The Rogue (2 page)

“Freedom from what?”

“From everything.”
From loneliness.
“So I will probably wear something shockingly immodest. White. Sheer. You know the sort of thing, I daresay.”

“I'm beginning to understand how the scene in the ballroom bored you. Who
are
you?”

She had gone too far. She knew it. She
reveled
in it.

“Just a girl, as you have said.” She tried to sound breezy. “A girl who wants her first kiss to be with you.”

“I am glad to oblige you in that.”

Yet still he did not kiss her. Instead his hand closed about her shoulder and she inhaled sharply. His touch felt warm and strong through the fabric of her gown. Then a single fingertip traveled slowly to the gully at the base of her throat. A shudder rippled through her.

“
Oh.
” She ached, wanting more of this touching in a deep well of wanting she barely recognized.

“Tell me to stop,” he said like the rumble of a storm.

“No man has ever—I've no' been touched.” She was revealing herself, the naïve innocent who could be easily seduced. But it was too late. With a few words and a single caress he had already seduced her. She was the greatest wanton alive. “I cannot believe this is happening to me,” she whispered.

“Then we are as one in disbelief.” He was close, so close.

His lips brushed across hers and heaven descended. Dawn broke. Stars showered. From lips to knees she awoke in an explosion of tingling wonder.

“Sweet heaven,” she rasped and grappled in the dark for him.

His lips were soft, his arms hard as she cinched her fingers around them—male and alien and thrilling. And very swiftly all she wanted was
more
. More soft lips and hard arms, more of their breaths mingling, more of a young man in her hands and on her mouth.
This
man, whose hand cupped her face and urged her mouth against his, whose lips grew firm and tasted good.
Tasted.
She had never known a man had a
flavor
. Or
textures
, soft and firm and rough and smooth all at once. She had never known the caress of another person's breaths on her cheek.

She had been missing a
lot
.

Climbing up his arms that were wonderfully muscled, her fingers clenched around his shoulders. So unfamiliar the smooth wool coat against her hands, so alien his fingertips stroking the edge of her hair, so strange and delicious and intoxicating and she wanted more.

She pressed her lips harder to his, but it did not suffice. She still wanted more,
much more
. Something was missing . . . Something would be better if . . .

She opened her mouth.

And felt it
all
. And understood why the men and loose women at the party embraced each other as they did—why there was nothing better than this—why she would never, ever get enough.

She made sounds, noises from her throat, without meaning to; they erupted on her breaths that he was taking with his kisses. He didn't seem to mind. Both of his hands wrapped around her face and he drew her up to him and she went onto her toes and their mouths were fused, giving and taking and melding and melting and hotter each moment. She was hot all over, in her throat and thighs and
everywhere
. The power of his arms beneath her palms made her wild inside. She could
eat
him, taste him and seek him like this, deeper with each breath, more desperate to have, to possess.
All
of him. She felt the tip of his tongue touch the edge of her lips and she moaned aloud.

“Tell me to stop,” he said harshly. “Push me away.”

“I cannot.” Her lips sought his again, demanding his kisses. “You must take yourself away. For I find that I cannot make you go.”

He did not take himself away. He held her in his hands and the universe became him—his mouth, his heat, his tongue caressing her lips, her teeth, her
tongue
. She whimpered, gripped his shoulders, and let him inside her.

And then they were apart, he was putting her away, and she was standing alone in the blackness with damp lips and frantic breaths and empty hands.

“I've got to go,” he said firmly.

“I know,” she cried. “I
know
. Will you . . . ?”

“Will I . . . ?” He sounded oddly choked.

“Will you be sorry?”

“For kissing you?”

“For
leaving
me?” she said a little desperately.

“Yes. So, perhaps you should leave instead.”

“If you suggest that because you believe I won't be as sorry to leave as you, you are mistaken, sir.”

She heard him shift, and the sound of his taut breathing.

“We are already having our first disagreement,” he said. “That's a poor sign, you know. Clearly we are doomed right from the start. Probably best to end it straight off.”

She laughed. “All right. Though I thought we might allow it another ten seconds.”

“It?”

“This.”

“This? Standing in blindness? Not touching? I won't survive another ten seconds.” He sounded certain.

“How do you know that?”

“I have the wisdom of age and experience to guide me.”

Oh.
Oh.

“Experience,” she mumbled, the joy slipping away. “With women, I suppose.” Of course. She was immeasurably silly.

“I say to you now,” he said in a new voice, “with complete honesty and in all sincerity, with no hope of anything at this moment beyond being heard: in this thorough darkness your
face is more clearly etched upon my memory than that of every other woman I have met.”

He was immeasurably silly too, it seemed. And
perfect
.

“Half of my face.” She smiled.

“Granted.” His voice smiled back at her. “And your eyes.”

She chewed on her lip. It tasted raw. “It
cannot
be true that you see my face and no others now.”

“I tell you it is God's truth.”

A tiny ray of hope lit her insides. “Really?”

“Go,” he growled like the beast she had called him. “Now. Go.”

She must. She thought perhaps that he was trying to be good. Trying to stop them from kissing again. Kissing more. Kissing too much.

She never wanted to go.

“All right.” Touching the walls to either side, she backed up. “Good night, sir.” Then she had to turn away, because the ache inside her was no longer pleasurable.

In the darkness he found her wrist. He took it, lifted it, kissed it.

She sighed.

He kissed her palm, the tips of her fingers, and she could not breathe, could barely stand on knees that had turned to jelly. Sensation ripe and hot and wonderful overcame her.

He opened his hand, allowing her freedom. She made her feet move, made herself draw her hand away, trailing her fingertips across his callused palm until she felt him no more.

“Good night,” he said.

Then she was alone again, walking swiftly through the darkness. Alone with a secret and a painfully quick heartbeat and a new ache of loneliness in her throat and chest that in all her eighteen years of solitude she had never imagined possible.

Stealing through shadows, she made her way out of the big house and then walked the quarter mile along the wooded path to the dower house. The moon was bright and
her lips felt especially soft, and she knew she ought to feel guilty but she did not.

Later in her bed, sleep did not easily come. He was there now, at the big house. She knew every room in Fellsbourne. She could find him tonight. Go to him. If she dared.

And do
what
? She wasn't that girl. She was many awful things. But she was not that girl.

She wasn't really sure what being that girl entailed, anyway.

When morning came she arose before dawn, bleary-eyed and subdued. Strapping on her bow, she saddled Elfhame and rode to the woods. Eliza wanted hare stew, and hares were aplenty at the edge of the woods. She knew well enough the usual habits of the men who attended Jack's parties. No one would leave the big house before noon. Today she would not be discovered.

When she reached the woods, she dismounted and tethered her horse to a sapling. Through the mists that rose from the earth in soft clouds, she swiftly espied her prey. At the edge of the trees, it feasted on clover. She halted and watched it.

Innocent creature. It had no idea that it could be eaten for dinner.

Drawing an arrow from the quiver on her back and setting her stance with silence born of years' practice, she lifted her bow and nocked the shaft. Siting her target, she pulled back the bowstring.

A stick crackled nearby. The hare's ears popped up. Abruptly, it bounded into the underbrush. She leaped forward but it was too late. Wise little creature after all, to recognize danger and react so swiftly.

Blowing out a frustrated breath, she pivoted to the ruiner of her hunt. And every sleep-deprived mote of her body came to life.

In the misty dawn he seemed even more like an elven prince than by candlelight, his eyes silvery and fixed upon her with great intensity. Not merely a prince.
A warrior.
He
wore the same coat as the night before, a bit wrinkled now, and his gilded hair was tousled. The sword at his side looked so fearsome and his stance so powerful and certain, that he seemed at once like the most ordinary man and the most extraordinary god.

“You were not a dream,” he said—ridiculously, wonderfully.

“I am not a dream,” she replied, smiling, and knew that it would be the simplest thing in the world to pretend now that she was not in danger.

22 Febr. 1822

Sparrow,

I have not heard from you in too many weeks. Do check in.

Peregrine

28 February 1822

Dearest Peregrine,

As All of Society knows, I have lost my One True Love (rather, my Second True Love, but who's counting?) to another lady (whom I adore, which is positively delightful) and in (supposed) grief have exiled myself to the North to avoid all mention of their bliss (although they set sail last month for the East Indies and will not return for a year anyway). So you see, I
am very busy Rusticating at present and haven't the time to write tomes to you.

I am certain, in any case, that you would rather amuse yourself in trading correspondence with Lady Justice, as always. I understand that her current project to Improve Britain is to press Members of Parliament for married women's rights to legal and financial autonomy from their husbands. I applaud her. With your seat in the Lords, you might consider aiding her rather than antagonizing her. But alas, I believe you thrive on that antagonism. Whatever would you do if
Madame La Justice
ceased writing pamphlets that condemn our Club and you no longer had the excuse to trade barbs with her? I think you might simply cease to exist.

In hopes of that day never arriving, I am ever yours,

Sparrow

March 1822

The Sheep Heid Inn

Duddingston, near Edinburgh, Scotland

F
rederick Evan Chevalier de Saint-André Sterling could hold his sword, liquor, and woman with equal skill. Unlike any other man Miss Annie Favor had enjoyed in her nineteen years, he could do so all at once.

Fond of weapons in the bedchamber, Annie welcomed the sword dangling from Saint's hip when he threw her upon the bed in a tangle of skirts and laughter and got to business. It wasn't every day, after all, that a man with shoulders like a cavalry steed's and eyes as green as the Queen's own emeralds came into the Sheep Heid Inn in the little village of Duddingston.

“Good sir,” she sighed some time later as he rolled away from her and sat on the edge of the bed to tug his breeches over his tight bum. “Will ye do it again? An'
again?” she said with satisfaction, watching him pull on his boots.

Lean muscles in his back and arms twisted beneath a sheen of moisture. She could not see now the scar that stretched across half his chest and waist. But she knew it was there and it gave her delicious chills. She trailed her fingertips down one impressively taut arm as he drew on his shirt.

“I want to be able to tell my father all aboot it come Saubath,” she said. “Just after he preaches on the evils o' fornication.”

Slowly swiveling to face her, he set his emerald eyes upon her. Like a river beneath sun, they glittered. Annie's tongue got abruptly dry.

“I've never seen such eyes,” she whispered. “Be ye a demon come to steal my soul?”

The mouth that had moments earlier made her shout into the rafters now curved into the Devil's own smile.

“Sweet, sweet Annie. Your father is a man of the cloth?”

Relaxing back against the pillow, she grinned. This was her favorite part.

“He be the vicar o' Duddingston Kirk.” She allowed her eyelids to droop. “I'm vexed to say, he's a birsie one. Why, the last man he found me with, he scourged up an' down the causey. But he couldna find his walkin' stick, so he used a carriage whip.”

For a moment he regarded her with those eyes of otherworldly intensity. Then he threw back his head and laughed.

Annie did not know quite what to do. No man before had ever laughed.

She let her fingers slip from his waist to the sword he strapped anew to his hip, caressing the hilt. “Have ye ever used this on a woman?”

His laughter halted. Quicker than a single breath, the blade whipped free of its scabbard and laid flat across her throat. Heavy and cold, it pressed into her flesh. She tried to scream but found no air for it.

“Not yet, Annie, my girl.” His voice was deep, husky, just like when he'd been inside her. He leaned down and his next words brushed over her gasping lips. “Never been suitably tempted.”

When he went from the room, he left a gold coin on the table and a curse curling off of her tongue.

“Speed in all else, but with the ladies always a gentleman,” drawled a man of dark locks and ale-colored eyes from the taproom chair in which Saint had left him earlier. “That, despite the drink. You put the rest of us to shame, cousin.”

Saint settled into a chair but did not take up his glass. The girl's enthusiastic ministrations had not filled the icy hole in his gut. More whiskey would not either. His brother, Torquil, had always accused him of having a hollow leg, or alternately that he was so quick he could toss the contents of a glass under the table without anyone noticing.

Tor might have been right about the hollow leg. For, despite how much he'd drunk in the past two days since they crossed into the Borders—in the two months since his brother had died—he was not intoxicated.

His inestimable cousin, Dylan, Lord Michaels, however, was.

“That redheaded minx upstairs is not a barmaid,” Saint said. “She is the progeny of the vicar of this village,” playing a game of
How naughty can I be before Papa whips my lover with a stick?
The games women played never ceased to astonish him.

Dylan's glass arrested halfway to his mouth.

“Good God, Saint. Don't say you've docked a preacher's daughter? For an entire hour, no less! Hell's fire, he'll drag you to the altar for it.”

“I daresay in this case he would account an hour or a minute all the same.”

Dylan cast drink-soaked eyes at the other tavern patrons and said in a hush, “You're a duck waiting to be shot here now. D'you want to be leg shackled to a Scots jade?” He
tried to stand, but wavered. “Tor would've quit this place the minute he learned the strumpet's secret.”

“Come now. You did not think her a strumpet an hour ago, when you imagined her a girl of the trade.”

Dylan nodded. “True. But, the modesty of a gentlewoman . . .” He waved his hand about. “Strong appetites ain't the thing for a lady. Tor could spot a strumpet from leagues away.”

Saint settled more comfortably into the cushioned leather and lifted his glass. “To my brother, the smartest son of a bastard this earth has known.”

“Nossir,” Dylan slurred as he fell back into his chair, all danger from irate Men of the Cloth apparently forgotten. “Won't toast to that rakehell. Rather, to my cousin Saint, the finest son of a merchant this side of the Atlantic. Both sides.” He swallowed the remainder of the spirits then set down the glass with a clunk, and peered at a letter on the table beside it. “Read wants a tutor for his ward,” he said abruptly.

A slow heat bloomed in Saint's gut, dead center of the ice. “Read?”

“Duke. 'S got a nephew or grandson or some such. Favor to Blackwell, don't you know. Rather, no . . . Black
wood
, that is. Damn whiskey.”

There was no making sense of Dylan when he was foxed. But this merited clarification.

“The Duke of Read?” Carefully, as though it were a directive from a general, Saint pinched the sheet of finely pressed paper between thumb and forefinger.

“‘My uncle, presently in residence at Castle Read,'” he read aloud, and then to himself. When he finished, he looked up at his cousin. “What is this?”

“Th' reason we're here, cousin,” Dylan said.

“You gave me to believe that there was a girl in Edinburgh,” Saint said perhaps too languidly. “A girl you intend to court. A girl whose family would not bring her to licentious London again on account of their Puritan ways. A
girl who had promised her hand to you in secret and whom you wish to marry.”

Dylan sighed. “A pearl of a girl.”

Saint set the letter down on the table.

“It's a
favor
,” his cousin said. “Debt of honor. Played cards with Blackwood. Years ago. Lost. Emptied the coffers to pay him, but it wasn't enough. Said I'd make it up to him someday.”

“Presumably you have not yet?”

“Couldn't. Can't.”

Dylan's estate was entailed, his lands secure, but poorly productive; he never had money to spare. Tor had been the best of them at making gold hand over fist, because he had made it illegally.

“Blackwood said th' old duke needs a tutor for his ward.” Dylan's curls wiggled over his brow. “Can't refuse.”

“A tutor? How awful is this boy that a duke cannot keep an actual tutor employed? You are a baron, for God's sake, Dylan. Not a schoolteacher.”

“Not sums and French.
Fencing
. Boy's got the rudiments. Needs technique. A few months, s' all. Brief stint.”

Saint frowned. Sums or swordplay, this did not add up. “Dylan?”

His cousin offered him a saturnine frown. Above his lavender coat, it lent him a decidedly clownish air. “Well, he don't want
me
, of course.”

Years ago, when Saint had been running between bullets on battlefields, Dylan had taken pleasure in sending him letters from country estates all over England. The young Lord Michaels, it seemed, was accounted one of the finest fencers in the land, sought after at house parties for his entertaining showmanship with a blade and his charming company. For the first time in their lives, since that day in the cane fields when Saint had picked up that old sword out of the dust, everyone thought Dylan was the best.

“He asked for you,” Dylan said now.

Slowly Saint curved his fingers around the carved
wooden arms of his chair. A moment ago he had been enjoying this chair, thronelike and so ancient that it looked like it had lived in this pub since Creation. He had been enjoying the flavor of malt upon his tongue and the sweet laughter and plump thighs of Miss Annie Favor until she revealed her intention of having him scourged. He even liked the little medieval village of Duddingston despite the new threat of its vengeful vicar. He had been enjoying this entire holiday to Scotland with his cousin, upon which Dylan drank heavily to ease the grief of losing the man they had both loved, and he considered his next step in life.

Since burying his brother at sea, he had been at a standstill. He hadn't the funds to found a fencing school. Every reputable
salle
in London had made him offers, but he could never live there. This little journey to Scotland had seemed the ideal diversion until he decided what to do next.

“Why me?” His fingers played about the wooden armrest. “Why not Faucher or Accosi? They are both in England.”

“Read wants an Englishman. You're better than both of them anyway.
And you're my cousin, the great-great-grandson of a baron, for pity's sake,” Dylan added. “A drop is enough.”

Yet a drop of noble blood had not been enough six years ago. And now the Duke of Read wanted him. The irony of it would be sublime if it weren't unwelcome.

“Had you intended to tell me the truth before we actually walked into the duke's castle? Or did you plan to simply turn me over to the major-domo and hold your palm out for the commission before heading off to cards in the drawing room?”

“It ain't my choice that you won't let that blasted solicitor read Tor's will. Must've left a fortune to us, the blackguard. I wager you'll be through with teaching for life once you accept that money's yours to use as you like.”

Not an option.

But he had swiftly discerned the essence of Dylan's plan. “And while I am teaching the gentlemanly arts of foil and
saber to this young branch of the noble tree of Read, you will be courting the pearl-like Miss Edwards while residing in the castle of a wealthy duke.”

Dylan grinned, his face to no greater advantage than when he was pleased with himself. “Ideal accommodations for launching a campaign, what?”

“And what of her father's conviction that you are a drunken, penurious Corinthian? Will that simply evaporate?”

“He likes me,” Dylan mumbled. “He just don't know it yet.”

“‘Holiday in Scotland, cousin. Take a month or two to celebrate Tor's rakehell life.' Hm.”

“Well, if I could've done it the old-fashioned way and forced his hand, I would have! But I ain't handsome enough to make the girls drop their drawers at the crook of a finger, like
some
fellows.” He gestured to Saint and then rolled his eyes. “Oh, stuff and nonsense.” Abruptly he brightened and tipped his glass forward. “You'll see. No better patron than a duke.”

This was true. He wanted out of England. His own reputation and the patronage of a duke with foreign connections would ensure that wherever he founded a school it would be a success. To secure this exalted patronage, for a few months he must live in the last place he wished to be.

Dylan was wrong. Some girls did not drop their drawers for him at the crook of a finger. With some girls he had been too fool-besotted to even ask. Rather, with one girl. Only one girl. The girl whose house six years ago he would have given everything he had to gain entrance to. The house he had now been invited into as an employee.

This would be a good moment to be drunk.

He lifted his hand to summon the tavern keeper. “If you intend to court a lady shortly, you had best sober up.”

“You'll do it? Great gun, Saint! I knew you would.” The barkeep set a plate of mutton pie before Dylan. “You'll see,” he said around a mouthful. “This'll be just the thing you need to set you right. By God, it'll set us both right. Tor would be proud.”

If he were alive now, Tor would split his sides.

How his brother had laughed at him six years ago and called him a fool—a fool for not getting what he had wanted before he knew who she was, and a fool for making another attempt a year later. But Torquil Sterling had lived life without honor. A cheating, Machiavellian, woman-chasing slave smuggler, he had never missed an opportunity to celebrate the pleasures of life while manipulating it all to his advantage.

Saint could still hear his laughter when he'd told him about that ill-fated fortnight in Kent six years ago. Now he was gone, and with him the last person who knew.

Except her.

But she lived in London. So he told his cousin he would accept the post.

Castle Read

Home of the Duke of Read

Midlothian, Scotland

“I need a husband,” Lady Constance Read declared, tumbling into the velvety interior of her father's carriage. “Immediately.”

“Well, this is an abrupt change of heart,” said Eliza Josephs from the opposite seat as the carriage drew away from the cloth mill.

“My heart has nothing to do with it, of course.” It hadn't in years. Affection for five men Constance had aplenty: four now blissfully married, and the fifth so devoted to the secret government agency he headed that he hadn't time for anything else. She loved these men as friends, as brothers. But only one man had ever stolen her heart—a man she could not have. After that, the single time she had tried to give away her heart again, she made the greatest mistake of her life.