So when the man had challenged him, Rush had responded the way he knew how, with aggression.
He’d not hit the man. Even he had his limits.
But he’d let the little shit know that he didn’t bow to weasels or barons. Period.
The little beady-eyed weasel had gone off in such a huff that Rush had been filled with satisfaction since.
Perhaps he needed to recommence boxing sessions with his brother Tris. Tris boxed professionally and would surely kick Rush’s ass but even that would feel good. He needed to sharpen up with a fight. Needed to loosen his muscles and his mind with hard physical activity. He’d lost it these last months and a good beating always reprioritized his thinking.
He had a plan of where he wished to go and what he wanted to do, but he’d yet to decide how to extricate himself from his family. They needed him now. His new boss had been kind enough to delay Rush’s start but Rush would have to find a way out soon…
Ace, their eldest brother, had removed their sisters from London, leaving only him and his brothers behind. And without the girls to smooth the brothers’ rough edges, tempers in the house had been running high. One more reason he’d have to be careful how he made his exit.
Fulton had been on a run to Italy to move another shipment of wine but he, Tris, and Gris had been circling each other like lions in a cage.
That was surely why he’d not fulfilled his sister Mirabelle’s request. Check on her chit little friend who’d gotten herself a nasty guardian.
He pulled the bit of parchment out of his coat, the one with the chit’s name and address— Lady Abigail Wentworth—and frowned.
Rush had only met her once, but he already knew she was far too beautiful to be the sort of woman he protected. His attraction to her had been instant, sizzling through his veins like fire on kindling. A man couldn’t guard a lady like that and not get…ideas.
Hell, he’d already had them. Something about her fragile beauty called to him and he didn’t like it.
And that last thing he needed to confuse his place in this world further. There were a few things he understood absolutely. He wasn’t the marrying kind, he was the dregs. A rough and tumble warrior.
And his father’s lack of attention had proved something else too. He’d never be part of the elite world. If even his earl of a father didn’t love him, why would any member of the peerage?
Which meant he was never to touch her. Her beauty was to be admired at a great distance and not more closely.
But he’d promised Mirabelle, and he was currently relaxed thanks to his modest victory and so today he’d go see Abigail.
And then he’d call this duty fulfilled.
Once and for all. He could write to Mirabelle and explain that Abigail was fine. That the new guardian was good enough and that all this worry was just women being women.
He had two sisters, after all. Meddling was like breathing to them. Necessary.
The carriage rolled up to an elegant-looking town house and some of his good mood evaporated as he scowled at the stately brick-front home.
See. She lived in luxury. What would she have to complain about?
He stepped out of the carriage and bounded up the steps two at a time, then rapped with the knocker.
A butler answered the door with a frown. “Yes?”
“Lord Smith,” he said. Even he knew that he wasn’t supposed to ask for an audience with an unmarried woman without invitation. But he didn’t know her guardian’s name.
For a brief moment, the butler’s gaze clouded with confusion before he opened the door wider. “I’ll get Baron Westphal.”
Westphal? The name niggled in his gut, sounding uncomfortably familiar.
Westphal? Wasn’t that the name of the man who’d….
But he didn’t finish his thought, because appearing at the top of the stairs was the little weasel. Well, didn’t that just fucking figure.
Want to read more? A Romp with a Rogue
And more naughty lords are on the way… The Smith brothers are just getting started.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall…