Scandals of an Innocent. Nicola Cornick

of her brother, Lowell, which made movement a great deal freer and easier. But as she tried to ease her leg over the sill the britches caught on something and stuck fast.

      “Alice!” Lizzie’s hissing held a note of panic now. “Come on! Someone is almost upon us!” She caught Alice’s arms and tugged hard. Alice heard the material of the britches rip. She wriggled free for a few painful inches and then stuck fast again. She was not a slender girl and every one of her curves currently felt as though it was squashed into too small a space. The edge of the windowsill dug painfully into her hip. She dangled there helplessly, one leg out of the window, the other on the sill. She could hear footsteps coming ever closer, their measured tread loud on the cobbles of the road.

      “He will see us,” Lizzie groaned.

      “He will certainly hear you,” Alice said crossly. Lizzie’s idea of being quiet seemed to equate to behaving like a bull in a china shop. “If you will cease that pulling and pushing and keep still and quiet for a moment, he will pass by the end of the alley. And put the lantern out!” she added fiercely.

      It was too late.

      She heard the footsteps stop. There was quiet for a moment; quiet in which Alice’s breathing seemed loud in her own ears and the window ledge creaked in protest beneath her weight. She lay still like a hunted animal. Instinct told her that the man, too, was watching and waiting.…

      “Run, Lizzie!” Alice gasped. “I am right behind you!” She gave her friend a shove that sent Lady Elizabeth stumbling off down the passage even as everything seemed to explode into noise and movement around her. A man came running out of the darkness, and Alice wrenched herself free of the ledge and tumbled headlong on top of him, wrapping them both in the silky, voluminous folds of the wedding gown as they fell to the ground. As an ambush it could scarcely have been more effective had she tried.

      Alice scrambled up, lost her footing on the slippery folds of material and fell to her knees. The man was quicker. His arms went about her, scooping her up and then holding her fast against him, so that all her kicking and pummeling was quite in vain. His grip was too tight to break, as taut as steel bands about her waist and back. Her struggles were embarrassingly puny against such quiet, almost casual, strength.

      “Hold still, urchin,” he said. His voice was mellow and deep, and he sounded carelessly amused, but there was nothing careless in the way that he held her. Alice could tell she was not going to be able to break his grip. She also sensed by instinct that this was no drunken lord returning home after a night’s entertainment at the Morris Clown Inn. There was something too powerful and purposeful about him—something too dangerous to dismiss easily.

       She was in deep trouble.

      Fear clawed at her chest as she frantically tried to think of a way to escape him. Her whole body was shaking with fear and panic and a desperate need to flee. She stopped struggling and went limp in his arms in an attempt to trick him into loosening his grip, but he was evidently too old a hand to fall for the ruse, for he simply laughed.

      “So docile all of a sudden? Listen, boy—” He stopped.

      Held so close to him, Alice could feel the hard muscles of his body tense against her own and she recognized the precise moment that he realized, despite the evidence of her attire, that she was not a boy at all.

      “Well, well…” The amusement was still in his voice, but it had a different quality to it now. He shifted, his chest unyielding against the betraying softness of her breasts, his hand moving intimately over the curve of her bottom where the rip in her britches exposed rather more bare skin than she would have wanted. His grip on her slackened, not much, but enough for Alice to wrench herself from his arms and turn to run.

      It was the treacherous wedding dress that foiled her again. Wrapping itself about her ankles, it tripped her so that she staggered and almost fell. The man caught her arm in a savage grip, spinning her around so that her back was against the rough brick wall of the alley. Alice gasped as the pain jolted through her, and gasped again as he deliberately brought his body into closer contact with hers, holding her pinned against the wall with his hips, his hands braced on either side of her head. She was trapped, caged. A long shiver went down her spine that was neither fear nor cold.

      The man took her chin in his hand and turned her toward the pale light of the lantern. His face was only inches away from hers, the harsh lines and planes shadowed in the darkness. She could feel the beat of his heart against her breast, feel his breath against her skin and the press of his lower body, lean and hard, against hers. It filled her with a strange, unfamiliar kind of ache and a weakness she did not much care for. Alice hated to feel out of control. She had never experienced such waywardness from her body before.

      The man pushed the hat roughly back from her brow, and her hair escaped its confinement and fell down about her shoulders. He brushed the tangles away from her face. Then his fingers stilled. She felt the shock rip through his body.

      “Miss Lister?” There was flat disbelief in his tone.

      Oh, dear. So much for her desperate hope that whoever he was, he would not be able to identify her. And she recognized him, too. Miles Vickery. She knew his voice now. She had loved his voice. It was so smooth and mellow Alice had sometimes thought that he could have seduced her with his words alone. He almost had.

      She had been such a fool to believe even for a moment that his attentions to her had been sincere.…

      Even as her treacherous body responded to the touch of his hand against her cheek, the knife twisted within her as she remembered that she did not like Miles Vickery very much at all. In fact, she absolutely detested him.

      Nevertheless, they stood staring at each other for what felt like a very long moment while Alice’s heart beat in her throat and the heat washed through her body and left her trembling. She could not move. She could not even tear her gaze from his. She was captured in the moment by the fierce, intent look in his eyes and in the strange, aching demand of her body where it touched his.

      Then a carriage rumbled across the cobbled road at the end of the passageway, and the sudden noise made them both jump. Alice took advantage of the moment to raise her elbow in a sharp and persuasive jab into Miles’s ribs, and as he doubled up in pain she ducked away and ran, leaving him standing staring after her, the wedding dress still in his hand.

      

      TWENTY MINUTES LATER, tucked up in her bed, Alice lay and watched the patterns made by the moon on the ceiling as her curtains shifted a little in the cold night breeze from the open sash window.

      Lizzie had been waiting for her, full of questions. In typical melodramatic fashion she had told Alice that she had run all the way back to Alice’s home, Spring House, without pausing even to draw breath and then had fretted and fidgeted for a full ten minutes before Alice had appeared for fear that her friend was lying in the street, raped, murdered or worse, whatever worse might be.

      “I thought you were behind me!” Lizzie had said, nursing the cup of hot chocolate that Alice had rustled up for both of them on the kitchen hob. “You said you were! And then when I realized you were nowhere to be seen I did not know whether to wait or go back for you, or what to do!”

      Alice had made some excuse about twisting her ankle and having to hop home, and that had satisfied Lizzie, who had spotted that Alice no longer had the wedding dress and was berating her for dropping it in the street. The girls had taken their cups of chocolate upstairs, tiptoeing through the quiet house so as not to wake its sleeping occupants, and Lizzie had completely failed to notice that Alice no longer appeared to be limping.

      And now, lying in her bed, Alice could not really understand why she had not told her friend about Miles Vickery catching her. Perhaps it was because she did not wish to think about Miles, let alone speak about him. She had never told anyone what had happened between her and Miles the previous autumn, probably, she thought, rolling over in bed in a vain attempt to relax, because nothing had happened. There was nothing to think about and nothing to remember. Miles was a penniless adventurer who had set out with calculated intent