Belief came easily when he saw Caroline and Perry together, and with it came fury and grinding pain.
He stepped farther into the room. Two heads, blond and dark, swung toward him.
“Good evening, Caroline,” he said. “Perry.”
Caroline’s fingers found the first sour note on the keys. “Liam?” she whispered. The piano bench scraped back. “Liam! You’re home!”
She gathered her skirts and rushed across the polished parquet floor. Halfway to him she must have seen the look on his face; her impetuous rush slackened to a walk. She closed the remaining space with ladylike decorum, her hands clutched in the folds of her skirt.
“Oh, Liam,” she stammered. “I thought… I feared you might be lost.”
Liam well knew his first responsibility; he didn’t indulge his desire to look at Perry’s face, to see the dawning alarm in the Englishman’s eyes.
Instead he kept deliberately mute, examining Caroline from dainty feet to the crown of her golden head. Not a hair out of place. He could see her blushing under his inspection and struggling to hold her dignified pose, but there was no sign that any real damage had been done by Perry’s early return.
No damage to Caroline, in any case.
He smiled faintly. “Who gave you the idea that I might not return, my dear?”
She uttered a nervous laugh and began to offer some inane witticism she’d undoubtedly learned in finishing school, but he was hardly listening. His initial concern was satisfied, and there was far more urgent business at hand than playing at pointless social rituals of welcome.
Perhaps she deserved some reassurance; she had, after all, been worried about him. But he was in no mood for gallantry. Caroline was his ward, and she’d obey, niceties or not.
“As you see,” he said impatiently, “I’m well. I’ve only just returned, and I have important matters to discuss with Perry. Elsewhere.” He glanced around the room. “Where is your aunt?”
“Oh, upstairs having one of her headaches.” There was distinct petulance in Caroline’s tone, umbrage at Liam’s failure to pay her proper homage. Perry had surely been giving her plenty of that.
“Then I suggest you go find her and ask her if she needs anything, since she’s too indisposed to carry out her responsibilities as chaperon,” Liam said. “I won’t be staying for tea.”
“I should hope not, coming here in all your dirt,” a light, cultured voice interposed. “Though I suppose I ought to welcome you home, old man.”
For the first time Liam looked up to meet Perry’s gaze.
He didn’t know what he’d expected: instant fireworks, perhaps, or fear and trembling on the traitor’s part as he realized his schemes had been foiled.
But Perry wasn’t trembling. He was regarding Liam from across the room with a faint half-smile, devoid of even a trace of shame. He strolled away from the piano to join Liam’s ward. “Caroline was worried about you,” he said. “I tried to assure her that nothing in the world could do you in without your permission. I’m delighted to have you prove me right.”
Good God. The man’s gall was incredible, his coolness beyond belief. The rage Liam had kept in check began to boil over. If he didn’t get out of here quickly, dragging Perry with him, there’d be a very nasty scene Caroline could not be allowed to witness.
Perry knew it. Sudden wariness flickered in the Englishman’s gaze.
“Perry’s right,” Caroline said, ignoring Liam’s command as easily as she recovered her air of insouciant feminine charm. She inserted herself between the men with a muted hiss of satin and petticoats and took Liam’s arm. “I was so worried, and I haven’t welcomed you home properly. If I’d known you were back, I would have arranged a dinner, at least. And you can’t go until you’ve told me everything that happened on your journey. You did bring something back for me, didn’t you?” She fluttered golden eyelashes in a practiced gesture of flirtation. “Look what Perry brought me from the jungle!”
She put a hand to her bodice. Just below the high neck of her gown, on a golden chain, hung a piece of carved and polished jade.