The Bride Wore Scarlet by Liz Carlyle

to be very much of a lady, didn’t I?”
    â€œI believe you are making my argument for me.”
    A sly smile toyed at her mouth. “Very well,” she said. “I am two-and-twenty, or will be soon enough.”
    â€œThat is very young,” he said. “You still possess the impetuousness and impatience of youth, I think.”
    â€œOh, I hope so,” she said. “And the optimism. That wonderful sense that all things are possible. Yes, guilty as charged. Besides, impatience is not always a bad thing.”
    Geoff relaxed against the back of the sofa, and studied her appraisingly. “Let me explain something to you, Miss de Rohan,” he said softly. “If you run the risk of accompanying me to Brussels, you will have to live with the result.”
    â€œTo my reputation, you mean.” She managed a slightly acid smile. “I understand, Lord Bessett. And by the way, I am not husband hunting.”
    â€œThat’s good to know,” he said, “because you won’t find one here. And the risk, of course, might go well beyond a sullied reputation. Save for what DuPont has reported, I know nothing of Lezennes or how dangerous a man he might be. I don’t even know DuPont, come to that. Our Fraternitas contact in Rotterdam will come down and do what he can, of course, but the truth is we might be walking into a lion’s den.”
    â€œUnderstood,” she said.
    â€œAnd your family,” he pressed on. “I can’t imagine what you mean to tell them, but it is up to you to deal with it. If I get a glove in the face from your father, I will not be amused, Miss de Rohan.”
    â€œPlease, call me Anaïs,” she said, “since you are already contemplating such intimacies as a dawn appointment.”
    â€œI am perfectly serious,” he said. “I know the influence your father wields in Whitehall, and I don’t particularly give a damn. The Fraternitas is not without power. Power at the highest levels of government. Do we understand one another?”
    She lifted both brows and pinned him with her stare. “I counted a cabinet minister, two undersecretaries, and a member of the Privy Council under those brown hoods last night,” she said. “I am not so impetuous , my lord, that I do not understand the Fraternitas extends into the loftiest reaches of our government.”
    â€œHere is one more thing you need to understand,” he continued. “If we go forward, I am in charge. I will make every decision at every turn of this operation. I will not have time to argue with you, or parry words with you. I am a plainspoken man, but I am relentless, Miss de Rohan. I will get this child back, trust me. But I will not break that poor woman’s heart in the process, and I will not run roughshod over her wishes—not unless someone’s very life is at stake. Do you understand what I am telling you?”
    â€œThat I am to be a mere pawn in your master plan?” she suggested.
    â€œThat, and the fact that I don’t even have a plan,” he said. “But I will come up with one as the circumstances warrant. And you will then keep to it every step of the way or I’ll have Dieric van de Velde carry you bodily back to Ostend and put you on that clipper himself.”
    â€œAye, aye, Capt’n.” Miss de Rohan cut him a snappy salute.
    â€œSo . . . this is acceptable to you?”
    A wide grin spread slowly over her face. “Did you think to run me off with your barks and your threats, my lord?” she said. “It won’t work. This is what I thought I was supposed to be doing all along—helping to find justice in an unjust world.”
    â€œAs simple as that, is it?”
    â€œWhat, you thought I was in it for the wardrobe?” she said on a laugh. “Frankly, those scratchy brown things look as if they might harbor vermin— medieval vermin.”
    â€œSo this is all you