Page 12 of Road Trip With a Rogue

“Are you going to get my brothers?” That would certainly add to her misery.

“No. I’m going to call for a carriage.”

She didn’t know whether to be grateful or offended.

Thank God she hadn’t compounded her humiliation by touching him back. By threading her fingers through his hair, or stroking his jaw, or sliding her hands over thehard plains of his chest. She’d saved herself that indignity, small as it was.

He pointed to her mask, lying on the floor. “Put that back on. I’ll be back in a minute. Donotleave this room.”

Daisy glared at him as he gave her one last, simmering look, then turned to the door. She rolled her eyes when he took the key from the lock and used it to shut her in, clearly having no confidence in her ability to be sensible.

Or perhaps he thought he was protecting her from encountering a less-discerning gentleman, she thought acidly. God, she hated him. High-handed, arrogantbastard. He’d toyed with her like a cat with a mouse, and she, like a fool, had let him.

She ignored him when he returned, gliding past him into the corridor with a regal sniff. With her mask back on, he swept her through the crowded rooms, using his big body to shove drunken revelers out of the way and shielding her from the catcalls and lewd innuendos that followed them.

A servant opened the front door to a frigid blast of air, and Daisy practically ran down the steps and clambered into the waiting carriage.

She glanced up in surprise as Vaughan followed her and caught the carriage door before it closed. His face was harsh and still annoyingly attractive in the lamplight, and she bit her lip at the horrible churn of conflicting emotions in her stomach. How could she want him and despise him simultaneously?

His gaze met hers and her heart somersaulted.

“Go home. And don’t ever do something so reckless again. You won’t like the consequences.”

Daisy’s cheeks heated, but she gave a disdainful sniff. “Consider me duly chastened.”

He gazed at her for a long moment, then opened hismouth as if he was about to say something more, but the horses rattled their harness and he seemed to change his mind. He closed the door with a resigned shake of his head and shouted up to the driver.

She almost toldhimnot to do anything stupid, either, like get himself killed while he was off fighting, but pride and fury kept her quiet. The last thing she saw as she pulled away was his dark silhouette standing at the foot of the steps, the lights of the mansion blazing behind him, like Lucifer at the gates of hell.

I hate you, Lucien Vaughan.

But you’d better not bloody well die.

Chapter Six

They would ruin you.

And it would feel so fucking good.

Daisy opened her eyes and willed the heat in her cheeks to fade as Vaughan—the real one, not the memory—climbed back into the carriage and settled on the seat opposite her.

The sting of his rejection had faded a little over the years, but those particular words had continued to haunt her. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d awoken from a dark dream with them echoing in her head, her body restless and on the verge of release.

Shehatedthat her unhelpful brain sometimes remembered the feel of his hand on her throat not with outrage, but with a hot, shameful pleasure that left her angry and confused.

She understood why he’d done what he had. He’d been trying to scare her into behaving. Protecting her, in his own warped, slightly perverse way. Perhaps the thought that neither he nor her brothers would be there to keep an eye on her while they were all away at war had motivated him.

And he’d been right. She’d been naive to think she could hold her own against a determined male, even one less physically impressive than himself, or with reflexes slowed with excess drink. Back then, she’d had no way of defending herself.

Not like now.

She couldn’t give Vaughan all the credit for her decision to learn how to use her knives, but that night had undoubtedly contributed to her determination to develop her fighting skills.

The carriage jolted forward, and Daisy glanced over at him. “Did you tell someone about the man we left in the woods?”

“I did.”

“Thank you.”