An Unlikely Alliance by Rachel van Dyken Page B

in front of her was Royce, fully clothed
and smiling like a lion that had just caught his prey.
    She felt her face heat as she realized her
state of dress. "Royce McArthur! I'm barely dressed!" Seething, she
sank into her bed and threw the covers over her head.
    "We're going on a picnic," he announced,
nonplussed by her outburst.
    "I don't care!" She sunk even lower into her
mattress with sheer embarrassment.
    It took all the strength she had not to
squeal when she felt Royce weigh down the left side of the bed as
he took a seat beside her.
    "Are you going to hide in there all morning?
I mean, I don't mind playing hide-and-seek if the final result is I
end up in your bed, but I thought you would want to know our
parents have planned a full day's excursion picnicking and
shopping—and, of course, they are unchaperoned."
    Evelyn sighed and pulled down the covers
only far enough to reveal her large eyes. Although she hated to
admit it, concern etched in her voice as she spoke. "You mean
they're going out two days in a row? Together?"
    He nodded as he inched his hand close to
where she was gripping the blankets the tightest. "Tsk, tsk,
Evelyn. You won't be one of those brides who hides under the
covers, will you? We can't have that."
    What did he mean we? "It's February."
    "Your knowledge of the calendar is
astonishing! Say, do you have the months memorized?"
    Evelyn groaned.
    Royce laughed. "Haven't you noticed this
unreasonably warm weather? I'll bet it's no colder than a brisk
spring day out there. Now hurry up. We have some spying to do. I'll
just wait outside. That is, unless you'd like me to stay and
help?"
    Evelyn was still frozen in place, but
managed to move her hand and point toward the door for him to
leave. Peeking around the covers she watched his beautifully
dressed form walk away.
    "Oh, I almost forgot." He turned around
again and winked. "I love your hair that way, down and curved
around your shoulders. Makes a man wish he could take a peek under
that sheet."
    "Out!" She threw a pillow at his head, but
he had already shut the door. His laughter boomed down the
hallway.
    How in tarnation did he even get in her room
without her maid having an apoplexy or her butler shooting him? He
must have sweet-talked her maid somehow, or bought her silence with
one of his devilishly handsome smiles.
    "Cad," she mumbled to herself and went to
the washbasin. If her father was out with Mrs. McArthur again, it
could only mean one thing. He had found a woman he could possibly
love. Her daddy played for keeps and wasn't the sort of man to
waste his time tinkering around. When he got an idea in his head,
he followed through with it. And it seemed the object of his
affection and thoughts lingered on Royce's mother.
     
    ****
     
    Royce sat at Evelyn's breakfast table and
drank a cup of hot tea, letting it soothe his rattled nerves. Of
course, he had seen plenty of women in bed—women dressed with
French lacy things that left nothing to the imagination. Yet seeing
Evelyn in her cotton nightgown was enough to send him into a
frenzy, abandoning all rules of propriety and falling to his knees
right then and there. The poor girl almost had him proposing before
she had even opened her mouth.
    Shuddering at how close he had come to
ruining all his best-laid plans, he took another lingering sip and
paused. Footsteps neared the room, so he straightened his jacket
and rose to greet Evelyn.
    "Are you better now, sweetheart?"
    She paused, looked down at herself, then
back at him. "Yes. I believe I am, now that I'm fully clothed and
wide awake." She raised an eyebrow and poured herself some tea.
"Since you've interrupted my sleep and nearly frightened me to
death with your unexpected presence in my room, what exactly do you
have in mind for our little spy game today?"
    "I thought you'd never ask." He sipped some
more tea and waited for her to sit before he explained. "They're
going to have a picnic here. Then the plan, if I heard it
correctly, was