Suzanne Robinson by The Rescue Page A

do you take in your tea?”
    “What? Oh, yes, thank you.” He took the cup and began stirring his tea.
    “You didn’t answer when I asked what you took in your tea.”
    Sir Lucas set the cup and saucer down withoutdrinking and turned a wide-eyed gaze upon her. Prim sipped her own tea laced with milk and sugar while she grew more and more uneasy. He was going to try again to make her reveal what she knew, and she was too weary to endure it.
    “You know, Miss Dane, if you told me what it was you saw, or what you know, whoever is after you would have no reason to kill you. The secret would be out, and there would be no profit in killing you.”
    Prim had already thought of this. “You’re wrong. Even if the … the secret were known to the world, there would still be the most urgent of reasons for dispatching me.” The murderer would have an even more compelling reason to want her dead before she could testify in court.
    “Bloody damnation,” Sir Lucas said while he gazed at her in wonder. “What could you know that’s so perilous?”
    “I—”
    “Decline to tell you. I know, I know. So what are you going to do, hide for the rest of your life?”
    The question caught her unprepared. All at once her exhaustion rushed upon her. With it came feelings of helplessness and isolation. She had been brave for so long, and she was very much afraid that she could be brave no longer. Her eyes stung, and Sir Lucas began to swim before her tear-blurred vision.
    “Oy! Don’t you be sniffling and blubbering at me.”
    Her cup and saucer rattling, Prim grabbed her napkin and pressed it to her nose. She was powerless to prevent a great sob from escaping the napkin. The cup clattered perilously on its saucer. Sir Lucas cursed andgrabbed both before she dropped them. Prim pressed the napkin to her nose and mouth with one hand and made a fist with the other in an attempt to regain mastery of herself. She lost the battle as the first sob became many. Humiliated, she brought the napkin up to cover her eyes.
    Beside her the cushions of the settee dipped. A warm hand took her fist, causing Prim to gasp and peep over the edge of the napkin. Sir Lucas was sitting beside her, making her feel insect-small with his height. He had taken her fist in his hands, and as she watched, he pried open the fingers, clasped her hand in one of his, and covered it with the other. Her entire hand vanished. Prim’s tears dried up at the feel of his heated skin on hers. Suddenly the world shrank to those few inches where their hands touched, and Prim felt something inside stir, something that coiled and wound around itself, producing an exciting tension.
    “It took you all this mortal time to do what I expected of you the first time we met. Choke me dead but you’re powerful brave for a lady spinster.”
    “B-brave? I’m not brave. I’m frightened.” The tears returned.
    “Then let me help you,” he said.
    Another surprise. Nightshade could be gentle. Even his voice could be gentle. Usually it reminded her of a perverse choir—full, harmonious, and singing praises of wickedness. Now she could almost succumb to the images of high battlements and armor and a warrior’s skills that it provoked. But what would bethe result? Danger for two instead of one; danger for the one who had risked his life to help her.
    “I cannot allow you to help.”
    “You’re a wretched blithering fool, Miss Dane.”
    Prim yanked her hand from his grasp. “Only an infamous creature would so address a lady. But you needn’t endure my presence. I shall leave at once.”
    “You will not.”
    “Then I’m a prisoner yet.”
    “Appears so.”
    Prim stood stiffly.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I assumed you were going to lock me up again in some barred room, or possibly your dungeon.”
    “Sit down!” Nightshade bellowed.
    Prim started and obeyed in spite of herself. He lowered his chin and looked up at her, his stance recalling dark, mist-filled streets and unseen