The Infamous Rogue Read Online Free PDF Page B

daughter is set to stay in society, so I want you to promise me you won’t make an ass of yourself every time she appears in the room.”
James bristled. The pounding impulse to strike his brother soundly in the teeth gripped him. He shrugged off the savage desire. Instead he moved toward the washstand.
James dipped his hands into the shallow basin, and slapped the cold water over his warm features. He rubbed his face, listless with fatigue and too much drink. But the memory of his stormy encounter with Sophia last night still burned in his head. Had he really made an ass of himself?
“I know you’re angry with Sophia for leaving you—”
“You don’t know shit.”
“—but you have to keep a cap on your temper. You can’t disgrace Belle.”
James rubbed his throbbing brow before he snatched a towel. “Didn’t we have this blasted conversation last night?”
“Fat lot of good it did. Gossip says you’re smitten with ‘Miss Dawson.’”
James wiped his face and gritted, “I’m not smitten with the witch.”
“Then why are you going to the earl’s country house party? You hate being in society.”
“Go to hell.”
James dropped the towel and stalked across the room. He was dressed in only a pair of trousers, and with the linens still rumpled, the bed looked very inviting.
He stretched across the messy feather tick with a loud sigh, and crossed his ankles. He closed his eyes, too.
“What are you going to do at the house party?” said William.
“Eat.”
“Eat who?”
James humphed. “If you’re suggesting I’m going to the house party to cause a scandal, I’m not.”
But William sounded unconvinced. “Why don’t you write to the earl and cancel the trip? Visit with Cora instead. Then you can get the frustration out of your blood and forget about Sophia.”
Forget about Sophia? Did the man really think a roll in the sheets with a whore was going to satisfy the dark fire burning in his belly?
He remembered the sultry look in Sophia’s fine eyes, the sharp arch in her brows. He remembered the thrilling feel of her round and seductive curves pressed firmly against him, and the smoldering texture to her sassy voice.
James girded himself against the arousal slowly burning in his blood. No. A tumble in bed with Cora wasn’t going to slake the lust in his belly…only Sophia could do that.
“No,” said James. “I’m going to the house party.”
William’s footsteps drummed in his ears. He heard the chair legs scrape across the hardwood flooring as William swiveled the seat and sat down.
“I know you’re having a wretched time attending parties, James. And Sophia’s return only makes matters worse. But we’ve all had to adjust to the tiresome antics of the ton since retiring from piracy.”
What did his brothers have to adjust to? They flirted and danced and charmed the society wenches with aplomb. The men even dined and gambled and snorted snuff with the rest of the peerage with considerable ease.
William suggested, “Look at Belle.”
“Look at Belle?” He opened one eye to glare at his brother. “We’re putting ourselves through this hell for her.”
“Yes, but she had to adapt to her new life, too.”
“How?”
“She had to start wearing a dress, for one.”
James snorted and closed his eye again. “She should have been wearing one from girlhood.”
“With four brothers, a father, and no mother for guidance?”
James stiffened at the mention of their mother. She had died in childbirth to Quincy, leaving a four-year- old Belle without a proper female example. But something more haunted him…
One thought about his mother was like losing his footing and slipping from a cliff. His thoughts tumbled backward with speed and he remembered the low sobs coming from her room when he was just a boy: sobs for his father, recently pressed into service by the navy.
Long before Mirabelle, Edmund, and Quincy had come along, Megan Hawkins had been alone with two small boys and no money or means of