Have You Any Rogues? by Elizabeth Boyle

Author:Elizabeth Boyle [Boyle, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780062322906
Publisher: Avon Impulse
Published: 2013-12-23T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

If the wind has changed, so has a Seldon’s heart.

WELL-KNOWN DALE MAXIM

Owle Park, 1810

Crispin got up from where he’d been sitting on the steps and paced the short distance across the cellar. “Michaels?! Of all the madcap, idiotic—”

Henrietta held up her hand to stave off the rest of Crispin’s censure. Hadn’t she heard much the same from everyone of consequence in her life since the day she’d made her fateful decision to run off with the fellow?

And they were all correct. It had been a disastrous decision. For her. And for Michaels—whose heart, very much like her own, had belonged to someone else.

What a pair they’d made.

“I will never understand why you married that bounder,” Crispin said, taking a bottle off the shelf and examining it.

Hen sighed. It was all so complicated. More so now than it had been then. “You know why.”

Crispin stalked back toward her, bottle in hand. “That doesn’t mean I understand. If only you’d trusted—”

“Trust? A Dale?” she shot back. “It has been drummed into me since birth that trusting a Dale is like trusting the devil.”

“As faithless as a Seldon,” he shot back.

Hen flinched a bit. “I was willing to look past your name.”

“Look past my name?” He set the wine aside and crossed his arms over his chest, stubbornly defiant. “It would have been your name.”

She rose to her feet to face him, unwilling to let him tower over her. “And that of our child’s,” she snapped back before she could stop herself, her darkest secret spilling out. She clapped her hand over her mouth, as if that could put the words back where they belonged—locked tightly in her heart.

Yet there they were. Spat right out in the open.

In the cool shadows of the cellar, her secret brought a light that left them both frozen and blinking at its stark glare.

Crispin’s eyes narrowed. “Our what?” he asked in a cold, quiet voice.

“You heard me,” she said, wishing yet again she could learn to curb her impetuous tongue. Then she repeated it, this time a little more gently, for the memory was, even after all this time, still raw. “Your child.”

Crispin shook his head. “How could that be—we only—”

“Yes, once. But that was all it took.” She turned away from him, wishing she’d never blundered into this mire.

“But you were married,” he argued, “to that bounder. How could you even think—”

She whirled back around. “Think that my baby was yours? I knew it for certain.” She laughed a bit. “Michaels was no bounder. Contrary to what everyone thought of him, he was actually quite harmless.”

“Harmless?” Crispin’s expression was incredulous. “The rumors I’ve heard of his exploits—ruinous deeds that aren’t fit for a lady’s ears, not even those of his widow.” He said all this while wagging his finger at her.

Henrietta blew out a long sigh. “If you are referring to the gel in that Southwark stew, she was paid to tell that story. As were countless others.” She reached over and gathered up the wayward pup, settling the little mutt into her arms.

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