Page 35 of A Remarkable Rogue

It wasn’t his company; it was the whiskey. Still… He faced her. “Lady Agnes is a good woman,” he admitted grudgingly.

“I think—” She drew a tremulous breath and tried again. “I think you’ll find we’re all good people if you give us the chance to prove ourselves.” She took a hesitant step toward him. “That’s all I ask. If we could make an effort to be friendly to each other. Then maybe someday you’ll let us officially welcome you as part of the Sinclair family.”

“No,” he firmly refused. Did they think him mad? Or so easily won over by the potential trappings of being part of a society family? He wanted none of it.

Tears of grief and pain formed at her lashes. “My husband was a terrible man, and what he did to your mother…” Her voice choked. She shook her head, for a moment unable to speak before continuing. “I cannot change the past, but wecanchange the future.” She took another step forward, and then another, and she slowly closed the gap between them. “I’d like to try, at least, if you can find it in your heart to stop hating us.”

“I don’t hate you.” In fact, in his whole life, he’d given the Sinclairs as little thought as possible. “I simply want nothing to do with you.” He gazed over her shoulder at Sinclair to make certain he understood as well. “I don’t need your name, your money, or your influence.” His eyes dropped back to the countess. “I don’t want any of it.”

“Then you want no sister as well?”

He whirled at the sound of the soft voice behind him.

Lady Elizabeth Sinclair stood by the terrace steps from where she’d been listening to their argument. A look of grief darkened her face that he simply couldn’t fathom.

A sister. He couldn’t answer, not with so much anger coursing through him. Lady Elizabeth was an innocent in this mess, just as he was, and she didn’t deserve to be hurt. Yet she was still a Sinclair.

Without another word, he walked from the garden toward the front of the house and called out for the groom to bring his horse. He was leaving. Now.

“Wait!” Footsteps ran after him on the gravel. “Captain Reed!”

Drawing a ragged breath of long-suffering patience, he braced himself as he faced Lady Elizabeth.

The troublesome gel ran straight for him, flung herself against him, and wrapped both arms around his neck in a tight hug.

Nate froze, his arms sticking out straight from his sides.Good Lord, were all the women in this family as mad as hatters?

“Lady Elizabeth, I simply want to—”

“Beth,” she insisted. “My family calls me Beth, and like it or not, Nate, you are family.”

Was he supposed to take that as a compliment or a warning? Yet he raised his hand briefly to her back to return the unexpected embrace before setting her away.

“I’d love to have another brother. Frankly, I’m tired of the one I already have,” she teased, but he knew her joking was to cover her nervousness. None of the Sinclairs were comfortable around him, and he sure as hell wasn’t at ease around them. But it was hard to be angry when she smiled at him with such clear longing for acceptance. “It would be nice to have someone on my side in family arguments for a change.”

When he didn’t immediately respond, she threw her arms around him to hug him again.

Then, she rose up onto tiptoes and whispered into his ear, “Please reconsider your feelings for us. It isn’t any of our faults that our father was a monster. He took away so much from so many people… Don’t let him take you away from us, too.”

She placed an impetuous kiss to his cheek and dashed away, back to the garden where her real family waited.

Ten

Nate stopped in front of the mountainous man guarding the front door of Viscount Chilton’s Piccadilly town house. Music and laughter poured out into the night from the party already underway inside. With a frown beneath the papier-mâché demi mask that covered the upper half of his face, he handed over the white card bearing only tonight’s date. The viscount’s personal insignia embossed the corner.

“I’m a guest of Lady Flame,” he told the footman and failed to keep the wry sarcasm from his voice.

The man examined the card carefully, then handed it back and stepped aside to let Nate pass. “Enjoy your evening, Lord Panther.”

Nate gritted his teeth at that bit of nonsense and entered the house.

He followed the strains of music as he moved through the house toward the ballroom and the heart of the salacious gathering, letting the sounds and sights of the very private party engulf him. Like him, everyone inside the house wore masks and costumes to hide their identities. One glance at the ballroom explained why.

Masked men danced front against front with women in tightly fitted dresses whose necklines plunged so low they almost revealed their nipples. Both men and women held glasses of whiskey, brandy, and champagne that were constantly being refilled by a small army of footmen circulating through the room. Musicians played from the minstrels’ balcony, but no one seemed to notice the music as each couple moved to their own scandalous rhythms. As one couple circled past, the man’s hand slipped down his partner’s back to cup her buttock.

Three sets of French doors stood open wide to the gardens beyond the ballroom. Dark beneath the moonless night, the pathways wound through the bushes and trees, and couples moved unhindered between the house and the gardens. The night breeze gave respite from the smoke of the dim chandeliers and the heat of the bodies crowding into the house and stirred the curtains of a series of alcoves lining the far end of the room. One curtain billowed open and gave a fleeting glimpse of a finely dressed man leaning against the wall and a woman disguised as a butterfly kneeling in front of him. Her antennae fluttered with each bob of her head at his crotch.

The room was a sea of jewels and satins, glitter and sequins, and long stretches of bare flesh, all shining and shimmering in the lamplight. A masquerade of costumes of all kinds and shapes paraded past, and both men and women exploited the secrecy to engage in pleasures they’d never dare attempt at a proper society ball.