How to Catch a Sinful Marquess - Amy Rose Bennett Page 0,1

a makeshift ladder had already cracked ominously beneath her weight. But she really couldn’t afford to panic about how she’d get down. First of all, she had to reach that blasted cat, and quickly. The light was fading fast, and it wouldn’t be long before her presence was missed.

Olivia drew a bracing breath. “P-P-Peridot.” Her stammer was little more than a ragged whisper. “Here, p-puss, puss. There’s a good k-kitty now.” Knees trembling, heart pounding, she forced herself to inch forward along the wall so she could peer up into the beech canopy.

There. Directly above her on a sturdy branch, but just out of reach, sat Peridot, her black, white, and tan fur barely visible in the shadows. The cat’s fluffy tail twitched when Olivia called her again. A disdainful gesture if she’d ever seen one.

Little minx. If Olivia survived this foolhardy escapade, she was going to pack Peridot into her basket and send her back to Berkeley Square posthaste. Let the Hastings House staff deal with their young mistress’s cat. Charlie meant well when she’d suggested in her last letter that Olivia might like to look after Peridot for a few weeks until Charlie returned to London in the first week of October. On the surface, her friend’s reasoning was sound: a pet would provide Olivia with congenial company, affection, and a source of amusement—three things that were sorely lacking in her life.

Ignoring the scrape of the brickwork along the tender flesh of her inner thighs, Olivia crept forward again. And then the hem of her muslin gown snagged on something, and she winced at the sound of fabric tearing.

Damn, damn, and double damn again.

How on earth was she going to explain the damage to Bagshaw? She’d be sure to tattle to Aunt Edith, who’d tell Uncle Reginald.

And then she’d be punished.

But at least Peridot will be safe—

“Ahem.”

The low, unmistakable sound of an adult male clearing his throat made Olivia simultaneously jump and squeak with fright.

Oh, no. No, no, no. Her heart plummeting like a dislodged stone, Olivia’s gaze whipped down to collide with that of a man’s. But not just any man.

It was the Marquess of Sleat. The very object of her girlish infatuation.

The subject of all her silly, romantical dreams.

In the flesh.

And what flesh it was. Well over six feet of muscular, broad-shouldered, square-jawed man glowered up at her.

Her grip tightened on the wall. Her pulse stuttered, and heat flared in her cheeks. Mortified didn’t even begin to describe how she felt.

Horrified would be closer to the mark. Definitely shaken and utterly speechless.

She’d never seen Lord Sleat this close up before. Indeed, she’d only ever glimpsed him at a distance as he quit his town house before striding off down Grosvenor Square or climbing into his coach. And there’d been that one occasion when he lounged on the stone-flagged terrace overlooking this very garden. In the summer gloaming, she’d spied the glowing tip of his cheroot cigar and the flash of amber liquid—perhaps whisky—as the light of the setting sun glanced off his raised glass.

Charlie had once described him as being the epitome of a Highland warrior crossed with a pirate. As Olivia continued to gawp in awkward dismay at the marquess, she decided her friend’s assessment was quite accurate. A thick sweep of sable hair falling across his brow partially obscured a jagged scar and the black leather patch covering his left eye socket. His other eye, the iris a dark storm-cloud gray, pinned her with a hard, distinctly sardonic stare.

“Two thoughts spring to mind.” Lord Sleat’s baritone voice and Scots burr coalesced into a rich, deep rumble, which Olivia swore she could feel vibrate through her body like a roll of distant thunder. “First of all, what the devil are you doing? And secondly, how the hell did a wee lassie like you get up there?”

One dark eyebrow arched as he waited for Olivia to respond, and for a moment, she wondered if she’d misjudged the marquess’s mood; she swore she glimpsed a quicksilver flash of humor in his gaze.

Amused or not, he still expected her to answer. She swallowed to moisten her dry-as-a-desert mouth. To undo the knots from her perpetually tangled tongue. “I . . . I . . .” She screwed her eyes shut as she attempted to wrest a coherent sentence loose. “I . . . my f-f-friend’s c-cat is . . .” Lifting a trembling hand, she pointed at the branches overhead. “Peri . . . P-Peridot . . .”