One for the Rogue

by Charis Michaels

  He landed on his backside with a wet thwack, and she sprawled helplessly on top of him, her hair covering them both like a wet, tangled net.

  “Well done,” he said again.

  Before she could swipe the wet hair from her face, he collected her beneath the arms and bounded up, tossing her over his shoulder.

  She said “Oof” and opened her eyes to see his wet shirt stuck to the corded muscles of his back. Her arms flailed, numb hands ineffectual, scrambling to find a handhold at his waist. His dog scampered below her, barking anew.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked to his back.

  “Inside the cabin on my boat,” he said, kicking the gate on his gangplank and striding on board. “We have to get you out of those wet clothes.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  So much for savoring and meandering, Beau thought, sloshing onto the deck of his boat with the shivering, dripping, traumatized duchess thrown over his shoulder. He clipped down the steps to the cabin, stooping to duck through the door.

  “Careful, Duchess,” he said, squatting to roll her off of his shoulder. “Use your legs. There you are. Don’t worry; it only feels like you’ll never be warm again.”

  She stood, thank God for small favors. He’d worried she’d be too hysterical for her legs to hold her. The truth was, she wasn’t hysterical at all. She simply huddled, pooling water on the floor, darting her gaze around in breathless, shuddering jerks.

  “I’ll . . . I’ll need dry clothes,” she said. Her breath was choppy and shallow. “Where will I get dry clothes? And my hair. It takes hours to dry. Hours.”

  Beau lunged for the stove and stoked the coals before stabbing four logs into the orange glow. He crossed back to the door, shooed the dog out, and slammed it to trap what little heat remained.

  “First things first,” he told her, plucking a blanket from his bed and dropping it on her shoulders, “we must get you dry to get you warm. Give me a moment to change myself, and then we’ll get you sorted.”

  She winced under the blanket and reached to free clumps of her long, tangled hair.

  Beau watched her as he unbuttoned his shirt. “I had no idea your hair was so long.”

  She glanced at him, and he raised an eyebrow. “What?” he asked. “It is a crime, hiding all of that hair.”

  When he whipped his wet shirt off his shoulders, she froze, a clump of wet hair extended in one hand. Her eyes grew huge and then returned to her hair with diligent attention, piling it over her shoulder to shield her face.

  “You will change here?” she asked through the wet blonde veil. “In front of me? You cannot mean for me to change in this cabin with you?” She sounded scandalized even through chattering teeth.

  “What I mean,” he said, “is to get dry. We are both at risk until we are out of the wet clothes and our body temperatures return to normal.” He shoved into a fresh shirt.

  Her hair was free now, hanging down one shoulder nearly to her waist, adding to the pool of water at her feet. He took a rag from the basin and shoved it at her. “Take this and soak up the water for your hair. The blanket does no good if it’s sopping wet. You’ve brought half of the canal inside.”

  She reached for the fabric with her eyes averted.

  “My breeches are the next to go. Consider yourself warned.”

  She made a sound of distress and pivoted, turning away as if the sight of him would turn her to salt.

  He chuckled, peeling off his dripping buckskins and pulling on a dry pair. “Desperate times call for desperate measures; isn’t that what they say? Don’t blame me. I wasn’t the one who decided to dive into the canal.”

  “I didn’t dive; I fell,” she said to the wall. “As you well know. Thank you, by the way, for saving me.” She turned when she said this and caught sight of him sliding his buckskins over his hips.

  Beau paused, watching the shock and then curiosity play across her face. Their eyes met, and the cabin suddenly felt as small as a closet. She dropped one corner of the blanket.

  “This is entirely inappropriate,” she whispered. An observation, not a warning. She was sounding less scandalized by the minute.

  Beau cleared his throat and fastened his breeches. “Have you ever undressed yourself, Duchess?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your dress? Your stockings or boots? I’m guessing you’ve always undressed with the help of a maid?”

  “Well, I’ve certainly never been undressed by a man.”

  He stopped breathing for a moment, allowing this statement to settle in. Beau had spent a lifetime ripping various offending garments off various thrilled women for the sheer drama and titillation of doing it. And now here he was, compelled by necessity to enact the same ripping for the purpose of her safekeeping, and he was doddering. And holding his breath. And talking about it. It ruined the effect—not to mention risking her health—to hesitate, but his brain was hung on whatever Ticking may or may not have done to her inside their strange, mismatched union.

  He shook his head and crossed the small cabin to her. She watched him, catching the fallen edge of blanket and rising up to her full height. She raised her hand to brush back her hair, and he reached out and caught it.

  “Gloves first,” he said, pulling back the soggy leather. It rolled off her fingers with a sucking sound, and he dropped it to the floor.

  “Yes, of course.” She began working on the other glove, but she fumbled, still too cold and numb.

  Beau seized her hand and rolled back the second glove. “Let’s table the conversation of men undressing you,” he said, taking up her bare hands together, massaging them in his own, working them back to life. Her skin was gray-blue beneath his fingers. He felt the pulse in her wrist, strong and fast, racing along with his own.

  “Is Miss Breedlowe with your brother?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Good. She will help us. I’ll send a note by way of the boys outside. Could Jocelyn and Teddy be seen leaving your dower house in a Rainsleigh carriage? Would this raise suspicion?”

  “No, not likely. Ticking mostly monitors me.” Her eyes were locked on their joined hands. “Jocelyn will lose all respect for me after this,” she said. “She will refuse to care for Teddy.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions. Jocelyn Breedlowe has seen quite a lot in her time in Henrietta Place. If this is the worst of it, I’ll eat my hat.”

  She laughed then, the desired effect, and he felt her fingertips begin to fold over his own. Yes, he thought, and he laced their fingers together, squeezing.

  She allowed this, looking into his eyes. “How will Jocelyn and Teddy know what to do when your carriage arrives? Wait.” She pulled her hands away. “What carriage? You have no carriage.”

  “The vehicles in the mews in Henrietta Place are mine,” he said. “Or so I’m told. Does the duke know your handwriting?”

  “No, he shouldn’t. I’m doubtful he believes I can read or write.”

  Beau snickered and leaned away, taking up parchment and a quill from his desk beside the bed. He scratched out four or five lines and read them to her:

  Dear Miss Breedlowe,

  Slight change of plans for today, if you please. The St. Peter’s chapel choir has detained me with their rehearsals. The imposition will make me terribly late for an alteration I have at Madame Dupree’s. This is the fitting for the dress I’ll wear to the Duke’s . . . ”

  He paused and looked at her.

  “Christmas breakfast,” she provided.

  He raised his eyebrows, impressed with her collaboration, and scribbled it in.

  He continued:

  . . . to the Duke’s Christmas breakfast. I find myself at a loss for how to fetch the dress to Madame’s studio unless I impose on you to assist me. Could I persuade you and Teddy to meet me at her studio with the dress in question? Madame’s direction is below. The slippers too, as I’ll want the hem to be accurate. My friend Mrs. Courtland has agreed to fetch you in her carriage for
this errand.

  He looked up. “Will your maid know which dress?”

  She nodded, and he returned to the note, signed it, and dusted it with sand. Next he wrote a second letter to the head groom in his brother’s stable, ordering one of the carriages to Portman Square and then on to his boat in Paddington. Discretion, he stressed, was essential.

  He cracked the door to the cabin and whistled for Jason and Benjamin, the boys he’d paid to watch the path. After an urgent exchange, he dismissed them with all the importance of a secret mission and a morning in London with his horse.

  When they’d gone, he turned back to her. “Sorry. I know you are uncomfortable. That summons may take an hour or more. The sooner we invoke Miss Breedlowe’s help, the sooner she will arrive. In the meantime, you cannot wait in wet clothing.”

  She looked down at her wet dress and then back up at him.

  He pointed to the bed behind her. “Sit,” he commanded, “and let us undo your boots.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “I can wait for Miss Breedlowe,” Emmaline assured him, her lips trembling.

  “But I cannot,” he said. “Perhaps you have grown accustomed to the smell of canal water but not I. And you’re dripping on my floor. Most urgently of all, your lips are turning blue.”

  She touched a hand to her lips.

  “And wet boots will blister your feet, if you do not succumb to frostbite first.”

  There was no argument for this, and she knew it. Her body quaked with shivers, she was almost too cold to properly breathe. She could not remember being more miserably uncomfortable. She sat unsteadily on the bed behind her, cringing at the feel of layers and layers of wet silk and wool.

  “I can unlace my boots.” She reached for her foot.

  “Hold up your skirts.” He knelt before her.

  “I can do it.”

  He cocked one perfect eyebrow. “You would prefer that I hold up your skirts?”

  “I can do both,” she assured him, but when she bent at the waist, rivulets of green water squeezed from her skirts onto his bed.

  She snapped up. Perhaps she could not do both.

  He simply waited, and she hitched up her skirts and slid a miserable, leather-clad foot in his direction. “Why are you being so nice to me?” she said, but she thought, Please don’t stop.

  If his ministrations to her feet felt anything like the attention he’d given her hands, she would freely extend every body part to him for the same treatment. She held her breath.

  “I’m nice to everyone,” he said, plucking at the laces with detachment.

  “You have not been nice to me, not always.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps you weren’t wet enough.” He wiggled the boot, jostling her foot from the stiff, wet leather. The looseness registered as a burn, a colder version of cold. Numbness gave way to thousands of pinpricks. She was powerless to move her foot this way or that to work the boot free, and he put his hand on her ankle and moved it for her.

  “Careful,” he said, sliding the boot off. When her foot was finally free, he wrapped his large hand beneath her arch and began to massage. Emmaline bit down on her lip to keep from moaning.

  “Waggle your toes,” he said, his voice strangely hoarse. “Force the blood to circulate.”

  She stifled another moan and did as he bade. She resisted the urge to offer up her right foot only because she would not have him leave her left. This was another first. No one had ever massaged her foot before.

  “You will warm up more quickly without the stockings,” he said.

  Absolutely not. The correct words sprang to her lips, but they would not come out of her mouth. She was so miserably cold and wet, and the thought of his warm hand on the bare skin of her foot was too enticing. She wanted to say, Absolutely, yes, but she settled with, “I’ll do it,” and she bent at the waist to lift her skirt and unfasten her garters. He pulled back, allowing her room, and her hair fell around her face, shielding her from his view. Did he watch her? She dare not check, but she felt flagrantly exposed, fishing up the hem of her skirt to her thigh. Her heart pounded in her ears and behind her eyes.

  “Can you manage?” he asked hoarsely.

  She nodded, but in truth the second hook was hung. She tried again and again.

  “Let me,” he said.

  “The fastener is hung,” she said.

  “Right.” His voice was calm and matter-of-fact, as if he relieved women of their wet stockings every day—and perhaps he did. But she could not look at him, and she kept her eyes on his hand as he gently set her dripping hair aside and lifted the hem of her skirts. Gently, fleetingly, she felt his hand skim her leg, then her knee. Each glide of his fingers was warm and purposeful on her wet skin. She bit her bottom lip.

  Now she felt his palm, flat on the side of her knee. She felt nimble fingers make startlingly quick work of the fasteners. Wet wool went slack and sagged, and he pushed the drooping fabric over her knee and down her leg. It was off her foot in the next moment, and he dropped the fabric to the floor with a swack.

  Now he wrapped his hand around her bare foot, and she gasped out loud, powerless to stifle her reaction. She could but breathe in and out, in and out. She breathed as if she’d just run a great distance, like she’d swum the length of the canal instead of being carried out in his arms.

  “I told you this would feel better,” he said. He tugged the corner of the blanket on which she sat and dried her foot, her ankle, and higher still, up her leg. Emmaline said nothing, and she allowed herself not to care. She’d been conditioned to say exactly the right thing at precisely the right time, but were there words, she wondered, for this?

  “Are you all right?” he whispered. It came out as a rasp, and he cleared his throat and asked again. “Duchess?”

  She nodded, even though nothing was all right. Her clothes were ruined, it was unlikely she could make it home without discovery, and no part of her plan to compensate Mr. Courtland was being realized. They were realizing quite the opposite, in fact. Her would-be pupil knelt at her feet and put his hands on her, and she absolutely did not want him to stop.

  “I’m curious,” the viscount said, taking up her other foot and starting in on the boot. “His Grace never undressed you?”

  “What?” The only thing this situation needed was a frank discussion about who had or had not undressed her.

  “You said no man had ever undressed you. And that”—he worked the wet boot off her foot—“is a crime against nature. You were married, for God’s sake. Was the duke an invalid?”

  Another unneeded discussion but far less provocative than his last question. She conceded. “No, not an invalid, but also not . . . youthful.”

  “He would have to have been very old indeed to pass up the opportunity to do what I’m doing right now.” He looked up, enclosing her foot with his left hand and reaching up to draw down her stocking with his right.

  Emmaline closed her eyes. “He was quite old,” she murmured.

  The viscount cleared his throat again. “He would have to have been dead.”

  The garter gave way in an instant, and he slicked the wet stocking from her foot and took up both feet and massaged them together.

  “Thank God he is dead,” she said quietly. She looked up suddenly. “I’ve never before said that out loud.”

  His hands stopped abruptly. “He was cruel to you, Emmaline?”

  She blinked, surprised to hear him use her given name.

  He stared, his hands still immobile. He raised his eyebrows.

  “Not cruel. Simply . . . ” Her voice tapered off. She was disinclined to describe the nature of her marriage, which vacillated between loneliness and disgust. She would not waste this moment talking about the Duke of Ticking.

  “Old?” he provided.

  She chuckled. “Well, yes, he was that. The duke had no interest in me. My dowry was a means to an end for his debts. He was lost to drink—had been for many years, I believe. I was immaterial to his daily life.�
��

  “And his nightly life?”

  Emmaline shrugged. What could she say?

  He nodded and set her bare feet carefully on the dusty boards of the cabin floor. He shoved to his feet and then took her by the wrists and pulled her up. “You’ve already said he did not undress you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re asking,” she whispered.

  “I don’t either.”

  He’d whispered this, but it was an irritated whisper, and she was confused. “No one has ever asked me so much about him, dead or alive. All that mattered to anyone else was that he was a duke.”

  “All that matters to me is his treatment of you. And it matters too much.”

  Emmaline studied his face. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said, still irritable. “I mean nothing. I mean that if we don’t get you out of this dress, you’ll catch pneumonia and die, and I’ll be blamed. Turn around.” He made a spinning motion with his finger.

  Her heart stopped for two beats. She heard herself say, “Shoes are one thing. But the dress? I cannot. If Miss Breedlowe is coming, I will wait for her.” There, she’d said it.

  “You cannot be comfortable.”

  “More comfortable than I would be naked.”

  He made a growling noise and said, “I will give you a nightshirt. And you may wrap in the blanket.”

  “Yes. You have a solution for everything.”

  “No, that’s my brother. He has a solution for everything.” He opened a trunk and rummaged inside. “He solves problems; I fix them.” He produced a wad of white linen and tossed it on the bed.

  Emmaline stared at it. “How did my lessons on propriety devolve into the most scandalous encounter I can imagine?”

  “Everything about me is scandalous, Duchess,” he whispered, taking her by the shoulders and spinning her. Gently, he gathered her hair and dropped it over one shoulder. “I tried to warn you,” he said softly, unfastening the first taut hook at the top of her spine. “I tried to send you on your way, or scare you off, or reverse what my brother offered. But no, you would have none of it. And now here we are. Make any claim you want about my improper etiquette or rubbish manners, but the burden of good behavior is about to now fall entirely on my avaricious shoulders, and I can honestly say that I don’t know what will happen. I’ve told you that I don’t believe in pretending to be something that I am not.”