50 Ways to Ruin a Rake Read Free

calmly turn aside to hand off hats and coats to a waiting footman. Family might well discount the danger, but servants always knew. If the Smithson’s butler saw nothing untoward, then Trevor could relax his fist.
    He did, easing his grip on her elbow as well. But he stayed right by her side while her bizarre cousin continued to twist her head one way and the other as he stared intently at her face.
    Meanwhile, Miss Smithson rapidly got tired of being manhandled. “They’re brown, Ronnie,” she snapped as she tried to pull away. She had more hope of pushing aside a boulder.
    â€œOf course they’re brown,” her cousin agreed. And yet he continued to study her as…well, as Mr. Smithson studied his insects. “To the baker, they’re brown. To a lovesick stable boy, they’re brown. But to me, sweet Mellie, they are decidedly more interesting than brown .” He actually sneered the color.
    Trevor felt his irritation run away with him. Was the man a Bedlamite? “But they are brown,” he said.
    The behemoth shot him a triumphant glare. “Exactly my point.”
    Miss Smithson made a very loud sigh. “Ronnie—”
    â€œYou see,” her cousin continued, riding directly over her words. “Your eyes are a kind of mink color in darkness—”
    â€œYou can’t see them in the dark,” she said. Exactly what Trevor would have said.
    â€œIn shadow then. But in the sun…” He twisted her head such that the light fell directly on her face. Then he exhaled as one might breathe when in the Sistine Chapel—with awe and amazement. “I was thinking mahogany, but that’s not it, not it at all. They’re like cat’s eyes.”
    Miss Smithson pursed her lips. “Yellow and slitted?”
    â€œNot a real cat. The stone. Cat’s eye stones. Brown, but with striations of gold, not in a slitted line, but more like in a circle. A radiating circle. No, that’s not right.” He dropped his hands with a huff. “It’s most difficult.”
    Finally released from her cousin’s grip, Miss Smithson took a deep breath and straightened upright. She wasn’t that tall, but she did have a fierce expression in her eyes—her golden-brown eyes, he reluctantly noted—as she glared at her cousin.
    â€œRonnie, you didn’t have to grab me like that. You could have just asked me to step into the sunlight.”
    â€œWhat?” her cousin said, his brow furrowed in thought. “Your eyes are most difficult, you know. I would just call them cat’s eye brown, but that’s a double metaphor, you know. The stone is a metaphor for the animal. And the stone would be a metaphor for your eyes. Bad poetry, that.”
    â€œYes,” Miss Smithson said, obviously not caring in the least. “Very bad.”
    â€œI’d use the chrysoberyl and say damn to the boys who’d have to look up the word, but it would be impossible to rhyme. And besides, the word looks so odd on the page. No one would know how to pronounce it, and the moment they’re thinking of that, they’ve lost the beauty of the poetry.” Then he looked back at her. “Though, of course, you know what chrysoberyl is, and the poem is for you—”
    â€œI also know what color my eyes are,” she said as she turned to the house. Then she paused to shoot her cousin an irritated glower. “May I go inside now?”
    Her sarcasm was lost on the bear suddenly looking at her bonnet. “There’s a hole in your bonnet. Did you not notice?”
    Which is the exact moment that Miss Smithson’s anger shifted right back to Trevor. Her gaze caught his, and he would swear those gold and mahogany eyes shot darts at him. “Yes, Ronnie, I knew.”
    â€œOh. Is it a new female style? To punch holes—”
    â€œNo, Ronnie.” Stomping past Trevor, she ripped off her broken bonnet and handed it to the