Free Never Romance a Rake by Liz Carlyle Page A

smile was muted. “Well, in a way, you did,” she remarked. “You have got the poor girl away from him, at the very least. But that lurid tale about the card game must never be heard of again, my dear. The girl will be utterly ruined.”
    Rothewell clenched and unclenched his fists. He was more than a little ashamed of his role in this debacle. “Look, Pamela,” he said awkwardly. “This was a foolish notion. I shouldn’t have barged in here.”
    Lady Sharpe waved her hand for him to hush. She began to pace again, her delicate blond eyebrows drawn together. Rothewell dropped his gaze and stared into the sobering black depths of his coffee.
    What on earth had possessed him to load Mademoiselle Marchand into his carriage in the middle of the night? Why had he fallen in with her mad scheme? He had thought merely to do the woman a favor, with little inconvenience to himself. But life was never so simple as one thought it. That was a lesson he ought to have learned the first time he had asked a woman to entwine her fate with his.
    He looked up to see Pamela pacing toward him. “Let me meet the girl,” she finally said. “I shall think of something quite clever, Kieran, I assure you. Something to explain why she is staying here. But what, pray, do you mean to do with the chit in the long term?”
    â€œWell, as to that—” Rothewell paused and eyed her over the rim of his coffee cup. “Well, as to that, I very much fear, Pamela, that I really do mean to marry her.”
    Lady Sharpe froze in her tracks. For once in her life, she was utterly and completely speechless.
    Rothewell seized the moment. Amidst a good deal of stuttering and stammering on his cousin’s part, he made the vaguest of explanations, thanked her again profusely, then bolted for the door.
    It was time to go home, he thought as he dashed down the steps. Time to go home and write the Comte de Valigny a bank draft for his twenty-five thousand pounds. Then at least one part of this travesty would be over. The bastard would have his money—and whatever happened afterward would be none of his damned business.

    Camille sat perfectly still in a chair by the window, looking down at the morning traffic in Mayfair. She had risen at dawn to wash her face and pin up her hair, for there had been no hope of sleep. Then she had sat down to await her fate—and here she remained; a stranger in a strange house, forgotten, perhaps. But what did a few more hours, or a few more months, matter? Had she not spent the whole of her life awaiting the pleasure of another?
    Eventually, she assumed, Lord Rothewell would return. If he did not, Camille was fully prepared to take matters into her own hands. One could not wait on—or even depend upon—a man for very long. That much she had learned from her mother’s mistakes. At least Rothewell had had the audacity to admit he was not to be trusted. That, she supposed, spoke well of him.
    She was not perfectly sure just what she’d got herself into with Rothewell—but she knew very well what she’d got herself out of. Her fate at Lord Rothewell’s hands could hardly be worse than the last three months she’d spent with Valigny. Certainly it would not be permanent. A quick marriage, and with a little luck, the blessing of a child to love. And then, at long last, she would be free. Free of her mother. Valigny. And, of course, Lord Rothewell. She would be glad indeed to see the back of him. His dark, glittering eyes, short temper, and hard questions would endear the man to no one.
    She looked down and realized her hands were clenched again. With well-practiced will, she forced them to relax. Matters could be worse. There might even be a sliver of kindness in Rothewell. Of course she might well be mistaken. It was a risk she had weighed before leaping.
    The other man—Lord Enders—oh, his type she knew well. He was nothing but a rutting