Features Ro recognized, that still held the power to stop the breath in his chest.

She hadn’t seen him; she was patently unaware he was there.

He frowned. “What the devil are you doing here?”

She jumped. Smothered a small shriek that died away as her gaze rose, locked, and she stared.

Not at his face.

Her gaze had risen only as far as his chest. His naked chest.

He knew perfectly well what it looked like, knew precisely why women, ladies especially, stared at him in that way, but this was Lydia, and her staring at him in that way was definitely not going to help.

Somewhere in the inn, a clock chimed. Twelve bongs; midnight.

His only option was to ignore his half-naked state. It could have been worse; he might have changed into trousers before he’d left home, and then she’d have swooned.

“Lydia-cut line! What the devil are you doing here? More to the point, where the devil have you been-in a torrential downpour in the dead of night?” The words came out more harshly than he’d intended, a reaction to the unwelcome realization that ten years had clearly been insufficient time to mute the effect she had on him. And all that flowed from that.

An impulse to shake her, given she’d clearly been doing something witlessly dangerous, being just one of his reactions.

She blinked. Her gaze slowly rose over his chest to his shoulders, then up the line of his throat to his face.

Her lips parted even further; her eyes widened even more. “Ro?”

Pressing his lips tight, he hung on to his temper. What the devil did she mean by staring at his chest when she hadn’t even known it was he? “As you see. Now, if you please-where the deuce have you been, and why?”