A Rogue of One's Own
Lucie gave her a pointed look. “Forgive my being forward, but it would be ill-advised to become more closely acquainted.”
“Acquainted,” Lady Henley said slowly.
“With his lordship.” She gestured a circle around the now deceptively idly lounging nobleman.
Lady Henley’s expression cooled. “How kind of you to advise me.”
“I’m afraid you risk attracting attention.”
“No one can see us. There’s a shrub.” The lady gestured at the sprawling rhododendron shielding them, her body already arching toward the viscount again.
Lucie’s neck prickled with an unpleasant emotion. “It’s still a rather unbecoming look for a suffragist.”
Lady Henley, stubborn creature, wrinkled her nose. “It is? Say, was it not you who told us women should strive to own their aspirations and desires? Yes, you did say it.”
“Did she now,” drawled Ballentine, intrigued.
Lucie unlocked her jaw with some effort. “The context was slightly, but significantly, different. Have we not had enough scandal threatening the women’s colleges this year?”
Lady Henley made a pout. “Very well. I suppose the hour is quite late.” She eyed Ballentine from beneath her lashes.
“I did advise you,” Lucie said, and made to close the window. Or tried to. The window did not budge. She pulled harder. Still it stuck. Lady Henley tilted her head. His lordship was watching her efforts with growing interest.
Her head was hot. How could it be stuck? She gritted her teeth. Fires of Hades, the window would not move.
“Allow me,” Tristan said, and stepped closer.
“I don’t need—”
He spread his long fingers and settled his fingertips on the wooden frame. With a slow, steady glide, the window lowered and settled gently on the sill between them.
Her own face was reflected back at her, distorted, narrow-eyed, with her blade-straight hair gracelessly escaping her chignon.
On the other side of the glass, Ballentine’s smugness gleamed like a beacon in the night.
She all but yanked the curtains shut.
“Do not mind her,” came Lady Henley’s muffled voice, “she’s a spinster.”
She spun around, her heart pounding as though she’d run a mile. What a silly, exaggerated physical reaction. No need to be emotional. But she would have to leave, unless she wished to witness Ballentine’s exploits with Lady Henley through shared walls. She truly did not wish to witness it.
Attuned to her moods, Boudicca came strolling from her corner again, her eyes yellow in the gaslight. She butted Lucie’s skirts until Lucie bent and stroked her. At the feel of the soft fur beneath her fingers, her pulse slowed.
She needn’t worry about Lady Henley flinging herself into the river Isis over Ballentine as others had threatened before—she was no green girl. And Ballentine’s reputation as a seducer preceded him; in fact, he was the last person to try and hide what he wanted. Calculation on his part, she suspected, as it encouraged scores of women to try and reform him with healing feminine love, and a good number of them made a noose for themselves out of their own ambition.
She gathered the inkwell, the blotter, the fountain pen, her notes. On her way to the door, she picked up a shawl, because there was always a draft in Lady Margaret Hall’s library.
She all but bolted out the front door and skipped down the stairs, then paused to drag a breath deep into her lungs. The cool night air was a balm on her heated cheeks.
“Taking a walk, my lady?”
The silky voice wrapped around her from behind.
She turned slowly, her hands drawn into fists.
Tristan was leaning back against the windowsill, a lit cigarette between his fingers. Next to him, his walking cane was propped against the wall, the oversized amber pommel aglow like an evil eye in the shaft of lantern light.
“Why, that was quick.” There was no trace of Lady Henley.
“Something happened to spoil the mood,” he said, exhaling smoke through his nose.
“A pity.”
“Not at all. It was quite entertaining.”
He detached himself from the sill and approached, his tall frame throwing a long shadow toward her. A sensation fluttered low in her belly, like a hundred soft and frantic wings. Well, bother. During his absences, she forgot how imposing he was; whenever they crossed paths again, she became acutely aware of it.
She had first felt the flutter years ago when petitioning parliamentarians in a corridor in Westminster. Tristan had been about to embark on his first tour—by orders of his father, she’d assumed, for there wasn’t a sliver of a soldier’s discipline in him. But when he had unexpectedly appeared in front of her, a bolt of heat had shot through her body and rooted her to the spot. She had not yet put the lens in place that showed a bothersome carrot-head. Instead, she had been ambushed with a version of him everyone else was seeing: a face of chiseled symmetry. Wide shoulders. Slim hips. The famous Ballentine build, in a tightly tailored uniform. All the sudden, unbridled attractiveness had afflicted her with the unfamiliar urge to fuss with her hair. Humiliating. It was hardly beyond her to admire the aesthetics of a well-made man. But him? For six long summers, Tristan the boy had plagued her in her own home with leering stares and pranks—when she loathed pranks. Worse, he had endeared himself to her brother, her cousins, and her mother, until she had felt ever more out of place at the dining table. Judging by the outrageous headlines whenever he set foot on British soil between deployments, he had failed to improve.
He halted before her, too close, and she raised her chin. By some irony of fate, she had gained a bare inch in height since their first encounter in Wycliffe Park.
“You shouldn’t idle on our doorstep,” she told him.
“And you shouldn’t traipse about alone at night.”
On his right ear, his diamond earring glimmered coldly like a star.
Her lip curled. “Don’t trouble yourself on my behalf.”
She resumed walking.
“I rather wouldn’t.” He was next to her, needing only one stride where she took two. “However, I’m afraid I’m obliged to escort you.”
“Truly, there is no need for gentlemanly overtures.”
“A gentleman would insist on carrying your bag. You are lopsided.”
He was, notably, not insisting to carry it.
And she was walking into the wrong direction, she realized, appalled. Blast. She could hardly turn back now; it would look as though she had been running from him, quite mindlessly, too.
“A lady’s reputation is in greater jeopardy when she is in your company than when she’s on her own after dark,” she tried.
“Your faith in my notoriety overwhelms me.”
“It certainly worked a charm on Lady Henley.”
“Who?”
She sniffed. “Never mind.” And, because it did irk her that he would endanger their household’s reputation for nothing at all: “I suppose where the chase is the aim, names are but tedious details.”
“I wouldn’t know.” He sounded bemused. “I never chase.”
“What a worrying degree of self-delusion.”
He tutted. “Have you not read your Darwin? The male flaunts himself, the female chooses, it has ever been thus. Beware the determinedly chasing male—he is hoping you won’t notice his plumage is subpar.”
“Whereas yours is of course superiorly large and iridescent.”
“I assure you it is not iridescent,” he said in a bland voice.
Annoyance crept hotly up her neck. “The ladies do not seem to mind.”
“My dear,” he murmured. “Do I detect jealousy?”
Her fingers tightened around the strap of her satchel. Could she make her wrong turn look deliberate? Unless she changed direction, she would end up in Oxford’s town center.
“I think that is exactly what it is,” Tristan said. “It would certainly explain your frequent sabotage of my liaisons.”
“I know you find your own banter highly entertaining, but it is wasted on me tonight.”
“I remember the one time with Lady Warwick.”
Despite herself, a memory flashed, of two figures in a shadowed garden. He could have been no older than seventeen. “It was ghastly,” she said. “She had just returned from her honeymoon.”
“And was already bored witless.”
“She must have been desperate indeed. It does not mean she deserved to be despoiled on a garden table.”
“Despoiled? Good Lord.”
He sounded vaguely affronted. Good. They were halfway down Parks Road, and she wished him gone.
“Who would have thought,” she said, “the infamous rake remembers his liaisons.”
“Oh, I don’t,” came his soft reply. “Only the ones who got away.”
Who probably were very few.
She stopped in her tracks and faced him. “Was there anything in particular you wanted?”
His eyes glittered yellow in the streetlight, not unlike Boudicca’s.
“It would not be too particular, I think,” he then said, his voice low. Almost a purr.
She stared at him unblinking, down her nose, while her heart beat faster. He did this sometimes, say things in a manner that suggested he was picturing her alone with him, in a state of undress. She supposed it was how he spoke to all women: with the intent to seduce. To her, he did it to aggravate.