The Rogue (24 page)

He was fencing left-handed.

Lord Hart called the points, the opponents disengaging
briefly after each successful touch, then reengaging. Neither showed any pain at being struck and she had to assume that neither was hitting as hard as he might. The first bout ended to Sir Lorian's advantage, five touches to four.

“Fine sport, gentlemen! Shockingly well matched, I say,” Mr. Westin said. “Shall we demand another, ladies?”

“Oh, yes,” Lady Hughes purred. “How I do enjoy seeing men in
action
. Don't you, Constance?”

Saint's gaze came to her, enigmatic. He was the better fencer. He must have allowed Sir Lorian to win.

“Another would be delightful,” she said.

Sir Lorian smirked as he settled into
en garde
. “I was easy on you in that first bout, Sterling. This time I will make you work for it.”

“I appreciate the warning,” Saint said.

“
Allez
,” Lord Hart said.

Lip caught between her teeth, Constance watched as with five quick, neat advances her husband destroyed their host. On the final swift attack, Sir Lorian gasped and his foil clattered to the floor.

Lord Hart called, “Mr. Sterling, lower your weapon.”

“'Pon my word,” Mr. Westin cried. “He's pinked him!”

Just above Sir Lorian's wrist on his sword arm, a circle of crimson soaked through the linen. His face turned nearly the same hue.

“Look at that,” Saint said bemusedly, and glanced at the sharp tip of his blade. “I am terribly sorry, Hughes. I have no idea how that happened.”

Constance stared at the spot on the floor where the
point d'arret
from his blade lay, still wrapped in twine.

“I inspected both of those,” Lord Hart said with a frown. “They were secure. Mr. Sterling, you should have known when your blade became unprotected. I am surprised that a man of your ability would not have noted it. You have disregarded the rules of this bout. Sir Lorian, do you wish satisfaction?”

“Satisfaction?” Mrs. Westin's eyes were wide. “Do you mean a
duel
?”

“He's drawn blood unprovoked,” Mr. Westin said as they gathered around the fencers.

“It is Sir Lorian's privilege,” Lord Hart said grimly.

Every member of the party seemed paralyzed, except the one who had broken the rules of honor. He rested his palm atop his sword as though he were nearly bored.

“I am a mediocre shot, Hughes,” he said without rancor. “If you choose pistols, you'll likely win.”

Sir Lorian's fingers tightened over the nick on his forearm.

“Dear sir.” Constance moved to their host. “I am newly wed. Should you dispatch my husband tomorrow at dawn, I am unlikely to find a replacement at short notice.” She kept a playful tone. “And you see I was hoping . . . when you and I spoke at the Assembly Rooms . . . that is to say, I should like to remain
married
for at least a bit longer. Will you forgive this embarrassing mistake and shake hands instead?”

“Your wife is persuasive.” Sir Lorian glanced at Saint, then briefly at the other men. “You are forgiven, Sterling,” he said tightly. “But I will best you the next time.”

Saint bowed. Constance took her host's arm and led him away in search of a bandage.

“Y
OU COULD HAVE
beaten him fairly.”

He sat opposite her in the carriage, staring through the rain-speckled window at the shining street lit with lamps. He did not reply.

“Have you ever lost?” she said.

“Not in many years.”

“How many?”

Finally he turned to her. “Fifteen. I lost to my teacher. I often did, so it was not remarkable in that.”

“But it was remarkable?”

“It was the last time I fenced with him. The next day they beat him to death for the affair he was having with my mother.” He said it with extraordinary calm.

“Who did?”

“My father's hired men.” He turned his attention out the window again. “She was grateful to him for teaching me what my father would not. Georges Banneret was Dylan's father's plantation steward. He was French, an islander, and a great lover of civilized life. When war came to Saint-Domingue, he left. But he always regretted it. I think he enjoyed teaching us how to become gentlemen more than his actual responsibilities. My mother was also French. She admired him. But to my knowledge she never betrayed her marriage vows. My father was an ignorant, violent man.”

“Was?”

“He died last year.”

“I am sorry.”

“Don't be. I hated him.”

She could not respond. Even now, she did not hate her own father.

“He was discovered forcing himself on an unwilling girl,” he said. “A slave. He had done so often enough. The man who found him with the girl told him to stop. He chose not to.” His voice registered no feeling. “The world is better off without him.” Streetlight cut across his jaw, illuminating the scar there.

“Have you ever killed a man?”

He set an elbow on the windowsill and stroked his clean-shaven chin with his fingertips.

“Six years at war, Constance. Why?” His gaze shifted to her. “Have you someone in mind? Other than the Devil, of course.”

Looking into his unearthly eyes, she felt the distance between them acutely. “How can you tease about such a thing?”

“I'm not teasing.”

“I asked you to teach me to defend myself, not to stand ready to murder a man.”

He said nothing.

She allowed her eyes to trace his hand resting on his
knee. “I should have liked you to slice that grin from Sir Lorian's face tonight. You could have disarmed him more swiftly fencing with your right hand.”

“I could have disarmed him immediately either way. I thought it best not to defeat him too quickly.”

“Yet you wounded him.”

“He irritated me. His skill is far inferior to his arrogance.”

Lord Michaels's words hummed in her memory, how his cousin directed his aggression into his sword, how he did indeed have the desire to hurt another.

“So says the master,” she murmured.

He slanted her a keen eye. “Your father's money has been well spent, my lady.”

She was hot beneath his studying regard. Finally he turned his attention out the window again. Inside her, everything was twined and wound up and wanting him.

“It's a good thing you did not fight my fiancé six years ago,” she said, watching him. “He liked to hunt. Birds, mostly. But he was not much of a swordsman.”

“I did fight your fiancé. He acquitted himself well with his sword.”

The words hit her like a punch to the stomach.

“He
challenged
you?”

“Yes.”

“But—” She struggled. “He promised me he would not.”

“He broke that promise.”

“You met him? You
fought
him?”

“I'm not certain if I should take umbrage that you doubt this.”

An awful silence echoed about the carriage.

“You did not lose,” she said with certainty.

His eyes shone like a cat's in the darkness. “I withdrew.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that your betrothed was backed against a tree, his sword on the ground, his throat beneath the tip of my blade, and I quit the field.”

Her thoughts moved slowly now. “He lied to me.”

“Perhaps he believed your sensibilities too tender to endure the anxiety you must feel on his account.”

“That day . . . after he discovered us . . . he was furious with me. He refused to see me. He went away, to his family's hunting lodge. He would not answer my correspondence.”

“As remarkable as it may seem to you, I'm not particularly interested in the details.”

“We were to have been married the following month. But then his brother Arthur died abroad. And then the fire. I never saw Jack again.”

More silence, but changed now, like the silence of moonlight.

Finally he said, “Did you blame yourself? Or me?”

“Neither. He would not have been at the hunting lodge if it weren't for his anger with me. He would have been in London preparing for our wedding. But after Arthur died he might have gone there anyway. He adored Arthur, and the lodge was his refuge.” Her tongue was dry. “He must have felt great shame over losing to you.”

“He did not lose.”

“You insulted him by withdrawing when you were winning.”

“I was no one. It was not a profound insult to bear for a man of his rank and fortune.”

But—
no
. “Then your cousin, Dylan . . . he must have been your second.” And Jack's would have been Walker Styles.

“We agreed to do without seconds,” Saint said.

Air rushed back into her lungs.

“For the sake of my reputation,” she said.

He nodded.

“Why did you spare him?”

She saw in the tautness of his jaw that he did not wish to answer.

“You must tell me,” she said.

“I spared him, as you so colorfully phrase it, because I thought perhaps you wished to wed the marquess's heir to
whom you were betrothed. I did not fancy you forever after remembering me as the man who murdered your happiness.”

She burned all over, with shame and grief and longing dragged from the past and tangled with desire.

“I asked him not to challenge you,” she said. “I begged. On my knees. I had never gone to my knees before any man. I never have since.”

“Racked with guilt, were you?”

“I did not want you to kill him.”

“Your wish was fulfilled.”

She looked at his profile. “I loved him. I had known him my entire life. He was like a brother to me.”

He met her gaze across the space striped with passing light.

“I am sorry for your loss,” he said, the edge gone from his voice. “I regret that the fire was not as merciful to him as I.”

Her heart pounded. “Do you?”

His brow dipped.

Her fingertips dug into her palms. “I have never admitted this to a soul before. But I suppose if I admit it to anyone, it must be to you.”

“What are you admitting?”

“I did not wish to marry Jack. I mourned the death of my friend but not of my betrothed. He was a fine man. But I did not weep when I learned about the fire. For the first time in my life, I was free of the unwanted destiny that my father had planned for me from birth. I was free.”

He seemed to be considering her. “You knew that I was capable of killing your betrothed in a duel, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“You did not allow me even your name, but you discovered that about me?”

“Eliza did. She wanted me to understand . . . the danger.”

“I see.”

“I did not meet you because of what she learned.”

“Circumstances conspired in your favor. Yet you begged him not to challenge me.”

“I feared that you would be hanged for killing him.”

“If I had killed him, it would have freed you from your betrothal.”

“At the expense of both of your lives,” she said, the euphoria and fear of those days pressing at her breast again now. Terror that she had put Saint in danger had sent her to her knees before Jack, frantic, apologizing, vowing fidelity. When he gave his word, her relief had been nearly as great as her heartache. But he had lied to her.

Saint's gaze upon her was unreadable.

“You think me a wicked thing, don't you?” she said. “Then and now.”

“Not then,” he said. “Not now.”

“A manipulator who would use a man for her own desires, regardless of the cost to him?”

“Do you believe that of yourself?”

She thought of her father's plans, how he had defied convention and allowed her autonomy so that she would grow strong.

“A woman must do what she can with whatever resources she possesses.”

“I am beginning to see that.” He folded his arms over his chest and seemed to relax into the seat. “You played our hand well tonight.”

Yes.
Leave the past behind. Let there only be this moment in which they were allies. Not adversaries. Not strangers again.

“You, as well. Sir Lorian was as angry as a hornet. He will want revenge.” She smiled. “I anticipate an invitation to the secret society arriving soon.”

His eyes glimmered. “Let us hope so.”

Her ribs felt too tight to hold the feelings inside them. “I like that, how you said
our
hand.”

“Lonely little rich girl,” he murmured almost tenderly. “Have you never had a partner in crime before?”

“Only once.”

He tilted his head.

She shrugged. “Briefly, and it ended abruptly. I did not see him again for years. Six years.”

After a moment he grasped the windowsill and moved to the seat beside her.

“And what,” he said in a low voice, his head bent, “was your thought upon seeing him again after those six years?”

“That I hoped he had forgiven me, and that we could be friends, or at least not enemies. And that I wanted as desperately to kiss him as I did when I first saw him.”

“So.” He brushed the back of her hand with his knuckles. “More than one thought, it seems.”

“Admittedly, my mind is often too active.”

“About that last thought . . . kissing him.” He traced the length of each of her fingers with the tip of his.

“Yes.”

He smiled. “Yes, what?”

“I still desperately want to kiss him. I have considered waiting for him to kiss me again. But if he does not do so soon, I will have to take matters into my own hands.”

“Beautiful hands.” He caressed her skin. “Go ahead. Kiss him.”

She turned her lips up to his. They met, and it was sweet and powerful and right—profoundly right. With the caress of his mouth his palm curved around her face, drawing her close, settling her to him as naturally as though she belonged in his hands. He felt right and smelled right and tasted right, his heat and mouth and body all perfectly suited to her, as though the heavens had produced him expressly for her. Need rushed up from her middle, a wave of hot, powerful feeling, surging into her throat, tangling with the panic lurking there. Choking her.