docks and asked around. Ferrar arrived over a week ago. Interesting thing is he had no bevy of natives with him-seems there was no room left on the frigate for more than him and his man.”
Del raised his brows. “Definitely interesting, but no doubt he’ll have had cultists coming in on other ships.”
Cobby nodded. “So you’d think. But it does mean he won’t necessarily have all that many just at present. Might have to resort to doing his own dirty work.” Cobby grinned malevolently. “Now wouldn’t that be a shame?”
Del smiled. “We can but hope.”
He nodded a dismissal and Cobby left, closing the door behind him.
Del glanced at the clock ticking on a sideboard. It was already after three, and what daylight there was would soon fade. He fell to pacing slowly before the fire, rehearsing suitable words with which to break the news to Miss Duncannon that, contrary to his aunts’ arrangements, she would be heading north alone.
It was well after four o’clock, and he’d grown increasingly impatient, before a feminine voice in the foyer, well modulated yet with an unmistakably haughty tone, heralded the return of Miss Duncannon.
Even as Del focused on the parlor door, the knob turned and the door swung inward. Bowden held it open to permit a lady-not so young-in a garnet red pelisse, her dark auburn hair swept up and tucked under a jaunty hat, who was juggling a plethora of bandboxes and packages to enter.
She swept in, her face alight, a smile curving lush red lips, as Bowden hurriedly said, “I believe this is the gentleman you’ve been waiting for, miss.”
Miss Duncannon abruptly halted. Animation leaching from her face, she looked across the room and saw him. After a moment, her gaze slowly meandered upward, until it reached his face.
Then she simply stared.
Clearing his throat, Bowden retreated, closing the door behind her. She blinked, stared again, then baldly asked, “You’re Colonel Delborough?”
Del bit his tongue against an impulse to respond, “You’re Miss Duncannon?” Just one look, and his vision of a biddable young miss had evaporated; the lady was in her late twenties if she was a day.
And given the vision filling his eyes, why she was still a miss was beyond his comprehension.
She was…lush was the word that sprang to his mind. Taller than the average, she was built on stately, even queenly, lines, ripely curvaceous in all the right places. Even from across the room, he could tell her eyes were green; large, faintly slanting up at the outer corners, they were vibrantly alive, awake and aware, alert to all that went on around her.
Her features were elegant, refined, her lips full and ripe, elementally tempting, but the firmness of her chin suggested determination, backbone and a forthrightness beyond the norm.
Duly noting that last, he bowed. “Indeed-Colonel Derek Delborough.” Sadly, not at your service. Quashing the wayward thought, he smoothly continued, “I believe your parents made some arrangement with my aunts for me to act as escort on your journey north. Sadly, that’s not possible-I have business to attend to before I can return to Humberside.”
Deliah Duncannon blinked, with an effort dragged her senses from their preoccupation with shoulders and a wide chest which should by all rights have been encased in a uniform, replayed his words, then abruptly shook her head. “No.”
Moving further into the room, she set her boxes and bags on the table, distractedly wondering whether a uniform would have increased his impact, or lessened it. There was something anomalous in his appearance, as if the elegant civilian garb was a disguise. If the intention had been to screen his innately vigorous, even dangerous physique, the ploy had failed miserably.
Freeing her hands, she reached up to extract the long pin securing her hat. “I’m afraid, Colonel Delborough, that I must insist. I’ve been waiting for the better part of a week for you to arrive, and I really cannot journey on without a suitable escort.” Setting her hat on the table, she swung to face the recalcitrant ex-colonel-significantly younger and immeasurably more virile than she’d envisioned him. Than she’d been led to expect. “It’s quite unthinkable.”
Regardless of his age, his virility, or his propensity to argue, for her, it was, but the last thing she intended to do was explain.
His lips-mobile and distractingly masculine-firmed. “Miss Duncannon-”
“I expect you’re imagining that it will simply be a matter of bundling me into a carriage with my maid and household, and pointing north.” Pausing in the act of removing her leather gloves, she glanced at him and caught a telltale twist of those disturbing lips; that had, indeed, been precisely what he’d planned. “I have to inform you that that’s very definitely not the case.”
Dropping her gloves on the table behind her, she lifted her chin and faced him squarely-staring down her nose as well as she could given he was more than half a head taller than she. “I must insist, sir, that you honor the obligation.”
His lips were now a thin line-one she wanted to see relax and curve into a smile…what was the matter with her? Her pulse thrummed in her throat, her skin prickled with unexpected awareness, and he was still a good six feet away.
“Miss Duncannon, while regrettably my aunts overstepped their authority in seeking to oblige a neighbor, I would, in normal circumstances, do all in my power to, as you phrase it, honor the commitment they made. However, in this instance, it is entirely-”