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been remarkably swift. If we wait I’ll pass out and be too heavy even for him to move. I’ve fallen asleep on this settee before and it’s damned uncomfortable. I’m going to feel miserable enough in the morning—I want the comfort of my own bed. I’m not going to molest you, my dear woman. I merely need your support.” And to emphasize his demand, he pushed himself up to his feet, weaving slightly. Deliberately.
    She caught him, and he draped his arm around her shoulder as she braced his waist. “Just… guide me to my rooms,” he said, letting himself slur, “and then you can leave me to suffer the results of my indulgence.”
    “Overindulgence, more like,” she muttered beneath her breath, and the slight northern accent she’d been using had vanished, giving her the same clear tones of society he was used to.
Caught you, my girl
.
    He tried not to put his weight on her—she was stronger than she looked, but he weighed a good amount more, and if he was going to knock her over beneath him he wanted to wait until there was a mattress handy. He concentrated on the warmth of her, the feel of her as she slowly guided him down the hall.
    His rooms were on that floor, while Cecily kept quarters on the floor below, so they didn’t have to navigate the stairs. Like a good housekeeper she already knew which were his rooms, and she guided him into them.
    He was expecting cold and darkness. Instead the gaslight had already been lit and there was a fire burning in his bedroom for the first time in months, taking the damnable spring chill off the place.
    Christ, he didn’t care if she were a spy; as long as she was this good at seeing to his comfort she could have all his secrets.
    Except for the one, he reminded himself. Couldn’t let that one go—too many people depended upon him. Cecily had managed to find out, and used that knowledge to try to control him ever since, but he was too old and too cynical to risk letting that dark knowledge out to anyone else. He hadn’t been careful enough. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
    The darkness was closing in as they approached the bed. Damn, he’d drunk more than he realized. For a brief moment he wondered if he could manage to hold on to her as he fell, and what she would do. She smelled… delectable. He wanted her beneath him, he wanted to kiss that prim mouth into soft acquiescence. He wanted a thousand things he couldn’t have.
    He let go of her, falling onto the mattress, his grasp slipping free, and he closed his eyes.

    Bryony looked down at the Earl of Kilmartyn. He was half on, half off the bed, and she managed to push him onto the mattress with an undignified grunt. The man weighed a ton, for all that he seemed too lean. She stared down at him then, trying to summon the appropriate disgust for an inebriate. She’d seen servants the worse for wear, but never a gentleman, and shehad to admit he held his liquor well. Even on the edge of passing out he had barely slurred his words, and it had taken the brightness of his eyes, the deliberateness of his gestures to realize just how drunk he was.
    He should have looked revolting, lying there on the bed. Instead he looked beautiful, like a young boy, his overlong hair tousled around his face, the lines momentarily relaxed, the cynical tilt of his mouth softened.
    Did you kill my father?
she thought, keeping the words silent.
Did you betray his trust, rob him blind, and then have him murdered? All for the sake of money?
She reached down and brushed the hair away from his face. He didn’t move—she could probably get on the bed and jump up and down on it and he wouldn’t awaken.
    She looked at him and tried to summon hatred. Anger, disgust, contempt. All she could feel was sorrow for the darkness that infused him. He looked like a boy, despite the lines around his eyes and mouth, like a man who’d lost his way. And she was being ridiculously romantic. At best he was a drunkard and a lecher. At worst, a man