While the Duke Was Sleeping (The Rogue Files #1)(36)

He released her. Her legs slid back down, feet landing on solid earth—right alongside her judgment.

She looked up into his eyes. They were a dark forest, the green lost to the night, unreadable as they crawled over her face. “This was a mistake,” she whispered, looking down at herself, smoothing a hand down her rumpled cloak.

He snorted and she cast him a sharp look. “A mistake,” she repeated.

“You weren’t saying that moments ago. You were as hot for it as any lass I’ve ever had. I must confess a little surprise. I didn’t think you would be quite so . . . proficient.”

Angry heat stung her cheeks. Why shouldn’t he think she would be good at . . . at . . . amorous endeavors? As soon as the indignant thought entered her head, she slapped it away. A lady shouldn’t take offense over such a thing. Indeed, a lady would never have permitted a rogue like Struan Mackenzie such liberties.

He continued, “Although I suppose I should have surmised a certain aptitude from you since you’ve secured my brother’s interest.”

That’s right. He thought she was Autenberry’s lover. How could she have permitted herself to kiss the wretch? To more than kiss him? She’d responded to him as she never had with Edmond.

Not trusting herself to answer him, she pushed off the wall and started down the narrow alley, shaken and rattled, her body still throbbing in places where it should feel nothing.

She heard him follow behind her. “Poppy,” he started to say, one hand closing on her arm, forcing her around.

“You two there!”

Startled, she jerked, her gaze colliding with a figure looming at the mouth of the alleyway. She scanned the big-bellied man, marking his uniform. Mackenzie stepped beside her to face him, as well.

Now the Watch appeared? Earlier, when his presence could have been useful, he was nowhere to be found.

“Constable.” Mackenzie nodded circumspectly. “Just walking the lady home.”

Mackenzie slid a hand against the small of her back, guiding her out of the alley.

The man looked her up and down as though skeptical that she was in fact a lady. Granted, they were emerging from an alley. Doubtlessly, her hair and wardrobe were mussed. She could guess at all his lurid thoughts. The man’s gaze returned to Mackenzie, who stared back at him with a stony expression that seemed to dare him to disagree at the veracity of her virtue.

The man cleared his throat, resting his hand on the butt of the baton secured inside his belt. “Carry on, then. All manner of questionable characters out and about this late.”

Indeed. All manner.

Poppy held her tongue, her steps a quick staccato on the walk as they hastened home. She didn’t even attempt to shake off his hand against her back. It had been a long evening and she was tired of fighting. Besides, she could feel the Watchman’s stare fixed on the back of them and the sensation of Mackenzie’s big hand against her felt somehow comforting.

They turned the corner and she murmured, “You needn’t escort me the rest of the way. He can’t see us anymore. I can take myself home.”

“That is not happening,” he replied. “You’re daft if you think I will let you walk the rest of the way unescorted. Now if you had shown some sense and taken a hack in the first place or—”

“I can’t afford it,” she blurted, her arms swinging as she walked. It was so easy for him to assume that she had other choices—that she could simply hail a hack whenever she chose. This world, this life, held a decided lack of choices for women without family and means.

He fell quiet. For once, she had silenced him.

Heat crept over her face as her admission sank in. Only now did she feel embarrassed and vulnerable that she had admitted such a thing to him. In his eyes, in the eyes of a man who was clearly as rich as Croesus, it felt like a weakness. She felt small and pitiable, and she hated that. She hated being on the receiving end of anyone’s pity.

She had endured enough of that in her life. After her father’s death. After Edmond’s rejection. After every time people met her stunning sister and then looked at her, comparing her much plainer looks to Bryony’s and finding her lacking.

“It’s a matter of funds?” he demanded.

She groaned and increased her pace, forcing his hand to fall from the small of her back. He followed, his steps matching hers.

“You say that as though it’s an issue of no concern,” she accused. “For some of us it is.”

“I find it hard to believe that Autenberry’s paramour would be living short on funds.”

There it was again. That insulting and erroneous assumption. He thought she was Marcus’s lover. Even after the way she had just kissed him and let him touch her. He thought she was his brother’s lover.

Instead of bothering to correct him, she cut him a swift glance. “Last time I checked, your brother is in a coma.”

“And you have no nest set aside? No pin money from him?”

He made her sound like a kept woman.

“No.” It was the only word she could manage.

He made a sound. “Not much of a protector, my brother.”

His words rang in her head and she shivered. You’re wasted on him. She knew he was thinking that again.

“Can we not discuss this?”

“He’s more like our father than I realized. Shagging with little thought to anything else. To anyone.” She glanced back at him, stumbling slightly. He caught hold of her elbow. His gaze cutting and direct, his implication was clear. With any thought to you.