Lady Guinevere and the Rogue with a Brogue - Julie Johnstone Page 0,13

been able to see them well in the night, but his deep-timbered brogue had sounded as confident as ever. He was taller than she remembered, though. She could have sworn her head had once come above his shoulder, but it seemed it was not so. Everything about Asher—from his great height to his voice to, well, simply his mannerisms—made her feel fragile, devil take the rogue. She’d given up trying to think of him as Carrington. Her mind simply would not do it. She squeezed her eyes shut.

On a throat being cleared, she forced them open once more to find Ballenger staring at her questioningly.

“That will be all, Ballenger,” Guinevere said, her voice unusually weak. And no wonder! She’d slept horribly since her encounter with Asher.

She stared at herself in the mirror as Ballenger departed with a nod and a handing over of the hairbrush to Vivian. She’d thought to cut her hair more times than she could count, but she didn’t, and she wished she didn’t remember why, but of course, she did.

Him. Asher.

He had once told her she had the most glorious hair he had ever seen and that he wanted to pluck out every pin she vilely allowed to constrain it. He had said how he would then dearly love to let the silken strands—his words, not hers—slide through his fingertips. He never had, but she’d never forgotten what he’d told her.

The door shut with a soft swish, and her sisters launched at her like two well-seasoned agents of the Crown intent on discovering the enemy’s secrets no matter the cost.

“You said you had quite forgotten him!” Freddy exclaimed, taking the brush from Vivian and yanking it through Guinevere’s hair.

“Freddy!” Guinevere gasped, reaching behind her and snatching the weapon from her younger sister’s hands. “I do believe you’ve left me with a bald spot,” she muttered and dropped the hairbrush in her lap before rubbing her stinging scalp.

Vivian set a gentle hand on Guinevere’s left shoulder. “Are you unsettled from the encounter with Carrington?”

She was positively dizzied still, but she didn’t want to admit it. It irked her that a man she knew to be a liar could still give her heart palpitations. He was the very reason she’d started the Society of Ladies Against Rogues, whose primary purpose was to ensure no woman was ever duped by a villainous rogue again. They had not stopped all ruinations of women, of course, but they had halted a reasonable amount.

Frederica looked down her pert nose at Guinevere. “Do not ignore the question. Does the duke still affect you terribly?”

“Absolutely not,” Guinevere fibbed.

“She’s lying,” Frederica announced in her typical no-nonsense manner.

“I am not,” Guinevere sputtered.

“You are,” her youngest sister returned, focusing her gaze on Vivian. “Did you hear how her voice went up an octave?”

“I heard,” Vivian said, her blue gaze latching onto Guinevere’s with a sympathetic look. Though Vivian was five years younger than Guinevere and one year older than Frederica, she was more like Guinevere than she was Frederica. Vivian and Guinevere were both naturally soft and mushy on the inside. They were prone to feel too much too strongly, which was why Guinevere had been especially proud that she had gotten over how Asher had ripped her heart out of her chest, but it seemed now she was not actually quite as over it as she had convinced herself she had been previously.

“‘Double, double, toil and trouble.’” Guinevere’s eyes widened as she slapped a palm over her mouth at the words that had just escaped her treacherous lips.

Both her sisters’ gazes collided with hers at once—Frederica’s horrified and Vivian’s filled with wisdom beyond her years. It was the sort of wisdom Vivian had because she had been ill for many years as a child. Her insight was born of patience, endurance, and a deep understanding of the struggle it could take to overcome the past.

“She’s quoting Shakespeare again,” Frederica said with a shake of her head and a worried look at Vivian.

“I can hear you, you know,” Guinevere snapped, more irritated at herself than her sisters. It had been years since her annoying and embarrassing habit of blurting out Shakespearean quotes when she was vexed had occurred. She gnashed her teeth at the thought that she might be beset with the problem again. It had started when she’d made her first appearance in Society at Almack’s and had been, she believed, a large part of why her first Season had been so disastrous. Well, that and