Marry The Man Today Part 2

Or a husband.

Only a reporter.

Ross nearly laughed at the baldness of the woman's designs. "There's your proof, Robins. This whole b.l.o.o.d.y incident was a stunt concocted strictly to publicize their bootless cause for women's rights."

"Women's rights, my a.r.s.e. I'll show them what's what!" Robins snorted and turned back to the large ledger lying open on the desk. He dipped the quill and then scratched through a line of words. "I think I'll leave the ringleader to stew for an hour or two. Get herself a real taste of prison life."

Ross had the distinct feeling that it would take more than an hour or two of prison air to affect the indomitable Miss Elizabeth. "Would you mind if I visited the prisoner for a moment? Perhaps I can reason with her."

"Reason with her?" Robins gave a laugh. He grabbed a ring of keys from behind the desk then started toward the corridor of jail cells. "Be my guest. Though I doubt it'll do you a lick of good."

He wasn't looking for good.

Or satisfaction.

He was looking to a.s.suage this bothersome feeling that now grew in his gut with every step nearer the enigmatic woman's cell.

A sizzling feeling that filled up his chest with the tendriling scent of sandalwood and jasmine, and, yes, by G.o.d, cinnabar. Exotic and telling.

Fueled by a crystal clear memory of gilded auburn hair spilling over prideful shoulders.

And the certainty that her gaze would be as unflinching as her convictions.

"Take care with your hide, my lord," Robins whispered as he shoved the key into the lock. Blocking the doorway with his shoulder, as though the woman might just leap out of the cell and brave a mad escape.

"I'll be fine, Captain. Thank you." Though with the man filling up the corridor in front of the cell door, Ross had yet to set eyes on his target.

"You've a visitor, Miss Whatever Your Name May Be," Robins growled at the woman through the open cell door. When there was no reply, he turned and gave Ross a quick nod before striding off with a muttered, "She's all yours now, my lord."

All mine.

At least for the moment.

There was no sound at all from the cell, no pacing, or shouting, or shoe rattling against the bars.

Feeling suddenly, unreasonably, as though he was about to face down a tigress unarmed, Ross cleared his throat, squared his shoulders, and stepped in front of the cell door.

b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, he was done for.

The profound memories of her ostentatious pride had sent him trailing after her from the Admiralty, across Whitehall, and into Scotland Yard. Her haunting scent had drawn him along the corridor, tugging at his core.

But he hadn't expected that the sight of her, standing in the center of the cell, the late afternoon sunlight from the window behind her setting little fires against the bright cloud of her hair, could so completely take his breath away.

And her amazing eyes. Sea green and lushly fringed, challenging him to believe in her.

Turning up at the corners with the hint of a smile that seemed to be trying to take purchase on the rosy fullness of her lips.

"How excellent, sir." Her sultry voice lifted across to him like a b.u.t.terfly, perched itself in the center of his chest. Wings beating a velvety rhythm, brilliant with all the colors of the rainbow. "I see you wasted no time."

Wasted no time ? His sodden mind stumbled around the blocky words, wondering what they meant.

Had she been expecting him? How? More's the point, why would she be expecting him ?

d.a.m.nation, had she actually seen him hanging out the window of the Admiralty? Nearly drooling after her like a besotted chump?

"Shall I go first then, sir? "

"First?" Ross swallowed his confusion and took a long breath to clear out the cobwebs.

She crossed her arms beneath her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and tipped her chin at him. "I'm ready to tell you most of my secrets. You can ask me anything you like."

"Anything I... ?" Well, now that was an invitation he'd not expected from the woman. The possibilities left him stammering like an idiot.

And yet something was niggling at him. Something the captain had said.

That she was their ringleader.And unreasonable.b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, that she'd sent for a reporter!"Are you from the Times, sir?""Am I... wel l -" h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation! The truth was balanced there on the tip of his tongue, digging in, prompting him to speak it aloud. "That is to say, madam... I'v e -"

Been to the Times.

Subscribe to the Times.

Read the Times every morning, like clockwork, with my eggs and toast.

But, no... I...

"Because, sir, I was hoping that the Times reporter would be the first on the scene."

"Oh? Why is that?"

"Circulation, of course." Her fawn-colored brows dipped above her small nose. "I'm sure you know that the Times has the largest circulation of any newspaper in London. In the entire kingdom. Fifty thousand copies a day. Imagine that. More than all the other papers combined."

"Indeed."

"And, although every newspaper has its obvious biases"- 's he reached into the pocketbook hanging from her waist and pulled out a folded sheet of pape r -"I have a great deal of respect for the integrity of your editor, Mr. Delane."

"I'll have to tell him so." b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, the woman couldn't be as naive as that; editors were biased toward the power of the pound.

"Which is why I'm certain that you'll treat me with equal respect, Mister..." She flashed him a disarming smile. "I'm sorry, I didn't get your name."

"It's Carrington. Ross Carrington."

"Very nice to meet you, Mr. Carrington." She put out her hand to him, as bare and shapely as a swan. "My name is Elizabeth Dunaway. "

Given his unreasonable interest in the woman, Ross could only hope that her hand wasn't as silky soft as it looked. He held his breath as he reached for it, and was nearly knocked backward by the bolt of desire that zinged up his arm and into his chest.

He heard himself babble out a guttural, "Howdy-adoMissElizabethDunaway, " but resisted the seething urge to pull her into his arms and dance his mouth across those lush lips.

Instead, he dropped her hand like a hot stone. He fumbled for the notepad in his jacket pocket and poised the short pencil against the page, ready to write and w rite, convincing himself that he was only doing what any spy would do in the same situation.

Take advantage.

Complete advantage.

"Tell me everything, Miss Dunaway. Your public eagerly awaits."

Chapter 3.

A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

Samuel Johnson, 17 09- 17 84.

T ell him everything ? Elizabeth wasn't sure she wanted to tell this particular man anything at all. Let alone everything that was important to her.

She certainly couldn't tell him the way he made her feel as he filled the doorway of the cell with his broad shoulders, or the delicious way he smelled of bay and lemon and the afternoon sun.

Or the way he was looking at her just now, with his dark, smoke-shadowed eyes. Staring at her, really, charting her. As though he was planning a libertine route that would take him nibbling along her collarbone, tasting her from nape to toe.

And back again.

As though he would kiss her right here and now.

Or carry her off to some starry-edged kingdom where he would endlessly pamper and caress her, and lavish her with feathers and chocolate an d - Oh, great heavens above! What an utterly ridiculous daydream to be conjuring!

Right here in the middle of her protest.

She couldn't tell a reporter from the Times anything like that!

After all, she was the owner of the Abigail Adams and had a reputation to uphold!

Gathering up her scattered senses, Elizabeth threw back her shoulders, struck a firm pose, then directed a scathing glare toward the man who seemed to overwhelm the cell by just being there.

"If you want to know everything about me for your story, Mr. Carrington, then I suggest you begin by understanding that everything I say, everything I do, is in the cause of equal rights for women."

He took a long step toward her, c.o.c.ked his dark head as though trying to study her from a different angle. "Go on, Miss Dunaway. I'm listening."

"Yes, wel l..." She had expected the man to sneer at her, or sn.i.g.g.e.r. At least to start scribbling down her words on his ruffled notepad. Instead he was still staring at her. Into her.

She blinked away from him for a moment, but the stone floor wasn't nearly as compelling as the sun-bronzed, rough-planed face of this eccentric reporter from the Times.

"As you know, sir," she said against the pressing thickness of his silence, her fingers fiddling with the treatise she had been prepared to hand out to members of the press at just the right moment, "today's peacefu l protest was intended to illuminate the plight of the female citizens of Britain. As I have shown here in my essay."

She thrust the noisy piece of paper toward him, feeling more clumsy than usual. He had the good grace to glance down at her words. "Interesting, madam."

"Yes, well, sir, we were merely walking down the center of Whitehall, carrying signs and banners, when we were rudely interrupted by the Metropolitan Police."

"And you were also shouting 'Votes for women,' weren't you?" The man leaned back against the bars, arching a brow at her, a smile caught in the corner of his mouth.

"Indeed, we were."

"And liberty, equality, sorority."

"Were you there, Mr. Carrington? Did see our parade?" Not that it made a whit of difference. Except that it meant he'd been witness to her march, her private pa.s.sions, her shouted protests... and well, there was nothing she could do about it now. It just suddenly seemed too intimate an idea for such a small room and with so little s.p.a.ce between them.

But he had narrowed his eyes. "The captain reported your activities when I arrived."

"Ah! And was he outraged? " Better outrage than the jeers and laughter she'd heard from the street as the police loaded them into the wagons.

"I wouldn't call Captain Robins outraged, Miss Dunaway, but he was completely scandalized."

Good. Excellent, in fact! Elizabeth hid her smile inside her chest, where the man couldn't see how very pleased she was that she had scandalized the captain.

"Now, I can't help that, can I, Mr. Carrington? Depriving women of the same legal rights that a man has is scandalous. Refusing us an education is scandalous. So is robbing us of all property rights the moment we are married." She reined in the usual bellow of her hustings voice. "But forbidding us the vote is the most scandalous of all."

"I see." The man still hadn't taken down a single note in his notebook.

In fact, he looked thoroughly amused by her speech. He'd moved completely into the room and was leaning against the wall of bars, the heel of his highly polished boot propped against the bench. The rich linen of his suiting still crisp with expensive creases. The finely crested gold b.u.t.tons matching at his waistcoat and jacket and cuffs.

His deep chestnut hair trimmed just so. His square jaw barbered by a professional.

A man whose hobby must be either chasing the news or tormenting women in jail cells, because the smug Mr. Carrington was just too well dressed to be a penny-poor newsman.

"I don't think you see at all, Mr. Carrington. Though I shouldn't really expect you to. Few men do."

"What about your husband? Does he... see what you want him to see?"

"I am unmarried, sir, and have vowed to remain so for the rest of my life."

"Ah, you're a nun, then, Miss Dunaway. Hoping to proselytize to the male ma.s.ses in Westminster to give women the vote?" He c.o.c.ked that c.o.c.ky eyebrow again, surely thinking himself a London wit. "I didn't know the Church went in for that kind of thing."

"I'm not a nun, Mr. Carrington, I'm a prag in atist. And you're not a reporter, are you?"

"No, I'm not," he said without a moment's hesitation. The answer to a question she should have asked the moment she saw him in the doorway looking so... feral.

"Then who are you, sir?" She could feel the telltale spots of crimson blooming high on her cheeks, a sure symptom of her smoldering outrage. And not of the trembling embarra.s.sment that the arrogant man would surely surmise.

He straightened and became taller. "I'm Ross Carrington, the Earl of Blakestone."

Blakestone. The name sounded familiar, tinted by exotic images of danger and rife with legends.

"If that's so, your lords.h.i.+p, why did you pretend that you were from the Times?"

The lout had the decency to catch his smile behind his teeth before he said, "Curiosity."