A Rogue of One's Own (A League of Extraordinary Women #2)(2)

He shrugged out of his coat and spread it on the grass, then made to stretch himself out on his belly. The fine fabric of his trousers promptly grated like chain mail against the broken skin on his backside, making him hiss in pain. His father drove his lessons home with a cane. And yesterday, the earl had been overzealous, again. It was why Mama had grabbed him, Tristan, and he had grabbed his books, and they had taken off to visit her friend Lady Wycliffe for the summer.

He tried finding a comfortable position, shifting this way and that, then he gave up, unhooked his braces and began unbuttoning the fall of the pesky trousers. The next moment, the ground began to shake.

For a beat, he froze.

He snatched his coat and dove behind the standing stone just as a black horse thundered into view in the hollow-way. A magnificent animal, gleaming with sweat, foam flying from its bit. The kind of stallion kings and heroes rode. It scrambled to a sudden halt on the clearing, sending lumps of soil flying with plate-sized hooves.

He gasped with shocked surprise.

The rider was no king. No hero. The rider was not a man at all.

It was a girl.

She wore boots and breeches like a boy and rode astride, but there was no doubt she was a girl. A coolly shimmering fall of ice-blond hair streamed down her back and whirled round her like a silken veil when the horse pivoted.

He couldn’t have moved had he tried. He was stunned, his gaze riveted to her face—was she real? Her face . . . was perfect. Delicate and heart-shaped, with fine, winged eyebrows and an obstinate, pointy little chin. A fairy.

But her cheeks were flushed an angry pink and her lips pressed into a line. She looked ready to ride into battle on the big black beast . . .

She made to slide from the saddle, and he shrank back behind the stone. He should show himself. His mouth went dry. What would he say? What did one say to someone so lovely and fierce?

Her boots hit the ground with a light thud. She muttered a few soft words to the stallion. Then nothing.

He craned his neck. The girl was gone. Quietly, he crept forward. When he rose to a crouch, he spotted her supine form in the grass, her slender arms flung wide.

He might have moved a little closer . . . closer, even. He straightened, peering down.

Her eyes were closed. Her lashes lay dark and straight against her pale cheeks. The gleaming strands of her hair fanned out around her head like rays of a white cold winter sun.

His heart was racing. A powerful ache welled from his core, an anxious urgency, a dread, of sorts—this was a rare, precious opportunity and he was woefully unprepared to grasp it. He had not known girls like her existed, outside the fairy books and the princesses of the Nordic sagas he had to read in secret . . .

An angry snort tore through the silence. The stallion was approaching, ears flat and teeth bared.

“Hell,” Tristan said.

The girl’s eyes snapped open. They stared at each other, her flat on her back, him looming.

She was on her feet like a shot. “You! You are trespassing.”

She had looked petite, but they stood nearly eye to eye.

He felt his face freeze in a dim-witted grin. “No, I—”

Stormy gray eyes narrowed at him. “I know who you are. You are Lady Rochester’s son.”

He remembered to bow his head. Quite nicely, too. “Tristan Ballentine. Your servant.”

“You were spying on me!”

“No. Yes. Well, a little,” he admitted, for he had.

It was the worst moment to remember that the flap of his trousers was still half undone. Reflexively, he reached for the buttons, and the girl’s gaze followed.

She gasped.

Next he knew, her hand flew up and pain exploded in his left cheek. He staggered back, disoriented and clutching his face. He half-expected his hand to come away smeared with red.

He looked from his palm at her face. “Now that was uncalled for.”

A flicker of uncertainty, perhaps contrition, briefly cooled the blaze in her eyes. Then she raised her hand with renewed determination. “You have seen nothing yet,” she snarled. “Leave me alone, you . . . little ginger.”

His cheeks burned, and not from the slap. He knew he had barely grown an inch since his birthday, and yes, he worried the famous Ballentine height was eluding him. The runt, Marcus called him. His hand curled into a fist. If she were a boy, he’d deck her. But a gentleman never raised his hand to a girl, even if she made him want to howl. Marcus, now Marcus would have known how to handle this vicious pixie with aplomb. Tristan could only beat a hasty retreat, the slap still pulsing like fire on his cheekbone. The Lyrical Ballads lay forgotten in damp grass.





Chapter 2





London, 1880


Had she been born a man, none of this would be happening. She would not be left waiting in a musty antechamber, counting the labored tick-tocks of an old pendulum clock. The secretary wouldn’t shoot suspicious glances at her from behind his primly organized little desk. She would not be here at all today—Mr. Barnes, editor and current owner of half of London Print, would have signed the contract last week. Instead, he was encountering challenges in closing the deal. Naturally. There were things a woman could do just because she was a woman, such as fainting dead away over some minor chagrin, and there were things a woman could not do because she was a woman. Apparently, a woman did not simply buy a fifty percent share of a publishing enterprise.