Page 8 of Teach a Rogue New Tricks
She waved his words away as if waving his very antics out of existence. “Ah, well, I’ve been in the country until recently. And quite,quitebusy. No time for gossip sheets. Have you heard of my father?”
Who hadn’t? “Is it difficult to be the daughter of a famous adventurer?”
Her face fell. She searched her lap for who knew what. “No. Of course not.”
“Did you ever travel with him?”
“No. Of course not.” Her words the first time had been soft. Now they held a bitter edge.
“Fathers are complex creatures.” His relationship with his own father offered an excellent example of such filial complications.
“Indeed. But why should we speak of our fathers?”
“You’re right. Here I am, alone with a pretty woman, yet I insist on speaking only of family. I am out of practice, as you can see.”
“If you were a true villain, as you claim, your conversation would be much more scandalous. I assume, that is. Never having conversed with a villain before.” Her entire body rippled with a shiver, and she leaned closer to him, as if to share a secret. “I must confess to finding this all rather thrilling. I came up here for a tiny adventure. Find out the name of the man in the window. But I ended up with a rather big adventure—a self-proclaimed villain who desires tochat.” She chuckled.
Cass almost reached for her, to stroke his knuckles down the creamy bare expanse of her upper arm. He shoved his fingers under his thigh to keep from doing so. “Wonders never cease in London. You like adventure, then, Miss Cavendish?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“And would you like to have another?” He tried to hide the wicked tone wrapped like sin around his voice. He truly did. But there it clung, wicked and slithering and awake and alive, because ofher.
She almost answered him, too. But then her eyes narrowed, and she leaned against the back of the chair. “You are suggesting something more than a harmless adventure, are you not?”
He chuckled. “A harmless question.” Not really.
She shook her head. “No. Too intimate a question.”
“I don’t see how.”
“I may be a country bumpkin, but I have studied etiquette. Good manners. One must know these subjects to raise a pack of feral wolves masquerading as children, after all.”
“You have children?” She barely looked old enough to marry. But… maturity crinkled around her eyes and mouth. She was no schoolroom chit.
“Of course not!”
“No, no. Of course not. Only… you did say… just now—”
“I have two sisters. And cousins—twin boys, my father’s wards. I’ve had the keep of them when he’s away traveling.”
“Lola did say something about your father’s large brood, but… no governess?”
She sighed. One hand absently played with the tip of a nail on the other hand “We tried. Many times. One ventured to seduce my father when he returned home. Another sought to steal his scholarship. Still others refused to teach me and my sisters anything outside of housekeeping.” She pulled herself up tall. “And I’m good with languages. Such narrow-minded education would never do. And even if we had a governess, the children still needed someone to attend to non-scholarly matters. Injuries, nightmares, you know.”
His mother’s voice cooing over a scraped knee echoed in his memory. He did know. “And you offered such solace, comfort?”
She opened her palms to the sky and shrugged. “I did.”
He stared at her, an idea clicking into place. Could he be so lucky? Could the answer to his problem fall so easily into his lap? He shook his head. No. No thinking of her in his lap. That would not do at all, especially if his burgeoning plan were to work.
He rose slowly to his feet. “You’re saying you are an attractive, unattached woman who understands proper behavior and has experience getting even the most recalcitrant of young boys to mind?”
“I did not, actually, say that. And why do you assume I’m unattached?”
He paced across the room. Perhaps the unattached bit had merely been wishful thinking. “Are you? Unattached.”
“It’s complicated.”
