Page 19 of Rules for a Wicked Wager

“Younger, then, and remiss in your instruction.”

“He… I… I don’t like hitting people!” She took a deep breath, shot him a glare that sizzled across his skin, and straightened up to her full middling height. “Your friend has won his wager. I would throw your proposal back in your arrogant face.”

“Because I named you wayward to a scoundrel who meant to dupe you? So he would stay away?”

“Yes! What? No!” She crossed her arms below her bosom, plumping them nicely. If she weren’t pacing back and forth, he would have thought it a practiced move. More likely, she was trying to keep herself from punching him again.

“Fitzhugh is a jackanapes, through and through,” he explained. “I was doing you a kindness by steering him away.”

“By saddling me with a label that was repeated over and over for the last six Seasons?”

He shrugged. “You are Welsh. Wayward or wild made little difference.”

She gaped at him. Her mouth popped open, her eyes shone bright with unshed tears, and she seemed to vibrate with suppressed emotion.

“That’s not true!”

He studied her body. Indeed, he often did that. But instead of focusing on her more feminine wiles, he noted her tight shoulders and the way she bit her lip, a little more on the right side than the left. In truth, she looked lost.

“It is true,” he said as gently as he could. “Welsh is little better than a gel from the Colonies. Surely you know that.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s because you said that horrid thing.”

He didn’t contradict her. He found arguing to be a great waste of time. So he waited while she fought with her thoughts. Eventually, she would realize he was right. But then he had to tease her. “And besides, it’s true, isn’t it? I mean, everyone is a little bit—”

“You, sir,” she interrupted, “are a boor!”

He’d been called much worse, but still the words stung. “And you, my dear, are…” Innocent. Spirited. Beautiful. “Wayward.”

“Oh!” She reacted as a woman this time. Open palm as she went to slap him. He saw the move coming and caught her arm, then jerked her close enough to feel her breasts lift and lower against his chest. Her ruby lips were parted, and her amber eyes were before him, as mesmerizing as any cobra in India.

“Shall I tell you what I remember of that night?”

“No—”

He spoke right over her. “I remember asking you to dance and being pleased when you agreed. Then step by step, whenever we were close, you began to eviscerate me.”

She nearly choked on her gasp of outrage. “I did no such thing.”

“You whispered things into my ear, so soft I had to bend to hear them. I thought they would be sweet confessions or delicate words.”

“You had just damned both me and my sister. I heard it clearly. And then, I watched Fitzhugh repeat it to everyone at the ball.”

He barely heard her. He was too caught up in the memory of her words that night, of the tight horror in his chest, and the agony of knowing he had to complete the dance or lose composure in front of the whole ton. “You called me a useless fribble, wasting my life and my money away. You named me cruel and lazy. But more than that, you said I was the worst kind of Englishman, because I did nothing of any value.” With his free hand, he lifted her chin until they were eye to eye. “You called me useless that night, Miss Powel. You destroyed me.”

He hadn’t meant to reveal that. He hadn’t even thought those words before this very moment. But anger and resentment blistered his tongue as he spoke. Broken furniture was useless. A drunken servant was useless. He was a peer of the realm, or would be when he inherited. By definition, he was not useless.

And yet during a single dance, she’d laid his soul bare and named it useless. Pride made him finish the dance before he’d fled. He’d gone to the nearest brothel. And when that hadn’t worked to blot out her words, he’d run all the way to India.

And that had been the making of him.

That too was why he loved her. Because she had said exactly what he’d needed to hear in exactly the right way, forcing him out of his lethargy. If she hadn’t flayed him alive, he’d likely still be sunk in drink and cunny. And all anyone would ever say of him was…

“Useless,” he repeated. “You named me useless.”

“Clearly, I was wrong,” she said. “You were powerful enough to make me suffer for six years.”

“And you were vicious enough to send me to India, where, I assure you, I had much worse done to me than a little name-calling.”