A Rogue of My Own Read Online Free PDF Page A

had been left floundering without a goal.
    Of course Lilly had blamed herself for introducing the subject of marriage when Rebecca hadn’t been close to the age for it. She didn’t make that mistake again. Marriage was still discussed, but just in a general way that didn’t involve any specific names.
    But here was Raphael’s cousin where she would have least expected to find him. Come to think of it, it wasn’t so far-fetched to see him at Buckingham Palace. He was a marquis, after all. At least, she thought he might be a marquis. Hadn’t his mother married one, then next they heard, she had become a widow, so the title went to her eldest son? He could certainly have been invited to the palace for one of the entertainments.
    Coming out of her daze, she realized that this was the first time she was seeing The Angel when she didn’t have designs on his cousin. Previously, she had put aside as inappropriate her curiosity about the man. Besides, he wasn’t well known in Norford. His mother, one of the duke’s many sisters, had married and moved to London before Rebecca had been born. So she’d never learned his full name, as people referred to him as Raphael’s cousin, or Julie’s son. He simply remained The Angel to her.
    Of course she knew he wasn’t an angel. She’d even heard some vague rumors about Julie Locke’s son being a notorious skirt-chaser, which was a kinder way of saying he was a rake of the worst sort. She hadn’t believed a word of it. How could anything tawdry be associated with him ?
    Alone in the empty corridor, Rebecca started moving again,but she didn’t take more than a few steps before she came to a dead halt again. So utterly distracted by who had given her the warning, she hadn’t fully processed what that warning entailed.
    There was no costume ball tonight? Could Elizabeth really have gotten the days mixed up, or did she lie to make Rebecca look the fool? She would certainly have looked foolish showing up at a social event dressed as she was. Some sort of entertainment must be taking place, or Elizabeth wouldn’t have concocted a plan designed to embarrass her in front of others. If it had been a plan.
    “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Rebecca mumbled under her breath. “Give her the benefit of the doubt. She really could have been trying to make amends only to have it backfire on her. It would be a shame then to make accusations only to be wrong and end up looking the fool anyway.”
    She walked slowly back to her room, all of the ramifications running through her mind of what could have happened if The Angel hadn’t passed her in the hall. What would her mother do? She wished she could ask her for advice, but Lilly was probably back in Norford by now.
    Rebecca closed the door to her room and leaned back against it. She wasn’t sure if she should just retire so she would be fresh for her first full day at the palace, or change clothes and seek out Elizabeth to demand an explanation. The window caught her eye. The offensive window. The silly window draped with her petticoat! The kernel of anger she was trying to ignore couldn’t be ignored any longer.

Chapter Five
    D ID YOU FIND YOUR room satisfactory this time?”
    Rupert St. John, Marquis of Rochwood, reposed in the stuffed chair in an insolent manner, a leg draped over one arm, his back resting against the other. He sniffed the brandy he was handed, but didn’t drink it, and he didn’t answer the question. The disrespect he showed to his superior was deliberate. But then he despised Nigel Jennings and they both knew it.
    The first time Rupert had been asked to reside in the palace for a few days so he could be close to his quarry, he’d been shoved with his servant into a room so tiny it could by all accounts have been called a box. This time he’d been given a suite of rooms that a foreign king had just vacated. So the question didn’t require an answer. He hadn’t really complained about that other room, he’d