Have You Any Rogues? (4 page)

No. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t dare.

And yet it was him.

Him.
That was how she’d thought of him since they’d met in the woods at Owle Park.
Him.

Better that than by his real name.

Viscount Dale. Or rather Crispin, as she’d learned from a secretive foray through her mother’s volume of
Debrett’s
.

Yes, Crispin.

The man who had stopped and started her heart. The rogue who’d been about to kiss her.

And that time she’d wanted to be kissed.

Still did. By him, that is.

“I said, leave the lady alone,” Crispin repeated.

“And I said shove off,” Bertie replied, this time with a rude hand gesture.

Crispin moved in a blur—fast and furious—using every bit of muscle he had, all earned in a rigorous country life.

Solid, unforgiving strength Hen remembered from when her fingers had fanned out over his chest.

The viscount had Bertie in his grasp in an instant, and now the third son of a marquess was nothing more than a puppet in his hands, dangling in the air. “Listen well,” Crispin told him in a voice black with anger, “this lady is off limits to you. Forever.”

“Now see here—” Bertie had the audacity to demand, that is until Crispin gave him a good shake, like a hunting dog with a rodent.

The viscount hauled Bertie closer so they were eye to eye, and his voice was level and sure. “You will leave now or you will leave with a black eye and a broken nose.” Then he gave him another rattle for good measure and tossed him aside.

Bertie barely managed to land on his feet, and he scurried away like the loathsome little rat that he was.

After making sure the fellow was well and gone, Crispin turned to her. “He didn’t harm you, did he?”

“Who? Bertie?” Hen shook her head, still a little bit dazed.

At her rescue.

At his arrival back in her life.

She glanced back at the ballroom. “Bertie’s always been a bit of a cur. But I had things well in hand.” She did her best to still her trembling hands by smoothing at the creases in her gown.

Crispin laughed. “Did you now?”

“Well, perhaps not,” she admitted, glancing up at him and smiling slightly. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

“Again,
” he teased. “You do find yourself in predicaments, don’t you, my dear Calypso?”

“I suppose. But perhaps that is why you are my Odysseus.” Hen glanced shyly up at him and was struck that it hadn’t been just her imagination—Crispin Dale was terribly and wickedly handsome.

Crispin Dale.
Of all people! Why did it have to be him?

And then a second thought occurred to her. What the devil was he doing here? A Dale inside a Seldon house. Why, it was not to be borne!

And she knew what she should say.
Get out.

But those words lodged in her throat. Instead, she asked the one question she truly wanted to know. “What are you doing here?”

“You stole my heart, Calypso. I merely came to get it back.”

Beyond them, the open doors of the ballroom sent a shaft of light into the garden. She spied her brother walking past the opening and realized just how precarious her situation was. Far more than it had ever been with Bertie.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she told Crispin, pulling him deeper into the shadows of the garden.

“My Aunt Damaris is right—you Seldons are licentious creatures at heart. Trying to bewitch me, are you?”

She took a step back from him, putting the graveled path between them. “Whyever would you say that?”

“The first time we met, you asked me to unhook your skirt, and now you’ve maneuvered me out here—alone—into the scandalous reaches of your gardens. Perhaps when you are done seducing me, fair Calypso, you could show me where your father and his Hell Fire club meet.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, of all the ridiculous notions. My father is happily married to my mother. Hell Fire club indeed!”

He grinned at her. “If you insist—”

“I do—”

“You can’t be angry with me,” he told her, stepping into the middle of the path, erasing the line between them. “After all, I rescued you.”

“From Bertie,” she pointed out, as if that made his heroics hardly worth mentioning. “And perhaps I’ve brought you here because it will be easier to push you out the gate.” She tipped her head toward the heavy wooden portal that led to the mews.

“And yet you haven’t,” he said, reaching out to take her hand in his. “I think I know why you led me here.”

“You do?” she managed as he pulled her closer.

“Yes,” he murmured, “to gain that kiss you tried to steal from me back in my woods.”

“Those woods are ours,” she told him, a state of delicious wonder enveloping her. She only hoped he didn’t notice she didn’t deny the first part.

That she wanted him to kiss her.

She did, heaven help her. She’d spent all these months since they’d last met wondering, daydreaming, of what might have happened between them if her father hadn’t happened along when he had. Months spent delirious with curiosity, an unending desire to know what that moment would be like when his lips brushed against hers.

He leaned closer so his breath whispered over the curve of her ear. “I came tonight to give you your heart’s desire—”

Well, of all the arrogant, presumptuous, wonderful . . .

“. . . and to say good-bye.”

He pulled her close and dipped his head down to claim exactly what he sought: her lips.

Henrietta reeled back. “Good-bye? Whatever for?”

“I’m leaving, fair Calypso. With the peace treaty all signed, I am off to Paris. Morning after next, in fact.”

“Paris?” But it was another notion that hammered at her heart.
So soon?

“Yes. To Paris and Italy and all the sights in between.” His lips brushed against the lobe of her ear, his breath teasing over her bare neck.

Henrietta shivered, for his touch was filled with promise . . . and possibilities. As difficult as it was to think, and as beguiling as he was, Henrietta drew back, for it was his words that caught her imagination. “Paris? And Italy?”

She sighed with an entirely different longing. Oh, how could a single word be so seductive?

Paris.

And to her amazement, he understood her longing. “I sail down the Thames morning after next. Then across the Channel. I’ll be in Paris in a week.”

Envy filled her. “Oh, that sounds so wondrous. I’ve never sailed anywhere.” When she’d suggested as much to Astbury for a possible wedding trip, he’d shuddered at the notion.

Crispin, on the other hand, seemed to share her excitement. “I imagine it will be cramped and smell like fish. The crossing, that is. But then again, what is a little discomfort when I will be in France at the end of it.”

“Oh, yes,” Hen agreed, waving off any such inconveniences. “And then you’ll have all of Europe at your beck and call.” She couldn’t help herself—she made a little pirouette before him, unable to contain her own excitement.

“I suppose,” he laughed.

She came to a stop and caught hold of his sleeve. “And the Tuileries, will you go there?”

“How could I not?” He retook her hand, as if promising.

“You must write me and tell me of everything,” she instructed, ignoring how her family would react to her receiving missives from a Dale. “I want to hear all about the paintings, and the gardens. And the shops. And of course, the fashions.”

Before he could add another word, she rushed to continue, “And will you sit in one of the cafes in Paris and sip coffee?”

“I believe that is most definitely on the agenda,” he told her.

“Was watching the wicked ladies stroll by also on that agenda?” she teased back.

“No, never,” he told her in mock horror, but the roguish light in his eyes said otherwise.

“Well, read them poetry,” she advised. Then quickly changed her mind. “No, please don’t. I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”

He laughed again. “No wicked ladies. I will strike them from my list. Save the one from home who holds my heart.”

She opened her mouth to protest, then realized he meant her. She knew she should correct him, but she found instead she rather liked that he thought her quite wicked.

And that she held his heart. It was a starry, magical moment that left her a bit off kilter.

“Oh, how I would love to see all those things,” she told him, rushing past her disorientation. “And if you are in Paris, you must go to—” Then she stopped, remembering herself. “Heavens, I fear I am organizing you. Henry, my brother, and Christopher are forever telling me it is unbecoming in a lady.”

“No, no,” he told her, picking up a stray strand of her hair and tucking it behind her ear, his fingers grazing over her lobe, sending those agonizing tendrils of desire back through her yet again. “My aunt is rather against me going—me being the Dale, and not overly fond of my cousin who would inherit if anything—”

Harriet put her finger to his lips to stop him. “Don’t say such a thing. ’Tis bad luck.” Then conscious of what she was doing, she drew back her hand. “Yes, well, my father went on his tour all alone, and I’ve read his journals and seen his sketches, and I can’t see how you will have anything but the most marvelous adventures. Will you go over the Alps like—”

And together they finished the sentence.

“Hannibal.”

“Without the elephants,” he confided as if disappointed, and they both laughed.

Their dreams, it seemed, were as entangled as their hearts.

Suddenly she felt a bit shy and at a loss what to do—for with him gone . . .

“If you leave—” she began.

“Never fear, fair Calypso, I shall return. For you. You have only to wait for me.”

Before she could sputter a reply, because truly it was nothing but arrogance on his part to think she’d wait for him, he kissed her.

And the touch of his lips was like nothing she could have imagined. And it explained why he could so arrogantly ask her to do the impossible.

Wait for him.

C
rispin showed her exactly what he meant.

Wait for me.

His lips brushed over hers, and like the moment she’d first looked into his eyes, his world tilted.

No, upended.

He’d come tonight to prove to himself he’d imagined their magical meeting in the woods. That the fair Calypso of his dreams couldn’t possibly exist.

And yet, here she was. Her lips warm and sweet beneath his. She tried to back away, but he wound his arm around her waist and tucked her close until they were right up against each other.

His lips nudged at hers, opening her up, and his tongue ran over the slight opening he’d prompted from her.

And she returned his kiss exactly as he’d imagined, bold and passionate, bringing a sort of delirium with it.

His kiss deepened, and his hand cradled at her backside, bringing her right up against him.

All of him.

She let out a small mew of shock and . . . desire.

He knew all the stories about Seldon women—beguiling, bewitching creatures sent from the old gods to drive the usually staid and steady Dales mad.

Darius Dale, who’d been tempted by Celeste Seldon and had left his vicarage in the middle of the night, never to be seen again.

Or Phineas Dale, who’d been about to marry his true love but had abandoned her at the altar to run away with a Seldon vixen, who’d similarly abandoned him.

Neither of them had heeded the warnings, and look how they’d ended up.

Mad. Lost. Abandoned.

Utter nonsense, Crispin had told himself over the years.

Until now.

Certainly he could have satisfied his curiosity by observing Lady Henrietta in the park, or while she’d shopped, all from a safe distance, but instead he’d been drawn to deliberately breach that sacred line that divided the Seldons from the Dales. He’d snuck like a thief into the very bowels of his enemies for no other reason than the fact that he’d felt compelled.

Lured.

Yet here, on this very night, he’d convinced himself he could confront her and she wouldn’t bolt free. Disappear into some sylvan glen and never be seen again. His goddess. His own Calypso.

So it hadn’t been much of a surprise when he’d looked into her eyes and realized Henrietta was the most wild, tempestuous creature he’d ever beheld. And he knew, just knew down to his bones, that she might never be truly caught or tamed.

Just as every Dale prophecy about Seldon females warned.

Oh, Henrietta Seldon was the direct path to madness. Utter madness, he told himself. And yet, he couldn’t let her go.

For so many reasons. The way her eyes had lit at the mention of Paris. Of crossing the Channel. Of climbing over Hannibal’s Alps.

She shared his desires, his fantasies, and he wanted nothing more than to discover them with her at his side.

In coming here tonight, he’d answered all his doubts and discovered the truth. By seeing her, holding her, kissing her, it all became so clear.

To hell with waiting—risking that she’d come to her senses and remember that he was a Dale and she was a Seldon.

He’d ask her the impossible.

Pulling his lips away from hers, impetuously, recklessly, he offered her his heart.

“Come with me, Calypso. Come with me to Paris.”

H
enrietta was lost. Lost in a world she’d never imagined. No book could describe. Hot and languid desire coursed through her veins. Heated and anxious passion tugged in other parts.

Good heavens, how could he kiss her lips, stroke her bare shoulders and leave that spot between her legs clenched, tight and growing heated with every touch?

“Crispin,” she murmured as his lips nibbled just behind her earlobe.

If he heard her, he made no note, only went back to the same spot and bedeviled it some more, as if called by a siren.

By her song.

Oh, if anyone was being called, it was her. Lured and lulled.

She’d never understood how it was that sensible, smart young ladies could be led astray by some rogue . . . but now she knew.