Have You Any Rogues? (5 page)

Intimately so. Especially as his hand came up to cradle one of her breasts, his fingers teasing over the nipple . . .

Henrietta gasped, for his touch sent sparks of desire racing down her spine, cutting a rift through her, like a log cracked in half by the heat of the fire. And she knew she’d follow him anywhere if only he’d . . .

Then, as if by magic, he did just that.

He called to her.

“Come with me, Calypso,” he whispered to her. “Come with me to Paris.”

Come with him? How could he suggest such a thing?

However could she say no?

Especially when his fingers teased over her again, full of promise, and she saw the world—his world—the two of them in Paris, dancing in some elegant salon. Climbing over the ragged peaks and down into the beauty of Italy. Riding a gondola in Venice. Gazing upon the ancient ruins of Rome. Walking the streets of Verona like Romeo and Juliet might have.

Well, perhaps that isn’t the best example,
she mused.

But still, Hen was certain of one thing: Every night would be like this.

Full of promise and desires answered.

“Come with me,” he whispered again.

Henrietta’s thoughts swirled and she tried desperately to find some steady bit of reasoning—the sort Aunt Zillah claimed was lost on the young.

Here Hen had always thought of herself as quite sensible—that is, until now.

For she wanted nothing more than to dash out the back gate with Crispin Dale in tow and never look back.

How could she be sensible with his hard chest pressed to her breasts, his strong arms wound around her, his warm, steady hands exploring her with the surety of the most devilish rogue?

Oh, good heavens, she was lost . . . ever so . . .

That is until she heard her name from the most familiar voice she knew.

“Hen! Where the devil are you?”

Without even thinking, she stepped out of Crispin’s warm embrace as if yanked by an invisible chain. Spinning around, she spied Henry standing in stark outline at the open doors.

When she glanced back at Crispin, she said in explanation, “My brother.”

The rogue’s brows rose, not so much in alarm at being caught seducing Lord Henry Seldon’s sister but at the challenge of it.

Hen nearly groaned.
Men!

However, Crispin’s air of conquest vanished a bit when a second voice was added to Henry’s.

Christopher appeared beside her brother. “Hen? Hen, if you are out here, Her Grace says she’ll cancel your account at Madame Barousse’s.”

“Not my hats,” she muttered in dismay.

“I’ll buy you a trunk full in Paris,” Crispin teased.

Henrietta covered her mouth to keep from laughing. The horrid rogue! He did know the way to a lady’s heart.

Straight through a good milliner.

Henry and Christopher strode into the darkness of the gardens. Christopher joked with her brother, “With her account closed, you know demmed well she’ll wheedle the coins out of us.”

“She can try,” Henry replied.

“Ha! You know how she is. She’ll tell Grandfather about that bit of mischief you ran into last month at that gaming hell, and you’ll have no choice but to pay her bills.”

“Oh, demmit. She would,” Henry groused back. “Even when she knows I’ll never make that mistake again.”

Christopher chuckled. “Told you not to follow me.”

As had Hen. But had Henry listened? No!

She couldn’t help smiling—they both knew her so well—but then again, they had been raised together after Christopher’s family had been lost, and there was only six months’ difference between their ages, regardless of the fact that on the family tree she held the position of Christopher’s aunt.

They had come further into the garden, close to where she and Crispin were hidden behind the arbor.

“She’ll be Astbury’s problem soon enough,” Henry said.

“Heaven help the poor fellow,” Christopher replied, glancing over his shoulder at the ballroom. “Does he have an inkling of what he’s getting himself mired into?”

“Astbury?” Henry shook his head. “Poor fool is as besotted as the rest of the males in London. Demmed inconvenient to have such a fetching sister.”

“Isn’t it?” Christopher agreed. “Who’d have thought our Henhouse would grow into those ears?”

They both laughed, and Hen resisted the urge to box both of theirs. Ears, that is. And that horrible nickname. Her hands immediately balled into two tight fists.

They’d spent years teasing her that she had enormously large ears, as big as a henhouse, when it hadn’t been the truth. Not in the least. But there it was, they had teased her nonetheless.

Henry finished up chortling and added, “You wouldn’t believe the pups and lordlings who’ve pestered me of late for an introduction. Even Juniper came up. Steady, reliable Juniper, of all people!”

“No!” Christopher replied, clearly horrified. “Not Gusty!”

“Oh, yes, even Gusty. Muttering something about a decent introduction and putting in a good word for him.” Her brother sighed. “Thought he was smarter than all that. But there it is— the most steady fellow ever, unflappable as they come, and Juniper has fallen like the rest. Not that it matters much when she’s destined for Astbury.”

And in unison the pair of them said with a laugh, “Poor sod.”

Behind her, Crispin straightened. “Astbury?”

Hen winced, then glanced over her shoulder at him. “We are . . . well, not officially. It has just always been assumed. At least it was until—”

Until I met you,
she wanted to add, but already there was a burning bit of anger in his expression.

“You’re engaged?”

“No—it is just assumed—” When she saw that her rambling explanation was getting nowhere, she tried again. “It is hoped for. But that was before—” Oh, bother, however could she explain this?

And then it occurred to her there were no words.

She laid her hand on his heart, where beneath his jacket she could feel its steady beat. And when she looked up at him, she realized she didn’t need to say anything.

He knew. “To Paris?”

Hen nodded. “To Paris.”

Then a large, looming shadow passed over them.

“What is this, Hen?” Henry asked.

Hen snatched back her hand like a guilty child. Oh, heavens, now it all looked worse. So she drew a deep breath, turned around and, as regally as her mother might, gazed serenely at her brother and nephew, who stood before her shoulder to shoulder.

A wall of male suspicion.

“Nothing,” she told him. “Actually, this gentleman came to my aid—rescued me from one of our more persistent guests.”

“Who was that?” Christopher asked, suddenly sounding like a future duke. For it wasn’t so much a question but a demand.

Not that she was about to tell them about Bertie. Tattling on that rat-faced little weasel had only ever gotten the three of them into trouble as children, and she didn’t think they would fare any better now.

She looked from one to the other. “Mr. Dishforth.”

Henry and Christopher exchanged a wary glance. For they both knew Dishforth—their imaginary foe from childhood, upon whom they always blamed their mistakes.

And it was also their own secret, immutable code for “none of your business.”

With Dishforth therefore evoked, they were bound to inquire no further. However, that didn’t stop them from turning their steely gazes on her companion.

“And so you brought Lady Henrietta out here, Lord—?” Christopher asked him, looking Crispin right in the eye.

Oh, dear heavens, what if either of them recognized who this was? Well, Hen didn’t want to think about what would happen.

Yet as it turned out, Crispin was up to the challenge. “Only to allow her ladyship a moment of fresh air.”

“—to settle my nerves,” she added.

Which only served to make Henry and Christopher glower more. They both knew she gave nervous tremors, and most certainly never had them.

“Seems to be more than that,” Henry replied in a low, menacing voice.

“No, not at all,” Crispin replied smoothly, with a slight tip of his head. “I was leaving by the back gate—”

“Going so soon?” Christopher asked.

Crispin nodded amiably. “I’m off to Paris, day after next. Much to get in order.” He smiled as if he hadn’t heard any of Christopher’s doubts. “As I was saying, when I spied Lady Henrietta in some distress, I came to her aid, and that is all.”

“I owe this man a terrible debt,” Hen told them both. Insisted, was more like it.

Henry crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw set in a hard line. “I suspect it has been repaid.”

“Really!” she snapped. “How can you be so stodgy and rude, Henry? This man was kind enough to rescue me.”

From a loveless marriage . . . from a life devoid of passion. . .

“But now I seem to be keeping you.” Crispin bowed elegantly to Hen. “Good-bye, fair Calypso,” he whispered for her and her alone.

“Safe travels, my lord,” she said, holding out her hand for him.

His fingers curled around hers, and when they touched, that spark, that recognition lit between them.

Her gaze swung up, as did his, and it met, just as their hands had, with the wrenching understanding that if they let go, if they walked away now, the real casualty would be their hearts.

He leaned in and whispered softly, “Meet me at that gate just before dawn.”

She didn’t even have time to nod her assent, for then her father came to the doorway. “Ah, good, you’ve found her. Well done, lads. Come, Henrietta, your mother wishes to introduce you to Lady Jersey.”

And there it was. The ducal command.

Henrietta stilled, for she’d never once disobeyed her father.

Not in a way that would leave her cut off from everything she knew and loved.

What small bit of practicality she did possess—an inheritance from her mother’s side of the family, for goodness knows, no one had ever called a Seldon practical—reassured her there was a lifetime ahead of her to make amends for what she’d just agreed to do.

Time enough to convince her family that a union with a Dale, at least this one, wasn’t the end of the world as they knew it.

At least so she believed as she turned to him and said once again, “Safe travels, my lord. I hope I shall see you again very soon.”

O
n the appointed morning, or rather, just before dawn, Henrietta stole silently down the staircase of her father’s ducal town house.

She’d packed her own valise, donned her favorite blue hat, and was ready for her grand adventure. With him.

Him
.

No, she had to stop thinking of him as that. He was Crispin Dale. Viscount Dale.

She cringed just slightly. Habit, she supposed. It was rather hard to shake three hundred years of family animosity with just a kiss.

But what a kiss, she thought dreamily as she paused at the bottom step.

Gathering up her courage, she continued on, quietly opening the door to the ballroom. From there it was simply through the French doors to the garden and then . . . and then . . .

Into Crispin’s arms and off to Paris.

It was too much to believe. She grinned from ear to ear and took two steps into the empty ballroom.

“Thought you’d go without saying good-bye?”

Henrietta whirled around.

Christopher!

Lounging in one of the chairs pushed up against the wall, he smiled indolently at her.

“Where are you going?” he asked, rising from his post. “Paris?”

She flinched. “How the devil—?”

“Yes, well, my hearing is better than my morals. And since my morals aren’t the best, I could tell that rogue you were with in the gardens the other night wasn’t the rescuing type—”

“He’s no rogue—”

“Yet he asks you to meet him at the gates at dawn?” He shrugged as if he could see no other conclusion, and for a moment she thought—well, could almost believe—that he was here to help her.

That is until his brows drew into a dark, unforgiving line.

Oh, bother. “Christopher, this is none of your affair,” she told him, marching toward the doors as if she’d merely been going out to pick a few roses.

“I’ll not let you leave, Hen. Not like this.”

She stilled and glanced over her shoulder at him. Christopher! Of all people! He was on the road to being the most rakish Seldon ever, and he thought to lecture her?

“I am going,” she replied and continued toward the door.

But by the time she got to it, her fingers winding around the latch, Christopher was there, his hand over her shoulder, holding the door shut. Tight.

“I owe Grandfather everything,” he told her as she stood there with her back to him, shaking with anger. “I won’t see His, or Her Grace’s, heart broken over some ill-fated elopement.”

She turned around and faced him, and something of her concerns must have shown in her eyes.

“Good God, Hen, this bounder did promise to marry you, didn’t he?”

This took her aback, for even as she quickly recalled their conversation, she realized that Crispin’s offer had never once mentioned marriage.

And her frantic realization was apparently obvious to her suddenly chivalrous nephew.

“Gads! What are you thinking?” Christopher nearly exploded. Then remembering the need for stealth, he lowered his voice. “Who is he?”

Hen shook her head, her jaw set as stubbornly as he’d set his. “I won’t say. It is none of your business.”

“Anything that brings shame upon this family or hurts Grandfather is my business.”

Oh, this was a fine time for him to find his moral fortitude. Where had it been when he’d hauled Henry down to that Seven Dials stew last month?

“Stand aside,” she told him, for even now she could see the first hints of dawn starting to rise in the sky beyond. Crispin had told her to be there before dawn, and the time was nearly past.

“No,” he told her. And then without further word, he caught her around the middle and slung her over his shoulder like a sack of onions, carting her through the house further and further from the back gate.

Of all the indignities! Hen kicked and pounded on him, but Christopher just ignored her, knowing full well she couldn’t cry out.