TWICE A HERO By Susan Krinard

“Miss Gresham is receiving no callers. Mrs. Hunter was quite adamant. I told Mr. Biggs to make certain that Mr. Sinclair has no access, should he reappear.”

Thank God for Chen. “You think of everything when I can’t think at all. Thank you.”

“You honor me, Mr. O’Shea. There is more. Mrs. Hunter gave me this note to deliver to you.”

Liam recognized the perfume and the fine paper. Caroline. He shook his head to clear it and tore open the envelope.

The delicate, careful hand was indeed Caroline’s, but the note was brief and almost lacking in feminine flourish.

The meaning, however, was manifest. She wanted him to come to her house, tonight. She wanted to resolve matters between them. She was giving him another chance.

A strange, heavy feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. It felt like disappointment, and that was sheer madness. He had to set things right.

But as he rose from the bed he felt as if he were about to march to his death on the gallows, to be hung on a rope made of lace and blond curls and acres of petticoat.

He drove the phaeton to the Gresham’s in a state of complete mental blankness.

Mrs. Hunter answered the door. Biggs was nowhere in evidence.

“I’ve come to see Caroline,” Liam said tersely.

“I know.” She pursed her lips and let him into the house with obvious reluctance. Her attitude struck Liam as ironic; she’d done a poor enough job of watching over her charge.

If she hadn’t been in on last night’s fiasco with Perry. She would have to be questioned, but now was not the time.

“Where is she?” he asked.

Mrs. Hunter tilted her chin toward the stairway. Her disapproval burned into his back as he climbed the stairs. The house was eerily hushed. He reached Caroline’s sitting room door and knocked, expecting to find her waiting. There was no answer.

“Liam?”

He turned to face the open door of Caroline’s bedroom.

She was waiting for him, sure enough. Waiting in a sheer wrap that barely concealed the lacy white chemise she wore beneath. A chemise that revealed the thrust of her breasts, the roundness of her thigh sliding under satin. Her feet were bare, and her hair hung loose around her shoulders.

“Good God,” he choked. “What the hell are you doing?”

Her voice was low—too low, forced into a register that made it sound like a parody of Mac’s husky alto. “Waiting for you.”

Liam felt his face flame, but his body was chilled through. “Cover yourself,” he rasped.

“Why? Don’t you think I’m beautiful?”

Oh, yes, she was beautiful. Perfect. Any man would want her.

Any man but the one with her now. In the dim light he thought he saw the shape of a phantom standing behind his ward; taller, red-haired, tragic in spite of her gaiety. Siobhan.

They were not alike. Nothing alike. But Caroline might have been his sister standing there, ready to give herself to a man, with no idea of the consequences, because it seemed daring and grown-up and… no, not a way out of poverty. Not for Caroline. She’d never known want, and never would.

“I know you—want me,” Caroline said, stumbling over the word, as if she only vaguely guessed what it meant. “You were going to ask me to marry you.”

Yes. He was going to ask her for the sake of his oath. Never thinking beyond the ceremony because his mind refused to dwell on what must follow.

“Liam,” she whispered. “Look at me. Look at me.”

He couldn’t. There were ghosts in his way, the ghosts of defeat and those he had lost, phantoms of all the things he’d thought he wanted.

But Caroline was not among them. He did not want her. He couldn’t. He knew it with a certainty beyond any he’d known in his life. He could protect her, cherish her, care for her. He could fulfill his vow. But he could never love her.

She wanted something he had forgotten the meaning of, had lost years ago in the tenements of New York.

Caroline moved closer. She put her hands on his chest before he could walk away.

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