Let the Night Begin by Kathryn Smith Page A

where is this meeting to take place?” Did he really think she’d slip and tell him something she didn’t want to? Olivia was many things, but stupid wasn’t on the list.
    â€œIt is not a meeting. They said they would leave instructions for me at the Wolf, Ram and Hart Inn.”
    Reign went perfectly still. “Wolf, Ram and Hart?”
    Olivia frowned at him, but her gaze was puzzled, as she straightened her stockings and garters. “Yes, do you know it?”
    â€œYes. I’ve been there before.”
    â€œYou don’t own it, do you?” There was more than a touch of sarcasm in her voice, but she was worried too—worried that the inn might have been chosen for a reason. Chosen because of him. Now why would that worry her if the kidnappers knew nothing about him as she had insisted?
    â€œNo. Temple and I got into a fight there back in, oh, sixteen-forty-five? Some English showed up, acting as though they were all powerful. Scared a couple of the barmaids and bashed a few heads. We made sure they knew they weren’t welcome.”
    â€œThe memory of frightened barmaids and bashed heads makes you smile?” She had her chemise on now—more the pity.
    He was smiling too. “No. The memory of the fight makes me smile. You know someone wrote a song about it.”
    She didn’t look terribly impressed as she fussed with her corset. “Just what you needed—more reason to think highly of yourself.”
    Where the hell had that come from? “You think I’m conceited?” He crossed the short distance between them, turned her around and loosened the strings so she could fasten the hooks in the front of the garment.
    She snorted. “I know you are.”
    â€œYou know me so well, of course.” Hopefully he sounded caustic to her ears and not as wounded as he felt.
    Olivia glanced over her shoulder at him as she fastened the last of the hooks, her expression a mixture of sadness and mockery that stabbed at his heart. “There was a time I thought I knew you better than anyone. Perhaps I am as wrong now as I was then.”
    Only the tightness of her voice, the thinly veiled pain in her eyes kept him from lashing out himself. Hope flashed deep inside him. She wouldn’t still carry so much bitterness if there wasn’t some part of her that loved him still. He knew he shouldn’t care, shouldn’t wish for it, but he did all the same.
    Perhaps that was her goal.
    â€œPerhaps you are,” he replied tonelessly, pulling the lacings tight once more. He used to play lady’s maid for her quite often once upon a time. “I doubt you’ll trust my opinion either way, so I’ll keep my silence.”
    She looked away—the only indication that his words affected her at all. And when he finished with her corset, she tried to cover up her reaction to his words by making a show of pulling her gown over her head.
    He watched her struggle with the garment. She wouldn’t ask him to help her with it, but he would all the same. “Why did you come to me, Olivia?”
    She shoved her arms into the sleeves. “I told you, I think the kidnappers know what I am.”
    â€œSo I’m just added muscle?”
    â€œAnd you have social connections in Edinburgh.”
    He stared at her. She held his gaze, but he could see the strain around her mouth and in the faint furrow of her forehead as she struggled with her hair, the unfastened gown gaping behind her.
    â€œThat’s it?” He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “That’s the truth?”
    She laughed—a sharp, nervous sound. “What do you suspect me of, Reign, using my nephew’s kidnapping as a convenient excuse to bed you again? I don’t think such extremes would be necessary, do you?”
    More cutting remarks that made his heart beat a little bit faster. How could one woman inspire so many emotions in him? Part of him hated her for being his