Never Tempt a Rogue

Chapter One

As a firmly on-the-shelf spinster with no family other than the uncle and cousins who'd opened their home to her, Felicity understood the power of opportunities. She was living with the consequences of squandering her own. She'd trusted too easily, and given her heart to a man incapable of taking care with it. Amy could do better. With her looks and sweet demeanor, the eldest Miss Huntingdon would marry well. And that would need to be satisfaction enough. No one need tell Felicity that her own chance at a happily settled future had passed her by long ago.

"Never tempt a rogue, Amy." The words burst out before she could stop herself. Emotion came too, a piercing sharpness in the back of her throat as if her past mistakes would choke her. She pushed all of it down, the emotion and the memories. Just as she'd been doing for four years. "It won't lead you anyplace you wish to go. Trust me on that point."

Her cousin turned serious and quiet a moment before tilting her mouth in a tremulous smile. "Is that a direct quote from your etiquette guide, cousin?"

"More or less." Felicity looked down at the book in her lap and sighed. At some point she'd lifted her finger and lost her page. "Of course, I've only read a chapter so far, but what's the use of etiquette if not to keep us from making awful choices?"

"Did you make an awful choice?" Amy studied her with a surprisingly incisive gaze. "Is there something in your past that you regret, Fel?"

Biting down, catching the edge of her lip between her teeth, Felicity looked out over the rolling Surrey countryside. Swaths of green changed hue as sunlight slanted through feathery clouds. Not even the bucolic landscape could distract her from the memory of her regret.

Thomas Reeves was his name. Now Lord Kenniston. Her once upon a time beau. Her only love. The most appealing young man in the Berkshire village where she'd grown up. He'd possessed an easy smile, playful blue eyes, thick auburn hair, and a heart as shallow as a pie pan.

With Amy, there was always some smitten young man or another buzzing about her, gathering in her father's parlor during calling hours, hovering at the edge of a ballroom, hoping for a spot on her dance card. But with Felicity, there had only ever been Thomas Reeves. No other young man had ever given her—a bookish, ungainly girl with pale hair and even paler eyes—a second glance. But he had. He'd glanced aplenty, smiled often, and made her giggle like a fool each time he said something clever. Which he always did. She'd even giggled the first time he kissed her. But only the first time. After that, she'd learned to kiss him back, to make him as breathless as he made her. He taught her everything she knew about love, and making love, and then he'd taken it all away. An unexpected inheritance made him a baron. The moment he'd gained a title, she, a village doctor's daughter, fell far below his notice.

"Let's leave regret aside for now, my dear." Felicity considered confiding all of it, as a cautionary tale, if nothing else, but she suspected Amy would find discretion as unappealing as decorum. Despite her best intentions, the girl did love gossip, and Felicity could imagine nothing worse than finding that everyone they were about to meet would know the details of her youthful folly at the end of the Forsythe's two week house party.

For some pointless reason, the notion of Lord Lindsay finding out irked her most of all. She could easily imagine the arrogant smirk he'd wear on that full, perfectly sculpted mouth of his when he discovered that a plain old maid had indulged the same carnal urges he touted in his loathsome book. How could she insist on the man's honorable behavior toward Amy when she couldn't claim any moral high ground for herself?

"Do you think we'll play lawn croquet? "Amy asked, as if no serious subject had arisen between them. Variety was her conversational way. The girl switched topics as often as she changed her hair ribbons.