Lady Rogue by Suzanne Enoch

eyes, “you are a female.”
    “You’d forgotten, I suppose?” she replied, lifting an eyebrow.
    He gazed at her for another moment, then faced forward again. “A thorn as sharp as you is difficult to overlook, brat.”
    “Ah. So why do you put up with me?”
    “One of my few attempts at propriety.”
    She glanced up at his profile. The morning breeze sent a lock of his hair straying across his eyes, and absently he lifted a hand to brush the dark strands back from his face. Kit looked away, stifling the dismaying urge to trace the curve of his ear with her fingertips. “Is Miss Cralling another mistress of yours?” she asked instead. “Were you afraid I’d steal her heart?”
    His scowl deepened. “I don’t bed schoolroom chits,” he said, glaring at her, “chit.”
    “You are pledged to protect my virtue, anyway,” she returned, sitting back with her arms crossed, pretending not to be flustered. Everton was damned distracting.
    He snorted. “You sound as though you think me a Galahad.”
    “No,” she replied, looking at him hopefully. “But I do think you should let me go with you to the Fontaine rout tonight.”
    He frowned again. “No,” he said flatly.
    “Blast it, Alex, why not?”
    “Because I said no.”
    She tried to decipher whether or not he was bluffing. Defying him flat out would only get her asked to remove herself from his premises. She could go elsewhere, but now that she’d made herself his cousin, changing locales would be difficult to explain to the rest of the nobility. Besides, she wasn’t ready to leave magnificent Cale House, with its fascinating occupant. “Oh, all right,” she grumbled. “ Vieillard étouffant .”
    The Earl of Everton cleared his throat.
    “Stuffy…old…man,” she translated, enunciating each word to make certain he understood.
    Lord Everton nodded. “I’m still young enough that I could take you over my knee, cub.” He turned the phaeton onto Park Lane.
    She folded her arms. “Oh, I imagine you’d enjoythat,” she responded, covering her amusement at the epithet with a scowl.
    He grinned wolfishly at her. “You have no idea.”
    As the white walls of Cale House appeared, she jumped. She’d nearly forgotten she was to meet her father. “Oh, did I remember to tell you, I’m to meet Francis Henning for a game of hazard?” she said in a rush.
    He gave an irritated sigh. “I suppose you’ll go, anyway. Shall I drive you?”
    She was surprised he’d given in. “No. I’ll take a hack.”
    “Be back before dark,” he ordered, continuing past the mansion and stopping the carriage by a stand of coaches for hire. “And don’t soak Francis, or I’ll end up footing his bills for the rest of the month.”
    She nodded and climbed down, suddenly reluctant to leave his company. “I’ll be back soon.”
    “You’d best be, waif. I don’t wish to have to go looking for you.” He clucked to the team. “And you’re still not going to the Fontaine rout.”
    She smiled, hoping it wasn’t simply his sense of duty speaking, and that he truly was concerned over her well-being. “We’ll see.”
     
    The tavern her father had selected for their rendezvous was just far enough beyond the fringes of Mayfair that he was unlikely to encounter anyone who might remember Stewart Brantley. They were used to being anonymous. The odd looks she received as she stepped into the Hanging Crow Tavern on Long Acre were therefore unsettling. Only after she spied her father seated close to a back wall did she relax a little. “ Bon jour, Papa ,” she murmured, sinking onto the bench opposite him.
    “You look like a damned blue blood, Kit.” Stewart Brantley scowled.
    “If I don’t fit in, no one will speak to me,” she countered stiffly. Her clothes were wonderful. And wearing them was the closest she’d felt to being the noble Everton had said she was, since leaving England thirteen years ago.
    “If you’re arrested for theft, you won’t fit in,