As the Devil Dares (Capturing the Carlisles #3)(47)

“So this petticoat who isn’t yours but whom you’ve been escorting around London as if she were,” Ross corrected, then chuckled with amusement at the glower he elicited from Robert. “Is she the reason you’re halfway to the bottom of a bottle of cognac in the middle of the afternoon and lying to your mother about appointments at the club?”

Hell no. He’d never let a woman affect him before in his life, and he certainly wasn’t going to start now with Mariah.

But when Ross put it like that…Damnation.

He admitted with a grumble, “It’s complicated.”

“The best women always are.” Ross cut off the tips of the two cheroots and handed one to Robert as he returned to his chair. “And what do you plan to do with her?”

Leaning forward to light his cigar, he blinked, taken aback by that. “I don’t plan to do anything.” Except make her some other man’s problem.

Ross slid him a disbelieving glance. “And what does she plan to do with you?”

“A slow and torturous death,” he muttered, then popped the cigar between his teeth. At this rate, certainly, one of them would kill the other by June.

With a quiet laugh, Ross lit his cigar on the lamp, then kicked his boots onto the fireplace fender, settling in for the afternoon.

“Her father offered me a partnership with his company,” Robert admitted, omitting several details he preferred not to share. Not even with his cousin. Lately, the challenge Winslow had given him had begun to feel more like a deal with the devil than a chance to prove himself. “That’s why I’ve been escorting her this season. He hopes she’ll find a husband and settle down. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

Ross said nothing, but the expression on his face told Robert that he didn’t believe him.

“Lord Robert?” The club’s manager strode into the room, carrying a small, paper-and-string-wrapped package. “This arrived for you, sir.”

“Thank you.” Puzzled, he accepted it. He pulled loose the string, and the paper fell away. Peveril of the Peak. The Walter Scott novel he’d been perusing at the bookseller.

“A book?” Ross sat up curiously at that. The gentlemen at White’s were notorious for committing infamous firsts. The first man to ride a horse backward to Richmond, the first to wear trousers to dinner, the first to bet on a race of raindrops sliding down a window…but a book delivered to the club? Certainly this was the first time that had ever happened. “Who would send that to you here?”

“No idea,” he mumbled and removed a note card that had been stuck between the pages.

In your desperation to flee from us women

and our shopping, you forgot this. Consider

it the start of your grand library.

—M. W.



“Mariah,” he murmured, stunned that she would have thought of this.

Ross asked with surprise, “The Hellion’s sending you gifts?”

“It’s not a gift.” He tossed it onto the table with a grimace. “It’s a portent.”

With a knowing shake of his head, Ross pointed at the book with his cigar. “That doesn’t seem the action of a woman set on your slow and torturous death.”

No, it certainly didn’t. Which only made him even more suspicious.

If they weren’t at odds, he might have taken the gift as nothing more than a kindness. Just as he would have genuinely found her likeable. But in his fight with Mariah, there truly was no judging a book by its cover.

“This season is going to end badly for you,” Ross assured him, flicking ash from the end of his cigar. “And I don’t mean your business interests.” His eyes softened on Robert in that same contemplative diplomatic expression he used at court when he wanted to sway opinions on whatever new political stance King George wanted to take. “Either you’re going to be blamed by her father when she finishes her last season as a spinster and lose the partnership, or she accepts a marriage offer and you lose her.”

“Don’t be daft. I don’t want her for myself.” He glared at his cousin for even suggesting such a thing. “She’s a hellcat.”

Ross smiled slyly, studying the glowing tip of his cigar. “And what’s wrong with a woman with spirit?”

For a moment, his mind blanked, and he couldn’t find an answer.

What was wrong with Mariah, except that she would do anything to work at her father’s side? That ebony hair and creamy pale skin, those berry-red lips that tasted as spicy-sweet as they looked…and to his great surprise, a brilliant mind. She wasn’t some simpering young miss; she was a confident woman, one who donated her time and most of her allowance to helping children. For heaven’s sake, she knew naval battle strategy. And wasn’t afraid to use it.

She was pure challenge, every breathtaking inch of her.

If she had been any other woman except for Henry Winslow’s daughter, he would have pursued her. Without hesitation.

But she wasn’t any other woman. Mariah was the only obstacle preventing him from proving that he deserved the Carlisle name. And no one, not even an intelligent, intriguing, and achingly beautiful woman, would stop him from doing exactly that.

“Everything,” he muttered as he shoved himself out of the chair and walked away.

Ross called out after him, “Aren’t you bothered that she’s refused her invitation to St James’s ball?”