Countess of Scandal by Laurel McKee Read Free Book Online Page A

spinning. She hurried to the window, parting the curtains to stare at the street below, to see what the crash was. It looked like a confrontation in the middle of the quiet neighborhood, two soldiers and a roughly clad man whose cart had crashed, spilling out a pile of dried-up potatoes.
    "Perhaps you should go down and see to your duty," she said. "Help out your comrades in confronting a man with purloined potatoes. As long as no one sees you leaving here, that is..."
    Eliza heard the rustle of wool as he rose to his feet, straightening his clothes. She felt him move to stand just behind her, close but not touching as he stared down at the street He still smelled of clean soap, leather, and that faint citrus cologne, but it was blended with salty sweat and her own rose perfume.
    And that seemed even more intimate, more frightening, than the overwhelming passion of their kiss.
    "Your reputation is safe, Lady Mount Clare," he murmured close to her ear. "No one knows I'm here."
    Her reputation? Eliza laughed. What reputation would that be? "I hardly care what those clucking Castle hens have to say," she said.
    "I'm sure you do not" Will rested his chin on her shoulder, his breath stirring her rumpled curls. "But what of people like Emmett and Fitzgerald? What would they say if a British officer was seen leaving your bedroom? Would you be drummed out of the United Irish, Lady Democratical?"
    Eliza tore herself away from him, from the allure of his touch, and sat down heavily at her dressing table. "So you did break in here to spy on me. To try to find information I do not have."
    Will scooped up his black coat angrily pulling it on. "I am not a fool, Eliza, no matter how forgetful your pretty bosom makes me for a moment I know you are over your head with these plots. But I have no interest in playing spy, not for Dublin Castle or anyone else."
    "Is that so, Major Denton?" she said. She picked up her silver-backed brush only to drop it again. "Then why are you here? Why has your regiment been so hastily summoned back to Ireland, if not to harass innocent citizens like your comrades in Belfast do?"
    Will laughed humorlessly. "As if I would tell you. I have no desire to see my words passed around in some United Irish dispatch."
    "I am no spy, either!"
    "Eliza, I don't care what you are.. I only care what you were, what we once were to each other" He let out an exasperated groan, and suddenly Eliza felt his hands grasping her waist, spinning her around on the bench so fast she could not protest or pull away. His arms went around her waist, holding her still.
    "You would not listen to me at the assembly rooms," he said. "So I had to'come here."
    'To warn me," she whispered.
    "Yes, to warn you. I don't want to see your neck in the noose when Lord Lieutenant Camden and his generals unleash their forces"
    Did he think she had not thought of that? That doubts and rears did not wake her in the middle of the night? She was only human. But... "Some things are too important to abandon."
    "Exactly." He took her hand in his, raising it to his lips for a lingering kiss. Over their joined hands, his gaze met hers. "That is why I am here."
    Eliza opened her mouth, but she could not reply. She didn't know what to say. Will let go of her hand, striding toward the window. She watched; stunned, as he opened the casement and leaped up lightly to the sill as if he were a jungle cat
    "You can't go that way again," she said hoarsely.
    He smiled back at her. "Are you offering to escort me out the front door, Lady Democratical? I doubt that's a good idea, even as that little altercation seems to be ended," he said. He gestured toward the now-deserted street, and then he vanished.
    She ran to the window, leaning out to stare as he lithely climbed down the tangled vines until he could leap to the roof of her portico and swing to the street. The light had turned pearl gray now, and a cold wind swept down the street like an angry ghost The cart and the men were