After Dark with a Scoundrel

by Alexandra Hawkins

  Annoyed by her companion’s high-handed manner, she whirled about and said, “See here, Lord Bolt—Dare!”

  He did not look pleased. In fact, Dare seemed positively annoyed at her. “You are too old to be up to such mischief, Regan,” he said grimly before he dragged her away from her three companions and out of the ballroom.

  Chapter Six

  With an uncompromising grip on her upper arm, Dare tugged the protesting Regan through the crowded ballroom and out into the wide hall.

  “Unhand me, you brute!” Regan demanded as she glanced behind her.

  His jaw tightened at the notion that Regan was seeking assistance from someone to save her from him. “Are you hoping one of your admirers will play the gallant and rescue you from my clutches?” Dare nodded to an elderly gentleman who had stepped aside so they could pass.

  “Of course not!” she said crossly, breathless from the brisk pace he had set.

  Her vehement denial mollified him. Still, he could not resist adding, “Good. That trio would happily abandon you in order to save their own hides.”

  Regan did not seem overly concerned by the news. “I was looking for my friends. I was making my way to them, before Lord Fothergill and his friends waylaid me. By the by, where are you taking me? Is this about Frost?”

  Dare slowed at her reasonable questions. Where the devil did could they go when the house was practically filled to the rafters with guests? His gaze narrowed on a small door he could see over his shoulder. Changing directions, he strode purposely toward it with Regan in tow.

  “Dare!”

  He detected more exasperation than fear in her voice. It was not exactly what he was striving for, but he was not above using a little intimidation to get her to pay attention. Dare opened the door and dragged her inside.

  “Where are we—” She glared at his back as he shut the door. “The servant stairs? Do you not think it is a rather odd place for a family meeting?”

  He turned to face her. “Still worried about Frost?” he taunted, crossing his arms as he surveyed her from head to toe. “Don’t be. You have more pressing concerns.”

  “Such as?”

  Dare brought his thumb to his chest. “Me.”

  “You? Pooh! I am not afraid of you,” she said airily.

  Or anyone else, he thought, though he kept his admiration of her defiance from showing on his face.

  “You have nothing to fear as long as you behave,” he said gruffly, fighting to ignore the invisible tendrils of attraction that he always felt whenever she entered a room. By God, Regan had grown into a beautiful young woman. When he and his friends had returned to their private box at the theater, his attention kept sliding back to Regan. “I would have thought your years at Miss Swann’s Academy for Young Ladies would have quelled your penchant for mischief.”

  “Do not concern yourself with my affairs. I already have a brother. I do not need another.”

  Dare’s eyes flashed dangerously at the word affairs.

  “It is no trouble at all,” he said silkily, moving forward until her back collided with the banister. It confirmed that she was just as aware of the energy crackling between them as he was. “Since I will be residing with you and Frost this season.”

  Her eyebrows lifted at his announcement. “You are staying with us,” she said in a neutral tone.

  Dare shrugged. He was not inclined to explain that his brother and sister-in-law had taken over the family’s town house this season without any warning. While he could deal with Charles, Dare had no interest in living under the same roof with Allegra. “It is not the first time.” Of course, at the time Regan had been a child and he had only seen her as Frost’s little sister.

  Suspicion tightened Regan’s delicate features. “Frost ordered you to watch over me.”

  She was displeased with the notion.

  Good.

  Dare was not exactly thrilled with the situation, either. If he had not caught Regan flirting with Fothergill, Bolton, and Radcliffe, Dare would have spent an energetic and delightful evening in Mrs. Randall’s bed.

  “Frost knows what you are capable of.”

  Regan rolled her eyes. “Good grief, this is about the fire at Nox, is it not? What happened transpired five years ago and it was an accident!” Since Dare had neatly boxed her in physically, she avoided his gaze. “I have been adequately punished for my crimes!”

  Intrigued, he tilted his head. “Punished how exactly?”

  She exhaled noisily. “Never mind,” Regan muttered under her breath. “Now that you have revealed your duties and expressed your lack of enthusiasm for the unpleasant task, may I return to the ballroom? Thea and Nina will be looking for me.”

  “So you think Frost sent you away because of the fire?”

  Of course she didn’t. Frost had ordered the servants to pack Regan’s belongings the same day he had caught her in a compromising position with Dare. Now that she was facing Dare, though, she could not summon the courage to mention the kiss.

  “Maybe Frost did not like the notion of me kissing his younger sister?”

  Apparently Dare had no such qualms.

  Regan blinked at him, feeling unexpectedly skittish. “I have no desire to speak of the past.” She started to slide by him.

  Dare reached out and gripped the banister on each side of her so that she could not escape. “You do recall our kiss, mon coeur?”

  Regan brushed at her sleeve. “Vaguely.”

  Grinning, Dare could not resist tugging on the curl next to her left ear. “I recall that you were lousy at it.”

  Her chin snapped up. “I had never been kissed, you cretin!”

  “Brute … cretin … Careful, my lady, your polish is beginning to tarnish,” he teased.

  “Arse!” Regan hissed as she shoved away his right arm and walked around him to reach the door. “I cannot fathom why I thought I had missed you.”

  Her angry admission was a mild blow to Dare’s heart. His teasing had hurt her tender feelings, and he felt like a bounder for it. “Regan. Come back here.”

  “No, thank you,” she said, pulling furiously at the latch. With a snarl of disgust, she released the brass latch and whirled around. “I will have you know that your kiss was not what I expected from a Lord of Vice.”

  “Oh, really?” He stalked toward her, but she was vexed at him enough to meet him halfway. They circled each other like two pugilists. “What did you expect from a Lord of Vice?”

  Palms up, Regan opened her arms in a manner that would have made her vulnerable if he were her opponent. “Fireworks!” she spat. “The kind that burn so hot and bright it blinds you. Even at fifteen, I could recognize the difference between a spark and an out-of-control conflagration.”

  Oh, Dare was tempted to put his hands on her. He wanted to throttle the minx for retaliating for his thoughtless taunt about her inexperience. However, he possessed more control than that.

  Until she said, “Since your dismal showing, I have been kissed by dozens of connoisseurs.” Her smile was smug.

  Dozens. Dare’s nostrils flared and his vision dimmed at the notion of Regan practicing the art of kissing on broad-shouldered farmers and country squires. What sort of school was Miss Swann running?

  “Dare!”

  He had not even been aware that he had seized her by the shoulders and pulled her against his chest. “Five years is a long time between kisses. Perhaps we should renew our friendship.”

  “N-n-mmph!” was her wordless reply as Dare covered her mouth with his.

  The kiss was hard, demanding, and regrettably brief, he mused as he released her mouth with an audible smack. With the taste of her on his lips, Dare belatedly noted that Regan was poised on her tiptoes; all that anchored her was her fists, which were clutching the front of his black frock coat. He caught her by the elbows when she wobbled and steadied her until she could stand on her own.

  “Well…,” she said, a bemused expression on her face. “I will consider our friendsh
ip properly renewed.” The softness in her demeanor faded as she found her balance. “Now if you will excuse me. I have tarried long enough.”

  Tucking his hands behind his back, he permitted her to pass. He did not quite trust himself because he had an irrational urge to reach out and give her a thorough kissing. “Worried that your reputation will suffer if you dally with an improper gent?”

  This time the door opened effortlessly. Regan glanced back over her shoulder. “What reputation? With you, Frost, and the others, I have been more or less dallying with improper gents all my life,” she said with a rueful smile.

  She departed with Dare’s laughter echoing in the stairwell.

  Dare gave his back to the door and braced his hands on the banister. By God, it was good to have Regan back. Although he had long denied it, he had missed her presence in his life. She had been one of the few people who could make him laugh until it hurt.

  She could always slip past the emotional barriers he had erected to protect himself.

  It was one of the reasons he should keep his distance from her.

  Regan had been dangerous as a fifteen-year-old girl. As a grown woman, she was devastating to his peace of mind.

  And how are you planning to keep your distance when you are living under the same roof, my friend? a voice whispered in his mind.

  A soft thud drew his attention to the stairwell that was cast in shadows. “Is there anyone there?” he called out, suspecting that one of the Quintons’ servants had been eavesdropping on his conversation with Regan.

  If anyone was there, he or she was too frightened to reply.

  After a few minutes, Dare left the stairwell.

  * * *

  Several hours later, Regan heard a soft knock at the door. Reaching for her shawl, she climbed out of bed and wrapped the garment around her as she headed for the door. She was not surprised to see Nina and Thea on the other side.

  “I thought you were asleep,” she said to them both.

  Thea was the first to enter the bedchamber. “How could we sleep without hearing all the details,”

  Nina moved to the bed and sat down. “We were dying to ask, but considering how you had departed the ballroom with Lord Hugh, we dared not ask in front of Lady Karmack.”

  “Did Lord Hugh escort you to your brother?”

  “When Lord Chillingsworth approached you at the theater, he did not seem pleased at all.”

  “Do not worry about Frost,” Regan said, waving away her friends’ concerns.

  Nina frowned. “Then what of Lord Hugh?”

  “Dare?” Regan rubbed her lower lip with her thumb and smiled as she thought of his bruising kiss. “He did not approve of my admirers.”

  With eyes as wide as an owl, Thea asked in hushed tones, “Where did he take you?”

  “The servants’ stairs.”

  “Why on earth would he want to take you—” Thea’s mouth fell open. “Good grief, he kissed you!”

  Regan clapped her hands together, amused by her friends’ identical expressions. “Oh, your faces are priceless! Is it truly so astounding, given that the last time Dare kissed me, Frost banished me to Miss Swann’s Academy for Young Ladies for five years?”

  “What are you going to do if your brother finds out?” Nina asked, fiddling with one of the tiny ribbons on her nightgown.

  “Frost is not going to find out,” Regan said, her stern gaze meeting her friends’ concerned faces. “You both have to swear not to tell another living soul, and that includes your dear mother, Thea. No one witnessed the kiss. And I highly doubt Dare is in a position to brag about it.”

  “Oh, we swear not to tell,” both ladies vowed in unison.

  “After five years of separation, the kiss must have been dreadfully romantic,” Nina sighed.

  Regan scowled as she thought about Dare’s kiss. “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?” Thea pressed.

  Her arms parted in a gesture to convey her confusion. “He was rather angry with me for kissing dozens of admirers.”

  Both Nina and Thea seemed baffled by her admission.

  Nina was the first to recover. “Miss Swann runs her school like a nunnery. When were you kissed by dozens of admirers?”

  “More to the point, where were we?” Thea teased.

  Laughing, Regan sat on her bed with a playful bounce. “There were no admirers, silly,” she said to Nina. “I was merely taking revenge on Dare’s insulting comment that I was a lousy at kissing.”

  Her friends gasped.

  Regan nonchalantly brushed a stray strand of hair from her cheek. “Do not fret. The next time Dare kisses me, it will not be in anger,” she assured Thea and Nina.

  With Dare residing with her and Frost, Regan predicted that she would have many opportunities to provoke him into kissing her again.

  Chapter Seven

  “For a gent who spent the night pleasuring the beautiful Mrs. Randall, none of us expected to see you until evening.”

  Dare winced, forgetting that Vane had disappeared from the Quintons’ ball after his friend had been introduced to several ladies who were the product of his mother’s latest matchmaking efforts. According to Sin, Vane had been polite, but refused to dance with any of the ladies.

  Needless to say, his mother was displeased. However, no amount of tears could sway her son. Before he had made good on his escape, Vane had whispered into Sin’s ear, “Bluestockings! Egad, my mother is now presenting them to me in pairs.” No one had seen him again until he had wandered into Nox.

  Dare closed the ledger he had been studying and calmly entwined his fingers together. “Mrs. Randall was obliged to find her way home without my assistance.”

  “What?” Vane gaped at Dare. “The widow had picked you out of all of us to be her lover, you lucky ungrateful bastard. How could you be so cruel to her?”

  Had he not chastised himself for the same thing? Still, it chafed his pride to be scolded by his irresponsible friend. “While you were fleeing your inevitable fate, I was keeping Fothergill and his friends from chasing after Regan.”

  Vane sneered. “Fothergill? What the devil was he doing at the Quintons’ ball? I thought he and Lord Quinton had once come to blows over a mistress.”

  “It went as far as a dawn appointment at Battersea Fields,” Dare said, trying to recall the details of the event, which had taken place three years earlier. “I believe Quinton fired into the air, while Fothergill used his turn to aim his pistol at his opponent’s head. Quinton lost a piece of his left ear that morning.”

  Vane leaned against the large mahogany desk. “I heard that Quinton conveyed his apologies while the surgeon was attending him. If I had been him, I would have called for my sword.” The earl picked up the silver letter opener and tested the sharp edge. He flipped it in the air and caught it by its handle.

  Dare smiled. Fothergill had never challenged the Lords of Vice. He preferred to improve his odds by challenging weaker opponents. “If anyone issued Fothergill an invitation to the ball, it was most likely Lady Quinton. Rumor has it that she has not forgiven her husband for the mistress or the duel.”

  “Another reason why I do not want a wife,” Vane said, snatching the rotating letter opener out of the air. “They are vengeful, humorless creatures.”

  Dare slid the chair back from the desk and stretched his long legs. “Sin and Reign have fared well in their marriages.”

  Vane jabbed the point of the letter opener in Dare’s direction. “Our friends are too besotted with their wives to stray far from their skirts. Besides, if either one of them seriously considered dallying with a mistress, I wager Juliana would shoot Sin between the eyes, and Sophia would crack Reign’s skull open with her walking stick.”

  Dare grunted his agreement. Both ladies were wholly capable of managing their households and their husbands. “And what of your lady?”

  “I do not plan on being leg-shackled,” Vane said with resounding confidence. “Why settle for
one woman when I can have them all?”

  “Your mother seems to have other plans for you, my friend,” Dare said, sympathetic to Vane’s plight.

  Vane set down the letter opener and moved away from the desk. “Eventually, she will grow weary of the hunt”—he shrugged and offered a careless smile—“or run out of marriageable ladies.”

  Dare and Vane laughed at the outrageous thought. London seemed to have an inexhaustible stable of young, unmarried ladies.

  “So was Frost properly appreciative that you had sacrificed your evening with the widow to rescue Regan from Fothergill’s clutches?”

  “Bolton and Radcliffe, too,” Dare said, recalling that Regan had not glanced in his direction for the rest of the evening.

  Fortunately, she had possessed enough intelligence to remain close to her friends until they took their leave with Lady Karmack.

  “I decided not to mention the incident to Frost.”

  Vane snorted. “Frost does not need your protection against Fothergill.”

  “I did it for Regan,” Dare said mildly. “Frost is already looking for a reason to stuff her in the first stagecoach out of London. It is not her fault that Fothergill will pursue anything wearing a petticoat.”

  “How very chivalrous of you, Lord Hugh,” Vane mocked. “Tell me, does Regan know that you are quietly protecting her from Frost and unscrupulous admirers?”

  “No.” It did sound damn noble of him, he thought, the notion ruining his good mood. “If you want to keep your teeth in your head, you will not tell a soul.”

  “But I have not told you my price.”

  Dare lunged out of the chair, his fingers missing Vane’s coat sleeve by mere inches. Almost. The earl feinted to the right and stumbled out the door of the study with Dare on his heels. When he caught up to the grinning fool, Dare would ensure that his friend was more amenable to keeping his mouth shut.

  If not for Regan’s sake, then for his own.

  * * *

  “Nothing has really changed,” Regan murmured as she casually surveyed the drawing room of her family’s town house, taking in the veneered walnut wainscot, the marble chimneypiece, and the tapestry of Apollo and the muses that covered the far wall. She walked over the tapestry to admire the scene. When she was a child, Frost had told her that the artisan had used their father’s image to represent Apollo. She had believed the lie for years, and used to slip into the drawing room so she could share secrets with her father.