Page 10 of My Rogue, My Ruin
God help her, she couldn’t stop the heat from rushing across her face, and not even her brother’s alarmed expression could cool the flood. The more she thought about that atrocious man’s fingers, the more flustered she became. Gray’s eyes widened as he grasped her arm.
“Sit,” he urged, pulling her to a cream-and-mauve striped silk bench at the end of the hall. “You’re having a spell. I knew I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard.”
Brynn could hardly admit to her brother that the cause of her “spell” was a belated reaction to a stranger’s touch. He’d hunt the man to the ends of the earth if he knew. And truly, it wasn’t as if the masked man had touched her in any unseemly way—had he? It had all happened so very quickly. Perhaps she only imagined his fingers lingering on her overheated skin. Perhaps she had gone over the encounter so many times she had started to change her memory of what had actually occurred to what she hadwantedto occur. Which was ludicrous. Had the scoundrel attempted to slide his fingers through a gap in her modest lace neckline, she would have crushed his instep with her foot.
Brynn took in a labored breath. “I’m fine, Gray. Truly.” She flailed around for an acceptable excuse, her eyes scanning the narrow hallway. “These rooms haven’t been touched in years. I’m certain it’s just the dust.”
Gray seemed unconvinced. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” To prove her point, Brynn managed a realistic sneeze. She squeezed her brother’s hand, watching the lines of anxiety fade from his face. “Please, don’t fret over me,” she added. “This is the first time I’ve been able to relax all week, especially after the robbery and Mama trying to marry me off before the season is even underway.” Brynn stood up from the bench, her breathing finally returning to normal. “To that awful Marquess of Hawksfield, no less.”
“Hawksfield?” Gray’s brows snapped together. “Hmm. Motherwouldwant you to set your cap at a future duke, but you’d do far better than to marry him.”
As they turned down the carpeted steps, the muggy air of the attic cleared, and Brynn breathed easier.
“What do you know of him?” she asked, curious at his cryptic words.
Gray’s eyes narrowed in on her as they descended the stairs. “Why do you ask?”
Her brother had always been perceptive. Either that or Brynn had never mastered the ability to sound indifferent when speaking of something that mattered to her.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said quickly. “He just seems rather boorish.”
“Don’t let that fool you. Hawk is a wolf through and through. Values his horses more than he does anything else, including women. Though he’s likely as much of a rake as the Dancing Duke is.”
Brynn had actively avoided her neighbor for the remainder of the Bradburne Ball, and in doing so, had unfortunately been required to keep an eye on him as well. She hadn’t noticed Hawksfield dancing with any of the ladies in attendance, flirting with them in alcoves, or dashing out onto the terrace “for air” with them. In fact, he spent more time at the side of his sister, Lady Eloise, than he had entertaining his guests.
He certainly hadn’t seemed like a rake while dancing with Brynn, either. He hadn’t spoken with the kind of smooth elegance and wit she imagined would charm a lady. Why, the bandit had done a better job of acting the seducer than Lord Hawksfield! And that cut about her dress had left her seething and humiliated, while the bandit’s barb that she was in mourning had, in retrospect, been slightly humorous.
If Lord Hawksfield was a seducer, he hid the evidence well. However, she couldn’t fault him for valuing his horses. They were one of the things she truly valued herself. It got her thinking about Apollo, her chestnut Hanoverian, and how she hadn’t taken him out in days.
“Why do they call him that?” Brynn asked as they twisted down the wide stairwell, toward Mama’s day room where tea would be underway, no doubt. “Hawk?”
Gray cleared his throat, hesitating as if he’d opened Pandora’s box. “Because Hawksfield has a habit of going after what he wants with relentless purpose.”
Brynn thought of the marquess’s forbidding countenance and unsmiling face. She could see that about him. He did seem ruthless. “You don’t like him.”
“I don’t like him as a match for you.”
“Why?”
“Call it male instinct.” Gray glowered, his words clipped. He paused, his irritation draining as quickly as it had come. “And you’re right—he is an arrogant boor.”
“At last, we agree on something,” Brynn said, surprised at his outburst. “He’d leech the very last bit of health from my poor, ailing body.” She fanned herself and batted her eyelashes. However, Gray didn’t take her joke. Instead his face darkened into a frown as if something else upsetting had just occurred to him.
He paused before they came within hearing distance of the day room, where Mama would be waiting for them.
“You’re certain the bastard didn’t touch you?” he asked, his voice cast low.
“Lord Hawksfield?” Brynn blurted, shocked at her brother’s violent words.
“No, the thief,” Gray clarified, keeping the menacing slant of his brows. “But I’ll see Hawksfield at the end of my pistol as well if he’s been inappropriate.”
Brynn frowned, wondering at the thud of her heart. Lord Hawksfield had not been inappropriate, and he’d made it very clear he did not wish to be.
“No, he wasn’t. Lord Hawksfield, I mean. And neither was the bandit. He just instructed me to hand over the jewels.”
And insert them in a pouch strung around his waist, dangerously close to his trim, shadow-clad hips.
