Lady Rogue by Suzanne Enoch Read Free Book Online Page B

rules have not changed,” she informed him stiffly.
    He paused for a heartbeat. “I thought not. Pity, though.” Everton turned and pulled open the door again, apparently satisfied with the outcome of the argument.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded, unwilling to let him have the last word.
    “Whatever pleases you, cousin.”
    “Well, I don’t know what you expected. Father never asked you to bore me to death.”
    “I gave you a book,” he replied less heatedly as he started up the staircase.
    She tromped up behind him. “That’s your idea of entertaining a guest? To give them a stupid book?”
    “It’s a first edition,” he commented dryly.
    She hadn’t known that. “Then it’s old and stupid.”
    Belatedly Kit realized that she had followed him straight into his bedchamber. She stopped just inside the doorway. The room was twice the size of hers, and decorated in dark wood touched with green and gold accents over the ivory-colored walls. The four-poster bed was huge, but where hers was absolutely piled with pillows, there was only one on his. It didn’t have the look of a bed where one entertained a mistress, she decided.
    “I didn’t think you wished to embroider.” He glanced back at her, cynical humor touching his gaze. “Or do I err?”
    “Bah,” she snarled, trying to shake out of her mind the absurd idea that being in his bedchamber was significant of something. “Robinson Crusoe had more people to talk to than me.”
    “Than I,” he corrected, tossing his cravat to a man watching the two of them.
    “‘Than I,’” she repeated, mimicking his stuffy, cultured accent. “ Vous êtes un boeuf stupide .”
    “You’re an English chit,” he said absently, not bothering to turn away before he half unfastened his breeches and began tucking his shirt into them. “Speak English.”
    The gesture was meant to shock her, no doubt, and she felt her cheeks flush. What she was feeling, though, was far from scandalized. Reluctantly she tore her gaze from the fascinating sight of Everton dressing, to glance at his valet, surprised that the earl had let her secret slip. The servant, though, simply continued trying to smooth the wrinkles out of the crushed cravat.
    “ Vous êtes un grand boeuf stupide ,” she amended.
    Alex looked up at her for a moment as he finished refastening his trousers, then turned to his valet. “Don’t just stand there, Antoine,” he admonished, “translate.”
    The valet stopped what he was doing. “My lord?” he queried.
    “Translate,” the earl repeated. “Exactly. And throw that damned scrap away and get me a new one.”
    “Yes, my lord.” Antoine stepped over to the beautiful mahogany bureau and pulled out a crisp, snowy white cravat. “You are a…stupid ox, my lord,” he said, clearing his throat, and returned to the earl’s side.
    Kit watched curiously as Everton turned away to run a comb through his wavy black hair. It was a little longer than the current fashion, curling slightly where it touched his collar, but it suited him. Her fingers twitched with an abrupt desire to tangle her fingers through it.
    “ Un grand boeuf stupide ,” she repeated without heat.
    “Antoine?”
    “A big, stupid ox, my lord.”
    Everton raised an eyebrow as he looked at Kit’s reflection in his dressing mirror. “You barge into my house, eat my food, dirty my carpeting, abuse my favor and my friends, and I’m a stupid ox.”
    She nodded. “And a terrible host.”
    “My dear Miss Brantley,” he said, turning to face her, “allow me to remind you once again that you are not my guest. Therefore I cannot possibly be your host.”
    Kit didn’t recall that her father had envisioned quite this. The earl was as quick-witted as she had feared, and whether or not he was the fox she was here to hunt, she wouldn’t want him in her henhouse. “Yes, I am your g—”
    “You are a debt I am attempting to repay, for a promise I never made.” She started to