Through the Smoke by Brenda Novak

to him. Even after last night.
    Especially
after last night.
    “I’m not feeling well,” she told Cutberth. “Give me some time. I have to think about it.”
    “We don’t have long. We need to ride the crest of this cage incident.”
    For the first time, Rachel felt a healthy dislike for the accountant. After all his professed distress over such incidents, he acted almost gleeful about this one. “I said I will think about it.”
    He studied her. “Fine. But do not forget Tommy. He is counting on you. We all are.”

    Something disturbed Rachel’s sleep. Her head snapped up from the table, and she rubbed her face, trying to come to her senses enough to place her surroundings. She was at the bookshop, where she’d been trying to get a true picture of her financial situation. But a sixth sense told her she was no longer alone.
    Was it Mrs. Tate coming to check on her progress? A mouse, like the one that had distracted that young trapper? Some other small animal?
    Swiveling in her chair, Rachel looked behind her, squinting into the dark recesses of the shop, but the candle she’d left burning began to gutter out. Its small flame flickered and disappeared into a wisp of smoke, plunging her into blackness.
    “Hello?” Her spine tingled as she stood. She kept very little money in the till, but her inventory was worth a great deal to the right people. She felt confident no one in Creswell would bother her or her business. But there were bands of thieves that roamed the northern counties. Perhaps they’d grown weary of sacking the big houses. Perhaps they were looking for an easier target.… “Who is it?”
    “It’s freezing in here. Why are you not at home?” The earl’s voice, deep and resonant, carried across the room, providing Rachel with the focal point she needed. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she could make out her visitor, but just barely. Most of his body appeared as a murky shadow draped against the far wall.
    “What are you doing here?” she asked, without bothering to answer his question.
    “I saw the light burning.”
    In an effort to regulate her pulse, she took slow, even breaths, but the earl made her almost as nervous as the prospect of facing a band of thieves. What was he doing here in the middle of the night? Especially after what had previously passed between them? “You didn’t bother to knock?”
    She thought she saw his teeth flash in a smile. “I own the place, remember? And you were sleeping so peacefully.”
    “Most people are asleep at this hour, my lord. Is it your usual wont to haunt the village by night? No wonder everyone is so frightened of the great Lord Druridge.”
    He struck a match and, for a moment, his face glowed orange as he lit a pipe. “Not everyone is afraid of me, Miss McTavish.” The smell of expensive tobacco wafted across the room. “Take you, for instance.”
    Her every nerve seemed taut and attuned to the man who’d made passionate, then incredibly tender, love to her less than twenty-four hours ago. Somehow the memory of their time together didn’t seem congruous with the person who stood before her now. This was the old Earl of Druridge. The imperious mine owner. The peer of the realm. The privileged man her parents had hated. “I’m not sure what I think of you, my lord. My opinion doesn’t matter anyway. I have enough to worry about with the shop and Geordie. What brings you here?”
    “I want to know why,” he said.
    Rachel pulled her tattered cloak tighter around her shoulders. “Why what?”
    “Why you agreed to come to me last night.”
    “Why I
agreed
to come to you?” Rachel tried to inject her voice with sufficient disdain. “You flatter yourself, my lord.”
    As he smoked his pipe, she felt his eyes cutting the darkness between them. “Perhaps, but for all your maidenly airs, I know a willing woman when I’ve got one beneath me.”
    Heat suffused Rachel’s cheeks. She was glad he couldn’t see her plainly.