My Favorite Rogue: 8 Wicked, Witty, and Swoon-worthy Heroes

by Courtney Milan, Lauren Royal, Grace Burrowes, Christi Caldwell, Jess Michaels, Erica Ridley, Delilah Marvelle

  “Such a Tartar.” He popped a tea cake in his mouth, then held one up an inch from Jacaranda’s lips. “You can lecture me on my shortcomings for the entire journey, both directions, but don’t make me listen to your grumbling stomach.”

  She took a bite of cake just to get his hand out of her face, but something…not innocent flavored the exchange–while raspberry icing flavored the tea cake. Yes, he’d taken a bite of scone from her hand earlier that week, but that hadn’t been entirely innocent either—on his part.

  “You are tiresome,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ll fetch my bonnet and shawl, and then put together a basket of provisions, so we can execute this errand you are incapable of seeing to on your own.”

  She left him in her sitting room, munching cake, knowing it was a bad idea to allow him to remain unsupervised in her quarters, but unwilling to tarry in his presence. He hadn’t touched her since his pedagogic raspberry kiss days ago—except for helping her in and out of the gig—but when he didn’t touch her, the feelings his proximity stirred were even worse.

  Bodily feelings of heat and vertigo and inconvenient excitement, but feelings of the heart as well.

  Jacaranda liked Worth Kettering. Liked him despite his unwillingness to shoulder the responsibility for raising his niece or launching his sister, for he had a point. The earl should tend to both things. The head of the family took on the jobs nobody else wanted. Hadn’t Grey told her that, over and over? Grey had done it, too, and continued to do it. Witness, his letters were the most regular, and she treasured every one.

  Despite the fact that her brother now wanted a specific date for her return to the family seat.

  Worth Kettering and Grey Dorning would understand each other in a single glance. They were both men who went after what they wanted and let little stop them. An image came to mind of stallions meeting each other in savage battle.

  Jacaranda had stopped Grey, though. Stopped him from imposing one of the most daft head-of-the-family decisions he’d ever come up with.

  She was still glad about that.

  She was not glad about having to travel in proximity to Worth Kettering, but Mr. Hunter was the last tenant to visit, so she packed her hamper and put aside her liking for her employer.

  Also her desire for him.

  They tooled out, Goliath in the traces. As they crossed the covered bridge at a smart trot, Mr. Kettering made not even a flirtatious remark. He didn’t need to, not when Jacaranda could recall in wicked detail the feel of her hand getting acquainted with him through his breeches.

  Angels abide, what had she been thinking?

  “How long ago did Hunter lose his wife?”

  “Five years or so,” Jacaranda replied. “She didn’t last a year after the birth of the third child, and while she didn’t suffer, she did linger. Take the next right.”

  Goliath turned onto a smaller track, and Mr. Kettering let the horse proceed at a more leisurely trot. “What was her name?”

  “He called her Mary Jean, or perhaps Mary Jane. My tenure did not predate her death. Vicar would know.”

  “He’d know if her grave has a marker, wouldn’t he?”

  “It does not, nothing save a rough stone Thomas hewed himself to resemble a rose. It’s very different.”

  “Why hasn’t he remarried?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.” She hadn’t kept her tone quite disinterested enough, and Mr. Kettering peered over at her.

  “Slow down, sir. This bridge is none too sturdy.” They clattered over a patch of boards, one intended to handle only light traffic.

  “How does Hunter get his produce to market over such a paltry excuse for a bridge?”

  “He takes the hayfields and makes a slightly longer job of it, I imagine.”

  “Wyeth, why doesn’t Reilly note these things? The need for grave markers, the bridges gone rickety?”

  “His job is to steward your land,” she said, though she’d had this very argument with Reilly himself. “Trysting has no position described as steward of your people.”

  “Yes, it does.” He let Goliath’s stride lengthen as the track ran through an overgrown patch of the home wood. “I hold that position. How much farther is it to Hunter’s?”

  “Less than a mile. As the crow flies, this tenancy is close to Trysting, but the creeks and woods and so forth make it longer when you take the lanes. Oh, dear.”

  “Oh, dear, indeed.” Kettering drew Goliath to a halt before a substantial tree that had fallen across the lane. “Don’t suppose you packed a saw in that basket?”

  “Everything but.”

  “I’ll have a look.” He passed her the reins as he climbed down from the buggy.

  He released Goliath’s check rein so the horse could crop grass at the roadside, then he inspected the tree. Larger than a sapling, the oak had been down long enough for the foliage to have thoroughly wilted.

  “Had I ridden out daily, as my housekeeper advised me to, I would have seen this and had it removed.” Mr. Kettering unbuttoned his waistcoat, then passed both jacket and waistcoat to Jacaranda.

  “Your steward is responsible for the land.” She’d given Reilly a schedule, which would have put him on every patch of the property at least twice a month in the growing season. “Perhaps you and he might discuss a schedule.”

  “Not perhaps. I’ll find something to use as a lever. If I can get the damned tree loose from where it’s wedged in those rocks, I can probably move it far enough to let us pass.”

  Jacaranda aimed her best frown at him. “Rain will soon move in. Why not turn around and let Reilly deal with this?”

  “This is England. It’s always about to rain, and what will Thomas Hunter think, to know I’ve called on every tenant save my best farmer?”

  She let him disappear into the woods while she visually calculated whether it was even possible to turn the buggy on the narrow lane. Trees and rocks encroached on both sides, great nasty boulders that would not admit of buggy wheels or shod hooves.

  This part of the wood was unkempt, better suited for hunting than raising firewood or lumber, but she doubted Reilly had come this way in months. Thomas Hunter could be trusted to look out for his own land, after all, and Reilly no doubt saw the man at services, assemblies and over the occasional pint.

  That part of being a steward, Jacaranda could not do for him.

  Mr. Kettering came striding back out of the gloomy woods, toting a stout length of dead oak that had to weigh nigh as much as Jacaranda did. He heaved and hoisted and cursed and heaved some more, until the fallen tree was free of the rocks and lying at an angle, still blocking most of the road.

  “That’s the hard part,” Mr. Kettering said, taking off his driving gloves and slapping them against his thigh before putting them back on.

  That exercise had been trying for Jacaranda, too. Beneath the thin material of Mr. Kettering’s shirt, his muscles bunched and rippled with his exertions, leaving her staring at Goliath’s fundament in sheer defense of her sanity.

  “Would you like to put your jacket back on?”

  He grinned at her, swiping the back of his glove over his forehead. “I’ve grown a trifle warm, and we’re not done here.”

  A fat droplet of rain landed on Jacaranda’s nose.

  “We’ll get a soaking now, in any case,” she said, for what sky she could see through the trees had grown ominous.

  Mr. Kettering pointed with his elbow. “That way, there’s an empty cottage with a decent porch about twenty yards down that trail. You take the hamper, I’ll fetch the horse.”

  A peel of thunder rumbling over the last of his words had Jacaranda out of the buggy and retrieving the hamper post-haste. She didn’t like storms, didn’t like the idea of getting soaking wet where Worth Kettering could find humor in it, didn’t like much of anything about her day so far.

  She spied the cottage, recalling it from when the estate had boasted a game keeper. The place was minimally stocked as a gamekeeper’s cottag
e, one duty Mr. Reilly was happy to conscientiously oversee. She suspected he trysted with the occasional willing woman here, or perhaps, given his timidity and Mrs. Reilly’s lack of an understanding nature, with the occasional lurid novel.

  No matter. The cottage was warm and dry, and Jacaranda reached its covered porch just as the random drops coalesced into a steady shower. Several minutes later, Mr. Kettering came up the trail, leading Goliath. He waved as he took the horse around to the shed in back, his shirt already soaked to an indecent degree.

  A solicitor ought not to sport such muscle. The Regent should sign a decree forbidding such a display, at least before susceptible women.

  And what woman wouldn’t be?

  “Everlasting powers.” Mr. Kettering came stomping and dripping onto the porch moments later. “You warned me, Wyeth. Go ahead and say it.”

  “You cut yourself.” She scowled at his bleeding knuckles. “And your shirt is soaked, and the weather is hardly your fault.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, because the temperature had dropped, and her own clothing wasn’t exactly dry.

  “Let’s see what we can find inside. Right now, a towel wouldn’t go amiss.”

  He felt above the lintel, found a skeleton key where any schoolboy tall enough would know to look for it, and unlocked the door.

  He gestured Jacaranda to precede him inside, then paused in the doorway. “I was about to say, Reilly needs a talking to, given the state of the bridge, the woods, and his idea of where to hide a key, but he’s at least kept this place in good shape.”

  He had, or his lady friends had. The cottage barely needed dusting and lacked the mildewed scent common to neglected dwellings. The wood box was full, the windows were clean, and on the shelves above the sink, a few faded towels sat neatly folded.

  Over in the corner, an old tester bed was made up, knitted blankets folded across its foot, canopy nowhere in evidence.

  Jacaranda rubbed her arms as another rumble of thunder sounded, even louder than the last one.

  “The storm is still gaining on us,” Mr. Kettering noted. “Best get a fire going, and I hope you won’t mind if I get out of this wet shirt.” He wasn’t asking permission. He was disrobing as he spoke, removing shirt, boots and stockings.

  Jacaranda tried not to watch.

  While the rain against the windows began a steady roar, she took longer to remove her bonnet than she ever had in her life. Her fingers shook, and her insides felt odd, and she could not get the image of Mr. Kettering’s damp, naked chest out of her mind. She also could not get her dratted bonnet off, a hairpin having caught on some part of the straw or wiring.

  “Wood’s nice and dry,” Mr. Kettering said, scratching a flint and steel over some dead pine needles. A spark obligingly leapt, and to Jacaranda, even that—the spark falling on dry tinder, the flames eagerly licking up into the air—had prurient connotations.

  What on earth was wrong with her?

  “That should take the chill off.” He rose in one graceful flex of muscles. “We’ll hang your bonnet from the rafters, and it will be dry in no time.”

  Her only good bonnet would be ruined if she kept fussing at it. Her gaze fell on a box on the mantel, one decorated with a carving of the belladonna flower.

  “Sit.” She patted the back of a ladder-back chair then retrieved the box, finding it contained the same supplies its twin did at Trysting. “I’ll clean up your knuckles.”

  He obliged but turned the chair backward so he could straddle it and extended his hand.

  “This situation is fortuitous,” he said.

  “Finding a box of medicinals was fortuitous.” She dabbed a clean cloth on his knuckles. “You are still bleeding.” She held the cloth snugly over his abused flesh. “I thought you had gloves on.”

  “Had to take them off to work with the wet harness and buckles, but I like holding hands with you, Wyeth. Take your time, and don’t forget to kiss me better.”

  She peeked at his knuckles, then closed the cloth over them again. “You are tenacious.”

  “So are you. I like that about you.”

  He could not know how susceptible she was to such a compliment. “My brother says I’m unnaturally stubborn for a woman.” Now, where had that come from?

  “With seven brothers, you’d have to be.”

  She took the cloth away again. “This might sting a bit.”

  She applied a pungent brown astringent, and he winced, so she blew on his knuckles to ease the sting.

  “Let it dry, and don’t be mucking about in the ashes or Goliath’s stall until it does.”

  “Goliath has an open shed,” Mr. Kettering said. “He can amble around or crop some grass, and I dipped him a bucket from the cistern out back. Now, we’re safe and warm, and he is, too. What shall we do with this boon?”

  “Boon?”

  “I told myself to be patient.” He stood and crossed to the braided rug before the hearth. “I told myself sooner or later, I’d catch you in the pond, or reading late at night, or in some situation where we’re guaranteed privacy.”

  “The rain should let up soon,” she said, a sense of unease rising at his words.

  “I can be very quick,” he went on, casually unfastening his falls. “When I want to make a point.”

  He stepped out of his damp breeches and hung them from a nail on the rafter nearest the fire. And that gesture, that simple reaching, without a stitch on, was so blatantly, masculinely beautiful, Jacaranda wanted to tell him to hold the pose so she might memorize it. His skin was darker above his waist, but the musculature of his arms, legs, belly, and back was all of a smooth, powerful, healthy male animal piece.

  Blessed angels, he was beautiful.

  He took the towel he’d been sitting on and wrapped it around his waist, and Jacaranda wanted to weep.

  “Like what you see, Wyeth? I like what I see, too.”

  “You will not come any closer,” she said, holding up a hand.

  He stopped in his tracks. “Suppose not. I’d like it much better were you the one to do the approaching.”

  “In God’s name why?” She couldn’t keep her eyes averted, much as common sense was screeching at her to do just that. When she looked, she wanted to touch, and if she touched, she’d want to be touched.

  “A fellow needs to know his attentions are welcome,” he said, subsiding onto the raised stone hearth. “What better sign of welcome than when a woman makes the overtures?”

  “I thought you understood I am not interested in your overtures.” With the last of her resolve, she turned her face so the brim of her bonnet took him from her sight, and that was…a mercy.

  “You’re interested in my overtures. You’re not interested in earning coin by returning them. I applaud your scruples. The alternative makes a great deal of sense to me upon sober reflection.”

  Sober reflection eluded Jacaranda where Worth Kettering was concerned. “A great deal of sense?”

  “I’m not without sense, Wyeth, but I am without clothes. Why don’t you come investigate the bargain I’m offering?”

  “What bargain?”

  She was reduced to inane questions, in part because he’d chosen that moment to cross the room and crack a window, the better to help the fire in the hearth catch. The Italian masters hadn’t sculpted a man as breathtaking as Worth Kettering. He was a mature David, he was Vulcan, he was the exponent of all that was attractive and dangerous in a healthy adult male.

  And he was nigh naked in a secluded cottage with her.

  “That should draw better,” he said. “I’d suggest getting you out of your wet things, but then you’ll stay in them until lung fever carries you off. I’m not sure what motivated you to keep your bonnet on indoors, though.”

  She resumed tugging at the infernal bonnet, but the ribbons were damp, which made working the knot difficult. “I’m not as wet as you. You were out in the rain longer.”

  “If you need help with your bonnet, I am happy to oblige
.” He bounced down onto the bed, and the creaking of the ropes had Jacaranda’s insides bouncing as well. “You brought a brush in your reticule, didn’t you?”

  “Comb. I can see to myself.” Though when she removed her bonnet, she would look a fright.

  He flopped back on the mattress so his legs hung over the side of the bed, and his words were addressed to the rafters.

  “I may not have moved in quite the highest circles, but I am gentleman enough that you must know I wouldn’t force you. Let me get rid of that bonnet for you, Wyeth. You fancy it, and it’s fetching, in a rural sort of way. At the rate you’re going, you will soon be bald and the bonnet fit only for consumption by William the Famous Draft Sow.”

  He wouldn’t force her. Jacaranda could be stark naked and the only woman left on earth, and he wouldn’t ever force her. That realization settled her down enough that she gave up ruining her bonnet and her coiffure.

  “Come here, closer to the fire.” He sat up and patted the bed beside him, hiking a knee onto the mattress.

  “How can you be so casual about being nearly…about being undressed like that?” She lowered herself to the mattress as if it were not up to her weight, as if it might start moving without notice.

  He shifted, and the bed bounced. “I can strut about as God made me because I am a man in the presence of a female who likes the look of me unclothed. Then too, my clothes are wet, and wet clothes don’t flatter much of anybody. Damned uncomfortable, too, and in the most inconvenient locations. How many pins do you use, for pity’s sake?”

  “My hair is thick and takes a lot of pins.”

  But not so many that his deft fingers couldn’t work under the brim of the bonnet to withdraw the offending pins that snared the bonnet onto her head. He set the pins on the bedside table, lifted the bonnet away, and her hair went tumbling down her back in a single thick braid.

  “You have the knack of smelling luscious, Wyeth.” He buried his nose in a handful of her hair. “Diabolical of you.”