The Care and Taming of a Rogue

by Suzanne Enoch

  “You damned devil!” Langley snarled, pulling his fingers away from his ear and eyeing the blood on them. “You should have drowned that vermin, Wolfe!”

  “Yes, I should have, but before I could manage it he left me for dead and sailed away with most of my possessions.” Bennett scratched Kero behind the ears as she cowered into the side of his neck. Clearly he’d underestimated the generally good-natured monkey’s hatred of Langley. He was buying her a damned peach tree. An entire orchard. “What a shame that Kero doesn’t seem as fond of you as you wrote. But then you did leave her behind, as well.”

  Snatching a handkerchief from his simpering mother’s fingers, Langley pressed it to his pierced ear. “I want blood for blood,” he snapped.

  “I was hoping you would say that.” Bennett shot out a fist and punched Langley flush on the nose.

  Langley fell backward, hitting the ground with a satisfying-sounding thud. Spewing curses, blood now trickling from two orifices on his pretty face, he scrambled back to his feet again. “You damned bastard,” he spat, his face reddening to nearly the color of his blood.

  “Now you can leave the little monkey alone and come after me,” Bennett said coolly, every muscle singing with the urge to do battle.

  At least three chits had fainted, though he didn’t know whether that had happened because of the blood, the violence, or the excitement. Bennett noted them on the periphery of his mind, just as he did the rest of the guests who pressed forward like circling vultures. Of more interest and concern was Phillipa.

  She would be angry, of course, not because he’d taken action but rather because she saw a more logical course of action. If there was one thing Bennett had learned during three years in the Congo, however, it was that the strongest, most aggressive males were the ones who survived. Langley would not outflank him, betray him, or play on his trust again.

  “You bloody twat,” Langley snarled, still putting on a display of courage without actually advancing on him. “You simply can’t stand anyone thinking you less than a hero, can you?”

  “I think you’ve used more than your and my share of words combined,” Bennett goaded. “Come at me. Or do you want to continue dancing with me, instead?”

  “I’d rather be wiping your guts off my sword, Wolfe.”

  “Excellent.” He made a low ruffing sound, and Kero jumped off his shoulder and fled. Predictably the vervet headed straight for Phillipa and jumped into her arms.

  Langley followed the monkey’s retreat with an angry gaze. “Well, isn’t that interesting?” he drawled, the sound nasal through his pinched nose.

  Bennett bent down, then straightened, in the same motion pulling the long, slender, horn-handled blade from his boot. Another woman whose name he couldn’t recall fainted. The so-called gentlemen around her allowed her to fall to the ground before they even noticed her distress. “Let’s get to it, shall we?”

  “Put that away,” a lower, more commanding voice ordered. Bennett didn’t move, except to glance sideways as the crowd parted like the Red Sea and the tall, black-haired Duke of Sommerset strode through the opening.

  “No.”

  “You two were sponsored by the Africa Association. If there’s some sort of dispute, we’ll hear it. But attacking a man at his homecoming is unacceptable, Captain Wolfe, however badly you think you’ve been wronged.”

  “Not wronged. Stolen from.”

  Langley sketched a bow, elegant and proper despite a blackening eye and a ragged kerchief pressed to his ear. “I have nothing to hide, Your Grace.”

  “Then I’ll see you both at Ainsley House, at ten o’clock. Sharp. In the meantime, conduct yourselves in a civil manner.” His gaze rested on Bennett. “If you are unable to do so, stay away from public events. Especially those held in honor of the man you’re threatening.”

  Bennett realized he still grasped the knife handle. He took the moment of distraction as Sommerset turned his back and walked away to shove the blade back into his boot.

  “Leave this house,” Langley hissed, a half-dozen footmen approaching at his signal, “or I’ll have you thrown out on your arse.”

  Abruptly Jack Clancy stood between them. “I’ll see to it,” he said, and wrapped a hand around Bennett’s upper arm.

  Bennett allowed his friend to pull him aside, toward the door, before he yanked himself free. “I don’t need a rescue.” Anger still pushed at him—and he couldn’t leave Phillipa standing there with his monkey.

  “Well, don’t stab me, but I wasn’t rescuing you. I mean, I was, but only from being hanged on Tyburn Hill for murdering an earl’s only son and heir in front of two hundred witnesses.”

  He took a deep breath. “Thank you then, Jack.”

  “Very sensible of you. Let’s depart, shall we? I’ll buy you a glass at Jezebel’s.”

  It made sense. Jack made sense. Bennett rolled his shoulders. In the jungle it all would have been much simpler. As Jack—and Phillipa—had pointed out, however, they weren’t in the jungle. “I need to get my monkey.”

  “Flip and Livi are going outside to meet us.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Bennett muttered, striding for the exit again.

  Both Eddison sisters stood in the drive among the carriages when he left Thrushell House. He kept walking until he was directly in front of Phillipa, close enough to touch. He wanted to touch.

  “I—”

  Olivia slapped him. “How dare you let everyone know you’re courting Flip and then begin a brawl in the middle of a ballroom,” she snapped.

  Kero barked, and she immediately backed away a little. “No, Kero,” he said in a low voice, holding out his arm. All he needed was for the monkey to begin attacking everyone who touched him—they’d be asked to leave the country, rather than a damned party he hadn’t wanted to attend in the first place.

  “Livi, I can speak for myself,” Phillipa said, lifting her shoulder toward him. Kero hopped from her to him, and he offered her a peanut. “If I’d known you meant to go about punching and stabbing people willy-nilly,” she continued, “I would have made certain my family didn’t attend.”

  Bennett frowned. “I didn’t stab him.”

  “You would have if Sommerset hadn’t intervened.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Clenching her jaw, she continued glaring at him. Clearly he’d broken several rules, but he couldn’t be sorry for it. In fact, the only thing that concerned him about the evening was the idea that he’d done something to push her away from him.

  “Phillipa, he stole my future from me,” he finally said, wishing he knew how to look vulnerable and irresistible.

  “So you’ve told me. I don’t think you gained any converts to your way of thinking tonight.”

  “No. But I think I made my feelings fairly obvious.” He blew out his breath. “I’m rough around the edges. He’s not. I’m not likely to earn any allies in that house regardless of my restraint.”

  “Except that now he’s more than likely inside that house reminding two hundred people that your monkey bit him and that you punched him in the nose when all he did was welcome you home. He’s going to call you a blackguard and a rogue who argues with your fists.”

  Bennett narrowed his eyes. “So I should have listened to you.”

  “Yes, you should have.” Slowly she reached up and tugged on Kero’s tail. “You don’t have to win friends, Bennett, but you do have to appear cred ible.” When Kero hummed at her, she smiled. “And you, you silly thing. You weren’t any help, either. I thought you and Captain Langley were friends.”

  “Never were,” Bennett countered, handing over another peanut for her to give the monkey. “We had an overloaded boat on the way downriver. When we hit rapids, we started to swamp, and had to throw several boxes overboard to stay afloat. Langley grabbed Kero and threw her into the river, as well. Kero doesn’t like water.”

  She gasped. “What happened?”

  “I fished her out with an oar and told Langley I’d stake
him out over an anthill if he touched her again. Langley is one thing about which Kero and I are in complete agreement.” Of course he and Kero also agreed about something else—they were both becoming irretrievably fond of Lady Phillipa Eddison.

  “I would have bit his ear as well, then.”

  He took her hand and drew it to his lips. “I suppose I’ll be going.”

  “Yes, I think you should.” She lowered her head, then darted a look up at him through her thick lashes and pulled him a few feet away from Jack and Livi. “Until two o’clock, then?” she whispered.

  Heat rushed through him. So she still wanted him to come calling. “Leave your morning room window open, and I promise to be very prompt.”

  Phillipa smiled slowly. “Good.”

  And whatever his other difficulties, however much he wanted to finish his beating of David Lang-ley and retrieve his journals and his reputation, that smile seemed the most significant thing of the entire evening. Life had taken a damned odd twist since he’d left the Congo.

  Bennett slipped out of the Clancy House garden, retrieved Ares from where he’d left the bay hidden behind the stable, and rode for Eddison House. Jack’s mother wouldn’t be happy to find two dozen of her white and purple lilies missing, but he’d leave that for her son to explain. Jack would think of something. Lady Fennington didn’t grow lilies, or he would have been able to save himself the detour.

  He liked riding through London at night. Most of his fellows avoided it—especially on their own—but he was quite familiar with the sense of danger coming from the shadows, the heightened awareness of smell and sound, and the heavy feel of darkness around him.

  Carriages still rolled through the streets as the occupants finished their evening’s festivities, but the curtains were closed and the doors securely latched. And the few pedestrians outside hurried along, far more interested in their own concerns than in his. He wasn’t interested in them, either.

  Two streets away from Eddison House he found a suitable clearing behind someone’s stable yard, and he tied Ares off in the shadows to wait for him. Then he walked the remaining distance, feeling a bit unbalanced without Kero on his shoulders. He’d left the monkey sleeping in Geoffrey’s room, though, with a selection of fruit and nuts available for the boy or the vervet to sort through if either should awake.

  Silently he turned up the white house’s carriage drive to wait in the black shadows of the stable. By the distant sound of the church bells it was two o’clock. He’d said that he meant to be prompt, but one light still shone in an upstairs room.

  Abruptly, though, it went out. As muffled excitement and arousal stirred through him, he wondered if it was Phillipa’s bedchamber, and if she was on her way down to wait for him in the morning room. There was one way to find out.

  Crossing the carriage drive, he swiftly made his way through the shadows and shrubbery to the morning room. Four windows meant four chances for him to worry that she’d come to her senses and changed her mind, but he’d never been much for hesitation.

  He touched the first windowpane, and it shifted beneath his fingers. Relief ran through him, heady and welcome. It might well have been a mistake, a latch the servants had missed, but he preferred to believe otherwise. Slipping his fingers around the frame, he pulled the window open. The light green curtains lifted, flowing into the room, as he hopped onto the sill, swung his legs over, and stepped down onto the Eddisons’ morning room floor.

  The window couldn’t be seen from the street, but he reached back and closed it anyway. No sense risking being caught. Then he turned back again. The interior of the room was darker than the moonlit night outside, and for a moment he stood blinded, looking, listening, and inhaling for any trace of her. Above the sweet scent of the lilies in his hand, citrus touched his nostrils, stirring his blood. “Phillipa,” he murmured, facing the dark fireplace.

  A match flared, blinding him all over again. “I knew it,” a female voice hissed.

  Bennett took a half step back. Damnation. “Lady Olivia.”

  Phillipa’s sister lowered the glass flute of the lamp, then stood up. “Are you here to ruin my sister, or have you already done so?” Only the barest quaver at the end of her question gave him a sense of how nervous she must be.

  “Where is she?” he asked. Setting a trap didn’t seem in Phillipa’s nature; it was more likely that if she’d changed her mind, she would have sent him a note telling him precisely that. Of course he hadn’t returned to Howard House to look for a missive, but that clearly didn’t signify if she’d found a third option. One that he hadn’t considered.

  “Don’t worry about Flip. Answer my question.”

  Annoyance and frustration beginning to replace his surprise, he shook his head. “No. You answer my question. Now.”

  This time she took a step back, but she kept her chin lifted in a gesture that reminded him of her younger sister. “I knew she was up to something when I found her in here. I told her to go up to her room or I would tell Mama and Papa. And then I sat down here to wait for you.”

  She had meant to meet him there. “And what do you intend to do now?”

  “Tell you to leave. I won’t see Flip ruined simply because your unconventional ways appeal to her.”

  “Mm hm. Her unconventional ways appeal to me, as well.”

  “That doesn’t signify.” Olivia jabbed a finger toward the window. The appendage shook only a little. “You need to leave.”

  Getting by her would be a simple matter, but that wouldn’t stop her from shrieking an alarm to rouse the household. And he had no intention of hurting her, so grabbing and gagging her was out of the question.

  Actually, this little midnight confrontation had lifted her a few notches in his estimation. “So, Lady Olivia,” he ventured. “You think I’m no good for your sister?”

  “You made a spectacle of yourself this evening. I’m certain you flatter her and say all sorts of lovely things, but she doesn’t fit in well as it is. Being ruined by a man whose only goal is to leave England with all possible speed couldn’t possibly do her any good.”

  The damned chit made a good point. “Very well,” he growled. “For the sake of Phillipa’s reputation.” He took one sharp step forward, to let her know that he could have gotten past her—or to her—if he’d chosen to do so. “But just between you and me,” he continued, “since no one else seems to believe me, my aim here is not to ruin Phillipa. It never was. I’m not playing about.” He turned for the window.

  “So you would ruin her and then marry her?”

  “I meant the red roses.” Bennett set the now rather tightly squeezed lilies onto the nearest end table. “Please tell Phillipa these are for her.”

  Without a backward glance he retreated out the window and into the well-groomed shrubbery. Damnation. He’d spent the evening conjuring Phillipa’s touch, her scent, and her warm body spread beneath his. Now he’d had a cold bucket of sisterly advice dumped over his head.

  Bennett looked up at the row of second-floor windows. She was up there, but he had no more than a vague idea of where, precisely. “Bloody hell.”

  “Giving up already?”

  He whipped around, just barely keeping from yelping like a startled chit. Phillipa stood behind him, garbed in nothing but an excited grin and a flimsy-looking night rail. The seasoned explorer, nearly given an apoplexy by a slip of a female.

  She hadn’t gone to her bedchamber to wait for her sister to dispose of him. She’d come looking for him. Her eyes dancing in the moonlight and her gown nearly as transparent as mist, she opened her mouth. “You look surprised,” she whispered, chuckling.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, pushing her back against the wall and taking her mouth in a hungry kiss. He couldn’t get his fill of her. Five minutes ago he’d been contemplating taking himself into hand, so to speak. Damned poor substitute though it would have been, it might have allowed him to sleep.

  Phillipa flung her arms up around his shoulders, press
ing herself along his body. Hard arousal crashed into him. “Where can we go?” he murmured, leaving her mouth just long enough to utter the question.

  “Mm.” She pushed him away, twisting her hands into his lapels so he couldn’t go very far, not that he had any intention of doing so. “This way,” she returned, pulling him toward the back of the house.

  He’d half thought she’d climbed out of her window, but of course practical, logical Phillipa had found a better way. She opened the kitchen door, peered inside the dark room, then grabbed his hand and tugged him inside the house. Even if her sister had remained lurking about downstairs to see whether he would break down the front door, she wouldn’t have been able to hear them silently climbing the servants’ stairs at the back of the house.

  On the second floor he followed her down a short hallway to a door on the east side of the house. “Here,” she breathed, opening the door and slipping inside.

  His body had been on a bumpy ride tonight—the fury at seeing Langley, anger and frustration at being denied a fight, hope and anticipation, more frustration, and now the heated arousal as he followed her into her bedchamber and latched the door behind them. They’d best hope the house didn’t burn down tonight, because he was not going to be turned away now.

  She faced him again. “I’m sorry about Liv—”

  “Later.”

  Bennett kissed her again, more slowly this time as he relished the soft warmth of her mouth. Thank God he’d stumbled into Jack’s reading club that first night, or he might never have gotten close enough to Phillipa to know her. And that would have been a damned shame for every reason he could conjure.

  Shrugging out of his jacket, he sat her on the edge of her bed. Her hair was down, shimmering dark chestnut and gold in the light of the small fire in her hearth. Bennett strummed his fingers through it, breathing in the soft citrus scent of her.