The Care and Taming of a Rogue

by Suzanne Enoch

  “A leather bag?”

  Bennett lifted an eyebrow. “I suppose you may have the bag, but I thought you’d be more interested in what’s inside it. Shall we?” He gestured to the pleasant-looking grassy bank beneath the scattered shade of the surrounding oak trees. Together with the gentle burble of the stream beside it, the setting was desperately romantic.

  Phillipa clasped her hands behind her back. “Are you attempting to seduce me?”

  “I told you that I was.” He sat on a fallen trunk, and gestured for her to join him there. It seemed far too close to him, given the way her heart was pounding, but for heaven’s sake. He wasn’t a lion. He wasn’t going to eat her.

  “Well, it’s very pretty here. I’ll grant you that.”

  “You know, the last time I sat this close to a riverbank, a crocodile tried to eat Langley. A shame I stopped it, now that I consider it.”

  “You shouldn’t talk that way, Bennett. And you know that in the book it’s he who saves you.” She seated herself.

  “Yes, I recall.” Bennett shifted a breath closer to her before he set the satchel on his lap and opened the flap. “One of the friendlier tribes traded this to me for a mirror,” he said, pulling out a small wooden carving and holding it out to her. “What do you make of it?”

  She held out her hand, and he put it into her fingers. The squat figure was approximately the size of an ostrich egg, though the thick-looking fur, flat nose, and menacing teeth little resembled any kind of bird she’d ever seen. “It looks a bit like a chimpanzee,” she offered, “but not quite.”

  “I thought the same thing. My housekeeper wrote me a rather nasty note about me terrorizing her after I had her open the crate and send it here to me.”

  “Well, I’m not surprised. It’s rather frightening.” She turned it this way and that. “You never came across any animal that looked like this?”

  Bennett shook his head, one dusky lock of hair falling across his eyes. “Nothing even close. Baboons were the largest monkey in the area.”

  “Perhaps it’s a mythological creature.”

  Frowning thoughtfully, he ran his finger along its spine, as though petting it. “About twenty-three hundred years ago,” he said, examining the creature’s flat, wide face, “the Carthaginian explorer Hanno wrote that he came across some very large, very hairy individuals on the West African coast. He called them ‘gorillae.’ This could be a rendering of one of them, I suppose.” He flashed her a grin. “Or it could be the result of an artist drinking too much fermented berry juice, and is actually a carving of his wife.”

  “Mm hm.”

  “At any rate, I thought it was interesting, and I thought you might find it the same. So there you are.”

  She looked up at him. “You’re truly giving it to me?”

  “I can’t think of any other female who would wish to touch it, much less be interested in its origins.”

  Phillipa smiled, closing her hands around it. There might be nothing else like it in the world, and he’d given it to her. “Thank you, Bennett. It’s remarkable.”

  “Remarkable and frightening.” With another short smile that sent her heart into dizzy loops, he reached into the satchel again. “And something a bit prettier, I think.”

  He held a necklace in his hand. It couldn’t be anything else, with brightly painted wooden beads and shells interspersed with what looked like a trio of large claws. “I got this after a challenge where I had to knock the tribe’s chief warrior out of a dirt circle using nothing but a large stick. Which may not seem like much, but those damned things sting against bare skin.”

  “Your skin was bare?” she asked, deciding at the same moment that Livi never would have asked that question.

  “From head to toe. Part of the challenge.” He looked down at it. “The claws belong to a leopard, apparently killed by this warrior using the same kind of stick. I actually think a spear might have been involved, but he wouldn’t admit to it. Hence the fight in the dirt circle.”

  “You argued with a warrior over how he killed a leopard.”

  Bennett shrugged. “I killed a leopard, too, you know. Only I used a Baker rifle.” He held the necklace out to her. “It’s supposed to be protection against evil spirits. And it’s one of the prettiest pieces I’ve ever seen.”

  She began to reach for it. She wanted it, not just because it was primitive and beautiful, but because he wanted her to have it. Phillipa set the carving aside and folded her hands in her lap. “You can’t give me jewelry.”

  “It seems that I can.”

  “There are two reasons why you can’t.”

  He sighed. “I can hardly wait. Enlighten me.”

  “First, you’re simply not thinking clearly. And when you do realize where a more advantageous match lies for someone in your position, you’ll want these things back. I don’t want to be embarrassed, and I don’t want my heart broken.”

  “I’m not here to break your heart, Phillipa.” He set the necklace down across his knee, freeing his hand. He ran a finger along her cheek, making her shiver. “Though I am somewhat relieved that your heart is involved. Continue.”

  Phillipa shook herself. After his touch, she’d nearly forgotten what she’d been saying. “Second, jewelry is too…personal a gift. There are r—”

  “There are rules,” he interrupted, scowling. Before she could move, he had both her hands in his, their faces inches apart. “Don’t put me off, Phillipa. I’ve given you my one warning; I am after you. If you wish me to proceed your way, I will. To a point. But if you continue throwing up that damned—blasted—‘you can’t do that’ protest and still look at me with that same…passion in your eyes, I will put you back in that phaeton and not stop driving until we reach Gretna Green. Is that clear?”

  She swallowed, her breath coming fast and shallow. Every muscle longed to tilt her face up just a little so their lips would touch. He was too direct, too confident, to fit in with his Mayfair peers. And that made him very appealing to her, whatever she might tell both him and herself.

  “Do it, Phillipa,” he whispered. “Kiss me.”

  Though she had the distinct feeling that she would regret it for the remainder of her life, she held where she was. “I won’t tell you what you can’t do,” she murmured back at him, her voice shaking, “but I will tell you what you should be doing. If you mean to…do this correctly. If you’re serious about…wooing me.”

  “Don’t say that,” he returned in the same intimate tone. “It sounds silly.”

  Phillipa cleared her throat at the soft, compelling sibilance. “Bennett.”

  “I’ve been alone for a very long time, Phillipa, and I mean to marry you. That is how serious I am.”

  She pulled away from him while she still had an ounce of sense left to her. “A woman likes to be pursued,” she began, realizing at that moment how very little she knew about the topic in which she’d decided to instruct him, “but not literally.”

  “No chasing you down the street,” he agreed, a slow smile pulling at his sensuous mouth.

  “Correct. Poetry, picnics, dances, drives—things that can be shared, but aren’t gifts. Then flowers, and then more intimate gifts like jewelry.”

  “You fainted when I brought you flowers.”

  “Not two dozen red roses, for heaven’s sake. Up until that moment, you’d called me a conundrum and made some comment about chasing me. Then just like that, red roses.”

  “What is the least threatening flower, then?”

  Phillipa scowled. “You’re teasing me.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “I said I would go along with the rules to a point. And nice as it was to carry you in my arms, I’d prefer that my future actions not cause you to faint.”

  Apparently he meant to rush through the non gift-giving portion of the courtship. If he was truly serious, she actually didn’t mind all that much. “Daisies, then,” she decided. “White or yellow.”

  “Daisies,” he repeated, reaching over to t
uck a strand of her hair behind her ear.

  As she shivered, he leaned in, replacing his fingers with his lips, brushing lightly along her temple. She kept still. If she protested, he would stop. If she continued to push him away, he might stop looking for other ways to pursue her, and then she truly would have accomplished the stupidest action in the history of stupid actions. If they didn’t suit, it should be because they’d found they weren’t compatible, and not because she was foolish.

  “I’m something of a hunter, you know,” he murmured, his breath skimming warmly along her cheek. “You trying to run only makes me want you more.”

  “I’m not trying to be coy,” she managed, her eyes closing at his touch. “I’m trying not to be ruined.”

  “I know that.” With a sigh of his own he backed away, placing the necklace back into the satchel. “You’ll get this later, then. Will the carving suffice as an object of intellectual curiosity?”

  She smiled. “Yes. I shall keep the carving.”

  “Good.”

  Because now she wanted to kiss him again, Phil lipa stood and wandered over to the edge of the water. “Did you bring luncheon?” she asked over her shoulder.

  He walked over beside her. “I have peanuts, an apple, and a peach,” he said, patting various pockets. “I didn’t actually think of luncheon.”

  “Well, if Kero will share, I’m satisfied with the repast.”

  His fingers touched hers, twining with them. “I’m not satisfied yet,” he returned quietly, “but this is a very good start.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Today Langley asked me about the danger of lions. This isn’t the first time his lack of experience has troubled me. I finally answered that one always looks out for the large predators, though lions aren’t well-known jungle dwellers. Of more danger are the small ones that no one sees: the spiders and snakes and crawling things that are invisible until the moment their fangs pierce the skin. And then, of course, it’s too late.

  THE JOURNALS OF CAPTAIN BENNETT WOLFE

  Bennett walked back into Howard House, favoring Hayling with a short nod as the butler opened and shut the door for him, then offered him a tray full of invitations. “All for me?” he asked.

  “All addressed to you,” the butler returned, extending his arm as far as he could while keeping his body well back from Kero’s apparently terrifying and intimidating person.

  “I thought I was being viewed cautiously,” Bennett muttered to himself, taking the stack of cards and parchment and heading upstairs to his borrowed bedchamber.

  Apparently it was as Phillipa claimed, and his yearly stipend from the Crown made him more acceptable than Langley’s book damned him. Still, he needed to choose the events he attended with care; an appearance at the wrong soiree could send him sliding back to infamy. He’d have to pay a call on Jack for a bit of guidance. And in more than one field, since he seemed to be even more uncivilized than he’d believed.

  As he topped the stairs, he dug his fingers into his right side just above his hip. The spear wound was fairly well healed by now, but driving a carriage and pulling on the leads of a spirited animal used muscles that he’d been fairly careful with previously.

  With a concerned chitter, Kero patted his cheek. Bennett reached up and scratched her between the ears. “Don’t worry,” he muttered at her. “Nothing broke loose, so the exercise is likely good for me.”

  “Cousin.”

  For a moment Bennett though he’d imagined the nearly inaudible whisper, until the sound repeated. He turned his head to spy the figure lurking behind a hall table. “Good afternoon, Geoffrey.”

  “Shh.” Backing away, the ten-year-old gestured for Bennett to follow him along the hallway back toward the house’s west wing, where the family’s bedchambers lay.

  With a glance about to make certain the disapproving Fennington wasn’t somewhere waiting to club him over the head, Bennett followed his cousin into what was clearly the lad’s bedchamber. Lead soldiers, wooden swords and muskets and pistols, even what looked like a genuine American Indian bow and sheaf of arrows, littered the walls and floor and shelves.

  Books, jars of rocks and glass marbles and seashells—he’d had much the same collection himself at nearly the same age. Shortly after that, however, his worldly belongings had been pared down to what he could tote from school to school in one battered trunk.

  The boy closed the door once they were both inside. “I wanted to speak with you,” he said in a low, conspiratorial voice.

  Bennett pushed back against his general dislike of the entire Howard family. “What is it?”

  “My father says you should be more understanding of his position.”

  Hm. Considering that he had no intention of pummeling a ten-year-old, this seemed to be one of those occasions that Phillipa had mentioned, when patience and diplomacy were both called for. “And?” he prompted.

  “And I think you should be nicer to him. He’s had a very bad time of it, you know. Lord Mason purchased his favorite team, a sterling pair of grays, and Mama stopped speaking to him for a fortnight because he wouldn’t allow her and Madeline to holiday in Paris last spring to purchase the latest fashions.”

  Money troubles? In all the imaginings of his relations he’d entertained over the years, Fennington and his brood had always been wealthy and privileged and condescending. Apparently he’d been in error on one of those counts, anyway. Whether that explained the marquis’s eagerness to received fifty percent of Langley’s book profits, he didn’t know. Even if it did explain his actions, it didn’t excuse them.

  The boy continued to look up at him, all gangly elbows and knees and dark eyes set above high cheekbones. “I’ll make an attempt to be nicer,” he hedged.

  Geoffrey smiled. “Splendid. Because I read Captain Langley’s book, and I would very much like to become acquainted with Kero, even if Papa doesn’t wish me to.”

  Langley’s apparent affection for Kero was one of the largest surprises in his book, considering that the two of them couldn’t abide each other in the Congo. Bennett supposed it was a matter of David being unable to conjure any writing talent on his own. He sucked in a breath. “Shouldn’t your father and I make amends first?”

  “I thought about that, but it may take some time. And your disagreement shouldn’t keep Kero and me from becoming friends.”

  Bennett considered in silence for a moment. While he didn’t particularly care whether he angered Fennington, putting Geoffrey into the middle of their feud hardly seemed fair. On the other hand, he didn’t want Kero sitting on his shoulder while he attempted to woo or court or seduce Phillipa—whatever they were calling it at the moment.

  Perhaps Geoffrey had a point; a bit more civility toward Fennington might well benefit both of them. “Let’s sit on the floor, shall we?” he suggested, sinking down cross-legged.

  Across from him, young Geoffrey followed suit, his eyes shining as he focused his attention on the small vervet monkey. “I have some peanuts,” he said, and leaned under the bed to pull out a small box stuffed with them. “I gathered them in case you agreed.”

  “Good thinking.” As soon as Kero recognized the contents of the box she began to bark, bouncing up and down on Bennett’s shoulder. “You could put a few of them on the floor in front of you,” he commented. “She’s just as likely to grab the box and run, though, so you might as well dump them all out right beside you.”

  The boy did as instructed, and Bennett lowered his shoulder, the usual signal for Kero to disembark. She bounded onto the floor and began gathering peanuts into her arms, her teeth chattering in absolute delight.

  “Hold one out to her in the flat of your palm.”

  “Will she bite me? Father says she will.”

  “I can’t swear to anything, but she’s good-tempered and very bright. Move slowly and keep your voice gentle until she becomes accustomed to you.”

  Geoffrey nodded, looking nervous. Even so, he held out his open palm, and Kero grabbed
his thumb for balance while she removed the peanut with her other hand. “It feels like an infant’s hand,” the boy announced in a carefully hushed tone.

  “Except much stronger, especially when it comes to opening things that contain food. Offer her another.”

  Within five minutes his instruction had been reduced to “Don’t worry, she won’t pull your ear off,” and “She prefers being scratched between the ears.”

  “Oh, she’s brilliant,” Geoffrey laughed, hunching his shoulders as Kero sat on his head and rained peanut shells down on him.

  “You are two of a kind, I think.”

  Finally, Bennett stood. At least two of the invitations Hayling had handed over to him seemed to be for that evening, and he needed to find Jack before he accepted the wrong one.

  “Can she stay?” Geoffrey asked, handing up another peanut.

  Damnation. He couldn’t leave the house until he was certain the vervet wouldn’t panic, and he didn’t want to split them up if they were becoming friendly. Very well, he’d had to have Jack come to him. “We’ll give it a try. Kero, utangoja,” he instructed. “Stay” was the one command she tended to listen to, since the first incident with the leopard. Only, though, if he said it in Swahili.

  He left Geoffrey’s door open in case she became anxious and wanted to find him, then made his way back downstairs. “Writing paper?” he asked Hayling as the butler appeared in the foyer to meet him.

  “The desk in the morning room, sir.”

  “Thank you. And I’ll need someone to deliver a note to Clancy House.”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  To his surprise, Jack knocked at the Howard House front door before the messenger had even returned. “That was prompt,” Bennett observed, escorting him to the billiards room.

  “What’s amiss?” his friend prompted.

  “Nothing’s amiss.”

  “Your note said,” Jack returned, pulling it from his pocket and unfolding it, “and I quote, ‘I require your assistance.’”