Page 8 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

Then, just as he started to shake his head, he thought again of the fact that Scott had sent him to Earnshaw’s, where he had met Caro. An act of friendship?

“In a manner of speaking,” he conceded, pushing away his untouched plate.

Over fish, she asked whether it was true that he had been away from England for many years.

“More rumors?”

His fiercest scowl did not deter her. “Yes.”

“I’ve traveled on the Continent and…elsewhere,” he answered her, after a moment. Egypt, the West Indies. But what were countries, continents, to a man without a home?

“What fascinating stories you must have to tell.”

“Yes,” he agreed, thinking for a moment of what relief a man might enjoy, at last having someone to whom he could tell his tales.

But he did not offer to tell them.

Despite his warning, she was testing, prodding, probing. Too clever by half, his lady wife.

And far too tempting.

He had foreseen no difficulty in keeping a safe, respectable distance between them; instead, after dessert, he found himself following her into her chambers, snuffing the candles, and joining her in her bed.

“Maxim.” She sighed into his mouth as he pinned her wrists again, and he let himself stay with her nearly until dawn, pouring sweet words into her ears, driving her to peak after peak, seeking something from her that had no name in any language he knew.

The next morning, in the breakfast parlor, as she buttered a piece of toast, she asked, “Is it true you have cut off all communication with your grandfather, the duke?”

“Of course not,” he said, thinking of the terse letter at present wending its way to Northumberland and hoping that the rattle of his coffee cup in its saucer did not betray his agitation.

He stole secrets. He did not surrender them.

Nevertheless, that night, he contemplated leaving the candles lit. How he wanted to watch her peach plump arse quiver as he took her, to know the color of her areolas and whether the crisp curls that guarded her mound were the same rich auburn as her hair. To gaze deep into her whisky-warm eyes and—

He unwound his cravat, wondering what she would say if he offered to blindfold her with it. She had denied him nothing thus far.

Letting the strip of linen slip from his hand to the floor, he pinched the candle wick between thumb and forefinger, relishing both the sting and the darkness, and ordered her onto her belly.

“Rumor has it your mother was French,” she said afterward as she lay beneath him.

He made no reply.

“It is French, isn’t it? The language you speak to me when you—when we…” Even without the benefit of candlelight, he knew that she blushed.

“Some of it,” he conceded. “French is, after all, le langage de l’amour.”

She laughed, the same throaty sound that had drawn him in Earnshaw’s library. “Not on the tongue of an English governess.”

He didn’t doubt it, though he’d never had an English governess. His mother—his first teacher—had in fact been Breton. All his life her language had risen naturally to his lips in moments of passion. She’d taught him French too, of course, little anticipating the uses to which he would eventually put such knowledge. His extraordinary fluency had made him a boon to the Crown over the last decade.

The lock-picking he had taught himself.

Midmorning, on the fourth day following their wedding, he was reading over some papers in his study when she appeared in the doorway, a leather-bound volume in her hands.

“I finished it. The Highwayman’s Hostage.” Her eyes shone, today a rich, luminous brown.

He gave a wry smile. “I assume the ugly fellow—the one who reminded you of me—met a suitably sticky end?”

“Oh, no. Mr. Ratliff is far too clever for that,” she insisted, clutching the book to her chest as she stepped closer. “The man with the scars, the one everyone assumes to be the villain, proves himself a hero at the last.”