Page 53 of His Improper Lady

Tom had enough presence of mind to tell the driver to continue to the end of the block to let them out. Desiree turned to him, and his gaze went immediately to her mouth. Then he pulled his eyes upward. He settled her hat a bit differently on her head, his fingertips brushing the side of her face as he pulled them back, and the touch of them made her shiver.

Tom took a breath and turned to look out the narrow rear window. The last few minutes, they could have had half a dozen men following them, and they wouldn’t have noticed.

When the carriage stopped again, Tom sprang out as if he’d been shot out of a cannon. He gazed up and down the street so thoroughly he didn’t glance at her once. Desiree stepped down from the carriage. She rather missed him lifting a hand to help her. It was, she decided, a very pleasant courtesy.

Her spirits remained high even though they found no more success this afternoon than they had the day before. There were still other possibilities to visit, and, frankly, Desiree found herself looking forward to spending more days in Tom’s company. Besides, her visit with the Morelands overwhelmed any failure in their search.

She was brimming with her news when she reached home, but to her disappointment she found that both her brothers were out. Brock was at work and would return late this evening, but Wells had apparently left the city and would not return until the following day. Such sudden departures without explanations were nothing new with Wells. She hoped he would come back when he said he would—which was not always the case—because she wanted to talk to both her brothers about the Moreland family at the same time.

Desiree had told Tom she wasn’t going to the club this evening. She was too restless to settle down and concentrate as she needed to during a game; her thoughts were occupied with the Morelands and her search for her father. Her mind was equally busy thinking about Tom Quick.

She wasn’t sure what Tom felt for her. Indeed, she wasn’t all that certain what she felt for him, either. They’d been antagonists from the beginning, but their relationship had changed to a wary partnership as they worked together, then became...well, whatever their relationship was today.

Desiree was drawn to him, had been from the first moment she saw him, before she knew who he was or what he wanted. She had felt as if a light had sprung to life inside her. She had wanted him in an immediate, visceral way that she had never felt with any other man. If he had not come over to her, she would have gone to him.

It wasn’t just the light gleaming on his blond hair or those compelling blue eyes or the long dimple that popped into his cheek when he smiled. It wasn’t simply the way he walked across the room or the lean, tensile strength in him or the sound of his voice, though admittedly all those things made her want to touch him, to feel his lips on her.

Desiree liked him. She couldn’t help but like him. More than that, she trusted him—and Desiree was not one to give her trust easily. There was a sense of understanding between them, a mutual knowledge and way of thinking that sprang, she supposed, from their common pasts. Though she had known him for only a short amount of time, Desiree knew his life because it had been her life, too.

Tom felt that connection, too. However rude and antagonistic he had been when he’d said it, he had said truthfully that he knew her. Nor was he immune to the physical attraction between them. Desiree wasn’t mistaken about the way he had looked at her that night in the club; the heat between them had not been all on her side. And this afternoon in the carriage! Desiree’s lips curved up. Tom was anything but indifferent to her.

She had no idea what would happen tomorrow, what Tom would say or do. Whether he would pull back or come closer. But Desiree looked forward to finding out.

TOM LEFT THE office early the next morning. He’d spent much of the night tossing and turning, thinking about Desiree, and he was glad when the sun came up and he could start doing something. Anything. He was tired of thinking. Tired of feeling, as well.

He was no longer sure what he thought or felt. Yesterday, watching Desiree with the Morelands, with a curiously hollow feeling, he had seen clearly how well she fit with the family. It wasn’t just that they easily accepted her, which had been his worry all along, but that it was so easy to believe she was one of them.

Her manner and accent weren’t as aristocratic as theirs—for no matter how egalitarian the Morelands were, their heritage and upbringing always shone through—and she didn’t resemble them in coloring, but her spirit, her boldness, her confidence and lack of concern for the opinions of others were so like theirs that he imagined any stranger entering the room would have thought that she was a member of the family. What was it Megan liked to say the Morelands had? Joie de vivre, that was it. And despite all the hard knocks in her past, Desiree had that.

In more practical terms, the way Desiree had reacted to them, the happiness and eagerness with which she gazed at the Morelands, simply did not look like someone scheming to hurt them. She had not pressed her claims; it had been the Morelands who had provided the fact that the duke’s cousin matched Desiree’s story.

Her brother’s possession of the ring and the timing of Alistair Moreland’s disappearance were not, as Tom had pointed out, actual proof that Alistair was Desiree’s father. It wouldn’t satisfy a court of law. But in pragmatic terms, those things certainly hinted strongly at it.

Tom thought of the way Desiree had spun around, arms thrown up in glee, and her face glowing with such joy that it made his heart hurt. Try as he might to hold on to his skepticism, he could not. He had told her the truth when he said he believed her. He did believe she wanted only her father’s identity. And he believed Desiree thought Alistair was her father.

But the fact that she believed it didn’t mean that it was fact. Tom wanted it to be true for her sake. He didn’t want her to be hurt or disappointed. His search was becoming a quest to prove she was right, and that was the worst way to conduct an investigation. Looking at something with a desired end in mind was a sure way to go astray.

He must not let himself tilt the evidence to please Desiree. That was the danger in getting involved with a client, and Tom had never had that problem before. He might like or dislike a person for whom he worked, but he had never desired one.

And he desired Desiree. Her name was all too apt. Yesterday, caught up in her beauty and excitement, he’d ignored everything from propriety to ethics to safety and kissed her. In a carriage, curtains not drawn, only a few feet from her coachmen. And paying absolutely no attention to whether they were being followed. Followed, hell—the man who’d been after them could have come up and peered in the window and Tom wouldn’t have noticed.

The woman was absolutely devastating to his senses. Far less of his thinking last night had been about the foolishness of what they’d done than about how pleasurable it had been. How much he would have liked to continue. How he could maneuver it so that they were again somewhere private and alone.

Any way one looked at it, it was a foolish infatuation. Desiree was a client. Good Lord, she might very well be a Moreland! And even if she was not, Desiree wasn’t the sort to live a quiet life in a modest house, the wife of an ordinary working man.

Not, of course, that he actually wanted to marry someone like Desiree, who would be a constant source of worry and aggravation. Tom had enough excitement in his life from his investigations without having to worry about a wife scampering across rooftops.

What he wanted was to sleep with her. He wanted that a great deal. Ordinarily he would have thought an affair might be something they could indulge in. She was a woman of the world, someone who’d grown up in the stews of the East End and lived a sophisticated life, not a sheltered flower of a lady.

But an affair with Desiree was all too likely to turn into something bigger. To make him hunger for more. And affairs were all too easily broken off. What would happen to him if Desiree grew bored or realized she wanted someone else, needed something more than Tom could give her?

His thoughts made him too restless to get any work done. All his focus was on Desiree’s case, anyway. They had planned for Desiree to once again come to the office and go to Marylebone from there, but, unwilling to sit still any longer, Tom took a hackney to Desiree’s house.

She looked up and smiled when the butler ushered him into the dining room, and Tom’s breath caught in his throat. What would it be like to be greeted by that smile at breakfast every day? To see the light in her eyes, the luscious curve of her lips?

“Tom! Sit down. Have breakfast with me.” She gestured at the empty table. “As you can see, my meal is solitary. My brothers are always late to bed and to rise.”

Tom couldn’t resist the invitation since it was exactly what he’d been envisioning. Sitting down, he watched as Desiree poured him a cup of tea, and that was almost as nice as seeing her smile.