Page 3 of When the Scoundrel Sins

“Go away,” Quinton repeated in a snarl through gritted teeth. “This isn’t your concern.”

Ignoring that, Williams laughed. He was having far too much fun chiding Quinn and humiliating her to leave. “Tore your dress, did you, pet?”

The other man slapped Williams on the shoulder and gestured toward her skirt. “Before or after she was on her knees, do you think?”

Quinton’s broad body stiffened with anger so intense that it pulsed palpably on the midnight air. “Leave,” he ordered. “And don’t say a word about this to anyone.”

“Or what?” Williams taunted, throwing his glass away into the bushes to empty his hands to fight.

Amusement fled from the two men. Their faces turned hard, and they pulled themselves up straight. Tension sizzled like electricity in the air.

“Quinn, don’t.” She rested her hand on his right arm to stop the fisticuffs that were about to occur. Because if a fight broke out in the garden, then everyone in the ballroom would surely come pouring outside to see. All of London would find her looking like this and make the same assumption about her and Quinton that Williams and his friend had. “Just walk away. Please.”

His eyes flashed like brimstone. “And let them get away with insulting you?”

“Yes!” she choked out, afraid she would burst into sobs. “It doesn’t mean any—”

“Tupping a bluestocking?” The friend laughed. “That’s desperate.”

“Unless bluestockings taste like blueberries. Do they, Carlisle?” Williams took a step toward Quinn. “Is she a ripe juicy blueberry, ready to pop on a man’s tongue?”

Quinn’s arm muscles tensed beneath her fingertips as she felt his simmering anger flame into rage.

“Quinton, don’t do this,” she begged. “Please.”

But he shrugged her hand away and stepped forward, fists clenched and heading straight into the fight. In an instant, punches hurled between all three men, followed by the sickeningly dull thuds of landed fists.

Panic surged inside her. She couldn’t be caught out here, not looking like this! Not with one of Mayfair’s favorite rakes bare-knuckle brawling over her.

Without thinking, only knowing she had to get away before she was seen, she ran toward the house. She was desperate to find the retiring room, to hide there until Lady Ainsley could rescue her and put an end to this nightmare.

“Belle, wait!” Quinn called out. She glanced over her shoulder only long enough to see him land a punch that sent Williams reeling. “Stop!”

But thelastthing she would do was face him in her disgrace, or watch him get himself beaten up over her. When she heard him running toward her, the fight abandoned to chase after her, she hurried faster through the dark shadows toward the terrace door. Her shaking hand grabbed for the door handle—

“Annabelle, no!”

She flung open the door and rushed inside. Then halted in mid-step to suck in a soft scream of surprise when she saw four of theton’s biggest busybodies sitting in the library. They stared at her, as if she belonged in the mews rather than in the grand town house with them. Then their gazes roamed slowly over her, taking in the torn and sagging bodice, the dirt stains on her skirt…Oh God.

Quinton arrived at her side a heartbeat later, looking disheveled and mussed from the fight. Knowing smiles spread across the women’s faces, and their eyes gleamed like hyenas relishing a feast. A scoundrel and a woman they considered too ill-bred to ever be one of them—

He shed his jacket and placed it over her shoulders to cover her, but it was too late. The damage had been done. Her ripped and dirty dress provided all the proof—and ammunition—they needed to ruin her.

CHAPTERONE

Cumbria, England, Near the Scottish Border

September 1822

Annabelle paused as she walked with Lady Ainsley through the gardens at Castle Glenarvon, glancing up at the late afternoon sun as it slowly lowered toward the horizon. Another day gone.

Her chest tightened painfully as she whispered, “Only one month left.”

The dowager viscountess wrapped her arm around Belle’s and gave a resolute nod as she patted her arm. “There’s still plenty of time.”

Belle wasn’t so certain. Hadn’t the last four years passed in the blink of an eye, only for her to still be unmarried one month before her birthday and the deadline for her inheritance?

Drawing in a deep breath, she looked across the gardens to the sweeping views of the Cumbria estate she loved, with its river and glen, and farther out across the fields of heather leading away to the blue mountains in the distance. Given as a gift to a favorite of the crown during the English civil war, the estate had been created to hold the border against Scottish invasion. It had passed down through the late Lord Ainsley’s family as a treasured, if financially meager, property located so far north that a strong wind could have toppled it over into Scotland.