Page 57 of Teach a Rogue New Tricks
Cass loosened his hold. He wanted more than anything to ram his fist into the man’s face. But he held his fist to his side, ready but unused.
“I’m sorry!”
Cass threw him to the floor. “Go.”
The man scurried to his feet and fled.
Cass took a steadying breath. He should cower before the woman with a pistol in her pocket, but only relief made his muscles quiver. Let her tell Bax Cass abided in London. Perhaps Cass would do it first. He straightened his waistcoat and jacket then turned.
Miss Nora Cavendish looked much like her sister. They had the same thick dark-brown hair and green eyes. But the younger Miss Cavendish had bolder features and green eyes that dared any onlooker to do their worst. Ada stood taller, emanating control while her sister vibrated with defiance.
Ada flung her arms around her sister and squeezed. Then she held her out at arm’s length. “What are you doing here! Did you follow us? What a foolhardy thing to do! Why, Nora?”
The second cloaked woman stepped forward and pushed her hood back from her face, revealing golden hair and blue eyes. “I’m afraid I convinced her to come. It’s my fault. I thought you in danger, Ada. I did not know we were.”
Lady Willow, his sister-in-law and the sole victim of his one and only abduction attempt, turned her gaze to him. It hardened. But embedded in the brittle wall of her gaze—cracks. And something like curiosity shone through those and lived in the slight tilt of her head. “Hello, Lord Albee. I heard you’d returned to London.”
Cass’s heart stopped. He’d thought himself ready to face those he’d wronged the most. But was he?
Chapter Fifteen
Whatdid one say when the woman you unsuccessfully kidnapped stared you down while you stood in a city you were not supposed to be in next to a woman you were desperate to impress?
Desperate? He cringed. But yes, a little bit. A lot possibly. Not that it would happen this very moment. Or possibly ever again.
“Have you nothing to say, Lord Albee?” His sister-in-law seemed calm and confident, a far cry from the scared, unsure woman he’d first met.
He cleared his throat. “You look well, Lady Cordell. Marriage agrees with you.”
Her head slipped slowly to the side as her eyes narrowed. “That is all you have to say? ‘You look well,’ as if we last saw one another over tea and not a botched abduction.”
“Have you told Bax I’m… here?”
Her head straightened with a pop, and she swept around him, putting distance between herself and the others. “Selfish as always, I see. Nothing has changed. Only concerned for yourself.”
He strode after her. Yesterday he might have agreed with her—he’d not changed a bit. But today he did not want that to be true, did not believe it to be true. “I have been a right selfish bastard in the past. I don’t deny it. But—”
She whirled around. “What are you doing with Miss Cavendish?”
He hesitated to answer. He did not know what he and Ada were doing any longer. Reforming him? Seducing her? Both and neither. Courting? Ha. Viscount Albee didn’t court women.
He’d had a vague sense ofplanningever since yesterday, but no bloody idea what that even meant.
Willow whirled back around with a grunt. “Stay away from her.”
The younger Miss Cavendish ran up and thread her arm through Willow’s. She glared at Cass. “Ada. Let’s go home.”
“No.”
The two women whose shoulders, side-by-side, defied every rogue to do his worst stopped. Together, they turned. Their wide eyes sought the inner corners of Ada’s soul.
Ada stepped to Cass’s side, her movements precise and purposeful. She felt warm there, and her warmth seeped into him. He’d not known he’d needed it until she’d appeared, but God, his heart hurt with all the damned gratitude surging through it.
In his past, every time his brother had tried to stand by his side, he’d mocked him, thrown him away. And he’d already tried many times to do the same with Ada. No more. She deserved his best.
He leaned down to her, not wanting her to have to choose between her sister and him. “Go with them. I understand.”
Ada’s hand crept into his. “No.” She looked only at him but spoke loud enough for her sister and friend to hear. “You saved them from a drunkard and likely a rapist. The least they can do is listen to you.” She looked at Willow. “I understand why you are hesitant to hear him out, but I have spent this last week getting to know him. He curses abominably, has no idea how to behave with children, likes to say rather shocking things, and is not always mindful of personal space.”
