Kasey Michaels - The Dangerous Debutante

“Aylesford, is it? Your reputation precedes you, my lord,” Chance said flatly, looking over at his sister. “I’m now attempting to understand what I’ve done to make God so anxious to punish me. It would please me if you were to tell me that you have now completed your gentlemanly duty and are eager to be shed of my troublesome sister, to whom you may not have taken an instant dislike, perhaps, but to whom I suggest you would be wise to feel a very definite indifference.”

Ethan kept his expression neutral as Chance Becket released his grip, although he inwardly damned the poor reputation he’d so carefully built these last years, if only because Chance Becket obviously was aware of it. Of that, and probably of much more. “You’re warning me away, Becket?”

“Let’s be polite, Aylesford, but not that polite. I’m ordering you away,” Chance countered. “I owe you my thanks and a drink, I believe, and then you will oblige me by forgetting you ever met my sister.”

He looked past Ethan again. “Morgan, get yourself down here, now. No one is present who doesn’t know you’re more than capable of dismounting on your own.”

Ethan watched as Morgan lifted her leg over the pommel and slid gracefully to the cobblestones. She brushed off her gown, stripped off her gloves and advanced on her brother with a bright smile on her incredibly gorgeous face.

“Don’t frown so, Chance. I come bearing gifts.” Reaching into the pocket of the riding habit, she then held out her hand to her brother. “Apple?”

The imp! Was she afraid of anything? Ethan stepped beside Chance, knowing when to take his opportunities. “My advice, friend? Don’t take it. That little Eve has already landed us both in enough trouble. Our only hope now is to join forces.”

Chance looked at Ethan, one eyebrow raised in question, before he sighed, nodded and gave in to the inevitable. “As long as you know…”

“Oh, I know. So does she. And now you do, as well. It’s going to be a very interesting Season with Miss Morgan Becket as one of its debutantes.”

Morgan pushed the apple, hard, into her brother’s stomach. “Soon you’ll be hugging, and drooling all over each other’s shoe tops. Enough of the both of you. I’m going to see Julia and Alice.”

Both men watched her go before Ethan said, “Now, having been duly warned and threatened, how about we all step inside in case there are other curtain-twitchers about, and discuss how I am going to procure your sister’s voucher to Almacks, hmm? Because, no matter what you do or say, even a brother can’t be so blind about that magnificent creature. Steel yourself, Becket. I am not going away.”

AFTER RATHER HASTY introductions, Morgan was whisked off upstairs by her sister-in-law, Julia—a polite, minor beauty who nonetheless looked more than prepared to drag Morgan out of the room by her ear if she didn’t have the good sense to go willingly.

Leaving Ethan alone with Chance Becket in the tastefully appointed drawing room. “Julia’s taking her up to the nursery, to see our daughter, Alice. And probably to ask a dozen questions about you. I don’t think you have to worry about me, Aylesford, half as much as you have to worry about my very astute wife. If she decides you’re a rotter, you won’t get within fifty yards of Morgan again.”

“Thank you for the warning.”

Ethan had been given only a few moments to visually inspect the man he’d judged to be two or three years his junior, and had come up with no familial resemblance between Chance and Morgan Becket. Absolutely none.

Chance was blond, like his wife, like Ethan himself. Tanned, but obviously fair-skinned, a well set up gentleman who seemed more than capable of knocking Ethan down. At least once.

Both Chance and Morgan were tall. Other than that, they appeared to be as “related” to each other as chalk was to cheese.

But Ethan did recognize the man, remember him. Just as Chance had recognized and obviously remembered him. Now to discover if this would make things easier for Ethan, or even more complicated. He’d much rather have Chance Becket as an ally, although if the man knew precisely what Ethan planned for his sister, Ethan felt certain he would already be a dead man, and Becket wouldn’t bother about the consequences.

Strong-willed people, these Beckets of Romney Marsh. Perhaps it was something in the air there, at the back of beyond.

“Thank you,” Ethan said, accepting the wineglass Chance offered. “I’ll speak honestly here, Becket.”

“Is that so, Aylesford? You know how to do that?”

Ethan answered without rancor and, in fact, with some humor. “I’m making an exception here, Becket, and being quite unusually jovial and forthcoming. But don’t push, and neither will I. I failed to make any connection between you and your sister, as we’ve never been formally introduced. My mistake entirely. Not that you and your father can be held blameless as, while Saul and his Bessie are both quite formidable, the young man she calls Jacob is so thoroughly enamored of, and cowed by, your sister that he’s of no worth at all.”

Chance gave up his slightly threatening stance, since it didn’t seem to have any affect on the earl in any case. “I’ve been worried about that from the moment I received my father’s latest letter informing me that Jacob would be accompanying her. Jacob’s a good enough lad, but that’s rather like putting the pigeon in charge of the fox.”

“You do seem to know your sister very well. I’d like to add that, had I realized your relationship to her, I would have made other arrangements to get her back into her coach and safely to Upper Brook Street, and gone on my way. Looking back, I would say those ‘arrangements’ would have been to bind and gag her before tying the coach doors closed.”

Ethan took a sip from his glass. “I repeat, I would like to say that. But that last little bit would be a lie, and we both know it. Your sister is the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met. And she seems to see straight through me, which is as unique as it is unfortunate. I’ll need to keep her close these next weeks.”

“Or I need to truss her up as you suggested, and send her back to Becket Hall,” Chance said, sitting down in the facing chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “But she’d only run away, find her way back here, as Morgan always most wants to be where she shouldn’t be, so I might as well not dream of such an easy solution. But what do you mean, she sees straight through you? I don’t know what’s going on. She can’t possibly know what’s going on.”

“And she doesn’t. But while the rest of London believes me to be fairly worthless and more than a little base, your sister’s reaction to my well-rehearsed patter was to grin and call me a liar. She then added that like recognizes like, or some such thing. That shocked me. Is there something else I should know, other than the fact that your sister would make a far better ally than an enemy?”

“You mean, other than that I’d hang parts of you from every lamppost in London if I thought you’d touched her, and damn the minister if he thinks you’re indispensable. Or so he said when he warned me to silence about your presence in the War Office that night.”

Ethan smiled. “He called me indispensable? Well, now I am flattered.”

“Don’t be. The last man the minister termed indispensable was sent off on a sure suicide mission three months ago. He came back to us last week, packed in pickle juice. I may not have to worry overlong about you and my sister.”

“Really. I can see you and I are going to have an interesting relationship these next weeks. And we won’t mention the minister again after this conversation, will we?”