Then, she straightened her spine.
“You ought to have run faster,” he drawled, and she thought she saw the corner of his mouth tilt up into a smug smirk; the ghost of it annoyed her.
“You ought not to have been lurking,” she shot back, already feeling her cheeks warm up.
One brow rose fractionally. “I wasn’t lurking.” The unhurried nature of his tone annoyed her, too.
“You were standing in a dark alley past midnight, awaiting a woman you had already identified, but chosen not to immediately announce yourself to.” She met his gaze with as much composure as she could construct on short notice. “That is, by any reasonable definition, lurking.”
Anthony Keating, Duke of Wynford, regarded her for a moment with those insufferably steady green eyes, and she had the uncomfortable sense that he was quietly amused and declining to show it.
He took a step closer, which was unnecessary. The alley was not so narrow as to require it.
“I wanted to be certain I wasn’t mistaken,” he said. “I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.”
“How magnanimous.” She tried not to roll her eyes at him.
“I thought so.” He paused, tilting his head slightly. “You should go home, my lady.”
“I was going home,” she retorted, then wiped the dirt and dust off her hat.
Good God.
How was it that he was making her want to stomp her foot like a toddler throwing a tantrum?
“Before I stopped you, you were going in the wrong direction. Your carriage is two streets over, I assume. East, not west.” He tilted his head slightly. “The fact that you bolted south suggests either poor navigation or a great deal of panic.”
She hated that he was right. She set her jaw; her eyes narrowed at him. “You were following me,” she said.
“I was ensuring you were all right.” His voice sharpened on the last word. “Which is a distinction that matters, regardless of whether you choose to acknowledge it. That man had fixed himself on you, and a tavern like this one is not the sort of place where things end neatly. I had no means of knowing that you were?—”
He paused, and she could see him selecting his words with deliberate care.
“Who you were,” he continued. “I only meant to see you reach the street without further incident.”
“And yet here we are,” Caroline said. “Incident very much in progress.”
He looked at her for a beat. Something akin to irritation passed across his face before it was gone.
“You should not have been here,” he said. “Either of you.” His eyes flicked in the direction where Laura had run.
“But we were, and we survived intact. So perhaps the degree of danger has been somewhat overstated.”
“The degree of danger,” he said flatly, “nearly had a drunk dockworker put his fist through your face not five minutes ago. I would not call that overstated.”
Caroline’s spine locked, her bones going rigid. “You handled him perfectly well.”
“I shouldn’t have needed to.” He said it without heat, which somehow made it worse. “This is not a place for you or your companion. The clientele is not the sort who will be deterred by a sharp word and a brave expression, Lady Caroline. You are a young woman, alone, in men’s clothes, in a district of London that does not trouble itself with your well-being.”
The quality of his tone was not exactly scolding. It was more the tone of someone reading aloud from an unwelcome report, laying out the facts without embellishment.
She found, obscurely, that she preferred outright lecturing to this.
“I appreciate your concern,” she said. “You’ve now expressed it thoroughly. Good evening, Your Grace.”
She turned on her heel and started to walk.
He stepped into her path.