A Regency Rebel's Seduction: A Most Unladylike Adventure / The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle. Elizabeth Beacon

so it was a matter of honour not to harm a woman of any stamp. He should have taken a second shave of the day to insure that he didn’t hurt her soft skin, if only he’d known he’d be kissing such a wanton siren last night. ‘Failed again, Hugh,’ he scolded himself cynically. ‘Proved yourself a rogue once more, as per expectations.’

      Not bothering to even make the effort to cling to well-bred restraint in the face of so many failures, he hauled himself out of bed and gave vent to a heartfelt groan as his own heartbeat pounded fists of pain into his suffering brain at the sudden movement. Reaching blindly for the water jug, he gulped a lukewarm draught directly from it and groaned as he waited for the thundering in his ears to abate and the pain in his temples to dull to a bearable throb, then splashed water on to his face to try to relieve the ache behind his eyes.

      ‘Damned petticoat-led idiot,’ he castigated himself as he glared at his bleary-eyed reflection in the fine mirror his friend had furnished this guest bedchamber with, as he dried his face on the fine towel provided for more appreciative visitors than he was proving to be. ‘And just what would you think of me if you could see me right now, my friend?’ he speculated as he contemplated Kit Stone’s outspoken disgust at the spectre he’d made of himself.

      And that was before Kit could even begin on the subject of kept women and which of them was keeping her. Hugh shook his head, despite the fierce clash of pain it cause, frowned fiercely at his reflection, then realised he didn’t even want to meet his own eyes in the mirror any more, let alone imagine holding his friend’s dark and yet somehow steely gaze when he finally came home and took back his empire and his woman from such faulty hands as Hugh Darke’s had proved to be.

      ‘Abel Coste! Where the devil are you?’ he went to the door and bellowed, in the hope his drinking companion of last night was in a better state of preservation than he was himself this morning, which would hardly be difficult, given that he felt as if he’d been trampled half to death by a herd of wild horses.

      ‘Whatever is it?’ his unwelcome visitor demanded impatiently from below.

      ‘I want Coste,’ he snapped back.

      ‘Well, you can’t have him, he’s busy.’

      ‘Since you certainly don’t need a shave, I can’t imagine how,’ he mumbled disagreeably, but she obviously possessed hearing a cat would have been proud of.

      ‘And if you were planning to let him shave you, then you must be even more addled than I thought, considering the sorry state he’s in this morning,’ she told him, as if she was some sort of stern maiden aunt rather than a brazen hussy.

      She was still looking like a barbarian princess in her ill-fitting breeches and that ridiculous black shirt, her silken mass of dark chestnut hair falling down her back like a promise of all kinds of sensual delights. He knew she was no better than she should be, yet she made him ache to feel the luxurious wonder of her against his naked skin while he played idly with that wanton hair as they lay, momentarily sated, in each other’s arms. The last thing he needed was this burning desire to make her scream with desire and passion such as she’d never known before, and now he came to think about it, a mild shout of satisfaction might well blast the top of his head off and do permanent damage to his feeble brain just now.

      Damnation take it, he shouldn’t even think of her in extremis like that. Not only was he in no state to pleasure even the most undemanding of houris, but he was also an ungrateful bastard who suddenly really wanted to at least try to drive her wild with mutual lust and see if such exquisite gratification could cure his hangover.

      How could he even think of turning on the man who’d rescued him when everyone else had left him to rot in the gutter by trying to steal his woman? He’d better convince his baser self he didn’t want the confounded woman as a matter of urgency, then at least he’d be ready to conduct Kit’s business for the day instead of standing here fantasising about seducing his mistress.

      ‘I wasn’t planning on letting Abel or anyone else near my throat with a razor,’ he drawled in a deliberate echo of the insufferably cocky aristocrat he’d once been, ‘but to shave myself properly I need hot water and Coste is much better at lighting the range than I am.’

      ‘You must be atrocious at it then, since he made such a sad business out of it with all his moaning and groaning and constant “oh deary, deary me, but I don’t feel at all well,” that I found it a good deal quicker to deal with it myself,’ Miss La Rochelle told him so disapprovingly he was reminded of his sister’s steely-backboned governess in a particularly formidable frame of mind. He made the mistake of grinning over an image of his gadfly in breeches, instructing the daughters of the nobility in good manners and proper behaviour. ‘It wasn’t in the least bit funny to be expected to light your confounded fires for you as well as sober up the only help you seem to have left in the house in order to get some breakfast,’ she snapped.

      She then subjected him to a hostile glare that should reduce him to abject penitence. Wise enough to know it would be counterproductive to tell her that her ire was a boon rather than a bane to his aching head, he kept a grin from his lips with a mighty effort and did his best to look crushed. In his experience, the only way to deal with a female on the rampage was to agree with whatever she said and go his own way when her back was turned.

      ‘Of course not,’ he agreed. ‘It’s probably a disgrace as well—did you forget to tell me that or have my aching ears left out some listening?’

      ‘Men have a very peculiar sense of the ridiculous,’ she informed him with regal contempt, obviously not inclined to gratify him by rising to his baiting.

      ‘And most women don’t have one at all,’ he let slip, then corrected himself. ‘Except for the odd honourable exception, of course,’ he told her with a would-be placating smile that must have come out as a mocking grin since she glared at him, before marching back to the domestic regions. He didn’t even have time to muse on feminine unpredictability before she was back with a steaming jug.

      ‘Here’s your hot water and don’t scald yourself,’ she ordered him as she thrust it into his hands. ‘I suggest you make yourself decent before you come downstairs, if that’s not too much to ask of a man with trembling hands and a brandy-addled constitution like yours,’ she told him before she rounded on her heel and strode towards the kitchen while he gazed owlishly after her.

      ‘Managing female,’ he muttered darkly to himself.

      ‘I heard that!’ she shouted back improbably and he amended her hearing up to bat-like sensitivity and resolved to tell the truth about her only when he was safely on the opposite side of London in future.

      He kept trying not to smile as he shaved more deftly than he could have believed possible when he woke up this morning, and had to force a suitable blandness on to his reflected features in order not to cut himself. Usually the sight of his own face froze any inclination he might have to smile, but this morning even that didn’t seem as bitter a spectacle as expected. Last night he met a ladybird in the dark and now he was grinning to himself about her like a lunatic, despite a painful state he would prefer to deny existed that ought to be beyond a man in his condition. He reminded himself he couldn’t have her, even if she wanted him to, and poured his cooling shaving water with its unattractive bloom of shorn whiskers and used soap back into the can.

      Hugh set the jug by the door to take downstairs once he was dressed for a morning in the City, spent attending to his employers’ business affairs and grimaced at the thought of the hours of checking tallies and reviewing accounts lying ahead of him. Somehow even the thorny task ahead of him couldn’t blot out the dangerous sense of anticipation he felt at tangling with the woman downstairs one last time. He even caught himself whistling, before realising she would hear him. Eyeing himself—cravat decently tied and stockings and knee-breeches unwrinkled—he shrugged into a very sober waistcoat and gave himself a mocking bow. Today he was almost unrecognisable as the renegade captain of the Jezebel and resolved to avoid the haunts of the ton on his way to the City, lest someone recognise him even got up like a respectable cit. He shrugged off the prospect of being known for someone far less worthy, decided