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

  “You gave her—?”

  “Grandmamma did, too, and some jewels.” Hess’s gaze swung right back to the window. “Now let’s rescue our luncheon from that ant heap.”

  Worth let him stride off, confident the ant heap would be vanquished. He was unable to do more than stare out the same window and watch as the other members of his family assembled for their meal.

  Even Hess, notably cautious with his coin, had abetted Moira’s dreams.

  Jacaranda appeared at his side, a comforting presence he’d sorely missed while dealing with his brother.

  “Get out there, Worth. They won’t wait for you, and you won’t get even a single chicken leg between now and tea.”

  Nor did he want a chicken leg.

  He slipped an arm around her waist and whispered, “Come join us.” He needed her near, now more than usually, given what his brother had told him.

  She moved away to crack open the window and allow an eddy of rose-scented air into the corridor.

  “This is your first meal as a family. You should be a family, not a family plus a housekeeper. Don’t worry about Yolanda.”

  “The girl is plotting to overthrow the government as she knows it,” Worth countered. “If I were Hess, I wouldn’t turn my back on her.”

  “The worst that can happen is she has to go north at Michaelmas. She’ll put up with one more winter at Grampion knowing you’ll make her welcome next year, and once she’s eighteen, Hess will have no reason to keep her up north. The better crop of bachelors always lurks near Town, and your brother can let her come south feeling like he’s done his duty.”

  Hess gestured to a patch of grass in the sun, and Yolanda folded her arms. The blankets remained spread in the shade.

  “Duty is Hess’s middle name, and if you watch him, you’ll realize he isn’t arrogant so much as shy. He and Lannie have more in common than they think.”

  “She liked that, that you gave her a nickname, but Worth, you are the shy one now. Go have a meal with your family.”

  Worth. He was becoming Worth to her.

  Out on the shady blankets, Hess pulled off his boots, Avery chattered away in at least two languages, while Yolanda arranged her skirts just so.

  “You’ll be fine.” Jacaranda looked around, then went up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “You can tell me all about your ordeal later.”

  “Do you promise? My ordeal is likely to be harrowing in the extreme. Arachnids are quite the menace.”

  “Cook made chocolate crème cakes to ameliorate your suffering, but Hess won’t leave you any sweets if you continue to hide here. Bide here, I mean.”

  “Nattering little besom.” He kissed her cheek and headed down the steps, fortified by those few hints of understanding from her. It shouldn’t be so. He was a grown man, wealthy, thriving in all the ways that counted, and he wasn’t even really her lover. Barely her friend, in fact.

  But it was so.

  * * *

  “Confound it, woman, budge over.”

  Jacaranda tugged the covers more tightly around herself. “Go away.”

  “I will do no such thing.” Worth’s weight dipped the mattress. “What in blazes are you doing with a brick in your sheets at the height of summer? You’ll take a brick to your bosom but not my handsome self?”

  “What time is it?”

  He bounced and tugged and wiggled his long frame around until the last vestiges of sleep fled Jacaranda’s mind.

  “Past midnight,” Worth said, sounding infernally comfy. “Hess was of a mind to get back his own over the cards. I am traumatized and exhausted by my day, also relieved of two pounds six.”

  “Why not seek your own bed, and then we’ll both get some rest?”

  Her brick, wrapped in several layers of flannel, made a solid thunk when Worth set it on the floor.

  “You said I could tell you all about lunch,” he reminded her. “When, pray, might I do that, when you dodged the evening meal with some taradiddle about a tray in your room? You evade me at every turn, so I’ve tracked you to your lair.”

  He lined his chest up along her back, and his arm came around her waist.

  “Worth, begone. I mean it.”

  “You’re denying me my audience?” His lips held a little audience along the top of her shoulder, and his hand gently pushed the strap of her nightgown aside. Under the cozy warmth of the covers, Jacaranda felt a shiver, a thrill along the path his fingers traced.

  She was a good ten years too old to admit to thrills of any kind.

  “Now is not the time,” she tried again, but her voice lacked conviction, and his bodily warmth offered luscious comfort.

  “Now is the only time. Yolanda addressed not one sentence to Hess directly at the noon meal, which made for a lovely verbal game of battledore, I can tell you. Hess’s French is in good repair, but I fear his Italian is in worse shape than my own. My dear, you must relax.”

  “How can I relax when my bed has been invaded by the realm’s largest magpie?”

  “I’m visiting, not invading. You let bricks visit you and probably house cats.”

  His tone was playfully chiding, but beneath the banter lurked a question, too. If she insisted, he’d go, and he’d likely not come back until she invited him—if she invited him.

  “Do I gather the brick was in the way of a hot water bottle?” he asked. “You toasted it up and brought it here to soothe a female ache?”

  “You are too big for me to physically remove from this bed, but are you also too rude to comprehend the indelicacy of the topic you raise?”

  He shifted to crouch over her beneath the covers, confirming Jacaranda’s suspicion—her hope?—that he was naked. “I guessed correctly. The female complaint makes you cranky and out of sorts. I suspected this was the case.”

  Under him, Jacaranda rolled to her back, glad they had only moonlight to illuminate this exchange.

  “I have a headache, one that makes my eyes hurt and my neck sore. Now that you know I’m indisposed, will you take yourself off?”

  “Settle your feathers, dear heart.” He kissed her forehead, an odd gesture that eased aches in various parts of Jacaranda’s body and heart. “I haven’t come to importune you, not that I won’t at some point. See here.” He found one of her hands and brought it to his—his member. “Hardly a prurient thought in my body, at the moment. I truly did want to talk.”

  He wasn’t exactly flaccid, but he wasn’t rampant, either.

  “What did you want to talk about?” Jacaranda removed her hand two instants after she realized he’d removed his.

  Worth hung over her, so she had to smooth back his hair with her fingers lest it obscure his eyes.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said, climbing off of her and rolling to his back. He grabbed her hand again and kissed her knuckles. “Having Hess underfoot is disquieting.”

  “Family is always a challenge, which is part of the reason I’ve resisted orders from my siblings to return home until recently. In what way is his lordship disquieting?”

  She didn’t truly want to chase her visitor away, and she had told him they would talk, so she rolled up against his side and let her head fall to his shoulder. Maybe they could even talk about her upcoming return to Dorset.

  “I blush to admit it,” he began, his arm encircling her, “but I’ve treasured a sense of injury regarding the way I left Grampion all those years ago, and while I blamed my father, Hess had the last clear chance to thwart Papa’s machinations.”

  “How old would he have been?” She set aside the question of what the young lady had been about—the young lady who’d had an understanding with Worth Kettering but had fallen out love with him “posthaste,” to use his word. Jacaranda had reason to know no gently bred Englishwoman could be married against her will, thank God.

  “Hess was all of twenty. No Town bronze, no tour of the Continent. He might have gone grouse hunting up in Scotland a time or two, but he was a stripling more than a man.”

&
nbsp; “You’re having trouble clinging to your anger?”

  He kissed her temple and spoke against her hair. “Worse than that. I feel sorry for him.”

  Oh, that was much worse. Jacaranda felt sorry for Step-Mama, whose situation was far from difficult. “Sorry, how?”

  She aspired to feel sorry for Daisy, some distant day.

  Worth snuggled her closer, and something tense and tired inside Jacaranda eased up, gave up. To be held, to have Worth’s warmth and scent all around her in the dark, was lovely. Better than lovely, wonderful in fact, to cuddle up and chat in the depth of the night.

  “Hess is so alone up there,” Worth said, stroking Jacaranda’s hair in an absent-minded caress. “I may not have bosom bows twelve deep, but I like my clients. Some of them could be friends. I like my staff, I like the neighbors you’ve introduced me to here. I have Avery, I have you, I have people moving about in my life. Hess has his stables and nobody to share them with. No wonder he missed Yolanda and wants to take her home with him.”

  I have you. As flummoxed as Jacaranda was by his casual claim, she did not allow herself to tarry over it.

  “You have me for now, as a housekeeper, but we need to discuss that. Will you allow Hess to retrieve Yolanda?”

  Worth heaved a mighty sigh, and this time he kissed her ear. “Hess is Yolanda’s guardian. I can’t stop him, but in his mind, I think he regards such an arrangement as fair somehow: I have Avery; therefore, he should get Lannie.”

  “Why can’t you all have each other?” Jacaranda posed the question rhetorically, because her mind would not let go of those earlier words… I have you.

  “We haven’t the knack, my dear. Does your neck still trouble you?”

  Not as much as her heart.

  “That was not a gracious change of subject, Mr. Kettering, but because you won’t desist and it’s too dark for my blushes to affect you, yes, my head aches. I suspect the blooming flowers affect me badly.”

  “Poor lady. You’re reduced to Mr. Kettering-ing me. On your side, and let’s see if I can’t help out.”

  Her complicity in this scheme was irrelevant, because he gently maneuvered her into the position of his liking, while he angled himself behind her.

  “Close your eyes, my dear,” he instructed, “and tell me more about your cottage. You had a name for it.”

  “Complaisance Cottage,” she said, surprised he’d recall. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Relax, love.” Lips brushed her nape. “My hand is warmer than that brick. You might as well put it to use.” He put his hand to use, massaging her neck, a firm combination of stroking and squeezing that…

  She groaned with the relief of it, and he had the good grace not to gloat aloud.

  “What do your back gardens look like, Jacaranda, or does this cottage nestle against a wood?”

  She explained how the cottage was situated, how informal plots rioting with flowers ringed the pitch of grass, and the stately old dowager oaks stood at the edge of the home wood as a backdrop. She told him about the sea birds who nipped up any scraps or crusts that fell—or were tossed—from a tea tray taken on the terrace, and about the particular scent of the breeze, depending on whether it was a sea breeze, a land breeze, or some brewing combination of both.

  “You long for it,” he said, his voice low and lazy in the moonlight.

  “I ache with missing it,” she replied, because it was dark, and that was the honesty she could give him. “Don’t you miss Grampion?”

  “The sentiments ebb and flow.” His hand moved slowly over her shoulders now, the same way his words threaded through the darkness. “When the first snow falls here and it’s so much later and less hearty than the first snows in the north, I miss Grampion. When the crocuses march forth, no hesitance or backsliding in their arrival, as if spring is a foregone conclusion, I miss Grampion. When the summer weather gets truly hot and miserable, I miss it. Not so much at other times.”

  Which left…? “You don’t miss it in spring?” For she missed Dorset in spring.

  “Spring in London is a busy time. I receive the courtesy invitations. I’m nominally heir to an earldom, single, and worth a fortune. I accept occasionally, particularly if it’s a client doing the inviting.”

  “When you’re twirling some lady down the ballroom, you don’t miss your home?”

  “Hush.” He twisted up and over her for a leisurely kiss to her mouth, a kiss that involved

  his tongue flirting with her lips, teasing and implying and promising even as he soothed and reassured. “I miss my home. Are you satisfied to have wrung this confession from me? I miss my home almost as much as you miss yours.”

  “I do miss my home, and my family. I’ve missed them for years, and that’s why after all this time—”

  He must have sensed that her words would be unwelcome, because he kissed her again, thoroughly, lingeringly.

  Jacaranda subsided to her back, all thoughts of disclosures and partings tossed out of the bed like so many more cold bricks.

  She kissed Worth back, cuddled with him, and conversed for another few minutes, but in truth Worth’s hand, or his company, or something about his visit had relaxed more than Jacaranda’s body. As she drifted off, Worth spooned around her and her discomforts considerably eased, she had the traitorous thought that it was fortunate she was returning to Dorset, for she could grow accustomed to his nocturnal company.

  Sheer folly, that, but what wonderful, pleasurable folly.

  * * *

  “Do you miss having a wife?” Worth put the question to his brother as they rode out, no grooms, no steward to hinder their privacy. Thanks to Jacaranda’s carping, Worth knew how to get around on his own land, knew which bridle path led to what lane and which fields had the best footing before their stiles.

  “I do not miss the wife I had,” Hess said. “I’m sorry if that offends.”

  Worth shortened his snaffle reins. “You might offend the lady’s memory, but your words can’t offend me.”

  “Why haven’t you married?”

  Hess might be shy, he did not lack courage.

  “I’ve wondered that myself lately.” Worth settled his weight into the stirrups. “Shall we let them stretch their legs a bit?”

  They raced the entire three miles remaining to Least Wapping. Hess was at a slight disadvantage because he didn’t know the terrain, but Worth had put his brother up on a former steeplechaser and Hess was an excellent rider.

  Hess thwacked his horse’s neck when they trotted into the yard of the posting inn. “What a prime fellow. Don’t tell me he’s for sale. I’ve no need of another gelding and Alfred’s feelings would be hurt. This one has tons of bottom, tons of it.”

  “You truly love it, don’t you? The cross-country romp that would frighten the hair off most people?” Worth swung down and handed Goliath off to a stable boy to cool out. “I haven’t let Goliath have his head like that for months, but he enjoyed it.”

  “They weren’t put on earth to pace their stalls, looking handsome and bored.” In the hint of wistfulness in Hess’s voice, Worth gathered an insight into his brother.

  “Autumn will soon approach. Why not linger here for some of the informal meets and then stay to attend the lords?”

  Hess’s features composed themselves into a bland mask. “What of the harvest at Grampion? Is the corn to bring itself in off the fields?”

  Why can’t you all have each other?

  Jacaranda’s words echoed in Worth’s mind, and he let the subject drop, but in the part of his brain that couldn’t resist a complex negotiation, he began to plot and plan and strategize.

  “Let’s grab a pint,” Worth suggested. “The horses can catch their wind before they tackle the five-mile jaunt back to Trysting, and you haven’t told me of the staff at Grampion. Is Homer Gentry still your land steward, and does his wife still make those butter biscuits that melt away all of a small boy’s troubles?”

  “And leave him with a bellya
che into next Tuesday,” Hess finished the thought.

  To Worth’s surprise, Hess allowed himself to be interrogated about each and every person Worth recalled from his boyhood.

  Two and a half pints later, Worth mentally conceded it had more likely been a matter of Worth allowing himself to ask.

  * * *

  “What is Francine up to?” Grey hated having to ask his brother, but her ladyship’s correspondence had reached flood stage.

  Will tossed a stick dutifully dropped at his feet by a brindle mastiff larger than some of the ponies used in the mines.

  “I am not in Step-Mama’s confidence, Grey, for which I give daily thanks to my Creator. I did see her casting spells over the teapot with Mrs. Dankle.”

  The dog waited at Will’s feet, adoring gaze turned on its owner. When Will gave some signal visible only to the beast, it bounded off across the green between the gardens and the home wood.

  “Francine is ever imposing on Dankle’s good nature,” Grey said. “You need Ash to invent you a machine for pitching sticks into the next county, lest you tire your arm.”

  The dog was back in a half-dozen happy, ear-flapping bounds, the stick deposited at Will’s feet as the hound dropped to its haunches.

  “Step-Mama wants to spend the rest of the summer in Bath,” Will said, petting the dog’s great head. “If not Bath, then Lyme Regis. The older set likes to congregate where they have fond memories and to leave the house parties to us.”

  Where were Will’s fond memories? He was a handsome fellow in the tall, dark-haired, violet-eyed cast of his siblings and had read law with the same ease some people read the Society pages of the London Gazette.

  “I cannot afford to send Francine to Bath, and I’ve told her as much on several occasions.” Painful occasions, for them both.

  “I know that. Good boy, George.”

  “You name the largest dog in the realm after our sovereign?”

  “I named the largest bitch in the realm after our sovereign. Her full name is Georgette. You should ask Daisy what her dear mama is up to. If Francine burdens anybody with her schemes, it’s her own daughter.”