Page 92 of Rogue of My Heart

“An incidental kiss?” Shannon asked off to the side.

Marie peeked at her, suddenly wary that the women she’d been counting on to be her staunchest allies might turn against her as well.

“We were caught up in the moment,” she said. “But don’t you worry. Mr. Darrow was lying prone on the sand at the time, and so was I. There was no embrace and hardly any touching.”

Except their lips. And Marie wasn’t sure she would ever be able to forget the glorious embrace of their lips and tongues. Christian had tasted of salt and excitement. Even with his arms around her only a bit, she’d felt enveloped by him. She wasn’t naïve enough to think her feelings were anything other than lust and an awakening of the flesh. But then again, she hadn’t felt anything close to the stirrings Christian had given her when she’d stolen a kiss from one of the pub owners they’d sold beer to, or that handsome farmer who had offered her a nosegay in exchange for a kiss, or the footman her father had summarily dismissed after catching the two of them snogging when she was fourteen.

She shook her head to clear away the thoughts. “It was just a kiss,” she said. “It was fun and enjoyable, just as life should be.” She nodded as if to emphasize her point.

“If it’s kissing and enjoyment you want, then you’re in luck,” Fergus said with a scowl that sent a chill down Marie’s back. “The reason we didn’t have this little talk yesterday afternoon is because I was making arrangements, based on Lady Coyle’s advice.”

“Arrangements?” Marie’s voice shook at the thought.

Fergus broke into a grin that made him look downright piratical with his eyepatch. “Congratulations, dear sister,” he said. “You’re engaged to be married.”

“I’m—how—what?” Marie gawped at him.

“I settled the deal yesterday,” Fergus said. “Before word of any of this could get out. You want to play the siren? Well, go ahead. I’m sure your new husband will be glad of it. And with any luck, you’ll be with child by the end of the summer, and you’ll have a wee babe to calm you down by this time next year.”

“Fergus, that’s—” Marie shook with rage, balling her hands into fists at her sides. “That is the cruelest, most underhanded, most vile, heartless, wicked—” Marie ran out of words strong enough to spit at her brother. Her eyes stung with anger at being bartered away like so much baggage. “I will never forgive you for?—”

“Fetch your hat and meet me outside,” Fergus cut her off. “We’re paying a call to Kilrea Manor.”

Marie’s mouth hung open, but her words stopped in her throat. Kilrea Manor? Christian’s home? Fergus couldn’t possibly have engaged her to Christian himself that quickly, could he?

But it made sense. Christian was the one she’d committed the impropriety with. It only made sense that their families would want the two of them married off as quickly as possible after that sort of a scene. And if she were honest with herself, after seeing what she stood to gain as Christian’s wife—all of it—she had to admit there were worse things that could have happened.

“This isn’t fair,” she said all the same, rocking back and pretending she was still angry when, in fact, her heart was racing for another reason. “This absolutely isn’t fair.”

“Neither is life,” Fergus said, still looking like the Devil himself. “Go get your things.”

Marie tilted her chin up with a sniff and stomped out of the room, but the moment she was in the hall, she broke into a run, grinning from ear to ear.

* * *

“You, sir, are a complete disgrace,” Christian’s father snapped, his face contorted in a grimace that proved the intensity of his words. “Have you no respect for this family or our good name?”

Christian let out an impatient breath as he watched his father pace the length of his study in front of him. “I have a great deal of respect for this family,” he argued. “But I also know my place in it.” A place his father had made sure he knew from the time he was a boy. An inferior place.

His father wheeled around at the end of the room and glared at him with wide eyes. “Your place in it?” He turned an incredulous look to Christian’s older brother, Miles, who stood by the side of their father’s huge, mahogany desk with a smug look. “Do you hear this?”

“Shameful.” Miles sneered, looking as smug as always. “But then, I wouldn’t expect anything more from a reprobate and exhibitionist like Christian.”

“Just because I am comfortable in my own skin does not make me either an exhibitionist or a reprobate,” Christian argued. Though he had a few university chums in Italy who would probably argue the point. His record for going without clothes was four days, and a lovely four days they were.

“You would never be comfortable with anything ever again if I had my way,” his father bellowed, pacing back toward Christian, eyes wide. “I sent you off to Cambridge to learn more than just classics and the law, young man. I sent you there to learn your place in the hierarchy of man.”

“And I learned it,” Christian argued. He gripped his hands behind his back so hard that he would likely bruise his own knuckles. “I learned that there is little for the second son of a middling earl to do with himself.” And he’d learned that he would never, ever be anything but an afterthought in his father’s eyes. A distasteful afterthought at that. So what harm was there in him enjoying life, since he would never meet his father’s exacting standards?

“You could join the army,” Miles suggested with a smirk, as if he knew exactly how well that would turn out. “Or take up the cloth,” he went on, unable to keep himself from laughing at the ridiculousness of the notion.

Christian sent him a flat look, hoping the idiot knew he wasn’t helping. “I will gladly return to Europe,” he said, glancing back to his father. “If you provide me with the financing. Because as I have also discovered, there is very little that a second son can do to earn his own income when he isn’t permitted any sort of employment and his allowance is a pittance.”

“Are you complaining about my generosity, boy?” his father shouted.

“No, Father, I’m not.” Christian let out a breath, his shoulders sinking.

He really wasn’t complaining. His father offered him more than enough to live comfortably in a small way. He wouldn’t have minded living a small life either, except that he craved company. And as a member of the aristocracy, the company he was supposed to keep lived in a way that required a level of income just out of his reach.