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He fixed his sister with a stare. He didn’t like the idea of her knowing of his deeds. Or misdeeds as they were—which, quite frankly, were becoming few and far between since becoming Viscount Whitehurst.
Lily pressed a hand to his chest. “What? I read the scandal sheets too!”
“Well, you should not.”
“Perhaps you should not be in them,” she shot back.
The door opened again, and Mabel skipped in, ribbons bouncing in her raven hair. She threw herself onto a chair and boldly snatched up a piece of toast to slather it in jam. “I heard you curse too,” his sister said. “I am certainly going to tell Mama.”
Luke groaned and peered at his twelve-year-old sister. “I am going to have to buy you more sweetmeats, am I not?”
She grinned, jam smeared around her mouth. “Absolutely.”
“That’s bribery, Mabel,” Noel scolded.
“Why does everyone call you a rake?” his youngest sister asked, ignoring Noel.
Luke shared a look with his brother and sister and shook his head slowly. This was not a discussion he wanted to be having with his youngest sister.
“Tell you what, I’ll buy you double the number of sweetmeats if you can sit in silence for the entire meal.”
Her grin expanded. “Deal!”
“What are your plans today, Luke?” Lily asked. “Do you have time to take me to Gunter’s? Mama said she has a headache and cannot go.”
“First I have to buy sweetmeats, by the looks of it, and I need to visit with one person,” he said. One person whom he really did not wish to visit. But he had promised Cassie’s brother he would keep an eye on her, and he needed to ensure she was not sneaking into anymore private rooms and covering herself in dirt. Little Cassie Fallon was up to something and he had to discover what—before her brother returned.
Chapter Three
Cassie stepped smartly around the puddle forming on the pavement in front of Guildbury Hall then skipped past another, her skirts in one hand and the other doing a terrible job of shielding her from the abrupt downpour. She ducked gratefully into the carriage, settled against the plush cushions, and pushed a damp strand of hair from her face. She didn’t normally mind the rain, enjoying the patter of it on the windows or the shingle rooftop of her father’s Yorkshire cottage, but could it not wait until she no longer needed to venture outside?
The footman shut the door and she worked off her damp gloves to lay them out on the seat opposite. Jane’s house sat on the junction between Bolton Row and Curzon Street. Not far away but between the rain and London traffic, her gloves would surely have time to dry.
A light tap at the carriage door made her jolt and she grimaced when she spotted the face behind the rain-speckled window. Of course he would be here. Looking frightfully dashing too, despite the rain, and the blurred view she had of him. She inched open the door. “What do you want?”
“What a lovely way to greet a friend.” Luke flashed a grin at her, revealing even white teeth that sat so perfectly in his equally even mouth.
“You are my brother’s friend,” she pointed out with a frown.
Why she always had to notice how attractive Luke was she did not know. It was something that occurred to her more and more frequently over the years. He had been a fixture in her life for as long as she could remember, mostly because he and Anton were rarely apart.
When he had become something other than her brother’s friend, she did not know. At some point, she’d grown aware of his black hair and the way it fell perfectly across his forehead in little curls that should seem boyish yet on his strong features, begged for a woman’s touch.
His strong build could not be ignored either. He rode and fenced regularly, affording him shoulders that filled his clothes to perfection. She could only imagine what lay beneath the elegant blue waistcoat and her imagination never failed to fill out the blank picture as though he were some marble statue carved by Bernini.
“I had rather thoughtwewere friends too.” He gripped the side of the carriage and it rocked slightly as he climbed his way in and seated himself opposite her. He slammed the door shut with a finality that told her he had no intention of leaving anytime soon.
“What are you doing?”
“Coming with you.”
She folded her arms. “You do not even know where I’m going.”
Lord, he smelled lovely. Rain mixed with a little cologne. The scent filled the vehicle, cleaving through her own vanilla fragrance with a brutal swing of masculinity. As the daughter of a duke, men had been rather too involved in her life ever since her debut. If they were not angling for her hand, they were trying to manage her. Masculinity equaled a hindrance for the most part.
Until it came to Luke it seemed. Here, masculinity offered little morsels of temptation, luring her in to drink in his scent for just a while longer.
“Where are we going then?” He shifted her gloves over, removed his hat, and sprawled his arms over the back of the seat, as though he had all the time in the world to sit in her carriage and cause her delays.
