My Lady, My Lord by Katharine Ashe Page B

dare?” She retreated a step, enlarging the distance between them. “You are the most astoundingly arrogant person I have ever met, Ian Chance. You hurled me into this disaster and now you expect me to claw myself out of it, with such a great potential for danger?” She turned away from him. “Go away. Go back to my house and my life and leave me alone forever.”
    “Corinna—”
    “Go
.
”
Her voice broke. As though it had happened yesterday, the sound catapulted Ian back to a hilltop in the rain beneath the branches of a massive oak, pain streaking through his wrist, and a little girl’s concerned face.
    He pivoted around and made for the door. Damn and blast her infernal tears, and damn and blast her derision. He needed that like he’d needed it his entire life—like a hole in the head. A hole that he probably deserved. From the tip of a saber or the bullet of a pistol, Ian didn’t particularly care which.

Chapter Twelve
    C ORINNA AWOKE beneath a canopy swathed in dark fabric with the certainty that everything had changed. It had not, of course. Not for her present identity. The Earl of Chance would go along comfortably, living any way she saw fit. But Lady Corinna Mowbray’s life was ruined.
    She felt the greatest pain for her father. When he learned of the scandal, he would not understand. He would still love her, but his faith in her would vanish.
    She allowed the valet, Andrews, to dress her and she dragged herself to the dining room. The earl took breakfast desultorily, she had learned, coffee, toast, and the
Times
. Corinna missed her cup of chocolate and reading the post and art and political journals surrounded by soft pillows and satiny bed linens.
    This morning, however, she found she was not alone. Gregory sat at the place at the long table nearest the sideboard, a heaping plate of eggs, muffins, and ham before him, and the
Observer
spread open.
    “Morning, Ian,” he said with a nod. His eyes the color of indigo looked unusually serious. Gregory Chance was still young, not yet five and twenty, but intelligent and impressively intuitive. He might worship his older brother. Still, Corinna did not expect this interview would be particularly easy.
    “You stayed over last night?” Corinna accepted a cup of coffee from the footman, then gestured for him to retire from the room.
    “It was late. Hope you don’t mind.”
    “Of course not.”
    “Ian.” Gregory pushed back his chair. “I don’t mean to question you—”
    “Then don’t.”
    “Well, no. I’ve got to. Corinna has always been a good friend to me, like a sister. I don’t wish to see her unhappy.”
    “I don’t know what that has to do with me, Greg,” she said in all sincerity. She and Ian had barely seen each other for years. They didn’t have anything to do with each other’s lives, not before they had encountered each other at the exhibition the other afternoon.
    The exhibition.
    Her mind whirled. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?
    She stood, and Gregory followed to his feet.
    “It certainly appeared as though it had something to do with you last night,” Ian’s brother said.
    “Then it appeared wrongly. She merely wished my counsel on a delicate matter.”
    “A delicate matter?” Gregory’s brows flew up. “
Your
counsel?”
    “Astounding, isn’t it? But true.” She moved to the door. She must send a note to Ian immediately. Not a moment could be wasted.
    “Then your conversation didn’t have anything to do with the reason she was walking home in the middle of the night alone?”
    “Apparently not.” A bald-faced lie. But Gregory would never discover that.
    “There must have been a man involved, that is to say, before the boung nipper.”
    She paused as a footman opened the door. “Boung nipper?”
    “She didn’t tell you?”
    Corinna shook her head.
    “Oh, well, she’s a brave one. Grace and I found her fisting it with a footpad. We made short work of him and the Watch carted him away. Still,