Dearest Rogue

by Elizabeth Hoyt

  He held his breath as she traced his collarbone.

  “Why?” she asked. “I like your name. James is so very practical. I always think one can rely on a James—and I can rely on you, can’t I?”

  He cleared his throat again, trying to remember his argument. “Yes, but—”

  “You’ve got chest hair!” she exclaimed, as if discovering he had wings. “How very strange that must be. Does it get tangled in your shirts?”

  “Ow,” he remarked, because her exploring fingers had caught a few. “No. Not unless I were to decide to wear chain mail shirts.”

  “It’s very thick,” she said next. “How far does it go down—”

  He rolled off the bed. Rather fast in fact, losing a few of those chest hairs to her fingers as he did. And for the first time he was actually glad she was blind, because if she could see she’d have gotten quite the eyeful. His cock had been more than happy with her curiosity.

  She sat up, which did not help matters at all, because as he’d observed last night her chemise was damnably fine. He could see her nipples if he looked.

  Only a base cad would look.

  They were bright pink and pointed and sat atop the most gorgeous round breasts he’d ever seen. He just wanted to—

  He looked away and began dressing.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “You know damned well what the matter is,” he surprised himself by replying heatedly. This wasn’t the way to speak to a lady, to an employer’s sister, to—

  “No, I don’t,” she said. “Why don’t you come back and we can practice the kissing that—”

  “You’re too young!” he shouted. “Too highborn, too reckless with your own safety, too sweet, and too damned young. Stop. Stop baiting me, stop using me as your own personal plaything. I might be your brother’s servant, but I’m a man as well.”

  “I never thought you weren’t,” she said quietly. “I know you’re a man, James. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t want a personal plaything. I want you.”

  “You can’t have me, my lady,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  And he walked out of the room before he could take the words back.

  “BUT MY DEAR, surely you’ve heard?” Lady Herrick leaned ever so slightly forward, the smile playing about her lovely mouth announcing that she had an exquisite point of gossip.

  Eve took a sip of her tea and politely shook her head. “As I’ve said, I’m not sure to what you refer, my lady.”

  They both sat in Lady Herrick’s front room, which was done in pale blue, pink, and gold. Tiny gilded spoons were stacked on the tea table along with small hard biscuits. They were prettily decorated in pink icing, but they tasted like chalk. Eve had just given Lady Herrick the miniature portrait of a certain gentleman that she’d painted for her.

  “Why, Lady Phoebe’s kidnapping,” Lady Herrick said with just enough relish to confirm Phoebe’s opinion that the lady was a rather nasty piece of work under all that gold silk brocade. “She was taken from her very home, darling—the Duke of Wakefield’s town house right here in London. Some say she’s already been returned to her brother’s house, but if so, no one’s seen her.” Lady Herrick gave a delicate shudder. “Who knows what might’ve been done to the poor girl—blind and in the clutches of men without scruples?”

  Her hostess took a sip of tea, her eyes smiling maliciously over her teacup rim.

  Eve decided she’d had quite enough tea. “Are you satisfied with the portrait, my lady?”

  Lady Herrick picked up the tiny piece. It was oval, painted on a thin ivory board, suitable for ornamenting a snuffbox or simply framing. “Oh yes. You have his likeness exactly, Miss Dinwoody. Your talent is really quite extraordinary.”

  “Thank you, my lady.” Eve set her teacup down precisely. “I hope you won’t mind terribly if I depart? I’m afraid I have an appointment I truly can’t miss.”

  “Indeed?” Eve could see Lady Herrick’s mind working, trying to think whom she might be off to meet with. “Well, in that case I won’t delay you. Thank you again for the portrait.”

  “My lady.” Eve rose and curtsied, discreetly collecting the small purse of coins Lady Herrick had earlier given her.

  A footman escorted her out of the sitting room and down the stairs. Jean-Marie was waiting for her in the front hallway. He turned from inspecting a rather gaudy statuette of a Moorish boy in turban, loincloth, and earrings. The statuette was made of some black marble and the earrings, eyes, and lips were gilded.

  “Ma’am.” Jean-Marie inclined his head as she made the hallway. He held the front door open for her. “Do you think I should wear gold earrings?”

  “I think,” Eve said as they walked to her carriage, “that Tess would never speak to me again if I said yes.”

  “Hm,” Jean-Marie murmured as he opened the carriage door and set the step.

  Tess was Jean-Marie’s wife and Eve’s very talented cook. For the sake of her stomach she liked to keep Tess happy.

  Eve stepped into the carriage and waited for Jean-Marie to step inside as well.

  “Home?” Jean-Marie asked, raising his hand to knock on the roof to signal the driver.

  “No,” Eve replied. “I should like to visit Val.”

  Jean-Marie gave her a long look and then shouted to the driver, “To the Duke of Montgomery’s town house!” before sitting down again.

  “Is zere any partic’lar reason you wish to visit ’Is Grace?” Jean-Marie asked. Sometimes when he was tired, or excited, or felt some strong emotion, the French Creole accent crept into his speech.

  “I heard something quite”—Eve paused, carefully selecting her words—“ distressing at Lady Herrick’s house.”

  “And what was zat?”

  “Someone kidnapped Lady Phoebe Batten.” She felt her face suddenly crumple for just a moment—a second of panic-inducing loss of control. She dug her fingers into her palms, fists shaking, as she pushed down old memories.

  Old fears.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and willed the fear away. She was strong. She was Eve Dinwoody, a grown woman with a house and servants of her own.

  And most importantly, she had Jean-Marie, patient, strong, and absolutely lethal if he wished it.

  She was safe.

  Eve inhaled slowly. But Phoebe hadn’t been safe. Even in her brother’s house in the middle of London, she’d been stolen, a blind girl.

  She must’ve been completely terrified.

  “Eve, mon amie,” Jean-Marie said, his deep bass voice distressed.

  She opened her eyes at once and smiled at him. “It’s all right. I’m all right.”

  His coffee-brown eyes were worried, but before he could challenge her statement, the carriage pulled to a stop.

  At once Jean-Marie jumped out to set the step.

  He helped her down.

  Eve looked up at him. “Wait here.”

  Jean-Marie didn’t like the order, she could tell, but he nodded grimly.

  She turned and faced the huge town house Val lived in. At least six stories high and newly built, with massive columns and a pediment, it screamed outrageous expenditure, which rather fit the man himself. Within the pediment was a bas-relief of a smiling Hermes in traveler’s cloak and hat, holding his caduceus. The god of trickery and thieves bore a rather uncanny resemblance to Val himself.

  Eve snorted.

  She climbed the front steps and let the massive gilt knocker fall.

  Almost immediately the door was opened, but instead of a butler a young woman stood in the opening. She was tallish, standing very straight, and dressed all in black, save for her apron, fichu, and an enormous mobcap, tied neatly under her chin. “Yes?”

  Eve blinked, momentarily taken aback. “Who are you?”

  The woman didn’t seem at all put out by Eve’s blurted question. “I am Mrs. Crumb, the Duke of Montgomery’s housekeeper. How may I help you?”

  “I wish to see Val,” Eve said, then frowned
. “What happened to the butler?”

  That question Mrs. Crumb ignored. “Who may I say is calling?”

  Eve looked the woman up and down. Mrs. Crumb might be a servant, but she was rather formidable… and didn’t seem easily cowed at all. “I’m Eve Dinwoody. Val will see me.”

  For a second Mrs. Crumb’s eyes narrowed. Then she seemed to come to a decision. She nodded once, decisively, and stepped back, allowing Eve into the house. “His Grace is at present in the library.”

  “Thank you. I know the way.”

  The door opened into a massive entry hall. Beneath her feet was gray-veined pink marble. Gilded vines, curlicues, and flowers covered the walls, forming arches and medallions. Overhead the domed ceiling was painted a robin’s-egg blue and divided into more medallions, and from the very center hung an enormous crystal chandelier.

  Eve crossed the hall, the tap of her heels echoing on the pink marble. A curving grand staircase was at the far end and she mounted it, climbing to the first floor. She made her way down another hall and to the first door on the right. Val’s library was a long room painted a pale sea green. Gilded pillars lined the walls, with bookcases in polished wood set into niches between them. No doubt they were made from some fabulously expensive wood. Sometimes Eve felt as if she’d walked into an Oriental fairy tale when she entered Val’s domain.

  Val himself was at the far end, sitting cross-legged on a huge overstuffed cushion in front of a fire.

  He wore a purple banyan with a gold-and-green dragon embroidered on the back and he glanced up from a tiny jeweled book as she entered. “Eve!”

  “What have you done, Val?” she asked, advancing on him. “What have you done?”

  Chapter Eleven

  The second giant, Mag, made his home in the cold, rocky hills of the moor. He stood three times the height of a man, his hands were the size of cartwheels, and his breath smelled of rotted meat. When Corineus and the sea horse charged him, Mag roared his rage, but still the giant fell before them.…

  —From The Kelpie

  It was raining. Great gusts of rain came down in sheets as the day steadily fled.

  Trevillion huddled on the box with Reed, who no doubt thought he’d lost his mind to be sitting outside when he might be dry and warm in the carriage. But there was only so much temptation Trevillion could take. He’d spent weeks, maybe even months, in hopeless, unrequited yearning, and now to have Phoebe offer herself to him like a luscious ripe apple to a man starving…

  Except Phoebe didn’t even know what she was offering. She’d led a sheltered life, one circumscribed by her brother and her blindness. What did she know of men and their baser desires? She should be with someone younger. Someone unscarred, unscathed, and able still to look at the world with uncynical eyes.

  MacLeish was such a man—and Phoebe had rejected him. Trevillion wasn’t sure what to think about that. He knew what he wanted to think—that she might prefer a man like himself—but that way lay madness. He wasn’t right for her.

  He had to keep that firmly in mind.

  “I see a light, up ahead,” Reed shouted.

  Trevillion peered through the darkness, streams running off the corners of his tricorne. “If it be an inn, we stop for the night.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The horses labored, their hides gleaming in the carriage’s lantern light. The road was naught but a muddy stream and the carriage rocked from side to side as they neared the lights.

  It was an inn—if an ancient stone edifice with a meager yard and a lean-to stable nearby could be called such. The carriage pulled to a stop in the yard and Reed jumped down to run inside. He returned a moment later with two men and the news that they did indeed have rooms for the night.

  Trevillion climbed down from the box, nearly falling to his knees when his feet hit the muddy ground. His leg had locked, the muscles spasming in the cold. He cursed under his breath and made his way to the carriage door.

  “We’re stopping for the night,” he announced when he wrenched the thing open.

  Lady Phoebe raised her head from the seat cushions. Somehow she’d been sleeping. She looked flushed and warm. Clean. Good.

  He wished he could carry her to the inn’s door, but his leg wouldn’t bear her. He wasn’t sure it would bear him.

  “Come.” He took her arm, gently pulling her forward. “It’s not far, thank God.”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed at the first blast of wind and rain. “Oh, it’s so cold.”

  “And wet.” He helped her to the inn’s door, trying to shield her from the gusts of water, but even so they were both drenched by the time they made the door.

  “My wife needs a warm fire,” he said to the innkeeper, a stout little man with a fringe of graying hair about the back of his head.

  “Right away, sir,” the innkeeper said. “This way, please.”

  He led them up a narrow staircase and to a bedchamber, which, though tiny, looked perfectly clean. The draped bed was piled high with blankets.

  “Sit here.” Trevillion guided Phoebe, already trembling, to the lone chair by the cold fireplace. He needed to get her warm.

  “I’ll make that, sir,” said the innkeeper, indicating the hearth.

  “No, I can do it,” Trevillion replied. “Better you bring my wife a basin of hot water and whatever hot victuals you might have.”

  “And beer,” Phoebe said, through chattering teeth.

  “My best!” the little man said. “I brew it myself. A bitter such as you’ve never tasted before.”

  “Very well.” Trevillion lowered himself awkwardly before the cold hearth as the innkeeper rushed out.

  “Your leg is hurting you,” Phoebe said, wrapping her arms about herself.

  “Aye, it is,” Trevillion replied matter-of-factly as he laid the fire with coals and a bit of shredded bark for tinder. He applied the flame of the candle left behind by the innkeeper and was pleased when a flame flared up.

  “Oh, that’s better.” She held out her hands to the fire, but he could see that she was still shivering. She was such a little thing. What if she caught a fever?

  He turned and began working on the buckle of her shoe.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Making sure you don’t freeze.”

  He’d just gotten off both shoes when the innkeeper came back in the room with a basin of hot water and several cloths over his arm.

  “Set it here.” Trevillion indicated the floor near Phoebe’s feet.

  “There you are, sir,” the innkeeper said, putting the basin down on the floor and draping the cloths on the bed. “The food and drink won’t be but a moment.”

  Trevillion nodded and the man left.

  “We’d better have your stockings off before he comes back,” Trevillion said, his voice rough.

  He reached for one foot again, dainty and small, and set it on his knee. He trailed his hands up her calf, hidden by her skirts, feeling the slide of the silk, the warm skin beneath, up over her knee to the ribbon tied around her thigh. He could feel the bare skin above it, soft, inviting.

  Warm.

  He glanced up just as he pulled the ribbon free.

  Phoebe had her head tipped back, a smile flirting with her lips, her cheeks a sweet pink, and Trevillion caught his breath.

  What was he doing? This was madness. He ought to take his hands out from under her skirts. Ought to leave her to take off her own stockings.

  Instead he felt his hands shake as he began unrolling the stocking over knee and calf and slim ankle. He set it on the chair by her hip.

  He inhaled and reached up for the second stocking, aware suddenly what lay just above that ribbon, hidden in the recess between her thighs.

  Sweat broke out on his back.

  Slick silk, warm flesh. He found the ribbon, the flimsy little thing caught in his large, rough hand.

  Phoebe inhaled as he watched her, her tongue peeping out to lick her lips.

  He swallowed and pulled
the ribbon, letting it fall as he took the stocking’s edge between his fingers and slowly rolled it down her leg.

  Something clattered outside the door, waking him from his forbidden reverie. He ought to have been grateful.

  Yet Trevillion cursed under his breath as he hastily stood. He pushed the basin of hot water in front of Phoebe. “Put your feet in the water—it’ll warm you.”

  The door opened, heralding the innkeeper’s return. He bore a tray with the food and drink. Behind him was a woman—presumably his wife—with another basin of hot water, and following her were two boys, one with a small table, the other with a chair.

  Trevillion stepped back as the innkeeper handily directed the placing of everything. When he was done, their dinner was nicely set up on the table before the fireplace.

  He beamed at Trevillion. “Will there be anything else for you or your wife, sir?”

  “No, thank you. I believe we’re very good for the night.” Trevillion pressed some coins in the man’s hand and the innkeeper bowed himself out the door.

  Trevillion limped to the table and sat.

  “It looks like a chicken stew with dumplings,” he said, trying to regain some normalcy.

  His voice sounded too loud to his own ears.

  “Lovely.” Phoebe was taking off her soaked cap. “Will you tell me sometime, do you think?”

  Had she no idea what had just occurred? What a man felt when he put his hands under a woman’s skirts? “Tell you what?”

  “How you were lamed.”

  He looked up sharply at her.

  She sat with her fingertips on the edge of the table, feeling what was before her, and it struck him how brave she was. She lived with her blindness day in and day out, had followed him trustingly, and had met each challenge of their journey with good spirits and curiosity.

  He felt his mouth curve gently. “There’s a tankard of bitters just to the right of your right hand.”

  “Is there?” She looked excited, pulling the tankard toward herself. The sip she took was more careful than the one the night before, but she still came up with her nose wrinkled.

  He found himself chuckling, despite the cold and his leg. “Too strong?”