“Oh, he’s here! He’s here!”
Phillipa jumped at Livi’s pronouncement. Clearly she was even more unsettled than she’d realized. She set herself to inching chairs this way and that, making certain they formed a perfect half circle. Of course she’d been offended by his conversation. He’d said he wanted her, and after less than a week of acquaintance. Gentlemen did not say such things.
“Good evening, Sir Bennett!”
“How pleasant to see you!”
“What is the monkey’s name again?”
After the first few greetings, however, an odd silence swept across the room. Phillipa frowned, hoping he wasn’t staring at her or something. She concentrated on breathing, and on rehearsing her cordial, indifferent greeting when she happened to turn around and see him. Then a hand touched her shoulder, and she froze.
“Good evening, Lady Phillipa.”
She found herself facing a large bouquet of red roses. A very large bouquet. Of very red roses. For an odd moment she stared at them. No one in the entire world had ever given her flowers before. And certainly not red roses.
She finally lifted her gaze from the posies to look at the lean, dark-haired man holding them out to her. From his expression she couldn’t tell whether he was nearer amusement or annoyance, but his jungle-colored eyes were very, very intense.
“What are these for?” she asked, her voice quaking a little as she realized that absolutely everyone in the room, including her parents, was staring at her.
“To apologize for any affront I may have given you,” he said quietly, and tilted his head. “And to woo you,” he continued in a more carrying tone. “It was suggested that steps should be taken, and flowers presented.”
“Woo…me?” Phillipa squeaked.
Bennett nodded, the slightest hint of a grin touching his mouth. “Woo you.”
Everything went fuzzy and very loud and figures swarmed in her direction. The last thing she saw was the flowers hitting the floor as Bennett stepped in to catch her. That was a shame; they were very pretty flowers.
Good God, he’d killed her. Bennett swept Phillipa into his arms, then caught sight of her sister rushing forward. “Somewhere quiet,” he barked.
“This way. Oh, dear. This way.” Olivia hurried for the drawing room door, Bennett on her heels. Behind him he could hear muttering and jabbering and, closer by, the angrier voices of her father and mother.
Kero leaned out a hand and patted Phillipa on the cheek, much as she did when she was concerned over him. It was so damned odd, the way the monkey had taken to the chestnut-haired chit. When they reached the small sitting room he strode over to the sofa and carefully lowered Phillipa onto the cushions.
As he reluctantly let her go and backed away a step, Phillipa’s mother slapped him. “How dare you?”
“Move away from my daughter, you blackguard,” the marquis snarled, pushing forward.
Bennett straightened to his full height, using that advantage to look down at Phillipa’s father. “I just expressed my intention to court your daughter.” He glanced at her supine form again. “With the idea of marriage, if that wasn’t clear enough. How, precisely, does that make me a blackguard?”
“Hush,” the marchioness snapped. “Get out of this room, Captain. Family only.”
Narrowing his eyes, Bennett hesitated long enough to let them understand that they never would have been able to force him out if he hadn’t acquiesced to it. Then he nodded and retreated into the hallway.
Someone shoved him against the wall. Kero fled, yapping like a dog, onto the nearest wall sconce. “You stupid man,” Jack’s low voice came. “What the devil are you about? You should be locked in a damned cage.”
Bennett shoved back, sending Jack staggering a few feet. “Stop pushing,” he growled. “And enough with the damned insults.”
“I know everything’s become life or death and galloping into gunfire with you, but you can’t go about circumventing rules and propriety like that. And you can’t toy with people. Especially not Flip.”
“I’m not—What do you mean, ‘especially not Flip’?” Bennett narrowed his eyes. From everything Jack had said, his interest was completely focused on the other sister. If not, they were going to have a disagreement. A large one.
“I mean, she’s…odd. You’ve conversed with her; you know. She’s brilliant, but she has no prospects. Everyone’s waiting for Livi to make her choice, and then it’s just expected that one of the men left behind will offer for Flip. Make a fool out of her, and she’ll end up a spinster.”
No one seemed to be able to comprehend that he’d been serious. He’d brought flowers because she required them, and he required her. The end. “I brought bloody flowers and I stated my intentions. The rest is between Phillipa and me.”
“It’s one thing to be unconventional, Bennett. And I know you were practically raised by wolves. But you’re no virgin. You know the proper way to do this.” Jack glanced down the hallway toward the noisy drawing room. “Don’t you?”
“What do you want me to say?” Bennett hissed back. “I’ve had women on more continents than you can name. I know how to get a woman into my bed. I’ve never had any other use for one.” Until now. Whatever he wanted from Phillipa, it didn’t end or begin in the bedchamber.
“If your intention is to get Flip into your bed, you’re going to have to go through me, my friend. I won’t see her hurt, or ruined. Is that clear?”
His first instinct was to smash Jack in the face and tell him that no one stood between him and what he wanted. Bennett clenched his fist, then eased his fingers open again. He’d seen them conversing. Jack and Phillipa were friends. More than likely Jack was one of the few friends she had. He might not know exactly what he wanted, but he did know that he had no intention of hurting her. “You’re a brave man, Jack. But give me some bloody credit.”
So attempting to do the correct thing to get Phillipa still got him slapped and shoved and threatened. At the moment he couldn’t decide whether he’d been away from London for too long, or for not long enough. Walking out the door and returning to Howard House seemed the wisest response to all this nonsense, but he seemed to be the raison d’être for the dinner, and angering the sister further wouldn’t help him gain Phillipa.
He cursed, pacing back and forth along the hallway. How was he supposed to know that the heretofore practical, logical Phillipa Eddison would faint when he handed her a fistful of posies? It concerned him—not only because she’d fainted in his arms, but because of what others had said. That she was timid, that she lived through her books and wasn’t interested in or capable of actual adventure. If that was true, they would never suit.
Her reaction to the flowers supported that, and yet…It had been only a handful of damned days. How had he become so smitten with her so quickly? She’d dashed through every preconceived notion he’d ever had without even slowing down.
“She wants to see you,” Lady Olivia stated from the doorway of the sitting room.
Christ. They made it sound as though he’d sent her to her deathbed or something. He was the one who’d had a spear rammed through his gut. She’d received flowers. Through his deep annoyance, though, he was relieved. Relieved that she was well, and relieved that she still wanted to see him. With a last, hostile glare at Jack, he returned to the sitting room.
To his relief she was sitting up, a glass of water in one hand. Her parents stood nearby, their expressions closed. They might as well have been rooted to the floor, because clearly they weren’t going anywhere.
“I’m alive,” she said helpfully, offering what was likely supposed to be a smile. Her face still looked pale, which alarmed him.
“Someone told me that flowers would be an acceptable way to approach a chit I like,” he stated, stopping a few feet short of her. “Which is something that I already knew, but hadn’t thought of until he mentioned it.”
“My parents think you’re lonely and misguided,” she noted.
&
nbsp; He glanced over his shoulder at them. “Perhaps your parents could give us a private moment to spare anyone any further upset.”
“You should be embarrassed, Captain, flinging a courtship at my daughter like that.” The marchioness crossed her arms over her chest.
“Mama, please give us a moment. Nothing will happen; everyone knows he’s in here.”
After another moment of glaring, Lady Leeds nodded. “Five minutes.” She stomped out of the room, the marquis on her heels.
Bennett waited until they quietly shut the door behind them. “I’m supposed to be embarrassed for being interested in you?” he asked.
She looked at him, taking a sip of water as she did so. “You told me this morning what part of me interested you. I found that insulting.”
“So you said,” he returned, clenching his jaw. “Hence the flowers.”
“You weren’t raised in the jungle, Bennett. Don’t you know what red roses mean?”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve spent more time out of England than in it, and my mother died before she could give me any posy lessons. Red roses. Red for passion, and roses because they’re fragrant.”
“They signify love. And ten thousand of them together signify—”
“Two dozen. Not ten thousand.”
“It looked like more than that when you flung them in my face.”
He stalked toward her, feeling his own expression darken. “I didn’t fling anything. I said I intended to woo you, and I attempted to hand them to you.”
She stood, the glass still gripped in her fingers—likely for self-defense. “I am confused,” she announced.
“Well, so am I.”
“I mean, what you said this morning was a private thing, between two people. Two dozen red roses given in front of two dozen dinner guests is not private. It says that your intentions are…honorable.”
“Then they must be honorable.” Beneath all the frustration, this conversation began to seem somewhat amusing. He’d been correct in calling her a conundrum, anyway.
“But you don’t even know me! How do you know you want to woo me? I don’t like the idea that I’m so simple and easily decipherable that after five days—your first five days back in London after three years—you could point at me and say, ‘Yes, I’ll take that one.’”
“That is not—”
“You might have said something first, regardless. I told you before, there are steps. You take me driving, you dance more than two dances with me, y—”
“I attempted to.”
“At more than one soiree,” she countered. “You tell me that my appearance is at least satisfactory, you call on me to sit and chat, you—”
“That’s all nonsense.”
Phillipa blinked, looking hurt. “Oh. I think, then, that you might consider giving those flowers to someone else.”
Bennett took another step forward, close enough to take the glass from her hand and set it aside. “Phillipa, I spent three years obsessed with one thing. And then I spent two months after that fighting every day to stay alive. And now I’m doing everything I can to arrange to captain another expedition. I don’t dawdle about with anything. In the places I’ve been, indecisiveness is deadly. And time is too precious to waste on sitting and chatting about nonsense or in telling pretty lies.”
“Then why—”
“Why should I bother with saying I find you—what did you say—satisfactory, when I find you mesmerizing? Why should I drive you in a circle around some park when I want to taste you and hold you naked in my arms?”
“Good heavens.” Paling once more, Phillipa reached out to steady herself against the back of the nearest chair. “You cannot flout the rules like that.”
For a long moment he gazed at her. “Your complaint, then, is not that you don’t want to be wooed or courted or seduced by me,” he said slowly, “but that I’m not doing it correctly.”
“Well, other than a general disbelief that an adventurer would find me mesmerizing, yes, I suppose it is.”
“Then I have two things to say. First,” and he reached down to take her hands and draw them up to his chest, “I do find you mesmerizing.”
He slid his own hands down her shoulders, then leaned in and covered her mouth with his. He felt her hesitation, then the softening of her mouth as she leaned into him. She sent his sensibilities swirling with just the uncertain grip of her fingers into his jacket; it was as though she worried that he had made a mistake in wanting her, that she feared he would change his mind and leave her standing there alone.
Bennett shifted to place kisses against the sensitive corner of her mouth. Then he swooped in again for another heated, openmouthed kiss. Finally he lifted his head an inch. “Are you going to faint again?”
“I should,” she returned unsteadily. “At least it would stop you from behaving in such a manner.”
He smiled. “You would think so, anyway.”
Phillipa chuckled a bit breathlessly against his mouth. “You are a rogue, sir.”
“Which brings me to my second statement. If you want me to follow your rules and behave like a proper gentleman, you’d best convince me just how I would be benefited.”
“Bennett.”
“Because at this moment I can’t help but think that kissing you is better than chatting about the weather.” And if he pulled her any closer, she would feel just how interested he was in continuing this particular debate.
The door rattled and opened again. “Your five minutes are—Flip, get your hands off that man!”
At least she seemed recovered enough that she could blush now. Belatedly she fisted her hands and shoved at his chest. Bennett lifted an eyebrow, but took a step back from her—because she wished it, not because of her parents.
The marquis and his wife looked as though they’d been arguing over which of them would renew their attack against him first. “What do you think you’re about, Captain?” Lord Leeds finally demanded.
Bennett returned his gaze to Phillipa. “I—”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Phillipa interrupted. “Apparently in Egypt red roses are a sign of esteem. Nothing more. “
“This is not Egypt,” the man retorted. “I suspect that Sir Bennett knows precisely the meaning of red roses. And the repercussions of presenting them to a young lady in public.”
“Not precisely,” Bennett countered, “but I assure you there was no misunderstanding. Not on my part. As I said, I mean to court Phillipa.”
Her father actually blustered. “You…you can’t simply say such things and expect them to be accepted,” he stammered, his face growing red. “You haven’t asked permission of her parents.”
Bennett shrugged. “I’m only concerned with Phillipa’s feelings in this matter.”
“You are uncivilized, sir,” the marchioness stated.
“So I’ve been told.”
“I will not have anything scandalous connected with our Flip. She is not prepared to face the censure of Society. And I believe you have your own reasons for not wanting to appear foolish to your peers.” The marquis took a breath. “We will therefore tell everyone this was indeed a misunderstanding.”
For a moment Bennett weighed whether the marquis knew something about Langley’s fraud, or whether he was speaking generally of the dents put in his reputation by the book. The latter made more sense, but it didn’t leave him any more inclined to agree. “It is not a misunderstanding, damn it all.”
“Tonight we will call the roses a…a jest,” Phillipa said, stepping up beside him and putting a hand on his arm, “because I had bragged to Bennett this morning over lawn bowls that nothing ever overset me. Livi’s friends will believe that.”
“And tomorrow?” Lord Leeds asked skeptically, his gaze on his daughter’s hand where it rested on Bennett’s arm.
“By tomorrow we will all have had time to consider developments,” she returned. “And if Bennett is serious about courting me, then he will call and take me driving.”
“Back to the party, then,” her mother said, her expression easing just a little. “Tell your tales, and make an attempt not to embarrass Olivia in front of her friends.”
The family walked for the door. Reaching out, Bennett grasped Phillipa’s hand, stopping her. He leaned over her shoulder to whisper in her ear. “After the way you kissed me back tonight, you’d best not call this a misunderstanding tomorrow. Especially if you’re forcing me to take you driving.”
Through his hand he felt her shiver. “If my parents will let me see you again, I believe I have some lessons in propriety and the rules of courtship to deliver.”
His hand grazed her hip as she slipped through the door. “I have a few things in mind to teach you as well, Phillipa.”
Chapter Ten
When a girl of the T’ngula tribe comes of age, she stands inside a circle of tribesmen who all spit date palm seeds at her, with the idea of ensuring her fertility. While I see the symbolism, in practice the spitting is done so enthusiastically that the poor girl ends up stained and bruised from head to toe and in no mood to marry anyone. Perhaps a gift of a sack of seeds might be more practical, but who am I to counter tradition?
THE JOURNALS OF CAPTAIN BENNETT WOLFE
Hayling, I’m not asking much,” Bennett said, attempting to keep his voice pleasant and even. “Just hold the apple slice in your fingers, and she’ll take it with her fingers.”
“She will bite me,” the Howard House butler returned faintly, his hands still firmly clasped behind his back.
“Kero won’t bite you if she doesn’t think you’ll bite her.”
“I won’t bite her.”
Bennett took a breath. Damnation, it wasn’t as though he was attempting to be rid of the monkey. All he needed was someone to look after her for an hour or so. Wooing Phillipa would be difficult enough as it was; with Kero hooting and jumping about, he’d never get close enough to kiss the chit again.
The Care and Taming of a Rogue Page 12