How to Steal a Scoundrel's Heart (The Mating Habits of Scoundrels #4)(2)

She squeezed her eyes shut, preparing for it to hit. Hard.

And yet . . . it didn’t.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw the staid butler holding the bowl in his grasp. Apparently, he was much quicker than he looked.

Then, as if this type of thing happened all the time, he merely set it down on the table and said, “Right this way, Miss Thorogood.”

“Actually, there’s been a mistake.” She shook her head and immediately crouched down to the rug, nervously scooping up as many petals as she could. The bowl may not have struck her on the noodle, but she had some sense knocked into her nonetheless. “I should never have come.”

“His lordship is waiting, ma’am. There’s no need to fret over the petals.” He gently, but firmly, took her elbow to assist her in standing.

Awkwardly, she transferred her handful into his. “Right. Well. Be that as it may, I really must go before I disturb his lordship from whatever it is that I’m . . . disturbing.”

The butler followed her hasty retreat into the foyer. “Would you care to leave a card or a message?”

“I think not.”

Reaching the door, her nervous hand fumbled with the latch. And just before she could finally manage to open it . . . she heard a familiar drawl behind her.

“Leaving so soon, Miss Thorogood? Is that any way to greet an old friend?”





Chapter 1





A month earlier



If the carriage went any slower, they’d be traveling back in time.

Leo Ramsgate, Marquess of Savage, muttered a curse beneath his breath and snapped his pocket watch closed before he tapped on the hood. “What appears to be the problem, Rogers?”

“Sheep, milord.”

Ah. That explained it, he thought with a glance through the rain-dappled window toward the rolling hills of the verdant Wiltshire countryside. He wondered—and not for the first time—why he’d agreed to escort his former paramour to Bath. Typically, when an affair ended, it was over and done with for good. And yet, here he was, waiting for sheep.

As they came to a complete stop, a heavy sigh drifted across the carriage. “Will I be so easy to forget, Savage? No, don’t answer that. You’ll only say something detached and uncaring to make me feel guilty for my part in this premature separation of ours. Yet you never take any blame for pushing me into the arms of another man.”

Thus far on their journey, Lady Chastaine had held fast to two topics of conversation—the weather and their misunderstanding, as she put it. If she wasn’t scourging the rain for frizzling her auburn coiffure and the dreary gray atmosphere for doing nothing to complement her complexion, then she was relentlessly denying any culpability for her adulterous tryst. Had her excuses been a dead horse, she would not only have beaten it but dismembered and buried it in the deepest pit from which nothing could return.

He stared back at her with the bland nonchalance he’d perfected over the years. “Am I as ruthless as all that?”

“More,” she said with kittenish petulance.

He called up to Rogers again. “Any news to report?”

“There appears to be . . .” His words were drowned out by the excited barking of a dog, agitated baahs and the hollow clanking of a copper bell.

Leo opened the door to the drizzle and peered ahead, trying to discern the cause for himself. Unfortunately, from his vantage point, all he could see was a flock of dirty-arsed sheep.

“But I’ll have you know,” Phoebe continued, “I won’t be jealous of your next mistress. I’m too self-assured for that.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“And besides. For that, I would have to suffer from the delusion that you could ever truly care about any of the women you take as mistress. But you and I both know that isn’t possible.”

“Are we back to calling me heartless again?” he asked, flicking an absent glance over his shoulder.

She squinted at him, pouting prettily. “Did we ever stop?”

His mouth quirked in response. He would miss Phoebe’s particular brand of cynicism. Her wit could flay a man’s ego at fifty paces. Her tongue was waspish to a fault, but also devilishly skilled in other more delightfully provocative ways. No, she wouldn’t be easy to forget. But he would put her from his mind, regardless, as he’d always done with each paramour at the end of every affair.

The problem was, escaping the tedium of eternity that yawned before him in the meantime.

Leo had never been a man at ease with lingering in the hinterland between two places—the end of one thing and the beginning of another. He’d much prefer to continue on to London and find a new mistress to take her place. But instead, he was trapped here in this provincial hell.

His throat tightened on a growl of impatience as he called up to the driver again. “What were you saying, Rogers?”

“A woman, milord. On foot. The shepherd’s drover won’t let her pass. Oh, and now he’s got hold of her bag with his teeth.” He chuckled, clearly amused by the spectacle. “It’s a right solid tug-of-war, it is.”

Well, damn. Now Leo had to step out and see this nonsense for himself. If nothing else, it would serve as a distraction.

“So . . . have you?” Phoebe asked as he stepped down, the muddy road squishing beneath his hessians. “Selected my replacement, that is?”