Love Is a Rogue (Wallflowers vs. Rogues #1) - Lenora Bell

Chapter One

Cornwall, 1830

Lady Beatrice Bentley was meant to be researching word origins for her etymological dictionary, not making a study of wild rogues.

One wild, untamed rogue in particular: Stamford Wright.

Carpenter. Distraction. Bane upon half-finished dictionaries.

How could she concentrate on scholarship with such an overbearingly virile specimen of manhood disturbing her tranquil literary idyll?

All summer long, and well into autumn, she’d watched from behind the safety of the library curtains as he hammered, heaved, and dominated her brother’s Gothic mansion in Cornwall into submission.

The crumbling crenellations and bricked-up windows of Thornhill House proved no match for Mr. Wright. By sheer force of personality and person, he’d helmed a group of workmen in the rapid renovation of the great house’s facade.

While Beatrice had only managed the woefully inadequate addition of two hundred new words to her dictionary.

Her brother Drew, Duke of Thorndon, was traveling with his new bride, Mina, on the Continent. They should have arrived back in England by now, but had been mysteriously delayed. When her brother finally returned to Thornhill, he’d be thrilled with the progress Wright had made.

Beatrice was less than thrilled—in fact she was livid. She’d bargained with her mother for these precious months of blissful solitude in which to be as scholarly as she pleased, without fear of her mother’s scolding or London society’s ridicule. Was that too much to ask?

Apparently.

At every turn she’d been perturbed, nay, overset by the ungovernable force of nature known by the name of Wright.

She’d tried stuffing cotton batting in her ears. Humming to herself as she wrote. Swathing the library in thick velvet hangings.

Nothing made a jot of difference. Even if she couldn’t see him, she could still hear his gruff, commanding voice, and that was enough to shatter her peace of mind.

Take today, for example.

Wright and his men were building a pergola in the gardens. She could hear him barking orders and whistling jaunty melodies—quite tunelessly, she might add.

And when she gave up on studiousness, crept to the window, and shifted just an inch of curtain aside, the sight of him immediately unnerved her.

He stood with his leather boots firmly planted, shouldering the burden of a heavy length of timber as one of the workers, the giant one they called Tiny, maneuvered the log into place.

“Hold her steady,” Wright ordered. “A little to the left. Your other left. Steady on . . .”

His wavy dark brown hair gleamed in the late afternoon sun. He wore no coat, and his shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbows. Sweat-dampened white linen did nothing to hide the outline of his bulging arm and shoulder muscles.

“Easy does it, now. Nearly there.” Wright released his hold as the beam was nailed into place. “Well done!”

An odd little shiver traveled the length of her spine. He was so very commanding, so unquestioningly confident. Even though the air was brisk and cool, he tugged his shirt free from his trousers, fanning the fabric away from his torso.

Her breath caught in her throat. She stared, transfixed, as he lifted the hem of his shirt and used it to mop his brow. The newly revealed landscape of his abdomen rippled with ridges of muscle. A dusting of brown hair trailed down the center of his stomach, disappearing into his trousers.

He couldn’t mop his brow with a handkerchief like other people. Oh no, he must display his uncommonly flat and finely sculpted abdomen for everyone to see.

For her to see.

She covered her eyes with her hands to block out the discomposing sight. Her spectacles fogged over and she wiped them clean with her skirts, setting them back in place, unwilling to miss a ripple or a ridge because . . . because she was making a list of Wright’s infractions to present to her brother upon his return.

Tuneless whistling. Ribald jokes. Flagrant displays of sculpted musculature. Refusal to modulate or modify his work habits to suit hers.

When she’d instructed Gibbons, her brother’s land agent, to request that Wright work more quietly, Wright had sent back a brief, impolite missive informing her that he had a job to finish, limited time with which to accomplish it, and that the noise and debris simply couldn’t be helped. He’d then suggested that she might wish to repair to the comfort and luxury of her London townhouse until the work was complete.

Thornhill House was meant to be her sanctuary from London.

Beatrice had work to complete as well, but Wright couldn’t care less. All he cared about, besides finishing the renovations at a breakneck pace, was