Never Tempt a Rogue: A Rogues' Rulebook Novella (9 page)

“You care a great deal about how well you will carry out your duties. That sounds like what a wise man would do.”

She meant to soothe him, but he pulled away from her. The moment he stepped toward the fireplace, her arms felt unbearably empty.

“Duty doesn’t frighten you, does it?” he asked. “You would embrace responsibility, I suspect.”

“It depends on the responsibility, I suppose.” Felicity frowned, still trying to understand what she’d said to cause him to step away and take all the warmth in her body with him.

He moved toward her again, and she expected him to explain his odd question. Instead he pulled her into his arms and lowered his mouth to hers. He didn’t hesitate or hold back, didn’t wait for her to open to him. He tucked one hand against the small of her back and let the other roam, caressing her cheek, her neck, then lower to press his palm to her breast.

“I want you,” he said against her mouth before nipping at her lower lip. “I need you.”

She lifted a hand to thread it through his hair, to pull him closer. But then, as he had a moment before, Alex pulled away. He eased out of her arms and took her face between his hands. They were trembling.

“Think on that, Felicity.”

Without another word, he released her, retrieved his violin, and slipped out of her room.

CHAPTER
NINE

Alex had been staring so long at the ballroom doors that the array of colorful ladies’ gowns and stark black and white gentlemen's evening suits were merging into a muddled kaleidoscope.

He sought only one color. And one woman.

Amelia assured him that Felicity would be wearing periwinkle. He now knew it was one of her favorite flowers, along with violets and lilacs. All purple-hued blooms. Purple was her favorite color. He’d been collecting every scrap of information he could glean about Felicity.

According to her chatty cousin, Miss Beckett had learned about flowers and herbs from tending her family’s gardens and assisting her father to blend medicinal remedies. After her mother’s death, Felicity had taken on many household duties, and apparently she was a particularly good cook. His mouth watered when Miss Huntingdon described the various dishes at which her older cousin excelled, though he couldn’t be sure whether it was the mention of teacakes or the idea of Felicity dusted in sugar that made him salivate.

Felicity.
She finally entered the ballroom, stealing his breath and sharpening his purpose. He still wished for the waltz she’d declined during the first dance, but tonight he wanted more than to take her in his arms for a turn around the ballroom. He needed to speak to her, to make his feelings plain. To ask her one essential question.

As elegantly as any debutante, she swept along the side of the room until she reached Miss Huntingdon’s side. The two chatted while the violinists warmed up their strings. In moments, the first dance would commence, and he’d be damned if he let her stand alone at the side of the room all evening.

He began striding toward her. This time she’d say yes. If her yearning for him was half of his for her, she had to say yes.

“Lord Lindsay, have you come to claim your dance?” Miss Parker called to him as he passed her. When he glanced toward the young lady, she lifted a little cream-colored slip of paper. “Lady Forsythe has assured me you requested the first dance.”

At the mention of his aunt’s name, he caught her watching him and she tilted up her chin in an expression of triumph.

“Forgive me, Miss Parker, I—” He scanned the room to find Felicity. She was no longer in the corner where she’d stood chatting with her cousin. A vision in beaded silk and crushed velvet, she stood in the center of the ballroom, her hand in Mr. Buckham’s, his arm hooked round her waist.

“We must hurry, my lord.” Miss Parker took Alex’s hand and tugged him into the fray.

Before he could agree or protest or manage to swallow where his throat had gone painfully dry, the diminutive miss had him shuffling across the dance floor, moving through the steps by rote. Keeping his gaze on his partner proved impossible when Felicity spun nearby in another man’s arms, just out of reach.

Alex was so eager for the set to end, he maneuvered Miss Parker to the edge of the room, close to where Felicity and her partner were completing the final steps of the dance.

He’d ask her for the next dance the moment she was free.

Before he could bow and release the young lady in his arms, a man cried out behind him. Alex spun around to see what had caused the outburst and found a circle of ladies and gentlemen gathered to titter at some spectacle. Despite his height, he couldn’t discern Felicity’s pale blond head among the crowd. Her partner, however, was unmistakable. The man stood grumbling to another about his foot.

“Thomas, come away from her!”

Alex recognized Louisa’s shout and cut through the group huddled in front of him to find Felicity on her backside. Lord Kenniston had his hands on her, attempting to help her up, despite how determinedly she slapped his hand away.

“Allow me, Kenniston.” His hand on the baron’s shoulder wasn’t a request. He made that clear with a decisive shove.

When Louisa clasped the man’s arm and pulled the baron away, Felicity allowed Alex to take her hand.

“Are you all right, Miss Beckett?” He asked the proper, polite question for all the guests to hear, then whispered in her ear as he steered her to the ballroom’s edge. “This wasn’t quite how I hoped to get you back in my arms, but I’ll take it.”

“Is everyone still staring?”

“Not at all.” Some were, but most couples had begun dancing the next set. “Don’t worry about the rest of them. Tell me what happened.”

“There’s little to tell. I’m a terrible dancer.” She quirked a miserable grin that made him smile.

“And prefer to end every dance on your backside?” In a very ungentlemanly part of his rogue’s brain, that didn’t sound bad. Provided that she landed on something soft. Like their shared bed.

She grumbled something under her breath and he tipped his head to hear. “Pardon?”

“I stepped on his toes. He’s not the first man to suffer such a fate.”

Across the room, her partner was still carrying on about his abused foot. “I suspect he’ll live. He’s barely hobbling.”

“At least he won’t ask me to dance with him again.”

“There, you see. A fact both of us can celebrate.” If he had his way, the man would never dare to glance her way again.

The blush of embarrassment had almost cooled in her cheeks, tempting Alex to ask if she’d stand up with him for the next set. He was willing to risk his toes to hold her and prove to every gaping onlooker that she was still the most desirable woman in the room, poor dancer or not.

“Your aunt won’t be pleased. She arranged for me to partner with Mr. Buckham.”

“Dance with me instead.” There, he’d said it. Not nearly all he wished to say to her this night, but a start.

Rising from her chair, she turned to face him, her lovely eyes wide with shock. “You truly are a reckless man, aren’t you?”

“Oh yes.” He reached for her hand. Being near without touching her was too much propriety to expect of him. “I can’t wait to show you all my reckless ways.”

“Alexander, let me send a maid to tend to Miss Beckett.” His aunt marched up, fairly planting herself between him and Felicity, and nudged a young lady in his direction. “Have you forgotten that you’re to partner Lady Eleanor for the next dance?”

In the time it took to put his aunt and Lady Eleanor off with an excuse, Felicity had made her escape. He considered searching the house for her. With most guests occupied at the dance, they would at least have a moment alone. But before he could make his way from one end of the ballroom to the doors leading to the rest of the house, she reentered the room wearing a simple, dark gown and planted herself in a chair near the other chaperones.

He could ask her again. Yet as he made his way toward her, a strange emotion slowed his steps. A foreign feeling. One he’d rarely entertained, and certainly one his father had accused him of being incapable. It was a good deal like selflessness.

Felicity appealed to him as no woman ever had, and he wanted her with a maddeningly persistent desire. Yet she’d already passed a difficult evening, and approaching her while she was guarded on all sides by fellow chaperones seemed a foolhardy prospect, even for a reckless man. Most of all, he couldn’t bear the thought of bringing her further embarrassment. Some of the rudest guests were still pointing at her, no doubt recounting her ballroom
faux pas
. Could he add to those whispers by insisting she dance with him?

There was nothing for it. He would have to wait to confess his feelings until they could have a private moment. Slipping his pocket watch from his waistcoat, he calculated how long he’d have to wait.

His plan was simple one. When everyone had retired for the evening, he’d sneak into her bedchamber again.

He was a rogue, after all.

***

Three more days. Felicity ticked off another night on her makeshift bookmark and slid it back into the etiquette book. After her ballroom debacle, she was giving herself a reprieve from reading another chapter about how to be a perfect woman. Instead she planned to finish
Jane Eyre.

Her mind was too scattered for sleep. Beyond replaying that awful moment when she’d trod on Mr. Buckham’s toes and he’d squealed like a stuck pig before pushing her to the floor, she couldn’t stop thinking about Alex. When everyone else stood about laughing at her and only Thomas made an awkward, pawing attempt at assisting her, Alex swept in and rescued her. Somehow he’d known to distract her with conversation and make light of the whole incident. Just the scent of him, the sound of his voice, had soothed her. And then he’d done the most extraordinary thing of all. He’d asked her to dance. The woman who’d just trounced on another man’s toes and made a spectacle of herself.

In that moment she’d seen beyond his blinding male beauty to a thoughtful man, despite his infamy and whichever parts were true. And then, when she’d returned to the ballroom, he’d begun to approach her and stopped. Her heartbeat had stuttered for a moment too. The battle had been clear on his face, the same skirmish she’d waged the first time he’d asked her to dance. The war between desire and duty, what he wanted and what he should do. In the end, he hadn’t asked her to dance, but he’d watched her protectively for the remainder of the evening. Every so often, he’d position himself near enough that they might have spoken, if half a dozen chaperones’ ears weren’t waiting for any bit of juicy gossip to enliven their evening.

The man might call himself a rogue and bear it when others called him much worse, but he knew how to behave like a gentleman.

I’m falling in love with a gentleman rogue.
Not the immature infatuation she’d felt for Thomas, but bone deep emotion. Admiration and attraction, surely, but more too. A sense that they were alike, she a spinster chaperone and he a gorgeous viscount, for they were both struggling to play their roles.

Lost in thoughts of Alex, Felicity barely registered the knock on her bedchamber door until it came again, louder.

If it was Lady Forsythe chastising her for wounding Mr. Buckham, she was apt to say something rude. No one seemed to notice that the man pushed her away so forcefully she ended up on the floor. Perhaps someone should visit Mr. Buckham’s room and give
him
a setting down.

She yanked the door open and glowered at the man on the threshold before her mouth went slack. “Alex.”

“May I—”

Before he could finish whispering the question, she grasped his hand and pulled him inside, latching her door and planting herself against it.

For a moment, they stared at one another. His gaze trailed down her body, taking her in from unbound hair to bare toes. He opened his mouth as if to speak but said nothing.

“You shouldn’t be in my bedroom again.” The words were frightfully difficult to manage when all she could think was how she wished to kiss him, to run her finger along the bare patch of his neck where the top buttons of his evening shirt were undone.

“Yes.” He nodded and one burnished lock of hair settled on his forehead. “That is precisely what I came to discuss.”

Discussion? He expected a discussion when he was standing so near she could feel the heat from his body? When he could reach out a hand and touch her where only the sheer fabric of her night rail would separate his flesh from hers?

“Kiss me first.” She tried for a practical tone. It seemed a practical solution. If he kissed her, he’d melt away a bit of the tension pulling her body taut, and then she could think and talk and be reasonable.

He titled his head and narrowed one eye as if she’d laid a trap for him. But when she said nothing more, he took two steps forward, gripped her waist in one hand, cupped her cheek with the other, and claimed her mouth with his. No gentle tutelage this time, no teasing her with licks and nips. He took the lead and she followed, their lips dancing against each other as if they’d kissed a thousand times, knew each other’s rhythms.

Braced between the flat of the door and the muscled heat of his body, Felicity moaned when he pressed into her, allowing her to feel how much he wanted her. She reached for his hand and lifted it to her breast, needing him to know she ached for him too.

“If we don’t stop,” he whispered against her mouth, “I won’t have the wits left to tell you what I’ve come to say.”

He was right. Her notion of kissing first might not have been her best idea.

“Shall we sit?”

Though he nodded in agreement, he offered her one more lingering kiss before pulling away and striding toward one of the two chairs in the sitting nook. Like a gentleman, he waited until she was seated before taking a chair himself.

After leaning forward and bracing his elbows on his knees, he opened his mouth and then closed it again. His gaze held hers for a long silent moment.

“When I have something difficult to say,” she began in the same soothing voice she used with the Huntingdon girls, “I find that if I just blurt it—”

“Marry me, Felicity.” He smiled and slapped a hand against his leg. “There, I said it.”

“I…” It was gone. Whatever she’d started to say, whatever she was supposed to say. Gone. Her mind had turned to steam and was surely puffing out through her ears. Her heart was still there. She knew because it was thrashing in her ribs so hard she feared it was trying to escape. “I…” The single syllable, that one sound, was all she could manage.