The Care and Taming of a Rogue (19 page)

“No one’s ever been jealous over me before.” Her mouth swooped into a smile.

That stopped the retort he’d been about to make. What was wrong with the damned London noblemen, that they’d let her roam among them unnoticed for three years? “Are there any other waltzes being offered tonight?”

Phillipa nodded. “Two more. Apparently Lady Thrushell isn’t entirely pleased with the large number, but Captain Langley is particularly fond of the waltz.”

“Give me both of them.”

“No. It wouldn’t be seemly.”

“Even if I mean to marry you?”

“Shh,” she cautioned, her cheeks darkening. “You can’t bandy that about. You said it when we were…” She looked around, lowering her voice still further. “Naked.”

An unexpected smile touched him. God, she was an original. “I would argue with that, but I want a dance, and you’ve already ignored my request for a kiss.” Behind the cover of a half-open door and a potted plant, he reached up to brush his fingers along her cheek.

“You didn’t request a kiss. You said you wanted one.”

He moved still closer, putting his free hand on her hip. “I’ll play with words if you want,” he whispered, “but there are other things I’d rather be doing with you, Phillipa.”

“Bennett, stop,” she murmured back, taking his hand away but holding on to his fingers.

“Then give me your damned dance card.”

She glanced down to pull the card from her reticule. It wasn’t only Sommerset; four other dances had been claimed, as well. And he didn’t like that one bloody bit. “Who is Francis Henning?”

“A friend of a friend of John’s, I believe. He’s rather amusing, though I’m not certain he realizes that.”

“No. I mean, point him out to me.” He wrote his name down beside the evening’s last waltz.

Phillipa shook her head. “Considering that you look very like an angry panther whose antelope dinner has been stolen, I’m not pointing out anyone to you.”

“Are you certain?” he asked, only half jesting. “Pummeling this Henning would warm me up nicely for Langley.”

“Stop that.” She took back her card.

“Then distract me with something else.”

“Very well.” She stayed silent for a moment, considering. “These last few weeks have been full of new experiences for me,” she continued in a thoughtful voice.

Bennett held himself still. “Any particularly memorable experiences?” he asked. If she mentioned meeting a monkey or receiving daisies, he was going to put his fist through a wall.

“Mm hm.” With a quick glance at their shadowed retreat, she moved closer in his arms. “I keep thinking that everyone who sees me must know. Is the experience always so…exquisite? I can’t seem to think about anything else.”

Now
he felt better. “I can only think of one way we can be certain that a second experience would be as enjoyable,
nyonda
.” He ran a finger down her bare forearm. “In fact, I think you should open your morning room window when you return home tonight and then wait there for a time. Beginning at two o’clock, say.”

Her shoulders rose and fell as her breathing deepened. “It would be wise to find out for certain if we…merge as well a second time,” she breathed.

“I already know the answer to that, but I’m more than happy to demonstrate on every possible occasion. You fascinate me, Phillipa, and I want you. No one but you.”

She smiled, the expression lighting her eyes and doing some interesting things to his nether regions. “You make me feel like a butterfly, Bennett,” she whispered, reaching up to touch his cheek.

They’d been in hiding for several minutes now, and the odds grew every moment that they would be seen. Frankly, Bennett didn’t care about that. She was his, whether she felt ready yet to say it aloud or not. As long as he could recover his reputation, regain the trust and backing of the Africa Association or the East India Company, he would be able to go exploring again. And that was the only thing that troubled him. Not that his butterfly would spread her wings and fly away, but that she wouldn’t.

The orchestra played the opening of a country dance, and Phillipa abruptly broke away from him. “This is my dance with Mr. Henning,” she said, backing out of their tiny hiding place before he could stop her.

“I’ll keep you company until he appears,” he said, following her and offering his arm.

“Bennett, you don’t—”

“Don’t the monkey ruin the line of your coat?” a short, round fellow queried, then stuck out his hand. “Francis Henning.”

Abruptly Bennett felt a bit easier about this particular dance. He shook Henning’s hand. “Until this month, it’s been three years since I’ve worn a formal coat,” he said. “I don’t actually give a damn about its line.”

“I say, that’s brave of you,” Henning returned, taking a half step back. “I suppose next to angry leopards the
ton
don’t much impress.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Henning blinked. “I, ah, I’m here to collect Lady Flip for the country d—”

“Of course, Mr. Henning,” she said, brushing past Bennett and gesturing for the short fellow to lead the way to the dance floor.

Bennett stayed where he was, watching. He knew how to be more subtle, but tonight he couldn’t seem to manage it. At any minute David Langley would walk down the main staircase into the arms of his adoring guests, and at this moment all Bennett wanted to do was see Phillipa dance. All around him the well-dressed natives of this land chattered, so much noise that it made his head ache. Each one fought to be the prettiest bird in the flock, too self-concerned to notice anything but the outward plumage of the fellows around them.

“Sir Bennett, you must join me at White’s tomorrow,” one of the crowd, Lord Hay-something, he thought, rumbled. “I’ve no doubt we’ll have you in as a provisionary member by noontime.”

I would rather eat elephant shit
, Bennett thought. “My schedule is full at the moment,” he said aloud.

“You should come by without delay,” the fellow pursued. “You’ve already been in Town too long without accepting a membership somewhere. Strike while the iron is hot, don’t you know. I’ll be happy to sponsor you.”

“What about the current rumors that I’m a fool?” Bennett asked.

Hay-something looked affronted. “One never admits to that, Captain. And if you’re to be in London indefinitely, you should make an attempt to fit in, don’t you know.”

“Thank you for the invitation,” Bennett returned, facing the dance floor again, “but I don’t expect I would be spending much time at a club where everyone fits in.” And thank God for the Adventurers’ Club. In fact, a drink there after this bloody party and before his rendezvous with Phillipa might be just the thing he required.

“Have you ever
been
to a club?” the viscount retorted. “There are scores of gentlemen clamoring to get through the front doors of places like White’s.”

“Ah. There’s your problem,” Bennett retorted. “I’m no gentleman.”

“You—”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the butler bellowed from the ballroom’s main doorway, “Lord and Lady Thrushell, and Captain David Langley.”

Chapter Fifteen

Then he turned to look. He wanted a little visit with Langley without Kero’s opinion coming between them. Though with the number of people crowded around the doorway, that wouldn’t be quite as simple as he’d imagined. As he’d spent the past five months imagining.

That was when the cautious dislike he’d long felt toward this man—whose life he’d saved several times and who had more than once saved his—had deepened into hatred. He’d never called himself a gentleman, but that was precisely what Langley, who’d attempted to grind his name into the dirt and then stand on it, prided himself on being.

Well, Bennett would see how long that lasted. Sidestepping a footman and Lord Hay-something, he strode across the room. Despite the amused and speculative chatter of the nearest guests, they at least had enough sense to move out of his way.

And then someone didn’t move.

“No, Bennett,” Phillipa said, looking as though she was ready to knock him down. Or attempt to.

“Move aside,” he grunted, his attention immediately divided.

“I thought you had a plan to rescue your reputation,” she muttered back at him. “Something about not reacting the way everyone would expect a slighted man to behave.”

“That was before I saw him. Now I’m going to beat him senseless.”

When he started around her, she actually put a hand against his chest and pushed back. “That will not get you justice. Or your journals.”

“No, but it will make me feel better.” He drew in a sharp breath. “He doesn’t need his teeth to hand me my journals.”

Her pretty face paled, and she lowered her hand again. “Fine. If beating him is what you want most in the world, then do it. See what happens to your reputation and your future.”

Apparently he’d acquired a walking, talking conscience. Bennett narrowed his eyes. “I thought I made it clear yesterday what my intentions toward Langley were. You might have attempted to dissuade me then.”

“Yes, well, I thought that was merely manly bluster. And you weren’t planning on being here. Now you have murder in your eyes.”

“I won’t kill him until I have my journals again. Excuse me, Phillipa.”

He stalked straight at Langley, just visible now in the crowd. Light blue eyes lifted, caught sight of him, and widened. Apparently the butler hadn’t informed David that his formerly deceased partner was in attendance tonight, after all. Good.

“Langley,” he half growled as the darling golden-haired viscount’s son faced him, “you are a son of a bitch.”

Langley’s jaw flexed. “Wolfe!” he exclaimed, smiling with all his teeth. “You aren’t dead, after all!”

“No damned thanks to you. I appreciate you leaving me my boots, by the way. I expected to find them stolen along with my journals and my Baker rifle.”

“Your recovery hasn’t improved your disposition, I see. Or your memory. The only journals I left with are my own.”

Bennett opened his mouth to demand that Langley produce them. A match of their handwriting would prove to whom they belonged. If he said that, though, Langley would have another reason to destroy them. “I read my—I mean, your—book. A very entertaining fiction. At least you had the tribal names spelled correctly—though with those journals, how could you not?”

“What is it they say about the worth of one man’s opinion?” Langley commented smoothly, still smiling with everything but his eyes. “I don’t recall exactly. Something about it being rubbish. In the—”

With a loud threat bark, Kero scrambled across the floor and jumped—onto Langley’s head. Shrieking, she yanked out a handful of golden hair and sank her teeth into one perfectly shaped ear. Screaming, Langley threw her off. She hit the floor running, then scampered up Bennett’s leg and onto his shoulder.

“You damned devil!” Langley snarled, pulling his fingers away from his ear and eyeing the blood on them. “You should have drowned that vermin, Wolfe!”

“Yes, I should have, but before I could manage it he left me for dead and sailed away with most of my possessions.” Bennett scratched Kero behind the ears as she cowered into the side of his neck. Clearly he’d underestimated the generally good-natured monkey’s hatred of Langley. He was buying her a damned peach tree. An entire orchard. “What a shame that Kero doesn’t seem as fond of you as you wrote. But then you did leave her behind, as well.”

Snatching a handkerchief from his simpering mother’s fingers, Langley pressed it to his pierced ear. “I want blood for blood,” he snapped.

“I was hoping you would say that.” Bennett shot out a fist and punched Langley flush on the nose.

Langley fell backward, hitting the ground with a satisfying-sounding thud. Spewing curses, blood now trickling from two orifices on his pretty face, he scrambled back to his feet again. “You damned bastard,” he spat, his face reddening to nearly the color of his blood.

“Now you can leave the little monkey alone and come after me,” Bennett said coolly, every muscle singing with the urge to do battle.

At least three chits had fainted, though he didn’t know whether that had happened because of the blood, the violence, or the excitement. Bennett noted them on the periphery of his mind, just as he did the rest of the guests who pressed forward like circling vultures. Of more interest and concern was Phillipa.

She would be angry, of course, not because he’d taken action but rather because she saw a more logical course of action. If there was one thing Bennett had learned during three years in the Congo, however, it was that the strongest, most aggressive males were the ones who survived. Langley would not outflank him, betray him, or play on his trust again.

“You bloody twat,” Langley snarled, still putting on a display of courage without actually advancing on him. “You simply can’t stand anyone thinking you less than a hero, can you?”

“I think you’ve used more than your and my share of words combined,” Bennett goaded. “Come at me. Or do you want to continue dancing with me, instead?”

“I’d rather be wiping your guts off my sword, Wolfe.”

“Excellent.” He made a low ruffing sound, and Kero jumped off his shoulder and fled. Predictably the vervet headed straight for Phillipa and jumped into her arms.

Langley followed the monkey’s retreat with an angry gaze. “Well, isn’t that interesting?” he drawled, the sound nasal through his pinched nose.

Bennett bent down, then straightened, in the same motion pulling the long, slender, horn-handled blade from his boot. Another woman whose name he couldn’t recall fainted. The so-called gentlemen around her allowed her to fall to the ground before they even noticed her distress. “Let’s get to it, shall we?”

“Put that away,” a lower, more commanding voice ordered. Bennett didn’t move, except to glance sideways as the crowd parted like the Red Sea and the tall, black-haired Duke of Sommerset strode through the opening.

“No.”

“You two were sponsored by the Africa Association. If there’s some sort of dispute, we’ll hear it. But attacking a man at his homecoming is unacceptable, Captain Wolfe, however badly you think you’ve been wronged.”

“Not wronged. Stolen from.”

Langley sketched a bow, elegant and proper despite a blackening eye and a ragged kerchief pressed to his ear. “I have nothing to hide, Your Grace.”

“Then I’ll see you both at Ainsley House, at ten o’clock. Sharp. In the meantime, conduct yourselves in a civil manner.” His gaze rested on Bennett. “If you are unable to do so, stay away from public events. Especially those held in honor of the man you’re threatening.”

Bennett realized he still grasped the knife handle. He took the moment of distraction as Sommerset turned his back and walked away to shove the blade back into his boot.

“Leave this house,” Langley hissed, a half-dozen footmen approaching at his signal, “or I’ll have you thrown out on your arse.”

Abruptly Jack Clancy stood between them. “I’ll see to it,” he said, and wrapped a hand around Bennett’s upper arm.

Bennett allowed his friend to pull him aside, toward the door, before he yanked himself free. “I don’t need a rescue.” Anger still pushed at him—and he couldn’t leave Phillipa standing there with his monkey.

“Well, don’t stab me, but I wasn’t rescuing you. I mean, I was, but only from being hanged on Tyburn Hill for murdering an earl’s only son and heir in front of two hundred witnesses.”

He took a deep breath. “Thank you then, Jack.”

“Very sensible of you. Let’s depart, shall we? I’ll buy you a glass at Jezebel’s.”

It made sense. Jack made sense. Bennett rolled his shoulders. In the jungle it all would have been much simpler. As Jack—and Phillipa—had pointed out, however, they weren’t in the jungle. “I need to get my monkey.”

“Flip and Livi are going outside to meet us.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Bennett muttered, striding for the exit again.

Both Eddison sisters stood in the drive among the carriages when he left Thrushell House. He kept walking until he was directly in front of Phillipa, close enough to touch. He wanted to touch.

“I—”

Olivia slapped him. “How dare you let everyone know you’re courting Flip and then begin a brawl in the middle of a ballroom,” she snapped.

Kero barked, and she immediately backed away a little. “No, Kero,” he said in a low voice, holding out his arm. All he needed was for the monkey to begin attacking everyone who touched him—they’d be asked to leave the country, rather than a damned party he hadn’t wanted to attend in the first place.

“Livi, I can speak for myself,” Phillipa said, lifting her shoulder toward him. Kero hopped from her to him, and he offered her a peanut. “If I’d known you meant to go about punching and stabbing people willy-nilly,” she continued, “I would have made certain my family didn’t attend.”

Bennett frowned. “I didn’t stab him.”

“You would have if Sommerset hadn’t intervened.”

“Perhaps.”

Clenching her jaw, she continued glaring at him. Clearly he’d broken several rules, but he couldn’t be sorry for it. In fact, the only thing that concerned him about the evening was the idea that he’d done something to push her away from him.

“Phillipa, he stole my future from me,” he finally said, wishing he knew how to look vulnerable and irresistible.

“So you’ve told me. I don’t think you gained any converts to your way of thinking tonight.”

“No. But I think I made my feelings fairly obvious.” He blew out his breath. “I’m rough around the edges. He’s not. I’m not likely to earn any allies in that house regardless of my restraint.”

“Except that now he’s more than likely inside that house reminding two hundred people that your monkey bit him and that you punched him in the nose when all he did was welcome you home. He’s going to call you a blackguard and a rogue who argues with your fists.”

Bennett narrowed his eyes. “So I should have listened to you.”

“Yes, you should have.” Slowly she reached up and tugged on Kero’s tail. “You don’t have to win friends, Bennett, but you do have to appear cred ible.” When Kero hummed at her, she smiled. “And you, you silly thing. You weren’t any help, either. I thought you and Captain Langley were friends.”

“Never were,” Bennett countered, handing over another peanut for her to give the monkey. “We had an overloaded boat on the way downriver. When we hit rapids, we started to swamp, and had to throw several boxes overboard to stay afloat. Langley grabbed Kero and threw her into the river, as well. Kero doesn’t like water.”

She gasped. “What happened?”

“I fished her out with an oar and told Langley I’d stake him out over an anthill if he touched her again. Langley is one thing about which Kero and I are in complete agreement.” Of course he and Kero also agreed about something else—they were both becoming irretrievably fond of Lady Phillipa Eddison.

“I would have bit his ear as well, then.”

He took her hand and drew it to his lips. “I suppose I’ll be going.”

“Yes, I think you should.” She lowered her head, then darted a look up at him through her thick lashes and pulled him a few feet away from Jack and Livi. “Until two o’clock, then?” she whispered.

Heat rushed through him. So she still wanted him to come calling. “Leave your morning room window open, and I promise to be very prompt.”

Phillipa smiled slowly. “Good.”

And whatever his other difficulties, however much he wanted to finish his beating of David Lang-ley and retrieve his journals and his reputation, that smile seemed the most significant thing of the entire evening. Life had taken a damned odd twist since he’d left the Congo.