Love Is a Rogue

by Lenora Bell

  “I can’t believe I ever entertained the thought of marrying you.” Mayhew adjusted his wig and shook out the folds of his toga.

  “I’ll be warning every lady of fortune I know about you,” said Beatrice. “You won’t find your bountiful dowry here, Mayhew.”

  “Leave,” Ford said. “Now. While you can still walk.”

  Mayhew glared at them, and then edged his way toward the door.

  When he was gone, Beatrice took a long, quivering breath.

  Ford framed her face with his hands. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No.”

  “Gods, Beatrice.” His forehead touched hers. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  She laid her hands over his. “I won’t, I promise. I didn’t think he’d be audacious enough to threaten me at my mother’s ball.”

  “Men like him lash out like wounded animals when their pride is at stake. I lost you for a moment in the crowd. I was searching everywhere for you.”

  They stood like that, foreheads and hands touching. His lips were so close to hers.

  “I have to go back inside.”

  “I know.” Ford grinned. “So this is a costume ball. A bunch of fops running around in tights and curly wigs.”

  “Isn’t it ridiculous? And I’m the Princess of the Wallflowers. My mother will be livid. You should have seen the costume she wanted me to wear. It was stuck all over with actual dead butterflies.”

  “I gather that the change was a surprise?”

  “An unwelcome one for my mother. I’m always disappointing her and tonight I decided to do so in an ostentatious and irrevocable manner. Thank you for applauding.”

  “Of course. I understood the statement you were making. You look enchanting.”

  Her skin heated despite the cold air. “I really do have to go back inside. But I was hoping, that is . . . would you do me the honor of waltzing with me?”

  He smiled. “Wallflower princesses don’t follow the rules of propriety, I see.”

  “Propriety? I don’t even know what the word means.”

  “Then allow me to recommend an excellent etymological dictionary by a studious lady I know . . .”

  They entered the ballroom together, but before they reached the dance floor Lady Millicent intercepted them.

  She flicked her gaze up and down Beatrice’s gown. “And what are you supposed to be?”

  “I’m a wallflower,” said Beatrice.

  Lady Millicent laughed. “I know that, silly. Why would you wear an old gown like that to a ball? No one’s going to want to dance with you.” She turned to Ford. “Aren’t you the dashing highwayman? Do I know you? You may steal me away for a waltz if you like.”

  “I’m spoken for,” said Ford, taking Beatrice’s hand.

  They walked to the dance floor, leaving Lady Millicent gaping after them.

  “She looks like a trout,” said Ford.

  Beatrice giggled. “She does, rather.”

  “You know that’s my favorite gown of yours?”

  “I know. You told me.”

  The waltz began and Ford took her into his arms. This time they had an audience. Everyone in the room was staring at them.

  “No one knows who I am,” Ford said. “Except your family.”

  “You’re my mysterious highwayman.”

  “And you’re my wallflower.”

  His hands were so large and capable. They built her bookshelves, defended her from harm, and sent desire racing through her body.

  “I love you, Ford,” she whispered.

  She’d said the words. Now it was his turn.

  But if Ford said those words, everything would change. He’d have to admit that he believed there was a way for their two worlds to collide, to overlap. When there was none.

  And yet she was waltzing with him in plain sight of her mother, for everyone to see.

  Yes, he wore a mask, but she didn’t. Not anymore.

  “You don’t have to say anything, Ford. Because I know you love me, too.” Her smile sliced through his clothing and lodged in his heart.

  “And how do you know that, princess?”

  “Because you built me those shelves and you arranged that writing desk for me to use.” She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “It’s quite easy to interpret.”

  “You think you know everything, do you?”

  “My mother’s always telling me not to be a know-it-all, but I just can’t help myself. A Wallflower Princess can always tell when a highwayman loves her.”

  There was no use denying it. She’d stolen his heart.

  He squeezed her hand. “You’re right.” There, he’d admitted it . . . in a way.

  “I know that you don’t want some socially acceptable version of me. With you I’m joyously myself—or not joyously—I won’t pretend anymore. I don’t have to be the perfect daughter my mother wants me to be. You helped me see that, Ford.”

  Her smile was light shimmering on the ocean.

  A stone temple built to the gods, where he could shelter from every storm.

  “Beatrice,” he whispered, like a prayer. Like a poem.

  A line from a song that stayed with you, that came to mind when you saw the sun set orange and fierce over a turbulent sea.

  They were building something here, something good and strong.

  But was it strong enough to weather the storms ahead?

  The waltz ended, and Thorndon arrived to claim his sister for the next dance. He threw a look at Ford that could only be described as thoroughly suspicious.

  Ford backed away. He’d had his one dance. It was time to leave.

  He’d vowed to go speak with his grandfather, to find a way to convince him to allow Beatrice to keep the shop. He had no idea how he would find the leverage to make the old snake crawl back to his hole, but he’d damn well do it, or die trying.

  He was going to make this right. Perhaps if Beatrice had her clubhouse, if what they’d created together was hers to keep, they could find a way to build a life together.

  He was about to leave the duke’s house when a footman approached him. “Mr. Wright?”

  “Yes?”

  “The dowager duchess would like a word with you. In her chambers.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “I should have known.” The dowager duchess paced in the center of her pink-and-white boudoir. “I should have known when my daughter showed such an interest in that dusty old bookshop. Ever since your appearance in her life she’s become a completely different person. You’ve been corrupting her. Who do you think you are, Wright? You’re nothing. You’re no one.”

  Ford bore the onslaught of her contempt in silence.

  Life was always attempting to bring him to his knees, but he always landed on his feet.

  He clenched his jaw. The dowager just kept talking, spewing forth insults and hurling abuse, so finally he broke into the tirade. “I love your daughter.”

  When the words left his lips, he knew them to be true. He loved her and he didn’t care who knew it.

  “Love. What do you know about love? My son said that you have a reputation as a rogue. You’re nothing but a common fortune hunter with delusional aspirations.”

  Thorndon must be in on the campaign to be rid of him, then.

  The duke had warned him away from his sister, and introduced him to the admiral as a method of ensuring that Ford left England.

  His mother’s method of driving Ford away was far less subtle.

  “I know your kind, Wright, but the fact that you would aim so high is incomprehensible to me.”

  “I’m not a fortune hunter. I don’t care about her dowry.”

  “Of course you’d say that. To think that my son trusted you, and your father, and this is how you repay him?”

  The mention of his father chilled his blood. The dowager and her son held all of the cards here. “It was only a waltz.”

  “What else has happened? Is she ruined?” Her cheeks were mottled with pink. “If she’s
compromised, the duke will have to call you out.”

  “She’s not ruined. I give you my word.”

  His mind had gone numb. His heart was breaking.

  What had he been thinking? Poetry and sunsets. Fairy tales and happy endings.

  Weathering storms.

  This was a blast of Arctic wind so deadly that it might freeze his bollocks off.

  Beatrice’s mother didn’t just disapprove of him, she loathed him, and all his fortune-hunting kind, as she was happy to inform him over and over again.

  “She was supposed to marry an earl,” she wailed. “Mayhew left in a fury. Said a man dressed as a highwayman had gravely insulted him. I wonder that he didn’t call you out.”

  She definitely wanted to see him at the wrong end of a pistol. Ford was beginning to wonder if she’d pull a firearm on him herself.

  “Your Grace, there are things you don’t know about the Earl of Mayhew. He has a cruel and heartless past.”

  “Heartless, you say. Do you know what is heartless? Attempting to steal away my only daughter under my very nose. I’ve been so blind. I knew she was acting differently, but I thought she’d finally decided to see reason. When all the while she was with you at that bookshop, being seduced. You are the cruel one, Wright.”

  “I haven’t coerced her in any way. We didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  “We. There is no we, Wright. Lady Beatrice is the daughter of a duke. You are a nobody. And your kind always has a price.”

  She stalked to a writing desk. “How much? Will twenty thousand be enough?”

  His heart hardened to ice and broke off inside his chest.

  Beatrice’s mother was attempting to pay him to leave. “I would never take your money.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Wright. You’ll never have her fortune. This is the best you’ll do. Take the money and leave. Never attempt to contact Lady Beatrice again.”

  Take the money and leave London. Never contact me again.

  His stomach heaved. The exact words his grandfather had said to his mother when she’d taken Ford to London with her when he was eight.

  The harsh, remembered shame of it.

  He wasn’t going to stay here and listen to any more of this vitriol. “I will never take your money.”

  He left the duke’s townhouse without once looking back.

  The waltz he and Beatrice had shared this evening had only been a lie they were telling themselves. They could never find a way to be together.

  If she left the comfortable bosom of her family, if she lost her mother’s respect and affection, she’d regret it for the rest of her life and she would grow to resent him.

  And the duke could ruin Ford’s family so easily. Take away his father’s livelihood, his home.

  No matter how much he cared for Beatrice or how he’d begun picturing a life with her, he’d always be the fortune hunter in her mother’s eyes.

  Highborn ladies had family fortresses built around them to keep the riffraff away—even ladies as unconventional as Beatrice.

  The best thing he could do for Beatrice, and for his parents, was to leave. He’d pack his things and sleep on Griff’s boat tonight.

  His mother arrived in London tomorrow to meet with her sister and to see Ford off.

  He had a path to follow.

  At the moment that path led to a bottle of whisky and a night in the cramped quarters of a ship.

  Ford was missing. Beatrice couldn’t find him anywhere.

  She’d noticed that he hadn’t even looked at any other women tonight. He’d been focused on her. Attuned to the true meaning of her costume.

  He’d been there in her moment of need. A larger-than-life avenger.

  Dangerously threatening one moment and tenderly teasing the next.

  When she was in his arms, it was a safe place. Not because he would defend her physically, though that had been thrilling, but because he knew her. He knew the young girl who’d written that journal entry and then torn it out, hidden it away in a book, in the same way that she’d buried her emotions.

  She’d fought against her attraction to him from the moment she’d seen him outside her library window. She’d resisted the temptation to care about him, but it was impossible to resist any longer.

  She had a choice to make: she could be a spinster who’d only experienced life in the pages of books.

  Or she could seize this opportunity to live, even if the risks were enormous.

  But how did one broach the subject of ravishing? I’d like you to debauch me, please?

  Or maybe she should offer to ravish him?

  There was only one way to find out which method worked the best. Her mother had gone to bed after taking a sleeping powder, and the household was quiet.

  It was four o’clock in the morning.

  And she had a rogue to ravish.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Ford.” Beatrice knocked on the windowpane. “Ford!”

  The window opened. “Beatrice? What on earth . . . ?”

  “Let me in, it’s freezing out here.”

  He leaned over the windowsill and lifted her by the armpits into the room where a lovely fire was blazing in the grate.

  “How did you get up here?”

  “There was a ladder against the side of the house.”

  “Your hands are like ice.” He rubbed her hands between his. “You could have fallen to your death. Why didn’t you just take the stairs?”

  “Now where would the fun be in that?” she asked with a wink. “I wanted to surprise you.”

  She unclasped her cloak and it fell to the floor. She moved to the fireplace. She had to say this next part quickly, before she lost her nerve. She didn’t turn around, speaking into the flickering flames. “I’m here for ravishing, Ford. And before you tell me that’s a bad idea, I want to say that I’ve thought it all through very carefully.”

  He made not a sound. She’d shocked him into silence.

  “I want to be with you tonight, Ford. Tonight and . . . always. You don’t have to say anything, just listen. I know what I’m saying and I know what I’m doing.”

  He remained silent.

  She rushed ahead, her face hot from the fire. “You handed me that hammer, and I know you were asking me to demolish more than plaster. You wanted me to be able to express my anger and to listen to my inner voice. I finally know that I’ll never be able to please my mother, or society, or the world, and so now I can do what pleases me. And what pleases me is to be with you.”

  Why wouldn’t he speak? She turned around. And that’s when she saw it.

  The trunk, packed and ready by the door.

  She hadn’t even noticed when she arrived—Ford had his coat on, and his boots.

  “You’re leaving?”

  He bowed his head. “Yes.”

  “Right now?”

  “It’s for the best.”

  “But . . . why? Without saying goodbye to me?”

  His face was impassive and stubborn. “I was always leaving, Beatrice.”

  “I know that. I . . . I didn’t think you’d leave without saying farewell.”

  “You know I want to stay, Beatrice. You also know that I can’t. Your mother, your family, this entire society would never approve of a match between us.”

  “Oh, so now you care about the rules of propriety?”

  “This thing between us, this thing we’ve been building, it wouldn’t survive the storm of scandal. I’d be labeled a fortune hunter and you’d be labeled as ruined, lowered, even lost.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care now, but what about two years from now. Ten? When your mother still won’t speak to you, when you’ve lost the life you knew.”

  “But we renovated this house together, and we found ourselves in the process. Now you’ll throw me away like you threw my bonnet into the street because I don’t suit you anymore? You said that you never leave a job unfinished. What about us? Don’t leave us unfin
ished.”

  “I’ve done what I was contracted to do.”

  She couldn’t believe he was saying these cold, heartless things. It was so sudden, almost like he was a different person. Not even a hint of that charming, smiling rogue. “I thought . . . I thought you cared. Why did you build me those bookshelves?”

  “I built you the bookshelves because I want you to be happy. I think you should live here in London instead of retiring to Cornwall. Don’t deprive the world of your light.”

  To go from such happiness, such bliss, to this nightmare.

  She had knowingly walked into this trap, just like one of Daphne Villeneuve’s heroines.

  She’d walked right in, drunk on newly discovered power. Intoxicated by his kisses and the tenderness she’d thought she’d seen in his eyes.

  Now his eyes held only anguish. She had to know what had happened to transform him so completely.

  Something had happened.

  “During our waltz you said you loved me . . . well, you didn’t really say it but you agreed when I said it, and now it’s as though a wall of thorns sprang up to cover your face, your eyes.”

  “I saw reality, Beatrice. I saw the disparity between our worlds. You would grow to resent me if I tore your family apart. Your mother would never accept me and to have that rift be my fault—you might think it’s worth the pain now, but I know from experience that my mother never healed completely.”

  “Our situation is different. You’re not your father, Ford.”

  No, he wasn’t his father. And that meant he wasn’t going to selfishly and blindly claim her love no matter the cost. Beatrice’s mother had made it very clear that she considered him to be totally unworthy of her precious daughter.

  He refused to be the wedge driven into her family that split it apart, sundered mother from daughter.

  He couldn’t allow history to repeat itself.

  He hated himself even as he spoke the words, but he had to do this. He must be harsh. “These two weeks were only a fantasy, Beatrice. A fairy tale with no basis in reality. I don’t belong in your world and you don’t belong in mine. I have to leave.”