Love Is a Rogue

by Lenora Bell

  “I won’t have you injured on the job. Sit,” she said, pointing at a chair. “I won’t be a moment.”

  She returned with a basin of water and a clean cloth and proceeded to clean the wound on his brow. Every swipe of the cloth afforded him a delectable view of her breasts.

  They were directly at eye level as she wiped the blood from his hair. He sat on his hands to stop from pulling her close and popping one of those nipples into his mouth, tonguing her through linen.

  “You have bits of wood in your hair,” she observed.

  “And you have smudges of dirt on your cheeks and nose.”

  She patted his forehead dry with a cloth.

  “Enough, Beatrice.” He caught her wrist. “It’s just a scratch.”

  “So you’re allowed to come charging into the opera house and tell me I can’t marry Mayhew, but I’m not allowed to care for your injury?”

  “You’re not allowed to care. Full stop.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Beatrice cared. She couldn’t help herself.

  He was strong and confident and yet she sensed vulnerability at the heart of him, that fifteen-year-old boy who’d run away from home and joined the navy, unwilling to serve her father. He’d wanted to see the world, strike out on his own, and he had and now he was back in England.

  He was here with her, making her dream of giving the ladies a clubhouse a reality.

  And giving her freedom in the process.

  He put his arms around her waist and pressed his cheek against her chest.

  Her heart skipped wildly. She cradled his head in her arms, resting her chin on top of his head.

  “Beatrice, don’t care for me. I’m leaving London.”

  “I know you’re leaving. I’ve always known that. I’m leaving London, as well. But we’re here together, right now.”

  She wanted to be close to him and she felt no shame about it.

  This new space they were creating together, had muffled the stern, castigating voices in her mind.

  Here Beatrice smashed plaster and ripped nails from boards. She listened to her own voice.

  And what her voice was telling her was this: grab this moment with both hands, don’t be frightened, don’t think too much. Reach for this liberty, this newfound power, and hold on tight.

  He pulled her into his lap, settling her against his hard body. He unbuckled the leather tool belt and it fell to the floor with a clattering sound.

  He removed her spectacles and set them safely on a shelf. His hands moved to the back of her head, fumbling with hairpins, and then she felt the soft sweep of her hair falling around her shoulders.

  “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this.” He drew a shaky breath, his fingers massaging the back of her neck. “In Cornwall, your hair was like a beacon in that library window, a warmth I wanted to seek, a fire to guide my way.”

  “I watched you from the library window all summer,” she whispered.

  “I know. I saw you watching. It made me work harder and faster.”

  He flexed his arm and she ran her fingers over the curve of his muscle, experiencing a thrill at the breadth of him, the sheer strength and controlled ferocity. “I saw you lifting those enormous beams, and I thought about how you could lift me so easily. Lift me into your arms.”

  He rose from the chair with her in his arms, carrying her to a bookshelf and pressing her up against the books. There was nowhere for her hands to rest except on his shoulders.

  He wrapped her legs around his waist, and she curled around him like a rose climbing up a stone wall.

  His body was solid where hers was soft, and she wanted his strength for her own.

  His hands cupped her bottom, holding her up, anchoring her against his hard length. She felt weightless. She shook her hair out and it fell down her back. His lips sought her neck, nibbling and teasing the sensitive flesh behind her ears.

  Chipping away at her control.

  “Kiss me,” she commanded.

  He brought his lips to hers, a questing kiss, tender and restrained.

  A contrast to the iron grip of his hands holding her immobile, the crush of his body against hers.

  “Kiss me harder. I’m not fragile,” she said.

  He growled deep in his throat, and it was a sound of desire and frustration. His kiss turned rougher. The stubble along his jaw scratched her face. He parted her lips with his tongue and kissed her possessively.

  His fingers played over her collarbone, before sliding lower, flirting with the top of her breasts.

  His hands had calluses not only on the tips of his fingers but in the middle of his palms.

  Large, capable hands, toughened by work and weather. She’d seen what those hands could accomplish, what his body could do, the way he attacked life with certainty and skill.

  His teeth nipped at her lips, tasting her, and she mimicked the movement, sucking his lower lip between her teeth. His tongue teased her lips open, delving inside her, filling her and making her hungry for more.

  He sank to his knees, bringing her with him, laying her down on the exposed floorboards.

  “Beatrice,” he moaned into her hair. “You’ll be the death of me.”

  Ford attempted to rein himself in but the contrasts were too dramatic—the softness of her skin, the satin of her lips, and the roughness of the wooden floor.

  Beatrice with her brilliant red hair spread around her, spilling over that borrowed shirt the color of parchment, like the pages of a book he’d yet to open. A story he’d give his life to read.

  No trespassing! This was the exact circumstance he’d sworn never to enact. This was history repeating itself. The carpenter and the lady.

  This was wrong.

  This was right.

  He could kiss her forever on the floor, in the dust, cushioning her head with his arm.

  Filling his hands, his mind, his mouth.

  There was no right or wrong. There was only kissing. Only Beatrice.

  “Ford,” she breathed, her voice throaty.

  He liked the way she said his name, from one side of her mouth, saying it in a way that was different from any other person who’d ever said it before.

  “Ford . . . you’re . . . it’s . . .”

  “I know. It’s so good, Beatrice.” He kissed her hungrily. “So good.”

  “No. Ford.” She broke away. “You’re . . . pressing on me and I think . . . there may be a nail sticking up from the floor.”

  He rolled off her immediately. “I’m so sorry. Are you hurt?”

  She laughed ruefully as he helped her rise to a seated position. “Not hurt. It was only . . . slightly uncomfortable.”

  “I shouldn’t have laid you on the floor like that. It was wrong of me.”

  “Ford.” She touched his arm.

  He tried not to feel the pleasure of her touch, not to react to it.

  “I didn’t want you to stop kissing me. I just didn’t want to get a puncture wound and die a horrible death from blood poisoning.”

  Of course he had to stop kissing her. He never should have kissed her in the first place.

  The moment was lost. Gone forever. He was a fool.

  There was a right and a wrong and this was wrong. Coggins could have walked in on them at any moment and received an eyeful.

  “We can’t. Not here. We can’t. Ever.” His breathing jagged, his words not making sense.

  “You’re not speaking in complete sentences, Ford.”

  He stumbled to his feet and offered her his hand. “Beatrice, you deserve so much better than this. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “You weren’t thinking and neither was I.”

  “So much for keeping things businesslike.”

  “I don’t think it’s possible for us to be strictly business associates. We always wind up doing the most wildly inappropriate things.”

  “We have to make a pact. Absolutely no more kissing.”


  She took a deep breath. “Where are my spectacles?”

  He handed them to her and she hooked the wires over her ears. “I can maintain control of my lips if you can,” she said.

  “It might be easier to maintain control if you remained upstairs in the reading room. Don’t you have crates to unpack?”

  “I do. I only wanted to help with the renovations.”

  “And you did. Thank you. But I’ll take it from here. You’ll have your clubhouse, at least the rudimentary configuration, before I depart. You may come for a final inspection with your friends in one week’s time. I’ll go up to the roof now and finish patching the shingles.”

  He needed to clear his head.

  She bound her hair back into a tight knot at the nape of her neck and jabbed it with the pins he handed her. “I’ll go upstairs, then.” She avoided his gaze, gathering her carpentry book and leaving the room.

  The memory of her legs twined around his hips while he kissed her up against the bookshelves followed him up the ladder and out onto the roof.

  He balanced atop the slate tiles, staring out over the rooftops of London and over the river that led to the docks, to where his ship would arrive soon, the path he’d chosen.

  One thing he knew for certain: Lady Beatrice Bentley was trouble.

  Flame-haired, nimble-fingered, tool-belt-wearing trouble.

  She made him laugh. She was intelligent and talented.

  She looked incredible in a tool belt.

  But forbidden things were always alluring. And what was alluring as well was that she needed his help to best Foxton and keep this property.

  Being her knight in sawdusty trousers was exhilarating.

  Ford had a personal stake in her victory. Personal because it was a way to wrest control back from his grandfather. But at some point, he’d begun caring more about helping Beatrice find her freedom than being a thorn in his grandfather’s side. This could be a haven for her. She didn’t have to retreat to the countryside. Why shouldn’t she live here if she wanted to escape her mother? It wasn’t a grand house, but he could make it a perfect bookish retreat for her.

  She’d asked him why he hadn’t become an architect, and something inside him had reawakened. Some long dead ambition to not only build and repair structures, but to design them, as well.

  But dreaming larger was perilous. They were from entirely different social classes. Her brother was his father’s employer.

  Ford needed Thorndon to take his warning seriously and avert all suspicion from his father in the matter of the missing profits on the Thornhill estate. The duke wouldn’t be inclined to feel kindly toward Ford if he found out that he’d been kissing his refined, innocent sister.

  If Ford’s intentions weren’t honorable, and how could they be when dallying with him would ruin her life, then he had no business becoming intimate with Beatrice, in conversation or up against bookshelves.

  Finish the renovations, speak with Thorndon, and get the hell out of London, away from her searching questions and her luminous eyes.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It had been nearly a week since Beatrice had visited the bookshop. She hadn’t been back to unpack the crates of books, and she hadn’t discovered the hidden meaning in her aunt’s letter. Her mother had kept her busy running from one social engagement to the next, but there was another reason Beatrice had stayed away.

  She needed to inventory these feelings she was having for Ford. File them away into tidy little lots. Make them more manageable and less confusing, and hopefully be rid of them for good.

  This evening she was attending a meeting of the Mayfair Ladies Knitting League at the Duchess of Ravenwood’s apartments.

  Fern, the duchess’s maid, served red wine in dainty glasses. Normally they drank brandy or sherry out of teacups, but today their newest member, Lady Henrietta Prince, had brought wine for them to taste from her ancestral cellars.

  Beatrice drained her glass in one swallow and held it out for more.

  Wine-fueled oblivion. Perhaps intoxication might help her forget the sensual scenes that filled her mind’s eye. Ford lifting her, carrying her across the room in his strong arms, setting her against a bookshelf and covering her with his body.

  She’d wrapped her limbs around his hips and felt his hardness pressing against her . . .

  “This vintage is meant for sipping, Lady Beatrice,” admonished Lady Henrietta, her full lips pursing. “You won’t experience the complexity if you gulp it like that.”

  “I’m not here for the complexity—I want the sweet oblivion.”

  “What are you trying to forget?” asked Viola.

  “My life.”

  “Is it your mother again?” Viola asked with a sympathetic smile. “What’s she done this time?”

  “Ahem, ladies.” Isobel brought her gavel down upon the lectern. “I call this meeting of the Mayfair Ladies Knitting League to order. Let the record show that there are”—Isobel glanced around the room—“four ladies present this evening. Our president, the Duchess of Ravenwood, is still absent, though we expect her back soon from Egypt. Is anyone taking notes? Where’s Miss Finchley?”

  “She had a little explosion in her chemistry lab today,” Viola said.

  “Is she all right?” asked Beatrice. Miss Ardella Finchley was one of the sharpest minds she knew, but tended to be vague on the practical details of life. Her gloves were always mismatched, and her stockings always had a run.

  “She’s unharmed. But she’s staying home to try and scrub the foul odor away before her mother returns from the Continent.”

  “I’ll take the notes,” Viola volunteered.

  “Thank you, Viola. Now, let’s all welcome Lady Henrietta Prince to our ranks.”

  Lady Henrietta was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at her, with her mahogany hair and ruby red lips. “I was invited to attend this meeting by Miss Beaton. Thank you very much ladies for having me. I understand that though this is a knitting society there is little needlework involved?”

  “Quite right,” said Viola. “The society was envisioned by myself and Lady India, now the Duchess of Ravenwood, after she decided to infiltrate the Society of Antiquaries in a male disguise. We conceived of this secret society as a gathering place for all females, no matter their origin or station in life, who’ve been barred from joining societies they should by rights be eligible to join because of their talents or achievements.”

  Beatrice held up a knitting basket stuffed with yarn, while maintaining her grip on her wineglass with her other hand. “We always have our knitting baskets at the ready, in case of an unexpected arrival. We maintain the ruse of being a charitable organization. Which we are, of course. We donate blankets and garments to foundling hospitals. We just don’t make those blankets ourselves.”

  “We purchase them,” said Isobel with a grin.

  “I’m honored to be in on the secret,” said Lady Henrietta. “I share your enthusiasm for achieving goals. I’ve been managing my elderly father’s estate for him. My family came to England from France in the seventeenth century, and my distant relative brought grape vines with him and planted them. No one expected them to thrive in British soil, but they did, and we’ve been producing wine for the family cellars ever since. Now I propose to bring this wine to a larger market.”

  “I’m no judge of wine,” said Beatrice, “but as far as I’m concerned, you have every expectation of success. This is delicious.”

  And it made her braver, and less questioning.

  Perhaps it hadn’t been so bad that she’d goaded Ford into kissing her. Maybe it wasn’t a terrible thing that she’d loved it so much.

  Perhaps she wasn’t too much of a ninny.

  “I’m very glad you approve of the wine. Of course I can’t let anyone know that there’s a woman behind the venture. I use my father’s name when I write letters to potential distributors and restaurateurs. Why should being female preclude me from being an entrepreneur? I say, smash
down the barriers.”

  Lady Henrietta took her seat to vigorous applause from the ladies.

  Beatrice had to set her wineglass down for that, but she immediately picked it up again.

  “We welcome you to our ranks, Lady Henrietta, and we look forward to supporting your venture in whatever way we can. As for me,” said Isobel, “I’m attending a School of Law in disguise as my brother.”

  “A daring deception,” said Lady Henrietta.

  “And I’m finishing my father’s symphonies,” said Viola. “He’s gone almost completely deaf. I haven’t had much time for composing these days. I’m the music instructor to the Duke of Westbury’s sisters. They are to perform in a music recital very soon and the duke expects them to shine, but I’m inclined to despair.”

  “You can’t let them take all your energy and creativity, Viola. You must carve some time out for yourself,” said Isobel.

  “I know.” Viola sighed. “But they’re such a handful. Enough about my woes. Beatrice, tell us about the progress on the new clubhouse.”

  “I’m pleased to report that I have secured a site for our new clubhouse, ladies. We will no longer meet here, but at our own property on the Strand. It’s a modest building, but it will see us through several years of expansion. It’s the former premises of Castle’s Bookshop and has been bequeathed to me by my aunt Matilda Castle. I’m in the process of working with our solicitor to sign the property over to the League.”

  “Our very own clubhouse.” Lady Henrietta clapped her hands. “What a prodigious achievement.”

  “When I inherited the building it had a leaky roof, rotting floorboards, and rats in the basement, but I hired a carpenter and he’s nearly finished renovations. Soon we’ll be able to have a tour.”

  “How is Mr. Wright?” asked Viola.

  “He’s . . . busy.”

  “He’s a handsome brute,” said Isobel.

  “What he looks like hardly signifies,” said Beatrice. “It’s what he can do for us.”

  “Describe him to me,” said Lady Henrietta, pouring another round of wine for everyone.

  “He has a nose,” said Beatrice. “And two eyes. He’s always looking at a lady as if he’s mentally undressing her.”