“How do you feel today, Miss Woodmore?” he asked in that same smooth voice, standing in the doorway. He glanced at Rubey, who rose from her seat. “Well rested, I trust?”
“Yes, and also well fed,” she replied, gesturing to the remains of her scone. “I’m certain I have you to thank.”
Voss inclined his head in polite acknowledgment and stepped just inside the door, leaving it ajar next to him. “In addition, I had already presumed your need to be in contact with the eldest Miss Woodmore and thus, I have sent word to Corvindale that you are with me, and to pledge your continued safety. So you need not worry that your sister is concerned for you.”
Rubey had moved to the window. She left the curtains and windowpane open wide, but closed the shutters, leaving only a fraction of the sunshine sliding through the top half of the opening. The room was still well illuminated by the day, but the warmth was gone.
“Oh,” Angelica said in dismay, her attention turning to the other woman. “Why did you do that?”
“It’s safer,” Voss replied, stepping farther into the chamber. “We must take no chances that Moldavi’s men might glimpse you through the window.”
A spike of fear jolted her. “Do you think they’ve followed us? Or know where you’ve taken me?”
“I suspect they haven’t, for they didn’t know you were with me when we left Sterlinghouse last evening. But I intend to take no chances with you and your safety, Miss Woodmore.” His eyes settled on her as he smiled slowly. “Not at all.”
Standing by the window, Rubey made a soft sound that could have been mistaken for a snort, but Angelica wasn’t certain. The woman eyed Voss with a raised brow, and he merely turned his charming smile onto her. “Now, Rubey,” he said. There was affection in his voice—something that Angelica hadn’t noticed when he spoke to her—and also a bit of warning. “You give me too little credit.”
“A lie that is, to be sure. I give you more credit than you deserve,” she replied, folding her arms over her middle. For the first time, Angelica noticed a bit of Irish lilt in her voice. “And it lightens my coffers more than I care to admit.”
“But, Rubey,” he said, his voice still easy. “You know I’m good for it.” His voice lowered and Angelica felt a little responsive shiver in her belly.
“That you are, which is why I keep you around. But a little slow on the settling up. After this—” she gestured abruptly at Angelica and moved toward Voss “—I expect your account to be settled most generously.” Then, to Angelica’s shock, she poked him in the chest with her finger, just below the loose neckcloth.
Voss didn’t seem to care. “I am always generous,” he told her in that low, nearly purring voice that made Angelica vacillate between warmth and annoyance. He was fairly ignoring her and quite clearly flirting with this woman.
She didn’t like it at all.
Rubey gave a little huff of laughter that ended on a low note. “Indeed,” she added in a more husky tone. “When you are finished here, I’ll expect you to see to all of it.”
She glanced briefly at Angelica to say, “I’ll send clothing up for you shortly. And a maid.” And then she left the chamber, closing the door in her wake.
For a moment, Angelica sat stunned and speechless. She was alone in a bedchamber, clothed in little more than a thin shift, with a man.
With Voss.
He turned to look at her, but before she could speak, he gave a little smile. “Ah, yes. Propriety.” To her relief, he opened the door, leaving it more than halfway ajar.
“Thank you,” she said, fumbling her hands over the top of the puckered coverlet. The thing that frightened her the most was that the idea of being alone in the bedchamber with Voss didn’t frighten her, or concern her. In fact, the thought was more than a bit alluring.
Standing near the door’s corner, against the wall, he nevertheless seemed to fill the room, his shoulders wide and solid against feminine wallpaper. Though he remained near the darker side of the room, his skin picked up a hint of the golden glow of sunlight. Thick hair, the color of her old ginger cat, streaked with all shades of bronze and honey caught by the light, had been combed back neatly and rose above his high forehead. Yet, its very color and the hint of untamed waves near his ears and throat suggested something less staid and proper lurking beneath.
The sensual little curl at one side of his mouth contributed to that lack of propriety…along with the fact that his neckcloth hung loosely knotted from the opening of his shirt. The shallow V of golden skin and the hollow of his throat she found fascinating, and more than a bit disturbing as her imagination ran to places it had never been.
“Angelica.”
Her gaze flew to his and the expression she saw there made her insides plunge. Oh.
“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to close the door again,” he said in a voice that tempted her to ask him to do so.
Heat rushed to her cheeks and Angelica caught her breath, aware of a sudden, very pleasant tightening in her insides. What if he did? What if he came to sit on the edge of the bed—no. That was outside of proper. She swallowed.
As if to put a distance between himself and that enticement, Voss stepped away from the opening and sat on an upholstered stool in front of a small dressing table. His long legs were bent up a bit and, sitting amid lace and glass, he appeared more out of his element than she’d ever seen him.… Yet, with him there was no real awkwardness. He wore no coat, but the crisp white sleeves of his shirt and the intricate pattern on his waistcoat detracted from the pink and yellow florals surrounding him.
Angelica decided she should be relieved that he’d taken a seat so far from her. “Where are we? And who is Rubey? Is she your…sister?”
Her cheeks warmed when he gave a short little laugh. “No, indeed, Rubey is not my sister.”
Angelica drew herself up a bit and pulled the coverlet higher. “I suspected not,” she added in what she thought of as her Maia-voice. “I was simply giving you the benefit of the doubt. She is a proprietress of some sort, I suppose. Is this her home?”
A suspicion had begun to form during Voss’s exchange with Rubey, wherein Angelica realized she was missing some of the underlying meaning of their words. She didn’t know much about the demimonde or the sorts of women who would become a man’s mistress, but the way Rubey had looked at Voss and the ease of manner between them—along with the very low line of her bodice—made her wonder. She’d spoken of services and of settling accounts.… Angelica became more suspicious.
“Rubey owns the place,” Voss told her. “One of several, in fact. She’s agreed to let you stay here until I can make other arrangements.”
“Is she your mistress?” Angelica asked. “Or is this a brothel?”
The slight widening of his eyes was the only indication of his surprise. “I didn’t believe young, well-bred women knew of such things.”
“Am I to presume that is a confirmation?” she asked, trying to decide why she felt so uncomfortable. Right in the pit of her belly.
“You needn’t presume anything of the sort,” Voss said. “Rubey is merely a woman with many skills and assets—not unlike yourself, Miss Woodmore.”
She couldn’t help but wonder just exactly what sort of skills and assets Rubey had.
And then she realized that, a moment earlier, he’d called her Angelica. Now it was back to Miss Woodmore.
Angelica frowned and all of her warm thoughts dissipated.
But Voss didn’t seem to notice, for he continued. “In fact, I was hoping you might use one of your talents to assist me.”
Her attention flew to him, but his expression was neutral. Perhaps even…apprehensive. For the first time, she noticed that despite his easy manner, his eyes held weariness. “What exactly do you mean?” Angelica asked, resisting the urge to ask if he hadn’t slept well.
Voss shifted in his seat, his long legs ruffling the lacy table cloth, causing the glass bottles to clink gently. “You foretold the death of my associate Lord Brickbank. And I understand that you have been able, in the past, to predict or foresee the death of others.”
When she would have spoken, something like dismay and perhaps anger bubbling up inside her, he continued. His voice lowered and became…tentative. “I confess, it was more than a bit of a shock to me—that which happened with Brickbank. You’d warned us, you’d foretold it…and yet we couldn’t prevent it.”
His face seemed to sag in the uneven light. Emotion clouded his eyes, and the bit of annoyance she had with him ebbed. “Perhaps not,” she said, but gently. “If you had stayed away from the bridges—”
He looked sharply at her. “But you clearly said which bridge. We went nowhere near it, and he still died in the manner you’d foretold.”
Angelica eased back against her pillows, closing her eyes briefly. Yes, that very same realization had settled uncomfortably in her thoughts, as well. It made her fingers grow stiff and icy, despite the mild summer day, and her insides tighten.
There was no escaping fate.
And she was fated to bear its knowledge.
“How do you manage it, Angelica?” he asked suddenly, as if it burst from him. Earnestness and something much deeper blossomed in his gaze. “Seeing death at every turn?”
She sensed that he needed the answer; that it was a need for him as much as an understanding about her. “It’s become part of my life,” she said. “Since I was very young, I would touch something and sometimes the flash of a vision would rush through my mind. I didn’t understand what it was at first.”
“The first time you realized it was something more, you must have been quite distraught.” His voice had gentled.
“I was perhaps five or six. One of the footmen had dropped a glove and I picked it up. The vision was very strong and it startled me. I had an image of him lying on the floor of the stable. He looked odd, but I couldn’t have known it was because his neck and legs were broken. I returned the glove to him and two days later, he fell from the loft of the barn.”
