The Rogue's Conquest (Townsend series)

by Maxton, Lily

  If he didn’t stop, her limbs might go weak.

  “Did they put your article first? They should have put it first.”

  She shook her head. “It was in the middle.” Her voice came out thick.

  He caught her gaze. “Heathens,” he said softly. “Show me what you’re working on.” But he said it silkily, like he might say, “Show me to your room. Let me in your bed.” She felt her entire body heat.

  “You, James MacGregor, are an utter nightmare.”

  He smiled, because he already knew he was a nightmare, and she, inevitably, retrieved her work from underneath the table, because not even her family, no matter how much they loved her, could feign much of an interest when she began to talk about insects. James was the only one, when she wasn’t Cecil. He was the only one who knew her.

  And he wanted another woman. Didn’t he?

  She suddenly wasn’t sure. He wasn’t here to be taught something…he was simply here. With her. It seemed an odd course of action for a man who wanted to marry someone else.

  But if she was wrong, it was a depressing thing to contemplate, and it filled her with a deep, hollow ache. She showed him her drawings, instead. She was too proud of them not to.

  They moved closer to each other and bowed their heads over the book.

  “What is this monster? That’s native to Scotland?”

  “It’s very rare. I’d love to have one for my collection. I observed this from a distance before it flew away.”

  “It looks too big to fly,” he said doubtfully.

  “Oh, it can fly, believe me.”

  “One of these got stuck in my hair once,” he said, pointing. “I’ve been petrified of them ever since.”

  She laughed. It was difficult to imagine James being petrified of anything, let alone something so small. “They won’t hurt you.”

  “They’ll just crawl over your head with their sticky legs,” he said distastefully.

  They turned through a few more pages. “The males of this dung beetle are bigger than the female,” she said.

  “That’s unusual, isn’t it? The stag beetles are like that and you said it was unusual.”

  She leaned back, pleased that he’d been paying attention. “I didn’t realize you were interested in entomology.”

  “I’m not, exactly,” he said with a frown. “I’m interested because of your interest.”

  She frowned back. “Do you mean you’re feigning interest?”

  “No, I mean it’s better through your eyes, if that makes sense.”

  It did, in a way. It was flattering. Too flattering, coming from this man. To distract herself, she turned another page.

  “This is one of my favorites,” she said fondly, pointing at the sketch of the black-and-yellow striped insect. “Clytus arietes.”

  “A wasp?”

  “No, it’s a perfectly harmless, perfectly gentle beetle. It simply looks like a wasp.”

  “I don’t know if I could tell the difference,” James said.

  “Most insects and birds can’t tell, either. That’s how it protects itself. It can even buzz like a wasp. It tricks everyone, and it survives.”

  For perhaps the first time, something that was an asset in the insect world seemed a detriment in the human world. What was the cost of disguising oneself to feel safe? The only true urge of the insect was survival. But what of humans? What harm did such a thing do to one’s heart?

  Eleanor’s thoughts scattered when a loose piece of foolscap fell from the book. Before she could stop him, James had picked it up, and he froze as he looked…at himself. Eleanor’s heart jolted. Damnation, she’d forgotten she’d placed those at the back of the book.

  “I’ll take that,” she said quickly.

  Of course he didn’t listen. In fact, he pulled out of her way as she reached for it. Contrary, impossible man.

  “You really did sketch me,” he breathed. He sounded awestruck, as though he couldn’t quite believe it, and the stark contrast to his usual cockiness made something in her chest hurt. The first sketch visible before the foolscap was unfolded—unfortunately, there were multiple; it was a long sheet of paper—was James in full evening attire, jauntily holding a walking stick. He looked like a rogue, hair lightly tousled, cravat loose. He looked handsome.

  The details were sketched carefully, meticulously, down to the curve of his broken nose. Eleanor felt an awful heat creep into her throat and cheeks. How dreadfully embarrassing. And how like James, not to give an inch to protect her from that embarrassment.

  “I don’t look tall enough, though,” he mused, tapping his chin.

  And there was the cockiness. He was never long without it, after all.

  “If you’re not satisfied, you can simply hand that back to me and I’ll put it away.”

  “No, thank you,” he said, leaning away from her outstretched hand. “I need to study them intently so I can suggest corrections. As a scientist, you should admire my thorough approach.”

  She wondered if it was worth lunging over his body to snatch it away from him. Her pulse positively rioted as he slowly unfolded the sheet, because she remembered, in startling, vivid detail, her last sketch.

  He opened the paper. His eyes skimmed the next drawing, which was James sitting at a table, hand around a tankard of ale, his expression both smug and intrigued—the first day they’d met. The day that had sent her life tumbling into disarray. What did it say about her that she’d grown used to the storm and was starting to fear the calm that would descend once he was gone from her life?

  She knew the moment he saw the last sketch—his eyes widened, flashing blue. He tilted it toward her as if she didn’t know what it was, and she would have snapped at him, if she could have thought of anything to say.

  In her defense, he wasn’t completely nude. Only from the waist up. She’d drawn him in traditional prizefighting attire—shirtless with light-colored breeches, stockings, and plain shoes. His fists were raised in a boxing stance, muscles deep and rippling.

  “Well,” James drawled. “I’m flattered.” He set the foolscap on the table in front of them, and they both stared at it. “But you’ve never seen me without my shirt on. Unless you’ve been spying on me?”

  “Of course not. I simply looked through some depictions of prizefights.” Her face burned. There was no simply about it. She’d been intrigued by James’s size, by the breadth of his shoulders, the strength in every coiled muscle, and she’d looked up depictions to see if her imagination might match reality.

  It made her seem obsessed.

  James cast a sidelong glance at her, and then he cleared his throat. It was a sign of uncertainty she didn’t think she’d ever heard from him before. “Honestly, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about these.”

  The drawings? “Why?”

  “I wanted to know how you see me.”

  Something in Eleanor’s chest fluttered like wings. She answered just as quietly as he’d spoken. “And what do you think of them?”

  “I like them very much. But then, I like everything you’ve drawn.” He tapped the sketch of himself, smiling slightly. “You’ve sketched me in such detail.”

  And then she found herself speaking, with no thought to the consequences, and no care for how it would sound. Maybe it was the sudden hush. Maybe it was the distance between them, growing smaller and smaller as they talked.

  Maybe it was the simple fact that he was here and not with Lady Sarah.

  “You’re contrary and arrogant and you wear utterly ridiculous waistcoats, and yet…”

  “And yet?” he urged. His breath fanned across her cheek.

  “I don’t know how to look away from you,” she whispered.

  He leaned closer to catch every breathy word, and then he opened his mouth to say something, but she never found out what, because another voice rang loud from the doorway.

  “This looks cozy.”

  “Robert!” Eleanor straightened, heart thrumming. “I was just showi
ng Mr. MacGregor my sketches.”

  “Were you?” Robert said. “Where is Georgina?”

  “She left.”

  Robert arched an eyebrow. “And you didn’t think to call one of the maids instead?”

  “No.” She lifted a shoulder apologetically.

  Robert lowered himself into the armchair across from them. “Well,” he said brightly. “You have me now. You can continue your discussion.”

  What had they been saying? Oh, right—she’d just told James that she didn’t know how to look away from him. Eleanor felt her cheeks flame, and then felt Robert’s suspicious glare.

  “I was just leaving,” James said.

  “A pity,” Robert said, though he didn’t sound like he found it pitiful at all.

  “I’ll walk you to the door.”

  “I’ll have you know that I have very good hearing,” Robert called to them as they left.

  For a moment, Eleanor and James simply stared at each other in the entrance hall, tongue-tied, and then James managed to work up some faint shade of his usual careless smile.

  “More muscle in the arm.”

  She blinked, wondering if he was speaking a foreign language. She’d thought he might mention what she’d said, in that unguarded, impetuous moment, but he didn’t. “What?”

  “The drawing. My arms are bigger than that.”

  She couldn’t help but snort. “Forgive me if I don’t consider you an objective observer in the matter.”

  This time, his smile seemed more genuine. James reached forward suddenly, almost instinctually, as if to tuck her hair behind her ear, and then he arrested the motion, face stricken.

  Her heart skipped a beat, hands knotting in the fabric of her dress. “James?”

  “I should go. You told me morning calls are only supposed to last fifteen minutes.”

  She watched dazedly as he shrugged into his greatcoat, there one instant and gone the next, and wondered what in the world had just happened between them.

  Robert was waiting for her when she returned.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Eleanor?” He didn’t sound angry—she had never really seen Robert angry—he didn’t even sound accusatory. Only curious. And a little worried.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s courting Lady Sarah, isn’t he?”

  “I…” She’d thought he was, but he had come here, seeking her company, for no reason other than to speak to her. They had not discussed etiquette. They had not talked about Lady Sarah, at all, really. They’d talked about beetles and looked at Eleanor’s sketches and he’d laughed at her insults and they’d eaten dry rout cakes together. He had not seemed like a man intent on marrying someone else.

  She was also quite certain they had nearly kissed. Again.

  Surely it meant something. It had to.

  “Has he told you he’s not?” Robert asked.

  Eleanor shook her head, a sliver of doubt creeping in.

  “I feel sorry for Lady Sarah,” Robert continued. “Between the three of you, she’s the one most in the dark, and she seems to genuinely like both of you. I suppose women with dowries are lied to all the time, but still, it seems a pity that you should be the one lying to her.”

  And with those words, Eleanor felt guilt settle around her, cold and heavy, a darkness she couldn’t shake.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Eleanor realized sometime after James had left and her brief conversation with Robert that she was tired of secrets.

  She had been working on finishing up an article that detailed the rarer insects of Scotland when she’d gone to sign her name and, without thinking, without so much as pausing, signed Cecil Townsend.

  Then she’d stared at the signature blankly.

  She didn’t like that she signed her false name without a second thought.

  She didn’t like that it was even necessary.

  Sometimes she wished…well, she wished that she could just sign Eleanor without her life imploding on itself, without being rejected on principle alone, or ridiculed. It didn’t really seem like much to ask.

  It felt like she was asking the entire world.

  She didn’t like that a man as vibrant and irrepressible as James MacGregor was bending over backward to fit into a Society that didn’t want him, to prove himself to a man who’d abandoned him.

  She didn’t like that she was helping him do those things by lying to someone she was starting to consider a friend.

  She wondered what James thought about what had occurred in the drawing room. There was something between them, something undeniable. One kiss might be a fluke, but they had nearly kissed twice, and two…well…two kisses seemed like a choice. He couldn’t still be intent on pursuing Lady Sarah after that, could he? Would he ignore what was right in front of him? Would he ignore this thing that had blossomed between them, like a wildflower through a crack in the street, growing little by little, unseen, until it was inevitable?

  Eleanor wasn’t sure, and she hated that she wasn’t sure. How could he look at her like that and tease her and almost kiss her and still hope to marry someone else? How would she bear it if he did?

  But in all of her uncertainty, there was one thing she was certain of.

  She couldn’t continue like this any longer.

  …

  “Miss Townsend, what a pleasant surprise,” Lady Sarah said, sounding sincere as she stopped on the walking pavement, even though it was cold, and the wind cut like a sharp knife.

  Eleanor had caught her exiting a carriage in front of her town house. Thankfully, Lady Sarah’s mother wasn’t in sight, only a maid.

  “I wished to speak to you privately,” she said.

  Lady Sarah blinked but nodded at the maid, who moved away from them.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “You could say that. I have not been honest with you about my acquaintance with James MacGregor.”

  Lady Sarah’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  It occurred to her that Sarah might be in love with him, and she nearly lost her nerve. She knew that they liked each other, maybe they did love each other, in a way—she pressed her hand to her chest, easing the sudden sharp pang there—but Lady Sarah, if she was in love, was in love with a man who didn’t even exist.

  And Lady Sarah was not a pawn to be moved about a chessboard—she wasn’t a piece in these men’s games.

  No, she was not a piece on a board, she was a woman, with thoughts and hopes and desires, just as Eleanor was.

  It wasn’t up to someone else to determine what they deserved.

  Eleanor knew what she had to do, what she must do, even if James never forgave her for it.

  Eleanor told her then, not everything, but almost everything. That James had used something against her to seek an acquaintance with Lady Sarah, that she wouldn’t have introduced them otherwise, that he was not as wealthy as he presented himself.

  She wondered, the entire time, if she was doing the right thing. It felt wrong to betray James, but lying to Sarah felt just as wrong.

  She didn’t tell the other woman that James was the bastard of the Duke of Sheffield. That, at least, clearly wasn’t her secret to tell.

  Lady Sarah was silent for a long time. “But…I thought you liked him.”

  “I do like him,” she said.

  “But you make him sound like a ruthless fortune hunter.”

  “He is something of a fortune hunter, though that’s not all he’s after,” she said. “He’s a little bit ruthless, I suppose.”

  Lady Sarah had red spots on her cheeks. Eleanor didn’t know if they were from the cold or agitation. “You are not making sense, Miss Townsend.”

  Wasn’t she? That wasn’t surprising. She wasn’t sure she understood everything herself.

  “Do you have feelings for him? If so, I wish you would just say it, instead of toying with me like this.”

  “I’m sorry, that isn’t my intent. It doesn’t matter if I have feelings for
him—he wants you.” Or he had wanted her, but if that had changed, Eleanor didn’t know.

  “And you want me to refuse him?”

  “I want you to be happy,” Eleanor said, and she meant it.

  “You don’t believe I would be happy with him?”

  She didn’t think so, in the long run. James would probably begin to chafe if he attained all the things he thought he wanted so desperately. But that was just conjecture—it was impossible to predict the future. “I think he is a far different man than he presents to you, and he has misrepresented his situation. That’s all I can say with certainty.”

  Lady Sarah looked down at the ground for a moment. “He isn’t the first suitor to have done so,” she said, surprising Eleanor. “I’ve grown used to it.”

  “You don’t wish for honesty?”

  “I did,” she said, a little sadly. “But my father’s title, my dowry…I cannot separate myself from those things. And sometimes it’s almost impossible to tell.” She bit her lower lip thoughtfully. “And if I’m honest with myself, I’ve never fallen in love with any of my suitors, so it never hurts as much as it could. My parents have been lenient with me in this regard…they’ve let me turn down potential son-in-laws they would have preferred much more than James MacGregor. Though I admit, I did have higher hopes for Mr. MacGregor, because you seemed to like him.”

  She clasped her hands together in front of her. “Do you care for him?” Lady Sarah asked again.

  “I…yes,” Eleanor said. “Yes, I do.” It was difficult to admit that, out loud, to someone else. She’d barely admitted it to herself. But Lady Sarah deserved her honesty.

  The other woman nodded, still looking thoughtful.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” she said.

  Lady Sarah shot her a wry smile. “You have nothing to be sorry for. But if you don’t mind my asking, what could he possibly have to threaten you with?”

  Eleanor hesitated. In the end, she simply said, “Something that I hope won’t be an issue much longer.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  So much for a pleasant, platonic relationship, James thought.