A Good Debutante's Guide to Ruin_The Debutante Files

She sucked in a breath and continued. “I wanted to live for myself and not be at the mercy of others for once. Everyone else decides my fate . . . makes all my choices. I went there for me.”

She knew what she described was the lot of every female. Well, most females at any rate. Debutantes like her didn’t get to choose.

He swung around and she blinked at the sudden heat in his gaze. She stepped back quickly. The hard glitter in his eyes alarmed her. He didn’t say a word. Simply stared. Several inches separated them but it wasn’t enough space. She inched back.

He followed.

His movements were predatory. He backed her up until she couldn’t move any farther and collided with the bookcase. Several leather spines dug into the back of her gown, but she didn’t care. She could scarcely feel them there with his eyes devouring her . . . with the encroaching heat of him enveloping her.

Neither one of them spoke. Neither moved.

Her palms flattened at her sides, brushing well-read tomes. There was nowhere else to go. No retreat at her back. No retreat at her front. Not with the hard wall of his body directly before her. His silence was killing her.

“Say something,” she whispered, the same demand he’d made of her moments ago, her voice a broken little rasp on air that was stretched too thin around them.

“You went to the club because you wanted to live for yourself. Have your own experiences? Correct?”

She nodded jerkily, her eyes unblinking and so wide in her face that they actually ached.

“Then let’s continue.”

She couldn’t react. Not with him looking at her that way. Not with him this close. Her gaze unerringly went to his mouth, and she knew. She already knew how good it could be. But this was different than before.

There were no masks. No disguises. Not that he had ever used one, but she had. She had clung to hers. Perhaps not so much for anonymity as for the sense of courage, however false, it imbued into her.

There wasn’t even darkness. It was simply her. Rosalie. And Dec. Plain and simple. Well, perhaps not so simple, but they faced each other as a man and woman. Not strangers, hungry for a tryst at an illicit club. Not stepbrother and stepsister. Not guardian and ward.

His hand curled around the back of her neck, hauling her mouth to his. His tongue traced the seam of her lips and she shuddered, opening her mouth. Instantly, his tongue touched the tip of her own, tasting and stroking. She moaned, her hands coming up to cling to his shoulders. Everything changed then. His kiss deepened, grew harder, hungrier. Fast and desperate. She arched against him, those mewling sounds escaping from the hot fusion of their mouths.

“God, you taste so sweet,” he growled against her lips, crouching for the barest moment to lift her, his big hands cupping her bottom through her nightgown. “Bloody clothes . . .”

“Take them off,” she gasped as he worked one hand beneath her hem, gliding up her stocking-clad leg. She wanted this. Wanted his mouth and hands everywhere on her. She wanted him to do to her what he had done at Sodom. She wanted to fly apart in his arms again.

He froze.

Consternation washed over her. Had she sounded too brazen? Had she repulsed him with her forwardness? He stepped back. Her leg lowered, her foot dropping to the floor. He stared at her with an unreadable expression, his green eyes deep and fathomless. Impenetrable. Just as he was.

“Go to bed, Rosalie.”

She flinched at the words. At the dismissal.

He didn’t wait for her to move. She watched him with aching eyes, her heart a painful clenching fist in her chest as he turned and strode from the room, his strides eating up the distance. As if he couldn’t be away from her fast enough.

Smoothing shaking hands down the front of her night rail, she followed several moments later, certain he was quite gone by now. And he was. She didn’t glimpse sight of him as she made her way down the corridor toward her bedchamber. At her door, she hesitated, her gaze sliding toward the door leading to his bedchamber. Was he in there now? Regretting and hating that she had ever entered his life?

Pushing down on the latch, she entered her room, vowing that when it came to her, he would have nothing to regret again. She would be a ghost in this house. In his life. She would cause him no further worry or trouble. Somehow, some way, she would make herself invisible. It would be as though she didn’t exist at all.





Chapter 19


The day dawned bright, the sunlight bringing with it the harsh reminder of last night. Rosalie was his girl from Sodom. No, he corrected himself. Not his girl. Never his girl.

Myriad feelings swamped him. Distaste that she had ever been there. Had ever stepped within its walls and seen the things she had doubtless seen. Guilt. As though he should have somehow known it was her in the shadows. As though he should have known it was her beneath his mouth, shuddering and coming apart under his lips and tongue and teeth.

Perhaps a part of him had suspected all along? Bloody hell, he didn’t know. He’d lost perspective.

He only knew that he wanted the girl at Sodom. And he wanted Rosalie. They were the two women he had wanted for the last few weeks. The only two. And they were one and the same. It was a significant realization . . . even if he was not entirely certain what it meant and what to do about it.

He couldn’t stop thinking about last night. About all she had said.

She’d gone to Sodom for adventure. A taste of passion. Her first kiss. By her own admission, she had wanted a choice in her fate.

And she had chosen him.

This continued to sink its way inside him. She’d chosen him for her first kiss. And then she had come back for more. He groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. How had he managed to break free last night? She knew how to kiss now. Expertly. Enough to leave him aching. She knew how to touch him. And those little sounds she made in the back of her throat—the very sounds that gave her away last night—drove him mad. He’d never been with a more responsive woman.

It was a dangerous thing, knowing she was beneath his roof. In close proximity. He’d thought of her for days, and now she was so close.

He expelled a great breath, knowing he’d have to venture from his rooms eventually. He had told Aunt Peregrine he would join them at the Collingsworth ball this evening.

He sank deeper into his armchair, circling the rim of his half-full glass of brandy with one finger. He would not be alone with her tonight. He needn’t worry about repeating the incident in the library. He had come close then to forgetting. Who she was. Who he was.

He would not forget again.

They shared a carriage to the Collingsworth ball. This was the first time Dec had seen fit to accompany them to a social gathering. He usually joined them later at such events. It was awkward, to say the least. He shared the side with Aunt Peregrine, seated directly across from her. He trained his attention outside, through the cracked curtain, as his aunt rattled off the names of gentlemen Rosalie was to pay special attention to this evening.

He had not seen her since the night in the library. Somehow, they had managed to stay out of each other’s way. He had not changed his daily patterns, so he could only think the effort was on her part. She was trying to avoid him.

“And Aurelia, George Snidely will be there. He’s always paid special attention to you, dear. I expect you to return his attention in kind. This would be quite the triumph if I could see you both engaged by the Season’s end.”

Aurelia sighed and turned her head so that only Rosalie could hear her mutter, “Not with the likes of George Snidely, I won’t.”