Page 75 of The Duke's Rules Of Engagement
“Jo,” he murmured. “It wasn’t just that. You could show me those designs anytime. You needn’t have come to my house for that.”
Oh dear.
She licked her lips, then blurted, “I’ve been thinking about what happened to you.”
“What happened to me?” he repeated with a frown.
“At Vauxhall Gardens.”
His frown deepened.
She was beginning to love that look on his face when he was being obtuse. The way he arched his brows while at the same time screwing them together in confusion.
“First, you were behaving somewhat strangely.” He’d been neither haughty and stiff, as he generally was when surrounded by people he didn’t know well, nor caring and sensual like he had been the past few times he and Jo had been alone together. He had seemed somewhat distraught and rather confused. Quite out of character.
“Then,” she continued, “after you returned from your search for Miss Cherrington, you were covered in mud and leaves. Did you fall?”
“Oh.” He chuckled. “Right. That. I didn’t fall, exactly. I had an encounter with a cutpurse on the Dark Walk.”
Her mouth dropped open. She gaped at him, and as the seconds ticked by, she realized the room had gone dead silent except for the occasional crackle of the fire. “Truly?” she finally managed.
“Truly.”After another long pause, his expression darkened. “I must insist, if you ever return to that place, you must avoid the Dark Walk. Especially at that hour. And never go there alone. Promise me.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Promise me, Jo.”
“Very well, I promise,” she said impatiently. “But what happened toyou?”
“Nothing, really. I was searching for Miss Cherrington when a woman screamed, and the thief came running straight at me.”
“Oh, goodness!”
“I tackled him to the ground, retrieved the reticule he’d cut from the poor lady, and then returned it to its rightful owner.”
“Matthew,” she breathed through the sudden tightness in her chest. “If…if he cut her purse, he had a knife. You could have been stabbed. You could have beenhurt.”
His brows rose as if he hadn’t considered this. “Well, perhaps. But I wasn’t.”
“But you could have been.” Jo thought of what would have happened if the cutpurse had stabbed him then run, leaving him lying on the Dark Walk, helpless and bleeding…
She blinked hard to clear the film in her eyes. “You were lucky.” Her breath came out shaky. “I—” Squeezing her hands tighter in her lap, she gathered her composure. “If you were hurt…” She swallowed. “I am so thankful you weren’t hurt.”
He smiled at her—and it was a genuine smile, so honest it made something pang in her chest. “I wasn’t hurt, Jo.”
She nodded but still took a moment to regain her composure, to wipe away all images of him lying in the dark and bleeding, with her too far away to help him. “And…what about the first part of my question?” she finally asked.
“Which was…?”
She had the impression he remembered exactly what it was.
“When we were alone together after the fireworks, you weren’t yourself. Why?”
Blowing out a breath, he looked up at the ceiling, which was inlaid with a large square ropey pattern of plaster, the inside of the square painted the color of cranberries.
“The evening wasn’t going as planned,” he said.
“How?”
