Where Passion Leads (Berkeley-Faulkner #1)(12)

“I am glad you didn’t.” That much was true. “I suppose I owe you a debt of gratitude, Mr. . . .”

“Lord Randall Berkeley, of Warwick.”

No, he couldn’t be. What an odd trick of chance. Of all men who might have rescued her . . . Rosalie set down the tea and raised her fingertips to her mouth, her eyes widening. Just as Elaine had described. Except that the romantic image Rosalie had conjured up had little to do with the Randall Berkeley she saw before her. In her imagination Lord Berkeley had been an audacious gentleman, perhaps roguishly charming, whereas in reality he was cool and rather haughty. A less charming man she would never hope to meet. “I have heard of you,” she admitted cautiously, and he wiped the last traces of soap off his face with the towel.

“No doubt.”

A man full of his own importance, Rosalie surmised with distaste. An affliction common among the aristocracy. She rose from the bed cautiously, placing both feet on the floor and inching toward her clothes.

“Ready to leave so soon?”

“I must get back.” Something in her tone must have indicated her budding disdain for him, for he pinned her with a stare of appraisal that seemed to reach inside her to the very bones. Her shoulders quivered slightly, her hair brushing her h*ps as she halted.

“Get back to where?” he inquired. “I’d—”

“—rather not say,” he finished for her sardonically. “You might as well sit down, for you’re not leaving until I have some answers from you.”

That sounded distinctly threatening. Rosalie remained where she was, wondering desperately what hour it was. Indecision gripped her—she had been trained by Amille all of her life to do the proper thing in any situation . . . but what in God’s name was the proper thing in this instance? Should she run? Scream? Talk to him politely?

“Is this necessary?” she demanded.

“To satisfy my curiosity? Yes, it is.”

“I don’t have the time,” she dared, and his response was uttered in the most cutting of tones.

“Neither do I, but sit down in spite of your overloaded schedule. We haven’t yet discussed what you owe me.”

Holding his eyes resolutely, Rosalie continued to move to the Trafalgar chair in the quest for her dress, stockings, and shoes. The only way to deal profitably with him, she sensed, was to conceal her uneasiness. He was bred of the same instinct as the creature she had tangled with the night before, quick to take advantage of weakness.

“Owe you? What do you think I owe you?” “A few answers, for one thing.”

“I owe you nothing,” she said, her voice sharp in her eagerness to stand up to him.

“The hell you don’t—your playmate of last night would have slit your pretty throat from ear to ear after your tête-à-tête.” Rand neglected to add that even if that had not occurred, his own companions would most likely have offered to take the man’s place on top of her. It was the wont of the younger bucks to treat life as if it were a selfish folly. They cared for no one, for nothing except pursuing pleasure and maintaining their reputations. A strange kind of honor it was, that required payment of gambling debts but made no quarter for simple compassion.

“You fought him?” Rosalie asked, a wealth of surprise coloring her expression. Had he been so compassionate that he would have seen fit to exert himself to rescue—

“I paid him a guinea for you.”

“How pleasant,” she said, unable to tame a wave of indignation at his casual manner, “to discover one’s ultimate value. I’m overwhelmed by your generous expenditure on my behalf.”

Inexplicably there appeared a gleam of approval in the strange depths of his eyes. She had spirit, he surmised, and her attractiveness was increased by the discovery.

“Rosalie . . . petitefleur, vous devrez cacher les épines.” Little flower, you should hide your thorns. “Un avertissement très appréciable, monsieur,” she replied immediately, in an accent as pure as Amille’s.

“You have French blood in you,” Rand observed. “Yes.”

“Obviously not blue.”

“Apparently not.” Rosalie eyed him carefully, having been struck by the particular accent and intonation of his French. It was entirely too natural to have been learned solely in the schoolroom. Did he also have Gallic blood in him? No, he looked too much the part of an Englishman, large, solid, and affluent, without the slender agility or facile temperament typical of a Frenchman.

“You also owe me for a night’s rest,” Rand remarked. “What?” Rosalie questioned in a faint voice, realizing just then that they had actually shared a bed last night. She felt a leaden weight settle in her stomach. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, her virtue was ruined. She tampered down a burgeoning sense of panic.

“Your tossing and turning kept me up until the sun began to rise. You’re hardly an ideal bedmate.”

“You’re hardly what I would choose either!” she managed to retort, swallowing an unpleasant lump in her throat. Perhaps none of this was real. Perhaps she was having a dreadful nightmare. Surely she, Rosalie Belleau, a girl with a tidy, orderly, and dull life, had not been tossed into the worst imaginable scenario for an unmarried woman to find herself in. Turning her face away, she endeavored to conceal her confusion. It was almost certain that by now her face was a shade of brick red that would most likely remain permanent. “Yes, I’ve seen the type of men you prefer to consort with,” Rand commented, his eyes taking in her every move.