Page 79 of His Improper Lady

He had combed through his hair with his fingers, restoring it to some order, and he’d moved farther away. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t bring you out here to seduce you.”

“You didn’t?” Desiree’s lips curved up, and she couldn’t keep the flirtatious tone from her voice. “How disappointing.”

Tom released a huff of a laugh. “You aren’t making it easier.”

“I know. Not for myself, either.” Desiree smoothed her hands down her skirt and took another shaky breath. “Perhaps we should return to the party.”

He thrust his hands into his pockets and looked around, then sighed. “I agree.”

They turned and walked back to the house, keeping a careful distance apart. Neither the time nor the place, Desiree repeated to herself. But there would come a time. She was certain of that.

It took Smeggars a few days to come up with an address for a housekeeper named Nan McGee. Two days in which Desiree had all too much time to think. She had set out to find out who her father was, and that had been done. It could be said that she had no more reason to investigate. Yet her anxiety, even dread, was increasing every day. What was it that was so important?

There was this strange matter of the will. Perhaps they should look for that will. Given what had happened the other day in her studio, it seemed to present a danger to her. But her inner feeling, the thing that had set her on this whole search to begin with, told her it was tied to her parents. And anyway, how was she supposed to find this will? She knew nothing about it other than it supposedly was sent to Tom’s office, and both Tom and Con had searched their office thoroughly.

There was nothing left to do in her search for her parents other than interview the housekeeper. Desiree was doubtful that Mrs. McGee—who Brock had agreed was his remembered ‘Nan’—would be able to provide them with any more information than they already had. And after that, Desiree feared she would be left with an unabated sense of urgency...and no reason to see Tom Quick anymore.

And that prospect filled her with dismay. These days without Tom had been flat. In the evenings he had escorted her to the club and back, but that was very little time, no more than a few minutes of chatting, carefully avoiding the subject of their passionate kisses in the Morelands’ garden.

Yet she found herself waiting with embarrassing eagerness for those moments to arrive. She wasted an inordinate amount of time trying (and failing) to come up with a reasonable excuse to go to his office. The remainder of her days she spent thinking about him and their kisses and worrying that soon she might never see him again. The prospect of her life, which had once been so comfortable, now seemed bleak without Tom Quick in it.

She had always been an independent woman, content and able on her own, but now she felt as if she was missing some essential part. Each evening when Tom arrived, that absent part slid back into place.

No other man had made her feel as she did when they kissed, so eager, so sizzling with heat and excitement. It had been easy in the past to let her head overrule her physical attraction, but now she realized that she had not really tested that control until she kissed Tom Quick.

Desiree was determined not to give herself too easily, but she had never intended to spend her life celibate. One day she would meet someone to whom she could commit fully. Was Tom that someone? Was she brave enough to take that next step? Or would she be foolish to do so?

There was, she realized, no way of knowing if what she felt would last. She wasn’t even sure if what she felt for him was love. It was more than passion; she desired his company as much as she desired him. But was that love or merely infatuation? Her head told her she had not known him long enough to fall in love. But did love follow the rules? Desiree certainly never had.

Then there was the issue of what Tom felt for her. Desire, yes, that was obvious. But what about love? There was a closed quality to Tom. She found him more difficult to read than most; it had been one of the things about him that had intrigued her from the start. He had traveled a long way from his initial anger and dislike to a present friendship. He was concerned about her safety. He respected her abilities. But did that add up to love? Perhaps all that would lead to love one day. Or it might not. Was Tom even capable of love, or had growing up as he had in Falk’s unfeeling care, without parents or siblings, stunted any such emotion?

He yearned for that house. Desiree had seen that in his eyes, however much he had tried to gloss over it. One would think that his dream of a home would include a wife and family. Desiree suspected, however, that a woman like herself would not readily fit into that particular dream.

Such thoughts were running annoyingly through her head when the butler brought her a note from Tom saying that he had an address for Nan McGee. She jumped up and changed into something more attractive than the dress in which she had been lounging about the house, and called for the carriage.

Desiree couldn’t hold back a wide smile when Tom got into the carriage. He looked equally happy to see her, which made her smile even brighter. Mrs. McGee—if indeed it was the same Mrs. McGee—was retired and living in a small flat in Lambeth.

They drove across the bridge and were soon there. Heart pounding in anticipation, Desiree walked up the stairs to the housekeeper’s room. Tom rapped sharply on the door, and after a minute or two, the door opened the width of a hand, and a gray-haired woman looked out at them with narrowed eyes.

“Who are you?” she snapped.

“Mrs. McGee, we’d like to speak with you a few minutes, if you don’t mind,” Tom began.

“Well, I do mind.” She started to close the door.

“No, wait!” Desiree put her hand against the door to stop her. “Please. I’m Desiree Malone. I need to speak to you.”

Mrs. McGee frowned. “Malone? I don’t know any—” She stopped abruptly, her eyes going to the folded ten-pound note Tom held up.

“My mother was Stella Malone. My father—”

“Good God! Lord Moreland’s bastard?” There was surprise on the housekeeper’s face, but no exclamation of happiness at seeing her old charge.

Tom stiffened beside Desiree, but she put a hand on his arm and said calmly, “Yes. I want to talk to you about him.”

Mrs. McGee stepped back to let them enter, deftly snagging the folded bill from Tom’s fingers as they went by. She sat down in the lone armchair in the room, leaving Tom to pull over the two straight chairs from the table for him and Desiree.

“What do you want to know?”