Twice Tempted by a Rogue (38 page)

Yes, he could. He had a vague recollection of celery root. The night came back to him now, in a hot, sweaty rush. Setting aside the glass, he massaged away a sharp pain in his temple. “I can explain.”

“Please do.”

“There was a boxing match in Southwark.”

She shook her head. “Not another boxing match. That’s all you care about these past few months.”

“I don’t attend for love of the sport.”

Julian had never shared the popular fascination with pugilism. He’d tasted too much of real danger in his life to take amusement from contrived imitations. But he wished to God he did enjoy bloodsport. If so, a good man would still be alive. Months ago, Julian had agreed to attend a boxing match at Leo’s suggestion. At the last minute, he’d begged off, preferring to pass the evening in a woman’s embrace instead.

Worst decision he’d ever made. And not just because Carnelia was uninspired in bed.

Leo had attended the fight without him. And afterward, he’d been attacked and beaten in a Whitechapel alleyway—murdered in the street by a pair of footpads. A random act of thievery, it was concluded by most.

Julian knew better. That attack had been meant for him. In recent months, he’d attended every boxing match, cockfight, dogfight, and bear-baiting within a day’s travel of London. If the scent of blood hung in the air, he followed it—no matter how the spectacle turned his stomach. He could not rest until he reckoned with Leo’s murderers, lest they become his killers, too.

“Do you really think attending these matches will lead you to them?” she asked. “You have scarcely any description of the men. They could be standing next to you on the street, and you would never know.”

“You don’t understand.” He knew well how ineffectual the search was. It didn’t matter. Giving up was unthinkable.

“No, I don’t understand. I don’t understand a great many things you do lately. For example, just how do you get from a boxing match in Southwark to a costermonger’s wheelbarrow in Mayfair?”

“After the bout, there was a bull-baiting. The beast snapped its tether, and the crowd panicked.” Julian closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, his thoughts crowded out by memories of noise. The men shouting, the dogs’ frenzied barks, the thunder of footfalls as everyone rushed for the exits at once.

He raised both hands between them—one balled in a fist, the other extended as an open palm. “The bull charged.” In illustration, he drove the fist into his palm. “I was in the way.”

“I don’t suppose you were doing something noble, like diving in front of the beast to save a hobbled grandfather.” She put a hand under his chin and tipped his face to the light, examining his cheek. Her finger traced a slanting line toward his mouth—he must have a scratch there, he supposed. He licked his cracked lips.

Her touch skipped to the bandage encircling his arm. She ran her fingers over the binding, tucked a raw edge under the fold.

The casual intimacy of her touch was affecting. Too affecting.

Shaking his head, he pulled her hand away. “Nothing noble. I was just the one stupid enough to be wearing red.”

“Julian.” Her dark eyes glimmered with emotion as she squeezed his fingers. “You must stop making yourself a target.”

“I was only squashed. No real injury, save the pain in my arm. I decided to walk home to shake it off.”

“Walk
home? From Southwark?”

He shrugged his good shoulder, easing his hand from her grip. “It’s not so far.” Not for him. Lately he spent most nights wandering all quadrants of the city.

Last night, he’d made his way back so far as the square where Harcliffe House was situated. This house was always the last stop on his nightly rounds. He would pause on the corner down the street. If he stood half on the pavement, half on the green … then craned his neck … he could
just
glimpse the fourth rightmost window on the second floor. The one he knew belonged to Lily’s bedchamber. If the window was dark, she was sleeping and at peace. He, too, could relax. On the nights he found a lamp burning, he ached for her sorrow. And he simply stood there, quietly sharing her grief, until that light went dark or the sun came up—whichever occurred first.

In the weeks after Leo’s death, he’d found that lamp burning more often than not. As the months passed, however, her bad nights had grown less frequent. Last night, he’d been comforted to see the window dark. And just as Julian had turned to seek his own home, that faint pain in his arm shifted to a deep, persistent throb.

Twice Tempted by a Rogue
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

Copyright © 2010 by Eve Ortega

Excerpt from
Three Nights with a Scoundrel
by Tessa Dare copyright © 2010 by Eve Ortega

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-51888-0

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