A Rogue of One's Own

“The meaning,” she said loudly, “is that if Lord Ballentine spent the night in my bed, he cannot have spent it compromising my cousin.”

A strangled noise sounded from the direction of her mother.

She felt Tristan staring at her, but she avoided his gaze. It would hurt to face him, and she could not afford chinks in her armor now.

“Stop scribbling,” snarled Wycliffe. “If one word of this leaves this room, I shall see that each one of you loses his license.” The three men who looked like lawyers froze with their fingers around their pens.

Rochester was staring at her. “You make an incredible claim. Can you prove it?”

“You are asking for a witness?” She inclined her head. “It is not usually commonplace to have a third person in the room during such encounters.”

“Silence,” her father barked. His face had gone from white to a worrying shade of crimson.

Her heart was racing, the thuds heavy in her ears. The dreamlike quality to the situation was wearing off; the urgency pounding through her out on the fields that had filled her with unnatural determination was draining from her.

“You may silence me here,” she said. “But I won’t hesitate to go to the papers to make my claim. Certainly not should I find it confirmed that there were consequences.” She clasped a meaningful hand over her midriff.

The collective gasp sucked the air from the room.

Tristan took a step toward her before reining himself in, but it cost him; she sensed it from across the room that he was struggling. She took a tiny glimpse at him and found that his face was pale. What have you done? said the look in his eyes.

“Thomas,” said her father, his dark stare still on her hand curving over her belly. “Fetch your cousin.”

Tommy turned to his father with a look of shocked disapproval.

“Now,” Wycliffe said. Lucie knew this tone. It was the one preceding fatherly discipline.

Tommy’s lips pressed into a line, but he made for the door.

No one spoke a word until he returned.

Cecily certainly looked as though she had been debauched in a hedge and had lived to regret it. Her hair was tousled; her pretty face was blotchy and swollen from crying. Lucie was taken aback; it was no surprise that the men in this room were keen to protect her—she would have felt protective of her too, had she not known better.

When Cecily spotted Tristan standing next to the desk, her blue eyes widened with a measure of alarm. It turned to bewilderment when she recognized Lucie. Her face froze over entirely when Wycliffe informed her about Lucie’s claims.

“So, Cecily, do you have anything to say?” Wycliffe asked her.

Cecily was not looking at anyone in particular; she stood with her shoulders drooping. When she spoke, her voice was high and soft. “It appears to me as though Cousin Lucie would like to claim Lord Ballentine for herself.”

Wycliffe’s brows rose in surprise, and a murmur rose among the lawyers. This had been an attack, rather than a defense of position.

Lucie made a face. “I would rather have my teeth pulled than marry, Cecily.”

“And yet you are here,” Cecily muttered. “And you say you and he . . .” She choked a little, as though she could not bring herself to say the words, and her nose wrinkled as if she were fighting back tears.

“Cecily,” Wycliffe said, his tone notably cooler. “Again—is there anything helpful you have to say on the matter?”

Cecily’s gaze met Lucie’s directly for the first time since entering the library. “You never liked me,” she said. “I daresay, you envied me.”

“Envied you?” Lucie was genuinely surprised.

Cecily nodded. “For taking your place. Perhaps now, you wish to destroy my happiness in return.”

Beyond Cecily’s shoulder, Lucie saw her mother raise a hand to her mouth.

She slowly shook her head at her cousin. “I never had the place you occupy, Cecily, and I certainly was not happy here. As for your happiness—do you truly believe it is right, forcing Lord Ballentine’s hand?”

Cecily’s eyes narrowed at her, an angry glitter in their depths.

“Hold now,” Tommy said, stepping forward with a scowl. “I do not like this—why, it reminds me of a cross-examination. And it is hardly necessary—Cecily never forced a thing.”

“Then why am I here?” Tristan asked mildly. He had leaned back against the desk, his legs crossed over his ankles, looking deceptively idle. Lucie could feel his fury, tightly contained in his quiet form, and she had the disconcerting feeling that much of it was directed at her.

Tommy rounded on him. “Because a lady would not speak in detail on such a shameful matter, and she does not have to—she has been seen with you, and was gone for hours, unchaperoned. It suffices to ruin her, and by God, you will do right by her.”

Tristan’s smile held a hint of malice. “Your sister says I ruined her, too, and that I won’t deny—do you propose I wed the both of them? Beedle?”

“Uhm,” said Beedle.

“He has a tattoo,” Cecily blurted. “Lord Ballentine has a tattoo on his chest.”

Every head in the room whipped round to her again, and Lucie’s heart stopped for a beat.

Her gaze flew to Tristan, and the look in his eyes said this had surprised him, too.

“Does he now,” came Rochester’s keen voice. “Why don’t you describe it for us?”

Cecily was red as a beet, but when Rochester nodded encouragingly, she said: “It is on the right side of his chest.”

Wycliffe turned to Tristan. “Is this true?”

Tristan gave a nod. “It is.”

Tommy took a step toward him. “You,” he ground out. “You dared to—”

“Hold now,” Lucie said. “Cecily could have easily overheard this in the ladies’ retiring room, rather than seeing it herself.”

“Now, that is preposterous,” Wycliffe said. “The girl hardly moves in circles that would discuss Lord Ballentine’s tattoos in front of debutantes.”

Clearly, her father had no idea what women were wont to discuss among each other in the secluded areas during wine-filled social gatherings.

Her gaze locked with Cecily’s. Her cousin looked terribly out of her depth, but there was a recklessness in her eyes that said she was not going to relent.

“Why don’t you describe it,” Lucie said. “Because I dare you, you can’t.” It was a gamble, but there was nothing to lose now.

Voices swelled around them, protesting, lamenting, ordering—

“It is a . . . a nude woman dancing in a circle,” Cecily said.

It was the flick of her eyes as she said it, furtively up to the right, that sent goose bumps prickling down Lucie’s spine. “Are you certain?” she said quickly.

Cecily bared her small teeth. “You are terribly insistent, cousin.”

“A woman, you say?”

“I just did, say so.”

“And you found nothing unusual about her?”

Cecily leaned forward, almost a crouch. “She’s very obviously in the nude.”

“Obviously, you say—so you were close to see it?”

“Indeed.”

It was very quiet in the library now, the moment where everyone in the room was picturing a situation that would have brought Tristan’s bare chest close to Cecily’s eyes. . . .

“And her four arms didn’t strike you as peculiar?” Lucie said.

Cecily stared at her unblinking for a beat.

Then her eyes lit with a realization, as though she’d just solved a tricky puzzle. “Why must you try and trick me,” she cried. “Of course she does not have four arms.”

“This is enough now,” Wycliffe said. “Enough of this. Gentlemen—”

“Actually,” Tristan said, “there are four arms.”

Everyone turned back to him. Only Cecily took a step back.

Tristan raised his hands to his cravat. “Does anyone care for a demonstration?”

“Hell, no,” Wycliffe, Tommy, and Rochester said in unison, sounding appalled. And uncertain.

Despite the previous threat to their license, the lawyers had their pens at the ready and were following the exchange, riveted, as though watching a match of lawn tennis. Played with grenades.

Lady Wycliffe stepped forward. Pale and shiny, she could have been a waxwork as she moved toward her niece. “Cecily,” she said quietly, one hand extended. “Say it isn’t true.”

Cecily was still backing away slowly.

“Oh, Christ,” said Wycliffe.

Cecily’s bottom lip quivered. “Arthur made me do it,” she said, her gaze darting around the room. “It was all Arthur’s idea—he said . . . the tattoo . . . he told me . . . I didn’t mean to. I just got lost at the fair, running after you, after you just left me there.” She directed a tearful stare at Tristan.

“Out,” Wycliffe said to the lawyers, his voice flat. “Get out, now.”

“I went to the boathouse to cry, because Lord Ballentine had spoken very harshly to me,” Cecily said between sobs. “And I fell asleep on his coat with exhaustion. When I woke, the hour was late, dusk had fallen—was I to sleep in the boathouse? I had to walk unchaperoned—I had no choice.”