Page 4

A wry and welcomingly familiar smile edged her lips up at the corners. “That is unsurprising.”

They shared a smile.

“Yes. Well, this time I’m not doing so with the sole intent of getting a rise out of you.”

He gave a playful tug at one of her curls. Alice swatted his hand playfully in return, and just like that, they were restored to the easy way it had always been between them.

“I’m being entirely serious, Alice,” he said more emphatically this time. “It is a masterpiece.”

“A masterpiece?” She snorted. “Dynevor heartily disagreed. He said he wanted them to be more risqué, more passionate.”

“Dynevor is a boy,” he pointed out.

Alice sent her startled glance about the hall, as if she feared offending the revered gaming hell’s owner.

Denbigh narrowed his eyes. Did she fear the gentleman or revere him?

Either was a horrid possibility. Both made him want to kill the younger earl.

Both also made him want to toss Alice over his shoulder and whisk her away from this place.

Denbigh didn’t press her on it, and she didn’t volunteer anything more, and he left it that way.

A discussion about her employer wasn’t anything he really wanted right now.

In this moment alone with her, all he wanted to speak about was her artwork.

“I’m serious, Alice. There’s a maturity here. You have beautifully—” He grimaced at the insufficient praise for her drawing.

“It doesn’t have to be vulgar and crude and completely show everything to be evocative.

In fact, I would state with absolutely conviction that this”—he pointed to those previous areas Alice had identified as a defect— “is a masterful rendering of a woman who’s just had her eyes opened to lovemaking, is conflicted with the extent of her hungering, and has a fear of abandoning her innocence for forbidden passion. ”

Denbigh’s skin prickled, and he glanced over and found Alice’s wide eyes upon him. They were pale aqua pools as clear as those Scotland lakes he’d believed she’d been dipping her toes these past years. Contained within them was a startlement and something else.

“Go on, go.” The air sizzled around them. It came alive in ways that were dangerous and always had been with this woman.

Alice moved her gaze over his features. “Why are you here, Laurence?”

Sharing a first name with his evil sire, he’d always gone by his title, but the Mastersons had all insisted that he needed a given name and used his middle one.

Laurence.

Hearing her speak his name—those two syllables wrapped in her sweet, soft, lyrical voice—hummed through him.

These were the dangerous sensations that caused him not to ask after her these past years.

But he should have because then he wouldn’t be here trying to figure out how the hell to get her back home.

Understanding dawned slowly in Alice’s eyes.

“My brother,” she said softly. Horror flitted across her delicate features.

Her brother. That’s right. She was the forbidden fruit, and Denbigh was the evil best friend.

“ God, no . Do you think Exmoor told me you were here ? Because if he had, Alice, you can trust I would’ve been here long ago.”

The first part was a lie and slipped out too easily. The weariness faded from her expression and intensified the guilt within him for deceiving her in this way.

“But you are here,” she ventured. Suspicion returned to her eyes. “ Why ?”

Think, man. Think.

He should have planned far better than this. She’d always been too clever, far too clever, certainly more intelligent than he.

“Alice,” he said, lowering his voice. “Only because you are, Alice, and we both discovered one another here, I’m forced to confess something shocking.”

How he despised himself for layering deception upon deception.

“Something shocking about you , Laurence?” her query contained a smile.

“I am not as good as you believe I am, Alice.” There, that much was true.

“I don’t believe that, Laurence,” she gently murmured.

At her misplaced faith in him, Denbigh faltered. God he couldn’t bear this. His next words came tumbling out.

“I recently obtained membership in various clubs. Ones I’d never ever dare speak about to your brother. He’d be horrified if he knew.”

That was probably the biggest lie in the world, considering the other gentleman had known his sister was working at the Devil’s Den and hadn’t said anything or fetched her out in all this time.

A pink blush settled on her cheeks.

“ Oh .”

And he hated that knowing color in her beautiful face. He hated the conclusion she’d drawn, the one he’d wanted her to draw, for she saw him as a scoundrel, and he didn’t want her to see him in that light.

It shouldn’t matter. There could never be anything between them, given that she was Exmoor’s sister, but still, he didn’t want her to have that unfavorable opinion of him.

“I take it I will possibly be seeing more of you?” he ventured.

He’d already ascertained that speaking quickly about getting her out of here and acting high and mighty was destined to fail.

“No,” she murmured; sadness tinged her voice. Or maybe he imagined that with his own hope and ears? “I keep away.”

Her meaning couldn’t be clearer; she couldn’t be seen about.

“Yes, well, given we’re now occasionally sharing the same roof. I wouldn’t say it’s altogether impossible , either,” he ventured. “Would you?”

It wasn’t impossible. He consecrated his very life to getting her out of here.

“It is possible,” she conceded, but the look in her eyes told a different tale. She thought this chance meeting was the last meeting. It was anything but.

This was only the beginning.

As if she’d heard that unspoken promise in the air, Alice jumped. “I have to go,” she said, hurriedly gathering up her art materials. “I have an assignment to see to.”

Denbigh bowed. “Of course, Alice,” he called after her as she started to take her leave.

Alice looked back over her shoulder.

“It was so very good seeing you,” he said softly, meaning those words. He’d missed her more than he could say. More than was appropriate.

A tremulous smile formed on her lips.

“It was so very good seeing you too, Laurence.”

With that, she took her leave, and Denbigh stood there.

Suddenly, the immediate need to rip her from this place left him disconcerted.

Not because he feared he couldn’t or wouldn’t, but because he’d gathered from their all too short exchange that she genuinely cared about her work here, relished her freedom, and had found a home.

And when he took her away from this and brought her back to her family, where she belonged, she would also be stuck in a gilded cage, which she so hated. She would hate him forever.

And he could not bear it.