Page 51 of Teach a Rogue New Tricks
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At home, Ada crept silently into the library. Everyone seemed to be out, and the house buzzed with rare silence. She curled up in a chair near the window with her two new books. Persian love poetry and the Lady Hemsworth’s guide to moral behavior. The sun shone full and hot, and people passed by outside the window on horses and on foot. An hour ago, Berkeley Square had been completely deserted, an island Cass and she alone inhabited.
She tapped the cover of the poetry book she could not yet read. The book he’d bought her. Before kissing her under a shower of flower petals.
Well, she had her answer. What would it be like to be kissed by Lord Albee as an embrace and not as a warning?
Glorious. She’d told him sweet, and that had been true, but the kiss had been much more than that as well. It had been revelatory. He’d held her like he might break her, like he adored her. Yet the language of his lips said he would consume her if given the chance, and she would enjoy it.
She had enjoyed it. She’d even enjoyed the warning kiss that had come later. She chuckled. Of course that’s what he’d been doing. Warning her with his talk of abduction and his kisses—I’m dangerous.
But that kiss had said other things as well. It had spoken of breaking rules, consequences be damned. His teeth against the sensitive inner skin of her lip had brought the world to startling life, given her new perspective.
The bustling London outside the window no longer seemed unfriendly; she now found it exhilarating. Perhaps the transformation had occurred because she now felt part and parcel of its intrigue and its frenetic pace.
But she would not have long to swim in its currents.
Lucas would arrive soon.
She sighed and lolled her head back on the chair’s edge.Lucas. She’d sealed her fate the night she’d let him into her bedroom. It had felt right and good in the moment, the next step in her transforming relationship with her childhood neighbor. No one had forced her to sleep with Lucas, and she did not regret it. But the ramifications of the act—Lucas’s assumption that they would, naturally, wed—those she lamented.
She sighed, unable to blame him. Most men would assume as he did or the worst of her character. Why couldn’t women live as men did, doing as they pleased with their bodies without anyone caring much one way or another?
But no matter how much she wished it true, it never would be. Her body belonged always to others, as did her future.
She wanted to steer her own life in whichever direction she chose, to step into a future of her own making, just as she suggested Lord Albee, Cass, do.
She would go to Astley’s.
He’d bought her books, kissed her, and told her she deserved Italy, deserved a man who would take her there. There had been another revelation—he wasright. She wanted those things, had earned them through the years with her obedience and denial.
But no more.
She did not want to marry Lucas and return to the country. She never had truly wanted to but had always thought it her only option. Her life had always seemed a long corridor with only one door.
She set the books aside without even cracking their spines and rose from her chair. She found writing implements in a desk and sat gingerly on the edge of the seat before it. Every inch of her skin tingled with intention, the appearance of dozens more doors along that corridor.
She set pen to paper, and she set herself free.
Chapter Fourteen
Adaexited the townhouse with a bounce in her step the next morning, and as soon as her foot hit the damp ground of the alley behind their residence, she saw Cass.
He leaned against the wall, hat pulled so low the brim rested against the bridge of his nose.
Did he sleep?
She crept closer, softly, on the balls of her feet. She made no sound as she studied his profile, or what she could see of it. Freshly shaved cheeks, sharp jaw, patrician nose, sumptuous lips. Which quirked. “Miss Ada Cavendish.”
She stopped, froze, held her breath.
“Admirable attempt to sneak up on me, love. Silent toes, silent skirts. Wouldn’t have heard you coming.”
She thumped her shoulder against the wall. “How’d you know, then?”
He tipped the hat up off his eyes and turned, the quirk of his lips spreading into a predatory smile. “I smelled you. Sugar and lemons, Miss Ada Cavendish.”
She shivered, then popped off the wall and sauntered down the alley toward the street.
