Read Online Where The Heart Leads by Stephanie Laurens - Free Book Online

She blinked. That most curious sensation slid over her, as if the nerve endings beneath her skin had been stroked. Warmly. She was about tolook around to identify the cause when a disturbingly deep voice murmured, “Good evening, Miss Ashford.”
    Blond curls; blue, blue eyes. Resplendent in evening black-and-white, Barnaby Adair appeared by her side.
    Turning to face him, she smiled delightedly and, without thinking, gave him her hand.
    Barnaby grasped her delicate fingers and bowed over them, seizing the moment to reassemble his customary suave composure, something she’d shattered with that fabulous smile.
    What was it about her and her smiles? Perhaps it was because she didn’t smile as freely as other young ladies; although her lips curved readily and she bestowed polite accolades as required, those gestures were dim cousins of her true smile—the one she’d just gifted him with. That was so much more—brighter, more intense, more openhearted. Unguarded and genuine, it evoked in him an impluse to warn her not to flash those smiles at others—evoked an underlying covetous desire to ensure she kept those smiles just for him.
    Ridiculous. What was she doing to him?
    He straightened, and found her still beaming, although her smile itself had faded.
    “I’m so glad to see you. I take it you have news?”
    He blinked again. There was something in her face, in her expression, that touched him. Shook him in a most peculiar way. “If you recall,” he said, with a valiant attempt at a dry, arrogant drawl, “you insisted I inform you of Stokes’s thoughts as soon as practicable.”
    Her cheeriness didn’t abate. “Well, yes, but I had no hope you would brave this”—she flicked a hand at the fashionable gathering—“to do so.”
    She had, however, had the foresight to once again instruct her butler to tell him her direction. Barnaby hesitated, then glanced briefly at the groups conversing nearby. “I take it you would rather talk of our investigation than of the latest play at the Theatre Royal.”
    This time her smile was both smug and confiding. “Indubitably.” She looked around. “But if we’re to talk of kidnappers and crime, I suspect we should move to a quieter spot.” With her fan, she indicated the corner by the archway into the salon. “That area tends to remain clear.” She glanced at him. “Shall we?”
    He offered his arm and she took it; only because he was watchingher closely did he see the momentary girding of her senses. He affected them. He’d known that from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her—in that instant she’d walked into his parlor, and seen him—not in a crowd of others but alone.
    Steering her across the drawing room, necessarily stopping here and there to exchange greetings with others, gave him time to consider his unusual reaction to her. It was understandable enough; his reaction was a direct consequence of her reaction to him. When she smiled so unguardedly, it wasn’t because she was responding to him as a handsome gentleman—the glamour most young ladies never saw beyond—but because she saw and was responding to the man behind the façade, the investigator with whom, at least in her mind, she was interacting.
    It was his investigative self she smiled at, the intellectual side of him. That was what had made him feel so strangely touched. It was refreshing to have his manly attributes overlooked—dismissed as inconsequential—and instead be appreciated for his mind and his accomplishments. Penelope might wear spectacles, but her vision was a great deal more incisive than her peers’.
    They finally reached the corner. There they were somewhat isolated from the main body of guests, cut off by the traffic into and out of the salon. They could talk freely, yet were in full view of the company.
    “Perfect.” Drawing her hand from his sleeve, she faced him. “So! What did Inspector Stokes deduce?”
    He suppressed the urge to inform her that Stokes hadn’t