by Gaelen Foley
So much for his recent efforts to be good.
As her sleep-blurred vision cleared, Becky found herself surrounded by three large, strange men looming over her in the darkness, their handsome faces distorted into lecherous, leering gargoyle masks by the twisting shadows from the lantern’s flame.
They smelled of liquor, and though their voices were cultured, she was frightened by their hard, aggressive stares and speculative smiles. She knew in an instant what they wanted. She had seen that look before—in Mikhail’s cold, gray eyes.
With her cousin’s threat of force still ringing in her ears, and fragments of dark, violent dreams still lingering in her head, she pressed her back to the wall, her heart pounding. “L-Leave me alone. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Of course you haven’t, my dear,” purred the cool, lean gentleman in front of her. He had ice-blue eyes and a thatch of short, flaxen hair with a tinge of red in it. “Don’t be alarmed. I am Lord Draxinger and these are my friends.” He offered her an elegant, pale hand. “I believe you wish to come inside?”
She eyed him warily, not trusting his show of gentlemanly polish nor his offer of hospitality. Not by a mile.
“Don’t be shy, love.” The big, raven-haired fellow to his right moved forward, reaching for her as though he meant to scoop her up in his arms. “Let me help you.”
“Stay back!” she cried, warding him off.
He knitted his thick, black eyebrows in surprise, taking pause at her warning. “My dear girl, I am Lord Rushford—you’ve probably heard of me. Now, come inside,” he commanded with a managing smile. “We’re going to get you nice and warm—”
“Don’t—touch me,” she ordered him through gritted teeth.
The two lords exchanged a startled look, and then laughed.
“There, there, my dear. Don’t be afraid,” the third fellow interjected soothingly. He had leonine features and thick, wavy hair the color of mahogany. “They’re just trying to be friendly.”
“Can’t you blackguards see you’re scaring her? Give the girl some room.”
Only now, when he spoke, did Becky realize there was a fourth man with them.
Surrounded by lusty-eyed devils, she lifted her gaze and spied the golden-haired angel lurking in the background, outlined by silvery rain.
Fallen angel.
She drew in her breath, caught off guard by the vision of unearthly male beauty. Good God, in all her days, she had never beheld his equal.
An elegant creature of dark radiance, formally dressed, he was leaning with one shoulder against the other pillar several feet away, his arms folded across his chest. He kept his distance, as though wary of her, or aloof, or as if he merely found her beneath his concern.
Yet pinned in his celestial-blue gaze, she felt a strange tingle run through her body.
Tall and muscular, he had the lean, sculpted build of an athlete: an air of quick, restless energy behind his outward languor. His finely chiseled face was square-jawed, high-cheekboned, intense—a flawless composition of severe male perfection.
Perhaps she was still dreaming, but with the glow of heaven still upon him, she half expected to see mighty wings sprouting from his broad shoulders. But, no, she realized, her pulse quickening with unsettled awe as she looked into his otherworldly eyes and read the taut need in his stare; the devil himself had begun as the first among angels. Blissful sin personified.
Temptation in the flesh.
“Come inside with us, my dear,” Lord Draxinger spoke up, startling her out of her trance.
“Yes, have a drink,” Lord Rushford murmured, reaching out again to cup her cheek.
She knocked his hand away with a savage motion and shot to her feet. “Don’t touch me!”
The third man laughed at her fierce show of spirit. Becky glared at him.
“You know, I think she fancies me,” Lord Rushford rumbled, staring at her.
When he stood up slowly from his crouched position, rising to his full height, Becky had to tilt her head back to meet his fiery gaze. She felt the blood drain from her face.
Lord Rushford pressed closer; she shrank back against the wall. He planted his hands aggressively on the bricks and lowered his head. “Tell me your name, you impertinent vixen.”
“Easy, Rush. You’ve had a bit too much to drink,” said the cool-eyed angel in the corner, but the black-haired man was fixed on her.
“Get the door,” Rushford ordered the other one as he took her arm.
She felt cornered. Her heart thumped like that of a trapped rabbit. “Please.” She swallowed hard. “Let me go.”
“No, no, my dear. You must come inside and have a drink with us,” Lord Rushford said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I insist.” His grip was not rough, but it was unyielding.
Country girl or not, common sense told her she was doomed if she let these men take her inside. Staring at her towering captor, all of the strain and terror of the past week swirled in her mind, pounded in her blood, funneled down into a fierce point of rage.
No, she thought as her fury surged. She would not tolerate this. They were not going to do this to her. With senses blurred by fear, instinct pounded in her veins—fight or flee. As Lord Rushford leaned nearer with a vain grin, boldly bent on kissing her, Becky attacked without warning.
She stepped forward suddenly and kneed him hard in the groin. He yelped in startled pain and let her go as he lurched to the side. In the blink of an eye she shoved the brown-haired man violently out of her way, and when Lord Draxinger reached for her elbow with a condescending, “Now, now, my dear,” she hauled back her fist and punched him in the jaw as hard as she could.
She dashed out of the portico and ran at top speed into the night, instantly drenched in the pouring rain.
For a full second Alec could not even react for sheer astonishment. He was rarely surprised anymore in life, especially by females, but the girl’s attack left him flabbergasted. Fort was laughing his head off, applauding her attack and yelling, “Bravo, my girl!” but Alec could only stare in shocked amazement at the sight of the other two members of his exalted set laid low. Rushford bent, wheezing, over his offending organ, while Drax rubbed his jaw with a groan and spit out a bit of blood.
“Chit knocked my damned tooth loose!”
All of a sudden, Alec laughed aloud. Good Lord, the chit had thrashed them, neat as a ninepence! How many women of England, their past conquests, would have paid in gold to see the great seducers thus unmanned? Alec was not among the casualties of the little hellion’s rampage, so he could appreciate the humor in it; but although she hadn’t touched him, she had certainly jolted him out of his “mood.” He was already in motion, dashing out of the portico’s shelter with a hell-raising grin.
“Where are you going?” Fort called as he ran out into the rain.
“To make sure she’s all right!”
“Her?” Rush croaked. “What about us?”
“You deserved it.” Squinting against the rain, Alec spotted the mysterious waif sprinting away down the street. “Miss!” he yelled, starting in her direction. “Come back!”
She cast a frightened glance over her shoulder, but just kept running. Plainly, she had no intention of trusting them now. Alec sent his friends a scowl. “I told you not to scare her.”
Then he set out after her at an easy jog, his longer paces allowing him to gain on her at once.
“Careful, old boy!” Fort yelled after him merrily. “Girl’s dangerous.”
“I like dangerous,” he replied under his breath. Indeed, he was eager to see what she might try to do to him.
He cast aside his initial prejudice about her kind. The lass had spirit, aye, pluck to the backbone. He had to know her name. She was a challenge, and challenges, like surprises, were so very rare in his life. More than being merely intrigued, though, he was concerned about her, too—perhaps, in spite of himself.
He was not entirely sure now that their first assumption had been correct,
that she had arrived in advance of their usual summons for the filles des joies. She hadn’t been dressed like one, hadn’t smelled like one, doused in cheap perfume. She’d worn no rouge, no tawdry fake jewels. And she was sober.
Either she had just woken up and hadn’t yet known what was going on when his friends had besieged her with their excessive attentions, or there was another explanation for her naive alarm.
Alec intended to get to the bottom of it, solve her little mystery. It was not as though he had anything better to do.
Ahead, the girl paused on the corner, beginning to tire. Looking one way and the other, as though she wasn’t sure which way to go, she glanced behind her and now saw him chasing her. She jumped back, recoiling.
“Leave me alone!” she cried shrilly, though he was still half a block away.
“Wait! I just want to talk to you!”
She let out a furious sound and fled again, darting to the left.
With a glint in his eyes, Alec poured on the speed, drawing easily on his large, unused reserves of physical strength honed over many years of near daily training at the best fencing and boxing clubs in London. The puddles were deep as he splashed through them in his flat black shoes. He was still dressed for the ballroom in black trousers and tails, but the driving rain quickly soaked his shoulders and chest, sousing his favorite white silk waistcoat and plastering his hair to his head. Breathing harder with his sprint, he tugged off his cravat and threw it aside.
As he turned the corner onto Bond Street, a carriage-load of Drax’s expected guests passed him, hailing him in surprise, but he ignored them, absorbed in the chase.
He had a feeling he would not be going back to Draxinger’s for any cardplay tonight. No, he was already contemplating another kind of play altogether, the wondrous game of skin to skin. God, he needed it.
He had gone too long without. He had not had a woman since well before Lizzie’s wedding to Strathmore on Midsummer’s Eve. Rejected by the one girl he always thought he’d marry—if and when he was ever ready to settle down—Alec had not had the heart to resume his Don Juan ways.
Until tonight.
What the hell was he waiting for? His body ached for a woman’s touch. He made up his mind as he pounded on through the rain that this mystery girl would do as well as any. Besides, it would indulge his vanity to succeed where his friends had failed.
Passing a row of quaint shops with darkened bow windows, their shutters and doors locked up tightly for the night, the girl’s pace began to flag, as though she could not keep going much longer. She cast another anxious glance over her shoulder and saw him catching up.
Alec was almost upon her now, only a few yards behind, close enough to see the fury that flicked over her dainty features at his determined pursuit.
“Go away, you fiend!”
“No,” he panted cheerfully. She had yet to learn of his famed stubbornness—and he had yet to learn her name.
With a small yowl of pure feminine frustration, she rushed over to the nearest storefront, a haberdasher’s, and seized the only weapon she could find.
Snatching the long-handled candlesnuffer off its metal holder on the wall, she whipped around and swung it at him. “Stay back!”
“Oh-ho!” he laughed as he approached slowly. I like this girl. “What are you going to do with that thing? Put my lights out?”
“Keep your distance or I’ll brain you! I’ll do it, I will!”
He disobeyed, of course, stalking toward her another step or two as he caught his breath. “Easy, kitten—”
“Don’t you ‘kitten’ me!” Whoosh!—the metal bar sang through the air in her grasp. Her dark tresses flew; the dirt-streaked skirts swirled around her trim figure as she swung her weapon with admirable ferocity straight at Alec’s head.
He ducked, his fencer’s reflexes yanking him under the arc, but the nearness of the miss left him astonished all over again. Women had been threatening to kill him for years, but none had actually tried it before.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed, and then started laughing again. He couldn’t help it.
Her face flushed. “Don’t you dare laugh at me, you coxcomb! I’m not afraid of you! A hero’s blood flows in these veins, I’ll have you know!” she cried wrathfully, trying—rather adorably, Alec thought—to scare him away. “My father fought beside Nelson at Trafalgar!”
He held up his hands. “I surrender! Don’t hurt me!”
“Ugh, you—” Another massive crash of lightning overhead cut off her words and sent her darting under a nearby awning of one of the shops that lined the street.
Alec followed eagerly, but when he joined her, she was already in position to defend the small rectangle of dry territory she had claimed.
With her weapon at the ready, she begrudgingly allowed him to step under the cover of the striped tin awning.
The shadows were deeper in their shelter. He smiled wickedly at her as he approached. “Well, isn’t this cozy?”
The warm rain drummed upon the awning’s painted tin, dampening the sound and casting an air of intimacy over their taut standoff.
The girl backed up a step uneasily, adjusting her grip, more than willing, it seemed, to try again to break his head if he made one false move.
Alec was on his guard and half smitten—though that meant nothing. He was known to fall in love six or seven times a day. Beautiful eyes, he thought. He studied her by the distant streetlamp’s glow through a haze of rain. Big, stormy eyes full of fight and spirit, their violet hue a rare and fascinating color. Her thick dark hair was slicked back with the rain, accenting the delicate sculpture of her face. Raindrops starred her lashes and turned her plump lips to dewy roses. Dirty little stray. Ravishing.
And he wanted her.
He dared not tell her so, however, for fear of the risk to his health. Indeed, his amusement at her ire was bound to get him clobbered, but he could not wipe the roguish grin off his face. Finally, a distraction worthy of him. “You’re rather handy with that thing. Have you ever thought of playing cricket? Our team could use you at the Lords.”
She let out a dainty growl of exasperation. Whoosh!—again. He leaned back from the waist as the candle-snuffer sailed past his chest. He could have grabbed it, but then she would have run and his fun would end.
“What’s wrong with you?” she cried, obviously vexed by her miss. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“But mademoiselle, I only came to make sure you’re all right—and, of course, to apologize for my friends’ rude behavior,” he added with his purest choirboy stare. He offered a charming smile of humble male contrition along with it, but she eyed him warily, as though she wasn’t buying it. Well, she soon would. They always did. “They didn’t mean to frighten you—”
“I wasn’t scared!”
“Of course not.” Alec’s lips twitched with the effort not to smile at her bravado. “Still, it wasn’t very nice of them to disturb your slumber.”
She raised her weapon in menace. “Are you making fun of me again?”
“Why, no,” he answered softly. “I’m flirting with you, my dear.”
CHAPTER
TWO
“Oh,” Becky said slowly, not quite sure what to do with this information. She flicked her fingers more firmly around the metal rod of the candlesnuffer, though, securing her grip—just in case he tried anything.
The man’s smile was knowing, irresistible. “There’s really no need for further violence, is there? Haven’t you left enough wounded men in your wake?”
“They deserved it,” she bit back hotly.
“Yes, they did,” he agreed, advancing another step, his hands held out in a soothing, conciliatory gesture. “But I didn’t treat you that way.”
She remained on her guard, but conceded that at least that much was true.
“What’s your name?”
“You first.”
He seemed startled by the command, then shrugged. “Alec.” He lowered his hands to his
sides, making no move to come closer. “Lord Alec Knight, at your service.” He sketched a courtly bow, his hand on his middle. She wasn’t sure if he was still mocking her: His heaven-blue eyes danced. “You needn’t be afraid,” he added softly. “I mean you no harm. I know my friends gave you a bit of a start, but on my honor, you are quite safe with me.”
Becky eyed him warily. Safe, she thought, was a relative term. One thing was certain, though. There was nobody like him in Buckley-on-the-Heath. She had never met a man before who called her mademoiselle. Indeed, it seemed that in Lord Alec Knight and his companions, she had gotten her first glimpse of that fabled, nocturnal race, the London rakehells.
All the more reason to keep him at bay. His kind made a sport of ruining females. At least that’s what she had heard. And yet . . .
Blame her adventuring soul for it, she was a little intrigued.
Scrutinizing him cautiously, she decided that she did not sense any actual menace coming from Lord Alec Knight. Tall and strapping as he was, he could have ripped away her weapon if he’d had a mind to. No, by the look of him, any woman in this man’s radius was in a different sort of danger altogether.
Everything about him spelled heartbreaker. He had the face of an angel, a sinner’s smile, and the cool, hard stare of a jaded pleasure-seeker who didn’t give a damn about much of anything.
His weapons of seduction were formidable . . . that caressing gaze . . . that low, beguiling, slightly scratchy voice . . . that roguish playfulness—and, oh, that gorgeous face.
He had cast off his cravat, exposing the manly architecture of his throat. Without his neckcloth to hold his loose white shirt closed, the frilled V of his collar had parted down to the first button of his waistcoat, revealing the beguiling little notch between his collarbones and a tempting expanse of damp, gleaming skin.
