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turned to face him. He waved her to an armchair angled beside the fire. While she moved to it and sat, he drew real tiffany jewelry on sale another around, positioning it across the hearth but further back from the flames tiffany inspired jewelry . He sat and studied her. He’d intended from the first to use the library; having Pringle see McKenna in the small parlor had simply been a useful excuse. They’d set aside the small parlor for meeting with females, but it was simply too small for his present need. If he paced, or if Phoebe paced, in the small jewelry shop parlor they would have been too close. Far too close given the subjects their discussion was slated to encompass and the instincts it was sure to abrade. Let alone the feelings—the reactions, the emotions— already roiling through him. Settling in the chair, sinking into the cushioning leather, Phoebe flicked a glance at the door, concern for McKenna patently riding her. Distracting her. “He’ll be all right.” His subtle emphasis suggested that his reassurance didn’t extend to her well-being. Her eyes fastened on his face, her blue-violet gaze sharpening … then she shivered delicately. Crossing her arms, she rubbed her palms up and down her upper arms, as if sh Tiffany co e truly were cold … but the library was pleasantly warm. He inwardly frowned but kept the expression from his face. She wasn’t just unsettled; she was in shock but doing her damnedest to hide it. A sound at the door had him turning; seeing Gasthorpe carrying a tray, he waved him in. Waiting while Gasthorpe solicitously laid the tray on a table close by Phoebe’s chair, he grasped the moments while she and the club’s major-domo consulted on who would pour and the need for sugar lumps to deal with the unsettling tilt and swing of his emotions, a sudden upsurge of concern for her swamping his violent feelings of just a few seconds before. “My lord?” Gasthorpe’s voice drew him back; seeing the majordomo holding the teapot aloft, he shook his head. “No—I’ll take a brandy.” He had a strong suspicion he was going to need fortification to get through the coming discussion without either misstepping and failing to learn all he now knew he absolutely had to know, or worse, queering his pitch irretrievably with Phoebe. Watching her sip her tea, he let his concern for her wash through him, not fighting or trying to suppress it but letting it spread, sink in, and so gradually subside. Leaving his earlier, underlying feelings still standing, still turbulent, powerful and remarkably strong, a roiling, surging clashing sea swirling beneath his tightly reined temper. Not just coloring his temper but giving it an edge quite unlike any he’d experienced before. A clink of crystal reached him, then Gasthorpe appeared by his elbow, proffering a glass half-filled with amber liquid. He took it and nodded a dismissal. Gasthorpe bowed and withdrew. He sipped, watched Phoebe cradle her cup between her hands and gaze at the fire. What he felt—for her, about her— wasn’t familiar. He wasn’t even sure why he felt as he did. But given that she now meant this much to him, given their ever-deepening, soon-to-be-consummated ######ual connection, given that he wanted her as his wife not just because it was a logical decision but one defined and driven by something far more powerful than reason—given, <a href="http://www.ecigs-store.com/zreeoa-001-p-24.html"><strong>reviews electronic cigarette</strong></a> therefore, that he would have to learn to deal with her, a being he definitely didn’t completely comprehend—given all that, then exercising all due caution was assuredly the path of the wise. She swallowed, then drew a deep, fractionally shaky breath, and held it—and he felt, once again, the ground shift beneath his emotional feet. As if he were standing on quicksand, from bot antique tiffany jewelry h his point of view and hers. “What, exactly, is the tiffany and co jewelry business of the Athena Agency?” He kept the words uninfle cheapest tiffany uk cted, let nothing more than even-tempered curiosity color them. She studied him for an instant, then coolly replied, “That’s none of your concern.” He held her gaze, let a moment tick by, then calmly stated, “Think again.” When she merely arched a brow, unimpressed, and said nothing, he took another sip of brandy, then evenly said, “Correct me if I’m wrong. You—through the agency—have been assisting female servants to escape from their employment, presumably when they become the target of unwanted advances from their male employers, or males associated with their employers. You’ve been using the income from the fortune you inherited from your great-aunt first fashion rings to establish and subsequently to support the agency. You own the building the agency is housed in, but Mr. and Mrs. Birtles and a Mr. Loftus Coates are the named principals of the business.” Her face registered not just shock but another emotion that quickly resolved into outrage. “How did you learn all that?” “I checked.” Even now he was amazed, prey to a combination of surprise, fascination, and frank admiration that she had not only conceived the notion but had engineered it, given it life, and, as far as he could tell, successfully run the business for years. Spine rigid, she’d narrowed her eyes at him. “Checked how?” Then understanding dawned. Her jaw dropped; for an instant she was speechless. “You … you used your… your contacts to investigate my finances?” Her rising tone was a warning, one he ignored. He nodded. Fury sparked, lighting her eyes, her whole countenance. “How dare you!” Spots of color rose to her cheeks; she all but vibrated with righteous indignation. The reckless sea of emotions he was holding down surged in response to the accusation in her eyes; it would be easy, so satisfying, to let them erupt, but… “Phoebe …” Outwardly unperturbed, he held her gaze, then quietly stated the bald truth, “When it comes to you, to matters involving you, matters that in any way might prove dangerous to you, there’s little I wouldn’t dare.” Phoebe heard the ring of abject honesty in his words. Inwardly aghast, battling to conceal it, she read the unsettling, disconcerting, ineradicable truth in his eyes. Not only did he know, incontrovertibly beyond any hope of her disguising the truth, far too much—far more than was safe—but <a href="http://www.ecigs-store.com/egot-003-p-11.html"><strong>which electronic cigarette</strong></a> being him, the type of man he was, he would never let such “matters” rest. And, damn!—she’d brought this down on her own head! She’d encouraged him to engage in a liaison with her— without having thought it through. Without having recalled, not until now when she was faced with the inevitable outcome, that gentlemen like him had a tendency to assume responsibility for the women in their lives. In a blink, she jettisoned any idea of him turning a blind eye, of her convincing him—no matter what she said or how long she argued, no matter any distraction or inducement she might offer—to simply walk away and let things be. Let her and the agency carry on as before. But… there had to be a way. If he was a wall b man jewelry locking her, there had to be some way around him—over or under or past. She t Tiffany Bracelet uk ried desperately to think, but her brain felt literally torn, wrenched and shaken, racked with worry for Fergus, laced with guilty regret that her rush to save Miss Spry had led to his injury, and simultaneously rocked by the realization that Deverell now had it in his power to completely overset all her careful work. If he told anyone—Edith, even though she supported her without knowing the details, even Audrey, who was so eccentric yet would surely draw the line over a lady of the haut ton owning and actively operating an employment <a href="http://www.ecigs-store.com/"><strong>e cigarette wholesale</strong></a> agency, let alone consorting with se tiffany and co bracelet rvants and members of the lower orders as she necessarily did—the entire enterprise she’d worked so hard and so long to establish would come tumbling down about her ears. The man who sat in the armchair opposite quietly watching her was beyond doubt the most potent threat to her—on all levels—that she’d ever even imagined, let alone faced. Eyes locked on his, green and unwavering, she assimilated that. Along with the fact that he’d made no threats, no decrees, no statements of intent. That he was waiting. She thought back, reviewing their exchange … realized. Drawing in a slow breath, she shifted, easing her tense back. “What do you wish to know?” He heard the question for the capitulation it was but gave no sign of gloating. “How do you know which females need rescuing?” She drained her teacup, set it down, then told him of the network that operated throughout Mayfair and the major country houses, the housekeepers and butlers who knew each other, the interconnecting mesh of family and relatives who worked here or there, in this lord’s employ or that lady’s. “It’s not hard to hear of the problem households if you’re listening in the right quarters. Emmeline worked in a number of establishments, and she has seven sisters and two brothers, similiarly employed. Through them and her, word gets passed back to the agency.” “And then?” “And then …” She drew breath and went on, “If we need to rescue someone from an actual residence, as is usually the case with a governess, I visit with Edith or one of my other aunts. It’s not that difficult to arrange. I don’t make direct contact with the young woman involved—that’s always done through the housekeeper or whoever in the household alerted us in the first place.” “You go there to reconnoiter, to study the house and the approaches to work out how to mount your rescue?” She could read nothing—neither was there disgust nor condemnation—in his tone. “Yes.” She rose and started pacing before the hearth, rubbing the fingers of one hand, remembering various res tiffany london cues they’d staged. “If, on the other hand, the girl’s a lady’s maid, dresser, or companion, and therefore likely to travel, it’s often easier to rescue them from other houses.” “Such as the maid you rescued from Cranbrook Manor— Lady Moffat’s lady’s maid. I take it that was Jessica?” She cast him a glance, then nodded. “Lord Moffat has a roving eye, and roving appetites as well.” She sensed a reaction then, a clear response, a tightening of muscles, a swift, involuntary flexing of costume jewellery steel instantly suppressed—but she had no notion what it meant. She didn’t feel it was directed at her, but he remained so calm, so outwardly contained, that even though she could sense he was reining his reactions back, holding them in, even though she could see in his darkened eyes that he wasn’t as unengaged as he was taking care to appear, she still couldn’t tell what he was thinking. What he might be considering doing with the secrets she was revealing.