Chapter Seven

On the night of the Marigold Ball, the weather was cool and clear. If one tilted their head, they could almost see the stars through the manmade fog that spewed from the massive textile factories lining the Thames. But from her seat on a stone bench at the far end of the field, the only thing Rosemary saw was the flash of Sir Reginald's bushy tail as he vanished into the leafy branches of an oak.

" Sir Reginald! " she hissed with no small amount of alarm. "Sir Reginald, get down here this instant! "

Just a few minutes ago he had been fast asleep, curled in a ball inside the pocket she had secretly sewn into the waist of her burgundy ball gown. But the unexpected boom of a firework had caught them both unawares, and while Rosemary had jumped and then composed herself, Sir Reginald had panicked and bolted. Out of her pocket, along her arm, and straight up into a tree.

It wasn't the first thing to have gone wrong this evening, but it was definitely the worst. As Rosemary had been preparing to leave, she had received a hastily written note from Evie filled with apologies. She and Weston, it appeared, would not be attending the Marigold Ball as planned. Neither would Lady Brynne or Lord Campbell, or Joanna and Kincaid, which meant that Rosemary would be left to face the ton alone.

Which was why, naturally, she'd brought Sir Reginald.

As her grandmother gossiped with a bevy of crotchety old patronesses bemoaning the direction High Society was taking ( "have you heard, women actually want to participate in Parliament , of all things?!" ) and Lady Navessa made her rounds in search of the most eligible bachelor with which to bestow her marigold upon, Rosemary had taken her pet and retreated as far from the dance floor and white tents and paper lanterns as she possibly could.

She'd thought the little enclave she'd found, complete with a bench and trickling fountain to drown out the shrill laughter and vicious gossip flowing from the main courtyard, was the perfect place to while away the hours. Until a firework was accidentally discharged, and Sir Reginald abandoned her warm, cozy pocket for a precarious perch high overhead and far out of reach.

What was she to do now? She couldn't leave him here! Not by himself, out in the dark, where there was no telling what predators lurked in the shadows waiting to sink their teeth into a tasty squirrel-sized snack. Oh, what a disaster tonight was shaping up to be! If only she'd kept him at home. If only she'd stayed at home. But her grandmother had been quite insistent that she attend, as if the outcome of this Marigold Ball would be any different from the previous three. As if Rosemary weren't going to do anything other than sit in the proverbial corner and read a book.

Which, given her current circumstances, she wished she was doing. Instead she was anxiously swinging her arms from side to side as she walked back and forth underneath the oak trying everything she could imagine to coax Sir Reginald down.

She offered him a lifetime supply of peanuts. Sleeping under the covers instead of in his box. A day spent in Hyde Park climbing whatever tree he wished. Just not this tree. On this night. At this estate, the prestigious London residence of the current Duke and Duchess of Clemson. A couple renowned for being remarkable hosts…and excellent hunters.

During Rosemary's first Marigold Ball it had started to rain halfway through, and all of the guests had been rushed out of the field and into the main ballroom by way of the side foyer. There'd been mass confusion and, in the melee, Rosemary had gotten turned around and somehow found herself in a wide, dark hallway…with dozens of black, glassy eyes staring at her.

When her eyes adjusted to the low lighting, she was appalled to find herself gazing at a plethora of stuffed animals. Where portraits ordinarily hung there were deer heads instead of all shapes and sizes. Ones with antlers and ones without. Ones with their mouth open and ones with their mouth closed. There was even a full-sized stag beside which stood a bear towering on its hind legs, massive brown jowls frozen in a fearsome snarl.

If the Duke of Clemson was capable of killing a bear , what would he do to a tiny, defenseless squirrel?

Rosemary didn't plan to find out.

"Sir Reginald!" Hands on her hips, she implored her pet to listen to reason. "Please come down. I know you're frightened, but it's really not safe up there. I know you believe it to be safe because you are a squirrel and it is a tree, but you're not an ordinary squirrel, are you? You're a tame squirrel, which is completely different."

A quick chitter, a scrape of nails on bark, and then…nothing.

Stubborn creature.

"Fine." On a huff of determined breath, Rosemary lifted her skirts and climbed up onto the bench. Eyeing the lowest branch, which appeared wide enough to sustain her, she tentatively stretched her fingers out and, much to her surprise, managed to grab it. "If you won't come down, then I'll come up."

No sooner had her feet left the smooth, flat surface of the bench and she found herself suspended three feet above the ground with nothing but her quickly fading strength to prevent her from tumbling into the bushes than Rosemary realized her mistake. Namely, that she hadn't an athletic bone in her body and while climbing a tree was a simple matter of defying gravity for a squirrel, it was a much more difficult task for a woman.

Particularly if that woman was wearing a bustle the approximate size of a small pony.

"Well, well, well," a familiar voice drawled from behind her. "What have we here?"

Not him, was her first thought.

Anyone but him!

Her grandmother, Lady Navessa, the Duke of Clemson…anyone, anyone but the one man who was guaranteed to gain the most amusement from her unfortunate predicament.

"Aren't you supposed to be at Hawkridge?" she said through gritted teeth.

"Aren't you supposed to be dancing?" Fallen leaves crunched beneath Sterling's boots as he approached and although he didn't touch her, didn't lay so much as a single finger upon her body, she tensed as if he had for his mere presence –his scent, the cadence of his breathing, the burning pressure of his stare–immediately brought her back to the library and the passionate kiss they'd shared.

A kiss that he'd called a mistake before he had all but run out of the room. Her last glimpse of him before she'd left the manor. And while she'd be lying to herself if she said that she hadn't dreamed of seeing him again, she certainly hadn't dreamed of it happening like this . With her dangling helplessly off a branch while her legs kicked feebly in the breeze and Sterling quite literally laughed behind her back.

Don't fall. Don't fall. Don't fall.

A ridiculous command, really.

A piece of her had been falling for him ever since their first kiss.

"I don't like to dance," she replied tartly. Ignoring the growing ache in her arms, she struggled to maintain her grip as the only thing worse than being caught hanging in midair was tumbling onto her rump. At least if she didn't let go she could retain a shred of her dignity. Although admittedly it, and she, was on rather precarious footing.

"No, I can see swinging about like a monkey is far more preferable than a waltz." Sterling paused, and in the long shadow he cast in front of him she saw his head cant to the side. "What are you doing up there, by the by?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Not the least little bit."

"Sir Reginald." Her arms were really starting to hurt now. Was the pain worth saving herself the humiliation of falling at the Duke of Hanover's feet?

Yes.

Yes it was.

"Who?" he said blankly.

"My pet squirrel!" she cried.

"Ah, the rat."

Were such a thing possible, steam would have whistled from Rosemary's ears. Her legs kicked as she tried to twist her body to see Sterling's face, but he remained elusively removed from her line of sight. There but not there; his existence proven only by the surge of annoyance that filled her breast…and the dampness between her thighs. "We've been over this more than once. Sir Reginald is not a rat."

"Hmmm. I suppose you may be right, as last I checked rats don't climb trees."

"I am right. Furthermore– ahh! " Before Rosemary could jump into another lecture illuminating the various differences between the Rodentia families, her left hand–numb from the point of her elbow to the tips of her fingers–abruptly slid off the rough bark. She made a desperate attempt to save herself with her right, but as that wrist had all the strength of a dull potato, it was a failed effort to say the least. With an embarrassing screech, she fell back…straight into Sterling's waiting arms.

They closed around her like steel. Strong, immovable bands that pressed her spine flush against his chest and left her feet suspended several inches above the ground. She felt the steady thud of his heartbeat. She felt the comforting weight of his chin on the top of her head. She felt the gradual ebb and flow of his chest as it rose with each breath that he took. But most of all…most of all she felt safe . In a way that she hadn't in a very long time.

It was an odd sensation, as Rosemary had never really thought of herself as un safe. Aside from a few snaps with a wooden cane now and again, her grandmother had never beaten her. She was in no danger of suffering homelessness, or starvation, or being forced to do something that would test her morals in order to survive.

But like a bird that had been displaced during a storm and was made to grow up in a tree that wasn't its own, she never felt…she never felt like she fully belonged where the wind had planted her. Until she let go of a branch and landed on a duke.

Sterling…Sterling was her tree.

And wasn't that a miraculously terrifying thing to discover?

"Are you all right?" he asked gruffly.

"Y-Yes," Rosemary said, even though she wasn't. Not at all. How could she be? How could she be all right when she'd just come to the conclusion that she was in love? In love . With quite possibly the worst man she could have ever fallen in love with . Yet here she was, wrapped in his arms like some sort of fairytale princess. Except in this story, the heroine was a book-addicted wallflower and the hero…well, he was as much a hero as she was a princess.

Which was to say, not at all.

He lowered her slowly onto the grass and the leaves. Her toes touched first, then the balls of her feet, and finally her heels. When she was standing of her own volition he didn't release her, as she might expect he would, but instead grasped her shoulders and turned her towards him, leaving her with nowhere to look but up. A gasp wrenched itself from her lips.

"You…you shaved." Without thinking about what she was doing, her hand rose between them and she touched the edge of his jaw. It was hard, but also somehow soft; the thick scruff of stubble he'd sported at Hawkridge Manor nowhere to be seen. The difference was startling, even though she was sure she must have witnessed him clean shaven before. At a ball they'd both attended, or a play they'd both watched. But she hadn't paid him any mind then, and she was positive he hadn't noticed her.

Certainly not like he was noticing her tonight.

He laid his hand upon hers, and his muscles flexed and rippled as his mouth bent in a wry smile that made her heart skip a beat. "My valet refused to let me out in public without taking a razor to my face first. What do you think?"

"I think he did a very good job," Rosemary replied seriously. She searched his countenance, focusing on his square, handsome chin and the straight line of his jaw. "I don't see a stray whisker anywhere."

"What about now?" he asked, leaning into her hand as his eyes dropped to her mouth and the air between them suddenly crackled with delicious tension.

Rosemary wet her lips, and his gaze darkened. "As–as I said, he did a very…very good– ah. "

This time when she fell, she didn't scream so much as whimper. Perhaps because she wasn't falling out of something but into something.

And that something was Sterling.

He cradled her against him with all the infinite care of a shepherd tending to a lost lamb. Except Rosemary wasn't a sheep, and the Duke of Hanover had more in common with the wolf that stalked the flock than the man who cared for them.

His tongue slipped lazily between her lips and heat shot through her with the archaic force of a lightning bolt scorching the earth. Almost immediately, this kiss went further, farther, faster than the two preceding it. They were a wildfire racing across an open field that hadn't seen rain in a fortnight, and Rosemary…Rosemary wanted to burn.

Thrown off balance all over again, she clung to his torso as she'd clung to the tree, holding on to the narrow lapels of his emerald green jacket while his hands, devilish entities unto themselves, followed her body's natural curves from her shoulders all the way to her waist where they settled, thumbs hooked on the sloping ridge of her hipbones as his fingers splayed across her backside, delving through untold layers of satin and muslin and wool until he reached her bottom.

Sterling squeezed her plump flesh and heat shot through her anew when she found herself pressed intimately against his loins, that sweet, slick area between her thighs rubbing on a rigid, pulsing staff.

On a muttered oath, he abandoned her hips to cup her breasts, strumming across nipples already hard and all but begging for his touch.

Bright flashes of light danced behind her closed eyelids when he dropped his head while simultaneously yanking on her flimsy bodice, exposing her skin to moonlight and feverish madness before his wicked, wanton mouth closed around a swollen rosebud.

Her knees buckled, and his breath fanned across her breast in a velvety chuckle as he prevented her from sliding to the ground in a boneless heap of delirious desire.

"Clementines," he rasped. "You taste like clementines."

He kissed her other nipple, tongue swirling around the puckered point in a waltz all of his own making as she did her best to remain on her feet. Swathed in sin and draped in shadow, she and Sterling abandoned themselves to a passion that refused to be denied. That couldn't be denied, no matter how irregular or inconvenient it was to catch fire for a scoundrel who was hard-pressed to remember her name half the time.

But that wasn't important.

When flames licked across her skin, nothing was.

Tit tit tit tit tit.

Except for that.

"Sir Reginald!" she gasped, wrenching free of Sterling's embrace as her pet's anxious call threw a bucket of cold water onto the fire. Like a mother that had heard the cry of her child late at night while the rest of the house slept, every fiber in her being instantly went on alert. Yanking her dress into place and lifting her skirts, she hopped back onto the bench and tried in vain to spy the squirrel amidst the dark, leafy branches. "Sir Reginald, not to worry. I'm here!"

"What the devil is going on?" Scowling, Sterling shoved both hands through his hair, scraping the inky curls off his temple as he stepped beside the bench and followed her frantic stare upwards into the maze of limbs and leaves. "Who are you yelling at?"

"Sir Reginald." She bit her bottom lip–a lip swollen from Sterling's kisses. "I cannot reach him, but he's frightened. Too frightened to come down on his own. What am I going to do? I must get him. It's far too dangerous for him to stay here overnight."

A muscle ticked high in Sterling's jaw. "Have you tried reminding him that he's a damned squirrel ?"

"He already knows that," she huffed.

"Are you certain?" the duke said skeptically. "Seeing as he's oh, I don't know. Stuck in a bloody tree? "

"You don't have to take that tone."

"What tone?"

" That tone."

"You mean the tone of a man who was just cock robbed by a rat?"

Rosemary nodded. "An exceedingly crude way of putting it, but yes. And Sir Reginald isn't–"

"A rat. Yes, yes, I'm aware." Sterling's sigh was long and agonizing. "He is a member of the prestigious Sciuridae family which includes the American prairie dog and marmot."

Some women wanted diamonds and rubies.

Others, lavish furs.

But for Rosemary, Sterling's unwitting admission that he'd actually listened–and retained–what she had told him about Sir Reginald was the most wonderful gift she could have ever hoped to receive.

"What's happening now ?" he asked in alarm when she impulsively leapt off the bench and looped her arms around his neck.

"I am giving you a hug." A gold button pressed into her cheek as she laid the side of her face flat upon his coat. "Because you're not nearly as horrible as you think you are."

She felt him stiffen. Then after a long moment, during which neither spoke, he began to relax. Like a hard ball of clay being worked by the skilled hands of a sculptor, it didn't happen all at once, but rather in degrees. First he let out the breath he'd been holding. The tightness in his shoulders unraveled next, followed by a subtle release in his ribcage. At last, he reached behind her to pull her snug against his chest, not in a manner that was provocative or sensual, but tender and endearing, which somehow made it even more intimate than the kiss they'd just shared.

"Your Grace?" she whispered, lifting her chin to gaze at him under a thick sweep of mahogany lashes.

"Aye," he murmured, brushing a curl behind her ear. "What is it?" For once, his voice wasn't derisive and mocking. Instead there was a note of vulnerability in it that she'd never heard before. A chord of fragileness that delved far below the surface of his charming exterior to whatever traces of goodness and humanity that still lingered beneath.

"Could you…that is to say…might you be able to retrieve Sir Reginald for me?"