Love Is a Rogue

by Lenora Bell

  Bad, bad things involving sturdy desks.

  He had the book she’d given him in his coat pocket, and he planned to leave it with the butler. He was certain that Lady Beatrice hadn’t meant to give him this particular book. It was a Gothic romance, The Mad Marquess’s Secret by Daphne Villeneuve.

  It was about a blonde with the silly name of Sophronia who kept getting chased around the grounds of the castle while wearing a diaphanous nightgown by the mad marquess who may, or may not, have murdered his previous wife.

  He’d read it in secret, of course. Hadn’t wanted the boys to rib him about it.

  He’d read it at night by the light of a candle. He’d never admit it to a soul, but he’d enjoyed the book. It had been a page-turner.

  He’d been halfway through the story when he’d found the note tucked between the pages. Written in Lady Beatrice’s precise lettering, it appeared to be an entry torn from a diary in frustration.

  What she’d written had tugged at his heart, and made him want to relive their encounter in the library again, but in a different way.

  He’d tell her that not all men were repelled by intelligence in a woman.

  That she was uniquely attractive, and if the mean-spirited ladies and empty-headed fops of London couldn’t see that, then they were idiots.

  Which was also a conversation that would never happen.

  No doubt the lady was out on the town being courted by barons and earls. Who knew, perhaps she’d even become a princess in truth. There were plenty of impoverished European royalty hunting for fortunes.

  Ford shouldn’t care where she was, or by whom she was being courted. He was only visiting her house for news of her brother.

  Warn the duke, ensure his father was above suspicion, and ship out. That was the plan.

  The duke’s bookish sister was one buttoned-up bundle of simmering passions that Ford would never, ever unwrap.

  Chapter Four

  Beatrice and her two friends, Miss Viola Beaton and Miss Isobel Mayberry, were ensconced in the drawing room, devouring thick ham and butter sandwiches and talking over one another while they caught up on everything that had transpired during her absence.

  “I have missed you,” said Beatrice to her friends, through a mouthful of ham. Her mother’s lectures on proper diet and etiquette for young ladies always made her want to eat everything in sight.

  “We missed you, too,” said Viola, her green eyes sparkling. “When we held meetings of the Knitting League at the Duchess of Ravenwood’s apartments, everyone talked about how it wasn’t the same without you there to expand our vocabularies and teach us the origins of things.”

  “Is the duchess back from Egypt yet?” Beatrice asked.

  “Not yet,” Viola said. “We expect her in the coming weeks. We may need to find another house for our meetings.”

  “Your brother and Mina haven’t returned from Italy yet?” Isobel asked.

  “No, but I’m not too worried. As you know, Mina had some rather interesting activities planned for them on this honeymoon, including matters of”—she dropped her voice to a whisper—“espionage. If they don’t want us to know their whereabouts, I’m sure they have their reasons.”

  “Weren’t you lonely in Cornwall with Thorndon and Mina off traveling?” asked Isobel.

  “I could never be too lonely surrounded by books.”

  “And carpenters,” said Viola, with a warm smile. “Your letters had quite a lot to say about your brother’s carpenter.”

  Isobel made a motion as if she were donning a pair of spectacles. “‘Wright is repairing the rose trellis outside the library window today,’” she said, imitating Beatrice’s crisply enunciated way of speaking. “‘He refuses to wait until I leave for London. He’s an infernal nuisance.’”

  Viola pretended to dip a quill in ink. “‘Wright is the most maddeningly arrogant man in the world.’” She set down her imaginary pen. “Wright this, and Wright that. You wrote more about him in your letters than about the progress on your dictionary.”

  Beatrice brushed a crumb away from her chin, careful not to betray any emotion. “That’s because he hampered my progress. The accelerated pace at which he attacked the renovations on Thornhill House directly correlated to the decreased progress on my dictionary. He was excessively loud and distracting.”

  “I had the distinct impression from your letters that he might also be excessively handsome,” said Viola.

  “I suppose some might think so,” said Beatrice carefully. “But enough about me. Didn’t you win a prize while I was gone, Viola?”

  “She won second place in the Royal Society of Musicians’ contest for new symphonic works,” Isobel proclaimed.

  “I didn’t have the courage to go through with the plan to reveal my identity,” said Viola, her eyes solemn. “They thought the score had been composed by a Mr. Beam, who mysteriously never appeared to collect his prize.”

  “We all know you won the prize, and that’s enough,” said Beatrice. “I’m bursting with pride. Have there been any other developments?”

  Isobel adjusted an invisible cravat and cleared her throat. “I’m studying the history, principles, and practice of the Law of England relative to real property. An abstruse, yet endlessly fascinating, system.”

  Beatrice gave a little laugh. “I still can’t believe the deception is working.”

  Isobel was the most daring member of their secretly subversive league of ladies. Her brother was a homebound invalid and had given her permission to attend a School of Law using his identity.

  “I’ve had some close calls.” Isobel glanced down at her chest. “This flat bust of mine does help, and my mannerisms are already mannish—or so my aunt delights in telling me.”

  “And how is Ardella?” asked Beatrice.

  Viola leaned closer. “She’s working on something highly secretive in that makeshift laboratory of hers. She says it might very well change the world as we know it.”

  Miss Ardella Finchley, the only member of the League who actually knew how to knit, was also an experimental chemist.

  “Intriguing.” Beatrice was proud of her friends’ talents and goals.

  “And your dictionary?” asked Viola.

  “Will have to be put on hold for the moment. My mother presented me with a social calendar and a list of rules today. She’s planned out every second of every day.” Beatrice took another defiant bite of ham instead of lettuce. “I’m afraid I’ll have no time for my own pursuits. I had to go all the way to Cornwall to find some room to breathe.”

  “In fine fettle, is she?” asked Isobel.

  “The finest. Fettle is a wonderfully descriptive noun, isn’t it? I wonder if it’s from the Middle or Old English?”

  Viola gave her an affectionate wink. “I’m sure you’ll inform us the next time we meet.”

  “I did notice that your hair is dressed in rather a singular style,” said Isobel.

  “Singular is one word for it.” Beatrice sighed. “Does anyone except my mother think this style is flattering to me?”

  Isobel and Viola perused her hair, which had been piled on top of her head with the aid of wires and padding, and stuck all over with beads and feathers. Two very long, very wide, curls framed her face, falling against her cheeks. She kept seeing them out of the corner of her eye because they quivered when she spoke. It was most distracting.

  “I cannot tell a lie,” said Viola. “It’s not a good look. It’s somewhere betwixt a bird’s nest and the leaning tower of Pisa.”

  “I can lie with impunity, since I’m going to be a solicitor,” said Isobel. “It’s most becoming, Lady Beatrice. You might add a few more feathers. Or perhaps some common household objects? Forks! Why not a few judiciously placed silver forks? It would make you even more unique and could be quite useful for an impromptu luncheon al fresco.”

  “Stop.” Beatrice chuckled. “Today she promised that if I follow her rules, which, I might add include an injunction against associ
ating with wallflowers, I would have my reward in the form of a proposal from the Earl of Mayhew.”

  “First of all,” said Viola, “you can’t follow the rule about wallflowers because . . . us. And Mayhew? Absolutely not. He’s no one’s prize except for Lady Millicent’s, and they deserve each other. The venomous gossip and the vain coxcomb.”

  “I know my mother loves me, and she thinks she’s acting in my interests, but her love isn’t unconditional. It’s as if she sees me as an extension of herself—another limb—and she can’t conceive that I might have my own separate will and my own desires. We’re almost opposites, really.” Her mother thought that Beatrice’s entire future rested on the perfect collection of gowns. She wanted her to emerge as this Season’s social butterfly, but Beatrice was firmly encased in a cocoon of her own design, and she had no intention of spreading her wings until she returned to Cornwall.

  “I wish I had known my mother,” said Viola.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, here I am going on and on and you never even knew your mother.” Beatrice smiled at her friend.

  “It’s all right.” Viola shook her head and the sparkle returned to her eyes. “Tell us more about your mother’s plans for your time. We’ll have to find some way to steal you away from her.”

  “There is something else. She gave me this letter.” Beatrice pointed at the envelope sitting on a nearby table. “While I was in Cornwall, I inherited Castle’s Bookshop on the Strand. Do you remember when we visited it several years ago, Isobel? It’s where I purchased my Whyter’s Etymologicon Magnum.”

  “You inherited the bookshop?” asked Isobel.

  “Mr. Castle left it to his wife, my aunt Matilda Castle. I never even knew I had an Aunt Matilda. She was my father’s eldest sister and was disinherited for marrying a shopkeeper. She owned the shop outright and bequeathed it, and a small inheritance, to me in her will.”

  “How extraordinary!” Isobel moved to the edge of her seat. “I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of females I know who’ve inherited real property.”

  “Don’t get too excited. Mama decided that owning a bookshop was unacceptable for a lady, and she already instructed our solicitor to sell the building to a London property developer who sent in a report that the bookshop was in a dangerously derelict condition.”

  “She can’t do that, Beatrice,” said Isobel, her voice deepening. “If you’ve inherited the property, you’re the only person who can legally sell it. And I wouldn’t trust a report from a property developer. They are notoriously avaricious and would say anything to purchase a property cheaply and resell it for profit.”

  “She’d never let me keep the bookshop, but I’m overjoyed by the prospect of owning the collection of antiquarian books. I want to visit the shop immediately to see if the collection is intact.”

  “Let’s go today!” said Viola. “I want to see it.”

  “We should go,” agreed Isobel. “I refuse to let you sell a property that you inherited without at least viewing it first, or having an independent inspection conducted. This developer may be unscrupulous and attempting to bilk you out of your inheritance.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I’m studying inheritance laws. One of my future goals will be to assist ladies in the ownership and retention of real property. As your future solicitor, I strongly encourage you to have an independent appraisal performed.”

  “The property might be too derelict to be salvaged,” said Beatrice. “When I visited it several years ago I noticed a decidedly musty odor. There’s nothing worse than the presence of moisture or mold for rare books.”

  “Properties can be repaired,” said Isobel.

  “Indeed,” said Viola. “By carpenters. Don’t you know one of those, Beatrice?”

  Beatrice tensed. “If you’re referring to Mr. Wright, you can forget that notion immediately. He’s not available. He told me that he’s going back to sea with the Royal Navy as a ship’s carpenter.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Viola.

  “And even if he were available, I’d never consider hiring the man. He’s overconfident and arrogant.”

  “Confidence is generally considered to be a good trait in a builder,” said Viola.

  “I have a long list of his transgressions to present to my brother Drew upon his return, chief amongst those being that Wright derided my dictionary.”

  “Well then, that’s different,” said Isobel. “We can’t have males tearing down our achievements. What did he say?”

  “He said that it wouldn’t be a financial success, and that not many people would want to read it.”

  Her friends exchanged glances.

  “He’s very wrong to have said it, I’m sure,” said Viola.

  Beatrice studied her friends. “Wait. You don’t . . . Do you agree with him?”

  “Darling, the merit of your dictionary has nothing to do with profit,” said Viola soothingly.

  “Of course not,” said Isobel. “A very small and highly selective group of people will be ecstatic about your dictionary. I, for one, intend to purchase as many copies as I can get my hands on.”

  Beatrice groaned. “You think it won’t be a success. That I’m laboring for nothing.”

  “What, precisely, defines success?” asked Isobel. “If you’re proud of your work, then it’s successful.”

  “I can’t believe this—my friends siding with an arrogant male.”

  “I gather that Mr. Wright hurt your feelings,” said Isobel.

  “He did more than that,” said Beatrice. “He made me think the most uncharacteristic thoughts.”

  “What kind of thoughts?” asked Viola.

  “Ninny-ish thoughts.”

  “Define ninny-ish,” said Isobel.

  Beatrice glanced at the footman standing by the door and lowered her voice. “I kissed him.”

  “You what?” exclaimed Isobel with a look of astonishment.

  “Kissed him?” cried Viola at the same time.

  “Hush, please,” said Beatrice. “That came out wrong. I didn’t actually kiss him. I thought about it. I imagined a scenario in which I was the heroine of a Gothic novel and we met on a dark and stormy night in a haunted castle and I kissed him.”

  “Well then,” laughed Viola. “That’s quite harmless. I kiss handsome men all the time in my mind. One in particular.” She blushed. “One whom I would never consider actually kissing. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It means that I have a tragic flaw that I didn’t know about, but now I’m on guard against it ever happening again. I’ll never fall prey to such maudlin meanderings of the mind again.”

  “Beatrice, just because you live most of your life inside your mind doesn’t mean that what happens there should be confused with reality,” said Isobel gently. “You’re so very intelligent and cerebral. Believe me, you haven’t committed any crime of character.”

  Then why did Beatrice feel so shaken by her encounter with Wright? What had happened in the library was the antithesis of everything she believed herself to be: self-sufficient, independent, and impervious to sentimental longings and foolishness.

  It was her childhood that had set her apart, molded her spine of steel and replaced her need for love with a craving for solitude and privacy.

  Too many specialists and physicians in and out of her chambers with their ghoulish treatments, their supposed cures for her palsy.

  She’d always known that she was different.

  She’d never be her mother’s perfect little girl.

  And so she’d given up trying to please her mother and had plotted a different course for her life, one that she’d thought out carefully and set in motion with great deliberation.

  That’s why the fictitious kiss had shaken her to the core. A longing for physical intimacy wasn’t in her vocabulary. She’d exorcised any such need long ago.

  “He climbed through the library window, handed me a rose, and I . . . I had some preposterous idea th
at he was wooing me because I was special. He woos every female he meets. It’s what he does. He’s a rogue of the first order.”

  “Climbed through your window? How very Shakespearean of him,” observed Isobel. “Did he compare you to a summer’s day?”

  “I dropped my spectacles on his head. He climbed up the rose trellis to return them.”

  “I’m even more confused,” said Viola. “Why did you drop your spectacles on his head?”

  “The why doesn’t matter.” The hot flush of humiliation had crept back up her neck. “What matters is that it will never, ever happen again. I will never succumb to irrational imaginings about handsome rogues ever again. I’m quite impervious now.”

  “Oh, Beatrice,” said Viola with a tinge of sadness in her voice. “Only you would castigate yourself for something that never even happened.”

  They didn’t understand. To her it had been real. Vividly, exquisitely, real. So exquisite, in fact, that an actual kiss from Wright could never possibly live up to the imaginary one.

  “One imaginary kiss is hardly a reason not to—” Isobel was interrupted by a light knock on the door.

  “Yes, Hobbs?”

  “There’s a gentleman here to see you, my lady,” said the butler.

  Beatrice sighed. “I suppose my mother has already arranged a call from Mayhew.”

  “I don’t believe the person is in possession of a title, my lady. He’s a Mr. Stamford Wright. Shall I tell him you’re not at home?”

  Wright. Here? The air left Beatrice’s lungs. How could that be?

  Viola clapped her hands together. “Tell him she’s at home and receiving visitors, but only if they have offerings of roses and have composed at least three sonnets to her amber eyes.”

  “Viola!” Beatrice remonstrated.

  “You’re not frightened of him, are you?” whispered Viola with a scheming glint in her green eyes. “You’re not afraid that when you see him you’ll immediately imagine you know what?”

  “I’m not the least bit frightened. I’m perfectly in control of my thoughts.” The idea that she might succumb to such witless wanderings twice was unthinkable.