Page 16 of The Hero
“And yesterday evening, my father saw us kissing each other,” she reminded fiercely as she reached for and opened the door to what appeared to be a linen cupboard before stepping inside and closing the door behind her.
Leaving a slightly dazed Gideon alone in the hallway to greet his host.
CHAPTER SIX
“Step aside!” Harry instructed as she brushed past Oxford so that she might enter his bedchamber.
He frowned. “Earlier today, you hid in a linen cupboard so that we were not caught talking together outside your father’s sickroom, but now you have decided it is agreeable for you to invade my bedchamber instead?” He closed the door with a decisive click before turning to face her. “I was about to change for dinner.”
Which was when Harry realized—and became very aware—that he had been in the process of undressing when she knocked on his bedchamber door. He had already discarded his jacket, waistcoat and neckcloth. His shirt was unfastened at the throat, revealing an expanse of golden flesh and the dark hair which no doubt covered his chest.
Harry looked away, determined not to allow herself to become distracted by his disheveled appearance.
And yes, earlier she had hidden in the linen cupboard until the two men had strolled off together to speak with her aunt, at which time she had hurried to her own bedchamber. During the time since then, she’d had ample opportunity to think long and hard about all the events of this weekend.
The fact Oxford was here at all.
The obvious tension between him and Robert Granger.
Gideon having kissed her in the garden the evening before.
Her father having been shot this morning.
Facts which didn’t seem to make any sense. “Why are you here?” she prompted shrewdly.
“I was invited,” Gideon instantly dismissed.
She snorted. “An invitation my aunt says you instigated.”
His eyebrows rose. “Did she?”
Harry drew in a controlling breath. “You know she did. Besides, all in Society know—even those of us who have not yet been presented and entered London Society, but were instead told this snippet of gossip by their aunt—that the Duke of Oxford rarely if ever attends private house parties.”
“Yet here I am.”
Yes, here Gideon was, and to Harry’s mind, he no longer appeared as relaxed as he’d been before she questioned his reason for being so. “And so I ask again, why are you here?”
He shrugged “I had no prior engagement, and rumor had it, and this has been proven since my arrival here, that your aunt is a very gracious hostess.”
“And my uncle is a generous and congenial host.” She nodded. “But neither of those things are reason enough for you to have traveled into Bedfordshire in order to spend several days with a group of people you have nothing in common with and would not normally associate with.”
“In your opinion.”
“You know I speak the truth.”
He threw up his hands. “You are as stubbornly relentless in your demand for answers as the terrier dog I had as a child when in search of a bone he had buried in the garden,” he muttered. “And equally as annoying.”
She ignored the insult to remind him, “I am still waiting for you to answer my question.”
* * *
Gideon truly had no idea how to answer her. The last thing he wanted to do was lie to this young woman to whom he found himself so attracted. She might never forgive him if he did. But to tell Harry the truth would be to implicate her father in a murder, as well as betray the trust of the four men who had long been his closest friends.
The same four gentlemen, he reminded himself, who had found themselves in similar difficult situations with other young ladies during their search for the English officer who had slain Plymouth.
For the main part, they had remained true to the oath they had made long ago—to remain loyal to the Ruthless Dukes.
Gideon braced his shoulders, intending to do the same—