“Ha ha.” His eyes narrowed. “Very amusing, Ramona.”
From somewhere inside her pocket, Sir Reginald gave a loud chirp as Rosemary stood up. She absently patted the side of her skirt, and the squirrel quieted. “You did not come here to practice your Viennese Waltz any more than I did. So whyareyou at the Marigold Ball? My grandmother forced me, but I cannot imagine anyone who would have the power to make the great Duke of Hanover do anything he didn’t want to do.”
“Did you just miss the part where I climbed that bloody tree to rescue your rodent?”
Moonlight glimmered on her skin as she lifted her shoulder. “I didn’t force you to help me. You did it because you wanted to. Because deep down, you’re not nearly as self-absorbed or pretentious or wicked as you pretend to be.”
“I am wicked,” he said, offended that she’d dare suggest otherwise. “I’mverywicked.”
“Are you?” she asked skeptically. “To some, maybe. I’ve no way to see how you act with others. But with me you have been, while admittedly vexing at times, quite kind.”
Kind?
She thought he waskind?
He didn’t know whether to feel amused or insulted.
“I am afraid you’re mistaken, Roxanne. There’s not a kind bone in my body.” His eyebrows wiggled suggestively as he took a step towards her and lowered his voice to a velvety growl. “But by all means, if you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to check for yourself. I’d start with my trousers first.”
Her gaze softened. “You don’t need to do that with me.”
“Do what?”
“Use blatant sexual advances to disguise your vulnerabilities.”
Sterling gaped.
Kindandvulnerable?
This was really starting to get out of hand.
“Should I show you just how wicked I can be?” He meant it as a threat. A way by which to set Rosemary onto her heels and remind her that he wasn’t some trained puppy looking for sticks to fetch, but a feral beast with fangs and claws. If she thought he was another pet to be put in her pocket, she was sadly mistaken. He was a bastard in every sense of the word but one. A blackguard. A devil in duke’s clothing. A–
“By all means.” Seemingly unperturbed by his bared teeth and raised hackles, she gestured at the oak tree. “Should I send Sir Reginald back up there so that you can save him again? I’m sure that would be a true display of your terrible wickedness.”
The impertinence was almost too much to be borne.
“You’re wrong,” he snarled. Hands on his hips, he began to pace. “You think you see something redeemable in me because that’s what you want to see. But there’s nothing here, Rachel. Nothing but darkness and rot. Whatever kindness I had in me disappeared a long time ago, and the only vulnerable person out here is you.”
“Maybe,” she said quietly. “Or maybeyou’rewrong.”
Chest heaving, he stopped short, corded muscles bulging in his neck and shoulders as the guilt he carried, the guilt he always carried, nearly caused him to drop to his knees. “You have nobloodyidea what you’re going on about. You know nothing about me, or the things I’ve done. If you did…”
“If I did?” she whispered.
Slowly, he raised his head. From behind the shadows and the weight of his own sins he stared at her. His beacon of light. His ribbon of hope that he didn’t deserve. His second chance at happiness that he could never take. “If you did, you’d already be gone.”
She took a bold step forward, the silly chit. Then another, and another, until she was standing directly in front of him. Reaching out, she grabbed the lapel of his jacket. As if she were anchoring herself to the mast before her ship set sail into the midst of a storm. She lifted her chin. Met his gaze. And said four little words that set both their worlds on fire.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Chapter Nine
So this, Rosemarythought silently as she waited with her breath held for Sterling’s response,was how the mouse felt as he’d scurried up to the lion to pluck the thorn from his paw.A combination of exhilaration, and fear, and emboldened recklessness.
Truth be told, she’d never done anything so daring in her life as to purposefully provoke a man as dangerous as the Duke of Hanover. A single snap of his ferocious jaws and she’d be in the bottom of his gullet wondering where she’d gone wrong. Where she had turned left when she should have turned right. Except what if…what if no matter what path she took, they all brought her here? To a starry night with Sir Reginald in her pocket and Sterling at the end of her arm.
He stared at her, his expression a mixture of disbelief and thinly veiled anger. But there was something else there. Something dancing around the hard granite edges. A yearning. A wanting. Like a starved child with his face pressed up against the glass of a baker’s shop window dreaming of all the treasures contained within.
