“No,” she said with a pert smile. “You should be thanking me. Because there may come a time when this watch will save your life. After you turn it, you press down. Then you’ll hold your breath and fling it at the person you wish to incapacitate. It won’t harm them, only tranquilize them, send them into Morpheus’s arms for a good many hours. It’s my latest invention. But don’t tell Uncle. I’m still in the development stages.”
Raven tucked the watch into his pocket. “You’re going to be a whole lot of trouble for some man, someday, Miss Mina.”
But she’d never be his trouble. She was aesthetically pleasing, like a sculpture carved by a master, but he preferred his women older. On the tall side. With breasts that would overflow his palms.
Slim hips, yet a generous arse. Limbs for days...
Black hair and grayish-purple eyes.
Her eyes sparkling, Miss Mina curtsied. “I’ll take that as a compliment, Your Grace. You’d better go to Uncle now.”
“I think I’d better. Excuse me.” Raven made his bow and left.
He carried his pistol case back to the house, leaving Miss Mina to her target practice, her inventions, and her dreams of a London Season.
He found Sir Malcolm in the library. “Your niece seems a bit restless,” he said.
Malcolm glanced up sharply. “Did she say something to you?”
“She asked me why I wasn’t married, leveled a pistol at me, and told me she was nineteen and that you couldn’t keep her cloistered here forever.”
“Damnation.” Malcolm struck his palm against his desk. “I can’t stand the thought of letting her go. I know what’s out there.” His eyes were bleak.
He’d lost his wife and young daughter one year before Raven came to live with him.
“The world is a dangerous place,” Raven said gently. “Especially for young ladies. But she wants to have a London Season. You must let her go.”
He’d been trying to do the same thing with Indy—protect her from harm by telling her to stay home—and it hadn’t done any good.
“Mina is different from other young ladies,” said Malcolm. “She’s far more inquisitive and inventive, she says whatever eccentric thing comes into her head. She has a genius for all things mechanical. Can you imagine her at Almack’s Assembly, explaining to the Lady Patronesses about how to modify a pistol’s firing mechanism to make it go off more quickly?”
“Surely you have a female relative who might guide her.”
“There is my aunt. She never had children of her own. She might welcome Mina, but...”
“You don’t want to let her go.”
“She’s such a comfort to me. And I don’t want her to be hurt.”
“You must allow her to have her freedom,” said Raven quietly.
“I know. I’m just not ready yet.”
“I think she was flirting with me.”
“The deuce you say! I’ll have you drawn and quartered.”
“I didn’t flirt back, but she could benefit from a woman’s influence. She’s surrounded by men here, and not the type of men you’d want her to be involved with, if you take my meaning.”
“I hadn’t thought of it. I still think of her as a child. But you’re right. If she must be taken away from me, I’d rather have her find a perfectly ordinary man to marry, not someone...”
“Someone like me.”
A man with too many dark secrets. A man with blood on his hands.
“Your words,” said Malcolm. “Not mine.”
“Lucky for you, I’m not on the marriage mart.”