Regency Rebels: Scandalous Lord, Rebellious Miss / An Improper Aristocrat. Deb Marlowe

years, when Charles had been a companion only in her mind, he had represented safety, acceptance, and warmth. Then she had found him again, and he wasn’t her best friend anymore, just a stranger who had shown her mostly arrogance and disapproval. Now, with his mouth slanting hotly over hers, he radiated something else entirely: risk, danger, molten excitement that welled deep in her belly.

      She welcomed it, thrilled to it, reached for him so she could demand more. He groaned as her arms went around him, and the sound made the throbbing deep within her that much stronger.

      He was barely in control of himself. She didn’t care. He drove her head back with his hard, brazen kiss. She yielded to the assault and met him kiss for kiss. He backed her against the wall as his hands crept up to crush the curves he’d admired so boldly. She clung to him as if her life depended on it.

      She had cracked his armour, touched the man underneath. His passion served in part as a stalling technique, a way to avoid dealing with the emotions that frightened him. But it was true, and it was hers. She accepted it and while the wind gusted through the open window, draping the faded curtains over them and enclosing them in a cocoon of desire, she gave him back all the fervent warmth in her heart.

      He wasn’t ready to accept it.

      With a despairing moan he tore his mouth from hers and slid his hands up to grasp her shoulders. His chest heaved as his eyes closed and he rested his forehead on hers.

      ‘I remember it all, Sophie,’ he gasped, ‘even the part you didn’t wish to hear. I asked you that day why the rooms you drew were always empty. You said they were waiting for the happy people who would come to live in them.’

      Sophie closed her own eyes in pain. She’d pushed him too far. She deserved this, she knew.

      ‘Don’t do it here,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t create rooms for my happy family. They don’t exist. They never will.’

      He loosed her abruptly and strode out of the room. He didn’t look back.

       Chapter Eight

      This was the last in a high stack of forms. Resolutely, Sophie dipped her pen again and signed. She paused, staring at the bold scrawl of her signature, contemplating everything that this step meant, then she pushed the papers over to her guest. ‘Here you are, Mr Fowler.’

      ‘Thank you, Miss Westby.’ The man ran a practised eye over the contracts before putting them away in his case. Only then, Sophie noticed, did he visibly relax, take a sip of tea, and smile. ‘I admit this is far more pleasant than my usual business meetings, but then, everything about this venture is unusual.’

      Sophie sighed. There was that word again. Unusual. In the fortnight since that fateful day at Sevenoaks, it had echoed repeatedly in her head. Always in Miss Ashford’s ever-so-slightly condescending tone. She took a deep breath. Perhaps it was time to make unusual work for her, rather than against her.

      She raised her cup and an ironic brow. ‘Then let us drink to the unusual success of our enterprise, sir,’ she said.

      ‘Hear, hear.’ Mr Fowler drained his glass and began to gather his things. ‘I have no doubts on that score, however. Your work is delightful. It is sure to make us both a success.’

      ‘I sincerely hope so,’ Sophie said, standing to bid him farewell.

      He took her hand, but paused. ‘I feel I have to ask again. Are you certain you wish your portion of the proceeds to be paid to this … gentleman?’

      ‘Mr Darvey, yes.’ Sophie fixed her guest with a penetrating look. ‘He may not be a gentleman, as you have obviously discovered, but he is a good and worthy man, and he will see that the money goes where it is needed most.’

      ‘He’s a lucky man, to have attracted a patroness like you, miss.’

      ‘As I am a lucky woman to have found a friend like him.’ She smiled. ‘Nor am I unaware of my good fortune in securing a publisher of your calibre, Mr Fowler.’

      He grinned and picked up his case. ‘I’ll send you round a copy of the book as soon as it is ready. It has indeed been a pleasure.’

      Sophie watched from the window as Mr Fowler descended to the hired coach that had brought him. His cheerful whistle and jaunty step only served to frustrate her further. Her temple rested against the cool and soothing glass long after he had gone.

      It was disheartening, really. She had accomplished so much. She’d found friends who felt more like family as each day passed. She was in London, with a major design project coming along relatively smoothly, and now this. A design guide of her own. It was a victory, a culmination of a dream that she had worked towards for years. More importantly, it was a means of helping those who might otherwise have no chance of a future.

      Fate had surely had a hand in her meeting with Mr Darvey, all those months ago, for it had come at a time when they had both been in desperate need of some hope. The combination of her vision and his talent had resulted in some lovely pieces, such as little Edward Lowder’s cradle. But that had only been the beginning. With a bit of Sophie’s money, Mr Darvey’s good sense, and a few members of his former regiment, they had created more than beautiful furniture, they had manufactured opportunity. They had given hope to others as well as themselves. This book could lead to more of the same.

      She should be flush with success, awash in triumph, but she had found that she couldn’t truly enjoy any of it. Instead she was only filled with a ceaseless, restless anxiety.

      It was all Charles’s fault, damn his eyes. She had neither seen, nor heard from, him in the fortnight since that unexpected, heart-pounding, earth-shattering kiss. And unsettling though his continued absence may be, worse was her inability to reconcile her unruly feelings.

      Once she had recovered from the pure, physical shock of their embrace, she had been furious. How dare he resurrect a moment of their past, seduce her with the beauty and intimacy of it, then use it to push her away!

      A little more thought, however, had reinforced the notion that his kiss had been an act of self-defence. She had touched him. Her patient chiselling had succeeded at last, and she had found a tiny breach in the stone rampart around him. She had reached the man inside and it had frightened him. Typically, like a scared little boy, he had pushed back, trying to scare her off in the same manner.

      Perversely, his tactic had had the opposite effect on Sophie.

      And perhaps that was characteristic of their relationship as well, she thought with a smile. But she could not help the feeling of intense relief that had swept over her with the realisation that there was indeed a mystery to be solved here. It wasn’t a natural tendency for prudery and sanctimony that had changed Charles. Something had happened to induce this drastic alteration in personality and demeanor, to cause him to retreat behind that bulwark of prickly pride. Something to do with his dead elder brother.

      What could it have possibly been? As far as she knew, Charles and Phillip had had the normally contentious relationship of brothers a few years apart in age. They had been especially close as young boys, tumbling through the home woods, racing their ponies, and perpetrating endless pranks. Even later, when separated by school and their father’s increasing demands on Phillip’s time, they had maintained the rough-and-tumble, slightly competitive regard of adolescents.

      Had something happened to change that? Sophie did not know, but she was going to find out. It was a relief to have the task before her. It gave her hope, at least, that if Charles faced whatever it was he was hiding from, he might have a chance to be happy.

      That, at the last, must be her goal. With everything in her, she longed to see her tousle-haired, smiling Charles again, even if it meant he found his happiness without her.

      Such a thought, of course, led right back to that burning kiss. Good heavens, but every girl dreamed of such a kiss, when not only lips and bodies mingled, but