Page 20 of Teach a Rogue New Tricks
She nodded, looking small and sad. He’d done that to her. He had to get rid of her. She tore a gaping hole through the middle of his heart. “We could be discovered in here together, alone, any minute now. You should go.”
“True. I told Aunt Lola I needed to find the water closet.”
“Find it, then,” he grit out.
“The first maid I asked about your whereabouts knew immediately where you were. She may be a tiny bit in love with you.”
“I doubt that. I’m not lovable, Miss Cavendish.”
“How sad you think so.” Her head tilted to the side. “Have you considered that’s your true problem? That you do not think yourself worthy of love. Thinking back on your letters, I—”
“Miss Cavendish. No. Get out.”
She stepped closer, her chin set, her eyes bright. “With the children, I must remember often that there are reasons for their actions. They do not simply misbehave to misbehave. They want attention or feel sad or do not understand something. There’s always a reason for broken plates and dirty pinafores and hurt feelings. And if I find the reason, I—”
“I am not a child, Miss Cavendish. I do not break plates, I break lives. I do not dirty pinafores. I take them off women.”
This woman did not back down. She did not run away. She must. For her own sake and for his. The attraction he felt would ruin them both, would keep her from her season and him from his family. Because he’d have his way with her and leave her when the attraction faded, discarded like the flowers at his feet.
He had to stop it. In the only way a rogue knew how.
He strode up to her, took her elbow in one hand and pulled her right up against his body. He rested his fingers under her chin, reveling in the smoothness he’d been dying to touch so often since the last time. He tipped her chin up and bent until their lips almost touched. “Let me show you how very much not a child I am, love.”
He exhaled, then kissed as he drew in breath, inhaling her at the same time. He dropped it light as a feather upon her lips. A half kiss only. Why spend more than that on a warning?
The feather bounced back up and hit him like a thunderbolt. It sent shock waves through his body. A warning? For whom?
Who cared.
He cupped the sides of her face, pulling her up to him as he sank down toward her, deepening the kiss. She tasted sweet, of sweetness itself, that quality of life he missed with every inch of his body and beat of his heart. A sweetness he’d never have. Now might be his only time to taste it. So when her hands threaded together at the back of his neck, anchoring her body to his, and she sighed, he tilted his head and ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, seeking a deeper taste. She parted with a soft gasp, and he plundered.
Sweeter than he’d imagined. Pure sugar and sunshine. The type of taste a man became addicted to even when he had sworn to give up all addictions.
She stilled, her muscles tightened, the reactions of an animal realizing it is caught in a trap. Good. Finally. He’d known the sweetness could not last.
He lifted his head and chuckled. “Liked that, did you?”
She shrank away from him, and while he’d expected her to run, he’d not expected her flight to hurt, but it did. He’d add it to his list of unexpected ways to kill him—have Ada Cavendish shrink away from him as if she’d just seen a beast.
She wasn’t wrong, though.
“Go,” he said.
And she did.
Cass turned back to his flowers. Poor things. He knelt amidst them once more, welcoming the cool earth that seeped through his trouser legs at his knees. He may not be able to keep them alive, but he’d saved Miss Cavendish. He’d take that. Seemed like progress. He’d not done it in a heroic way, to be sure, but he couldn’t expect miracles.
She had helped him, in her own way. She’d given him a chance to prove he could protect the innocent. In his own ham-fisted way.
He stood and went in search of Nathan. Where could a man obtain vegetables to plant this time of year?
Chapter Seven
Adaknelt before the trunk at the end of Pansy’s bed and held her youngest sister’s legs still, pressing the cotton square to the raw, scraped skin.
The seven-year-old kicked hard, her heel hitting the trunk, her toes punching Ada’s chest. “Ow, ow, ow, ow. OW!”
“Hold still,” Ada admonished.
