Page 1 of For a Scandalous Wager (Breaking the Rules of the Beau Monde #3)

PROLOGUE

E ngland 1824 A Shadow of things to come…

H-E-L-P.

Four letters. Not perhaps the four letters Dalton Rochester was thinking of when he witnessed one shapely calf dangling over the second-story windowsill of Rosewood Manor. No, his four-letter word of choice started with an F and ended with a K.

The note, the plea, hadn’t required a signature even if he had not come to recognize the precise looping curve of the letter P as in: Please be discreet. Please come quickly. Please do not ignore this summons. Please. Please. Please.

He sorely wished to reply with: Please forget where I live, and I’ll do the same. But he wasn’t in the game of harming the tender regard or the budding feelings of debutantes. Although, at twenty-three, Evelyn Markham was hardly a debutante. It is, however, generally understood that a gentleman’s best friend’s little sister was and would always be as off-limits as any freshly minted young, innocent of the ton .

“What the bloody hell are you doing?” he yelled in a forceful whisper that she surely heard if the cheeky look she just threw over her shoulder was any indication. Thankfully, the light from the waxing-gibbous moon illuminated her virtual fall from grace. Watching her right foot poke about, searching for the trellis banked against the brick facade, something he wouldn’t have put any trust in even as a child, his heart soon gave way to the near calamity, and he broke out in a nervous sweat.

“I should think it obvious,” she shouted back, the words bouncing off the exterior of the house now inches from her face as she fully hung on to the lattice frame.

“Don’t you dare take another step, Evelyn Markham. I swear to God if you fall and die, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” she called to him from under her extended arm.

“Don’t speak. Just put your derriere back over that sill.” He moved into a better position, ready to catch her because he didn’t trust her to make it safely to the ground unharmed.

“If you’d had the good grace to come earlier, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.” She finally found a solid slat of wood and tucked the toe of her slipper into it.

Slippers? Damn it all. She wasn’t even wearing boots, the ninny. “I thought I made it perfectly clear that I have no stab of conscience wielding me toward being one of your victims of scheme and scandal. Now, hightail it back into your room or wherever it is you came from. And for God’s sake, do it right now.”

She ventured another step down the makeshift ladder, and he heard the weathered wood snap, pieces scrabbling down the side of the manse. “Oh!”

“Oh, God! Don’t move. I’m coming up.”

“No, it’s too much. We’ll both fall.”

“Then push yourself free of the wall and let go. I’ll catch you.” She was more than halfway there already, and Rochester trusted himself to catch her before she broke that lovely neck of hers. Curse him for ever having kissed it.

“I can’t,” she said while braced only on one foot, her other bobbing about.

If his heart hadn’t been pumping with worry, he’d have enjoyed the view.

“I’m afraid.”

“Fine time for that. You’re a helpless goose, is what you are. And a pain in my arse.”

“Rochester!” she yelped just before her other foot gave way. She lost her grip on the trellis—and on the evening.

With his arms full of skirts and soft womanly parts, his legs buckled from the force. Despite that, he managed to keep hold of her, cradling her against his chest even as the pain-in-the-arse woman made his backside hurt in reality. He blew out a ragged breath, and before he truly let her have it, he clutched her to him, stroking her hair with his palm and ignoring a twig poking him in the back of his head. His heart pounded with a combination of wild, uncontrollable fear and relief. With her breasts firmly pressed against him, he felt her heart answer with the same panicked rhythm. The position did nothing to calm him whatsoever. On the contrary, it made him rock hard under her soft derriere. Lord God, have mercy. This woman was to be the death of him. One way or another.