Never Tempt a Rogue: A Rogues' Rulebook Novella Read Free Page A

scrawl.
    The first dance is mine, sweet.
    - L
    Felicity clamped her jaw so tight she bit her tongue and tasted blood.
    The man wasn’t just bold. That was too much like praise. He was brazen, and completely wrong-headed, if he thought he could seduce and then cast off Amy as he had so many other young ladies.
    “You’re cross, aren’t you?” Amy pressed her hands together as if she wasn’t sure what to do with them. “Let’s just put the thing on the fire and forget I ever received it. We’ve just arrived. I can’t bear to see you out of sorts already.”
    “I’m not out of sorts with you, my dear.” Felicity approached her cousin and tucked a stray curl behind her ear, a comforting touch she remembered receiving from her own mother. “Ring for tea, Amy, and I’ll join you shortly. There’s a gentleman I need to speak with first.”
    Not that she had any idea where to find him. The Forsythe’s house seemed designed to confuse, with hallways jutting off in every direction, and doors to far more rooms than any one family could ever use. She couldn’t confront the man in his bedroom, so seeking him downstairs seemed the best option.
    The main entry hall was abuzz with servants, some directing visitors who’d just arrived, others carrying refreshments into Lady Forsythe’s drawing room, where she was holding court, greeting and orienting every guest to the merrymaking to come.
    Felicity rushed past the drawing room doorway as quickly as she could. As she hurried along, a figure beyond two enormous French doors drew her attention. The man she sought stood on a balcony leading toward the estate’s rear gardens.
    For a moment the sight of him held her immobile. He was terribly tall. And ridiculously handsome, in an almost merciless way. The longer she looked, the harder it was to look away, to take a step toward the door and confront him as she’d intended to do. Those legs of his were longer than any other man of her acquaintance. And his hair, which she’d thought of as brown, revealed its secrets in the late afternoon sun. Mice were brown. The day dress she usually wore at home was brown. His hair shone like polished bronze, some strands glinting as rich as gold.
    Stop this nonsense. Good grief, was Amy’s mania for men catching? Some contagious foolishness akin to the common cold, which Papa had called the scourge of mankind.
    As she stared at Lord Lindsay lounging idly on the balcony, one hip cocked against the balustrade, arms crossed as if in contemplation of his excessive share of male beauty, Felicity decided that men like him were the scourge of mankind. Men who considered women playthings, and feigned having a heart, when all that truly filled their puffed out chests was pride in their own prowess.
    ***
    Alex uncrossed his arms and sighed.
    So it was to be marriage. Not a series of lectures on how to be a respectable titled gentleman, but a lifetime of chastisement from his own lady wife. All that he’d been avoiding for years rushed toward him like an oncoming steam train, and impulse told him to escape. To jump the track and make his own way in the world.
    Yet as he turned to grip the balustrade of his aunt and uncle’s balcony, gazing out onto their perfectly manicured garden and the expanse of woods beyond, he recalled the land around his family’s estate in Surrey. No place in the world would ever be home like the south of England, and he couldn’t deny preferring country air. London was filled with incomparable diversions, but he never took a breath without sucking in its stew of smoke and dust. Sussex’s breezes were tinged with the sweet smell of meadow flowers, fresh cut grasslands, and the faintest hint of the sea, just a handful of miles past the downs. Drawing in another lungful, Alex decided Sussex air would be his elixir. He would start by enjoying the countryside and move, step by step, toward all the responsibilities hurtling toward him.
    “ Embracing duty is the Evering way