Proper Scoundrel Read online

  “You do not adore me,” Jade said unexpectedly, a week or more later and out of context, as they stood bent over her desk perusing a stack of ledgers seeking the root of her financial problems.

  Marcus straightened to regard her. “You heard that?”

  “No, but others did. Your avowal has been the topic of discourse for days. I told the women this morning that you said you adored me because I had about decided to hire you. Since they believe otherwise, I decided to set the record straight, here and now.”

  “You knew I said it, and yet you hired me? I’m astonished.” More so because the gossip had not changed her mind. “The women were right,” he said. “It’s not because you seemed inclined to hire me.”

  She waved away his comment, chin high, hard protective shell in place. “You see me as a challenge, but I will not fall at your feet as scores of women have likely done since you cracked your first smile. You’d simply like to ... to—”

  “I certainly would,” Marcus said, accepting her unconscious invitation to spar. If verbal battle she required, then verbal battle she would receive, though he’d prefer to employ more physical tactics.

  As his response left her speechless, he lifted a languishing lock of hair off her silken bodice, his fingers so close to stroking the fabric, and the body beneath it, they became warm.

  She caught a delayed breath and stiffened as if poised to bolt, though she remained as if frozen, while heat emanated from her in waves.

  “I most definitely would like to—” He brought the captured lock to his lips, while her scent—lavender—and her feel—silk—skittered and rushed the blood in his veins.

  The Lady Jade Smithfield, he believed, was also up for any challenge, though she might not yet admit as much. Given the fact that she equated brutality with his gender—though he worked daily to change her mind—he was likely the most challenging enigma set before her.

  In the same precise way, her ice-queen facade called to him as nothing in his life ever had. That, and her rebellious nature, striking beauty and generosity of spirit, made her unique, vulnerable ... and in dire need of a knight on a white charger, though she’d deny it, and he hadn’t the time, situation, or luxury to argue the point or fulfil the role.

  Being acclimated into her extraordinary household taught him that Jade rescued others; no one ever thought to rescue her, which implored him to do so.

  Oh, she needed him for the time being, as much as he needed her. She just didn’t know it yet. Observe that he hadn’t mentioned adoring her but once, days before, but his statement had prayed on her mind ever since, as a statement of hers had prayed on his.

  “You don’t despise me,” he said, returning that lock of hair to her bodice and smoothing it into place, her widening eyes not quite ebony, but so dark a brown as to appear black. “You’re fascinated by me.”

  She squeaked, not quite in protest, and Marcus crossed her lips with a finger. “It’s the man who hurt Lacey, and the ones who hurt Molly’s mother and little Emmy, you despise,” he said. “I despise them too. If I ever meet Emily’s father, I might have to beat him bloody.”

  Jade shivered and stepped away, rubbing her arms as if against a sudden chill. “Beating is a man’s way. You’re the same as the rest.”

  “All men have faults and weaknesses, Jade. While I admit that I’m nowhere near as good as the best of them, neither am I, in any respect, near as bad as the worst of them. You need time to get to know me.”

  Jade shook her head. He was wrong. “Time won’t change anything. The husbands and fathers you mentioned are not the first of their ilk to touch my life.” She read concern in the eyes of her man of affairs.

  He reached for her. “Don’t tell me your father hurt y—”

  “No.” She stepped back, putting a safe distance between them. Marcus Fitzalan could erase a life’s worth of lessons with a look. God help her, she’d almost stepped into the protection of his embrace, rather than away from it. “No. I barely knew my father. My parents were happy wanderers, always leaving me with my grandmother. My mother died abroad of a fever when I was young and my father squandered her fortune, never to return. My grandmother who raised me; she was abused by her husband.”

  “You witnessed your grandfather’s abuse?”

  Jade appreciated his indignation on her behalf, and yet— “Would you beat my grandfather bloody as well?” she asked, frustrating him, judging by his clenched fists. “You might have come in handy at one time, but no, my grandfather died when I was a babe,” she said. “No need to protect me; I’ll slay my own dragons, thank you very much. What my grandfather did to my grandmother, however, yielded everlasting effects. In that way, his abuse touched me and coloured who I am.”

  “Jade, I like who you are. You’re strong and noble and it suits you.” He chuckled. “Though I would have described you differently at first meeting.”

  “Amusement gives you such a false look of innocence,” she said. “What words would you have used to describe me then?”

  “Word. Singular.”

  “And that is?”

  Marcus shook his head. “I’d like to soften it for you and say lust, but that would be wrong. Lust is what I felt, of course—and still do, by the way—but it’s not the right word to describe what you radiated most.”

  “Well, what is?”

  Jade liked his admission of lust; it gave her a new and exciting feeling of power, but she felt entirely too eager for more. After their rocky beginning, she supposed they’d fallen into a relationship somewhere between business and sparring partners.

  “I’m having second thoughts about telling you,” Marcus admitted. “Perhaps this conversation had best wait until I’ve been employed for some time and you cannot do without me.”

  “I won’t discharge you.” She stepped near enough for him to breathe lavender and for his willpower to slip a notch. “Tell me,” she said, touching his arm, a bold move for her.

  Though she seemed only recently to have realized her power over men—over him in particular—she knew instinctively how to wield it. “Sex,” he said.

  “What?” she gasped, her shock tempered by the satisfaction and curiosity she failed to hide.

  “The day I met you, you radiated sex in black leather.”

  Like the cat who lapped the cream, the minx seemed pleased, whether she’d admit it or not. “Explain,” she said, not so much annoyed as intrigued, tilting her head, asking for more.

  That’s all it took and his body stood at the ready. Befuddled by the innocent seductress, and searching for sanity, Marcus ran his hand through his hair stalling for time.

  She crossed her arms and tapped her foot, a lush silken handful in sleek scarlet stripes, smelling of virtue and springtime. What he wouldn’t give to undo every one of the buttons marching from neck to hem of her fashionable redingote dress and reveal her every curve and swell to his leisurely perusal.

  Marcus swallowed. “What’s to explain? All you lacked the day I met you was a whip.”

  “A whip,” she stated, incredulously.

  Artlessness. Pure. Unadulterated. Now she revealed it. Marcus mocked himself with a laugh. “This conversation is at an end. I refuse to be your tutor in the perversities of attraction. Forget I said it. I can sometimes be—most often in your presence, it seems —the nether end of a horse.”

  “A week’s experience forces me to agree.”

  “Why thank you, Jade.” He tried to look stern, but her rare smile turned his severity to mint jelly. “Suffice it to say that I like how you’ve turned out, though I regret your corrupt view of the male population. Not that you haven’t reason. Especially as I stand before you, lack-wit that I am.”

  “Lack-wit or no …” She sighed. “I appreciate your approval, my corrupt view notwithstanding. Hopefully, it means you’ll stay long enough to unravel my finances.”

  Relieved that she dropped the dangerous subject, Marcus wondered if her father’s desertion made her expect others to abando
n her as well.

  With no quick answer or remedy at hand, he returned to the desk and shut the last of the ledgers. “Do you have more ledgers that I can check? I believe this predicament goes further back than you think.”

  “We only sold the land option to the railroad eight months ago.”

  “Right,” Marcus said, truly sorry that her finances seemed to be in such a muddle. “It now appears that you have an old problem to go with your new one.”

  Jade dropped into a cordovan leather chair, forgetting for a minute to remain strong.

  Marcus wanted to comfort her. His body wanted a certain comfort of its own. He quelled both urges. “How much money has gone missing from your sale to the railroad?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to find the land option since I confronted my former man of affairs with its existence and discharged him.” Agitated, she rose and went to rummage through a box Marcus had already searched. “It has to be here somewhere.”

  “It’s not,” he said.

  “You barely sifted through these.”

  “The railroad’s parchment is distinctive. It has a—” He saw her surprise. “It’s not there.”

  “How do you know what their parchment looks like?”

  Marcus shrugged, certain she could see right through him. “The South Downs Railroad has options on some of Attleboro’s land. I handled it. There’s a bright side, you know. You may not realize it, but when that option is exercised, you stand to make a great deal of money. It’s going to happen, Jade, and soon. The railroad is the future. This is only the beginning. Where did you say the other ledgers were kept?”

  Jade left Marcus sifting through another series of her grandmother’s papers while she went to fetch the account books he wanted.

  Beyond her remarkable reaction to his potent male presence, she felt restless, nervous … sick. Mention of the railroad did that, but never more so than now. The railroad is nearly here, he’d said. It will go through.

  Oh Gram, I wish you hadn’t told me your secret. Jade rubbed her arms, admitting she needed to know so she could deal with the railroad and put period to the greedy expectations of one Giles Dudley, fourth cousin twice removed. The letters from Dudley’s solicitor made his threat plain. He intended to inherit in her stead by proving her grandmother insane at the time she made her will, which would destroy the lives of the women and children in her care.

  Her grandmother? Insane? The world would surely think so if they knew her secret.

  Unless Jade could stop the railroad, the construction crew would surely dig up the proof Dudley needed.

  She’d have to take care of it tonight, Jade realized.

  After her decision to move forward, she stood in the centre of her storeroom and tried to remember why. She scanned the shelves for a clue. Ah, ledgers. She needed the one dating back to the year before Neil Kirby’s employment. Now she remembered.

  She dragged a chair across the small room. Gram used to laugh, almost with pride, at how much Jade disliked Kirby, reminding her that men were often necessary evils in doing business.

  Though Jade had been aghast over the land option Kirby engineered, she wasn’t surprised at his dishonesty, nor the least sorry to dispatch him when she discovered it. He knew bloody well he should have come to her, not her dying grandmother, when the railroad made the offer.

  Gram had clearly been too ill to know what she was signing.

  To save Peacehaven, Jade needed that land option back. The only other way to stop the railroad from cutting into her land meant she must continue to be very clever, extremely careful ... and only a bit more destructive.

  The whole thing scared her witless.

  She almost wished she could tell Marcus everything, Gram’s secret and all. She’d already seen evidence of his integrity, though she had no proof it would last. He was still a man, damn him, and more intoxicatingly male than any she’d come across. Though he could be playing a role, to put her at her ease.

  Not to be trusted.

  Dangerous.

  Except that Marcus was Ivy’s friend, and Ivy was an excellent judge of character. Except that Ivy was a man ... still, when he’d come to condole with her after Gram’s death, and she told him she needed a man of affairs and why, he found Marcus for her.

  True, she liked Marcus on sight. Too much. She knew that right off. She fought the sizzling pull the day he arrived, certain he must be bad for her ... until Emily trusted him enough to sleep in his arms—bless him and curse him as well.

  Something about Marcus Fitzalan shivered her deep inside, paradoxically making her crave more of the selfsame restiveness. Remaining in his presence reminded her of sitting too near a blaze. You knew it could scorch you, but you moved closer and closer, fascinated, despite all sense to the contrary.

  Jade cursed and stood on the chair in an attempt to reach an old account book hanging off the edge of an upper shelf, still too high to grasp.

  With a bit of experimentation, she discovered she could nudge it out—and hopefully off the shelf—by smacking its exposed edge with a ledger she could reach. Dust flew in her face with each blow. Jade sneezed once, twice, three quick times.

  The door opened and Marcus stepped in. “I followed the thumps. Your sneezes led me the rest of the way. Need help? Damsels in distress are my specialty.”

  “I’d have wagered as much, but I am doing fine on my own, thank you very—Oops!”

  He swung her down and into his arms before she could protest—though why she should object escaped her at the moment. She had never imagined feeling so light, so protected, so ... feminine?

  His bracing arms warmed the backs of her thighs ... nothing compared to the heat radiating from his hand at the side of her breast. She wished she had not spread her arms for balance when he toppled her, else there’d not be a distinct pulsing link between her budding breast and the centre of her womanhood.

  Loathe to terminate this new and oddly pleasant sensation, inclined rather to savour it, Jade avoided getting a sore neck by resting her head on Marcus’s wide, sturdy shoulder.

  Safe? Secure?

  Outwardly ... perhaps. Inwardly, an eruption, or an insurrection, seemed to be taking place. She should move from his embrace, immediately, if not sooner.

  Gram would accuse her of hiding. Jade decided she was procrastinating ... wickedly. She had never felt so much a woman. Provocative. Perilous.

  She should move.

  Just a minute more. Another.

  “Put me down,” she said on a sigh, still closely nestled against him, enjoying his spearmint scent that somehow enhanced her body’s unusual reaction. “I have things to do.”

  “In a dithering rush, are you?”

  She dare not smile outwardly at his wit.

  His breath warmed her face, warmed other parts too.

  She had never been held by a man. Hard and strong, but surprisingly soft and ... gentle? An enigma that should serve as a warning.

  “I am in a hurry. Truly. I have dinner plans.”

  “I’m sincerely sorry to hear it.”

  Jade gazed at the growth of whiskers shadowing his face, making him look both dangerous and enticing. With her index finger, she touched the indentation on his chin that dimpled when he nearly smiled.

  He chuckled and her fingertip fell in.

  “It’s deeper than I thought.”

  The devil stared down at her with fire in his eyes.

  “We have work to do,” she said in token protest. “Put me down.”

  He sat on the chair still holding her. “Whatever has to be done, we can, neither of us, remember what it is at this moment; you know that as well as I.” He wiggled his index finger as she had done with hers before burying it in his chin dimple. “May I claim a bit of exploration in return?”

  Jade’s heart and body skittered and tripped. “I don’t have a dimple.”

  “Must I explore a dimple? Are there rules?”

  She tried to speak but needed to cle
ar her throat first. “There should be rules.”

  “Fine then,” he said. “We’ll invent them as we go.”

  Chapter Four

  Marcus began to trace the air above Jade’s bodice, scalloping slowly around the line of buttons marching toward her waist, while hovering less than an inch above.

  Then he scalloped back up again to hover above a breast.

  Smaller and smaller became his circles in the air, closer and closer to the source of her tingling anticipation, until her nipple stood as if reaching.

  Jade gasped.

  Marcus regarded her then, his eyes bluer and deeper, waiting for her to stop him, she sensed, but she couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. She could only wait as anticipation thrummed in her centre.