Love Is a Rogue (Wallflowers vs. Rogues #1) - Lenora Bell Page 0,2
old Dutch landloper, or vagabond.
She tapped her chin with the feathered quill. Mr. Wright is an interloper upon my peaceful countryside retreat.
Thump. Thump. Thud!
The hammering sounded as though it were inside her head.
Stamford Wright, she wrote. See Rogue. Born and bred in Cornwall. Ship’s carpenter in the Royal Navy. Heavy of hammer and brawny of shoulder. Characterized by excessive virility and boundless arrogance. Believes he’s God’s gift to womankind. Highly distracting and irritating to the scholarly female.
Well that wouldn’t be going in her dictionary. She drew a line across the page.
“Oh, Mr. Wright,” Beatrice heard a lilting female voice call. “Would you care for some cider?”
“You go on ahead to the pub, lads,” she heard Wright say. “I’ve something to take care of first.”
“Oh, aye,” came Tiny’s answer. “Something by the name of Miss Jenny.”
More guffaws. Probably some thumping of shoulders and winking.
They must be talking about Jenny Hughes, one of the kitchen maids.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Jenny,” said Wright, much closer now by the sound of it.
“I thought you’d be thirsty, working so hard and so long,” Jenny replied.
The sound of cider being gulped. A soft giggle.
“Mmm. Exactly what a man needs after a hard day’s labor. Did you sweeten this cider with your smile, Miss Jenny?”
“Go on with you now.” Said in a tone that conveyed precisely the opposite instruction.
Of all the infuriating occurrences.
Instead of going to the pub and giving Beatrice a well-deserved respite from his outsize presence, Wright was flirting shamelessly beneath her window.
Beatrice pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. Enough was enough.
You’ve met your nemesis, Wright. From the Greek for retribution. The goddess of vengeance. The personification of divine wrath.
She marched to the windows and opened them wider. She’d drop an inkpot on his head—that ought to douse his ardor. Better yet, a flowerpot.
She peered over the ledge. Divine wrath had carried her thus far, but the sight of Wright’s massive shoulders scrambled her thoughts and sent them running in opposite directions.
He stood directly below her, one dusty black boot propped on a stair to better display his heavily muscled thighs. His white shirt was open at the collar, revealing a triangle of sun-kissed chest.
If he untucked his shirt from his trousers at this moment, she’d have a direct line of sight down his . . .
Lady Beatrice Bentley! exclaimed her mother’s scandalized tones in her head. Stop gawking this instant. He’s not an eligible gentleman. He’s not a gentleman at all and therefore far beneath your notice.
True. But he was also beneath her window and she couldn’t look away.
Not now. Not when he was cradling the cider mug in one of his huge hands, stroking a finger around the rim.
Watching him gave her the most unsettling tingling sensation in her belly. Must have been something she ate for luncheon. There’d been a rather questionable leek and cod pie.
Jenny took the empty glass from him. “Will you be wanting more refreshment?”
There was no mistaking the suggestive inflection in her words. She wasn’t offering cider; she was offering kisses.
Beatrice peered over the ledge. Wright had moved closer to Jenny and away from Beatrice’s line of vision. All she could see was the taut curve of his backside and his long legs.
Whispers and . . . smacking noises? Were they kissing? And, incidentally, what would a kiss from him be like?
She stuck her head farther out the window.
Too far.
Her spectacles slipped off her nose and plummeted straight for his head.
She dropped into a crouch beneath the window, cheeks flaming and heart thudding. She could only hope that he was too occupied to notice a pair of spectacles falling from the sky.
Silence from below. She risked a quick glance out the window.
Egad.
She dropped back to a crouch.
Wright had found her spectacles, and apparently he meant to return them to her.
He was climbing straight up the rose trellis like a pirate scaling the rigging of a ship, making a beeline for the library window.
He couldn’t climb the stairs like other people. Oh no, he must display his brute strength by climbing hand over hand.
Mortification. Noun. Late fourteenth century. From Late Latin mortificationem, “putting to death.”
Could she make a dash for the library door? Not without her spectacles.
Nothing for it but to face him.
She’d faced humiliation before. Stared it down. Dared it to break her.
This would be a very brief interaction. He would hand over the spectacles; she would thank him, and then send him on his merry way back down the trellis.