Page 8 of Seducing the Knave

Her childhood might have been rather sheltered having spent nearly her entire life in the country, but she wasn’t a simpleton. If his smirk was infuriating, his intense, penetrating gaze was downright offensive. No gentleman would speak to a lady as he did and certainly wouldn’t stare in such an unabashedly brazen manner. Despite his fine attire and fancy carriage, he was nothing but a scoundrel.

And scoundrels weren’t to be trusted.

“We’re on this journey together now, luv, ye may as well give me a name.”

She hated how his voice made her belly tremble. It was annoyingly textured. Rough and smooth at the same time. How was that even possible?

By the twist of his lips, she had no doubt he called her luv instead of princess only because he suspected it would irritate her more.

He was right.

Fine, then. But she wasn’t about to give him her true name.

After a moment, she answered with a nickname her mother had used for her when she’d been very young. “You may call me Elle.”

His smirk curled higher. “The letter?”

Her back teeth clenched. “No,” she bit out sharply, suddenly regretting her choice in pseudonym. “It’s French.”

“She, then?” he noted with another twist of his lips.

Apparently, the cad knew a bit of French. And once again, he was laughing at her.

“And what should I call you?” she retorted. “Lord Wright?”

He gave the tiniest flinch at her words, telling her she’d been right when she’d gotten close enough to the carriage to identify the crest on the door as belonging to the Earl of Wright. She didn’t know his lordship personally, but memorizing Debrett’s had been a requirement of her education. Besides that, the Wright name was rather renowned. Not only for the wealth and power associated with it, but because of the Wright family scandal which had come to light a number of years ago.

His chin lowered and a strange hardness entered his gaze. “Me name’s Max Owen.”

“Max? Short for Maxwell?” she asked, curling the corner of her mouth into a smirk of her own. “No. Maximillian. No, wait. It must be Maximus,” she concluded dramatically. And just when she thought she might have succeeded in annoying him as he annoyed her, he flashed another devastating grin.

“Just Max,” he corrected, his voice low and oddly intimate in the close confines of the carriage.

Something unsettling swirled through her blood, setting her on edge once again.

Damn him.

“Not the earl, then,” she noted with an exaggerated sigh of disappointment. She’d never once thought he could be. The earl was at least a decade older than this man and though she’d never met him, he was well known for his staid gentlemanly manner. “What a shame.”

Instead of irritating him as she’d intended, her words inspired a smoky laugh that drifted annoyingly over her nerves, lifting the fine hairs on her nape.

“How exactly did you come to be traveling in the Earl of Wright’s carriage?” she challenged. “Did you steal it?”

That curl at the corner of his lips was becoming quite infuriating. Did nothing faze him?

“Didn’t have to,” he answered easily.

“The earl just generously offered the use of his carriage to an East End brigand posing as a gentleman?”

Rather than insulting him, her observation only made his grin wider. “Ye heard the cockney on me tongue, then.”

He intentionally thickened the accent, and for some odd and twisted reason, the rougher speech in his smoky tone made her skin prickle with sensation.

“You don’t deny being a scoundrel?”

He shrugged. “Why bother?”

“Does the noble Lord Wright know your fine clothing is nothing more than a disguise?”

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