Then Comes Murder

Dangerous Games (part one)

"Bloody hell," Nora said again.

She'd lifted her hem to examine her ankle, and the words had slipped past her teeth before she could stop herself.

And then again when Jane Aubrey shrieked and pretended to swoon. Where Lieutenant Jacob Thornton-Spencer had let her unceremoniously fall into a heap—even despite her arm tucked in his, mind you—he'd managed to gently catch Jane before she hit the ground. Nora supposed she could forgive him for it: she had actually tripped, and Jane had managed to time her graceful descent.

"She's barely fainted," Nora insisted in a soft hiss as he hovered over the woman. Jane held a delicate hand to her brow. As if the lacy thing was a poisonous snake, he grimaced before using the woman's fan to coax a cool breeze across her face. Nora swallowed her scoff. Jane's tactics were hardly new. If anything, she could see the woman angle her breasts towards him.

"I'm surprised more of the nearby ladies haven't swooned," Jacob murmured. He glanced at her with a vaguely curious expression. "Hound's teeth, where did you even learn to swear like that?"

"My father's surgery." Wincing, Nora inspected her ankle. She'd twisted it nearly to ribbons, what with Caroline's foolish idea that she borrow her shoes from Paris. Nora had insisted that they were too small, but her cousin had balked at the sturdy boots Nora had planned to wear. Damn! She'd be limping for days. All for wearing a silly pair of shoes that no one even noticed beneath a tent of skirts. "Men say all sorts of things when they're getting their bones set back in place."

If Jane hadn't fainted, she certainly looked paler at the mention of broken limbs. Nora's lips twitched with a hint of wicked satisfaction.

To her surprise, Jacob's incredulous whisper was tilted with a matching smile.

"Do you have any sense of propriety?"

Half her leg was uncovered, her dress streaked with grass-stains and dirt. From the gentle criticism in his hazel eyes, she imagined she looked exactly the indignant creature he accused her of being. Nora bit her tongue to keep from saying something pithy in reply. Of course she had sense of propriety! She'd been half beaten to death with rules and expectations the moment her father had been dragged into the peerage six years ago. But the good lieutenant had just pulled her to the ground. In front of gathering crowd of gentlemen and ladies desperate to find something wrong with her. And her ankle hurt.

"Oh, my darling, Jane!" a matronly figure moaned as she pushed through the crowd.

It's not as if she's died, Nora thought scathingly. And it's not as if you've rehearsed this a hundred times. Like lukewarm applause after the bone-curdling high note in an aria of a lady who credited herself too highly, Mrs. Aubrey was the expected aftermath to one of Jane's fainting spells.

"Oh thank you! Thank you, Officer?" Mrs. Aubrey trailed off hopefully.

As if she doesn't know exactly who he is, Nora thought.

"Lieutenant Thornton-Spencer," Jacob said.

At Mrs. Aubrey's near-screeching sigh, he swallowed as if condemned to the gallows.

"Oh! Lieutenant Thornton-Spencer! We have heard so many heroic things about you. And a what wonder that they are true!"

Well that's certainly a way to bypass the inconvenience of introductions. Nora considered it a miracle she kept her eyes from rolling into the back of her head. She coughed pointedly.

At that, Jane stirred with a soft gasp and smiled prettily. The golden afternoon light kissed her cheeks and sent her bright eyes sparkling beneath fluttering lashes. If Nora wasn't sprawled next to them, clutching her swollen ankle, it might have made for a perfectly romantic introduction.The quintessential sort ladies her age liked to read about in novels. Poor Jane, she thought. To have me here spoiling it. From the burning glare that Jane Aubrey was sending through her eyelashes, it seemed she agreed.