An Unforgettable Rogue by Annette Blair Page A

other girls away.”
    Alex covered her mouth with a hand, but the bright light in her eyes revealed not one whit of remorse. “You knew and did not try to thrash me?”
    “By the time my indignation took hold, I was off to Oxford and it no longer mattered. What drove me most to distraction was your goading me into some lark or other that broke a corresponding rule, for which I, not you, would be punished. I suffered mightily for that penchant in you. Why were you always after breaking rules, Alexandra?”
    “I only broke a rule when I had good reason to do so. Besides, you made up half the blasted rules, yourself, as if rules and the following of them were the be-all and end-all of existence.”
    “They are more than that. Rules, whether written or unwritten, like honor and ethics, are the very backbone of a civilized society.”
    Alex closed her eyes and laid her head back, as if overtaken, at once, by weariness. “Pity you did not follow any rules where your family was concerned.”
    Hawk winced, for her blade struck bone. Having come from a long line of privileged rogues, he had always attempted to act more civilized than his less-than-exemplary ancestors. He had prided himself on following a code of ethical conduct that would keep him from wreaking the kind of havoc his father and grandfather, and scores of other male ancestors, had perpetrated before him.
    He had treated his tenants with generosity and respect, bedded only those women who wanted bedding—lucky for him, a great many had back then. He had gambled only with rich, greedy, bird-witted men who seemed to want to lose, Chesterfield prime among them.
    Against his father’s exhortations that he owed more to his name than to marry the penniless Alexandra Huntington, he had married his maddening hoyden of a neighbor, the plague and nuisance of his growing up years. Because she had no other chance for marriage, or so he thought, and would have a better future as a rich and titled widow. And because she was prudent, trustworthy, resourceful and penniless, and would appreciate the favor he did her.
    He had married her, because she would take better care of his family than he, while he was off fighting Boney, a glory for which his father had offered everything a son could ever hope to have.
    Glory, bedamned. His father bedamned. Waterloo had been worse than hell. He had gotten what he deserved, going off to war, but Alexandra had not deserved what she got, yet her life had been altered as well.
    Hawk would never forget the look on her face when he bid her farewell at the church immediately following their wedding ceremony. God’s teeth, he had used her ill.
    As if that had not been bad enough, he was so eager to fare off to glory that he married her and shipped off to France before the reading of his father’s will. He had known that all Hawksworth brides were well provided for at the time of their husband’s deaths. He had known it and counted upon it.
    He still did not know what had gone wrong in the case of his bride, for his father’s old solicitor had also passed away, leaving everything in the hands of his nephew, who had been traveling since Hawk returned.
    He had not known that he left his family to be cast off by his heir, without a farthing to their names or a roof over their heads. Or that they had been forced to take up residence in Alexandra’s ramshackle manor, between St. Albans and Wheathampstead. But, devil take it, she was right; he had not followed his own code of conduct where his family was concerned. God knew how they had managed, though he would learn soon enough.
    Alex opened her eyes of a sudden, in something of a panic, as if to ascertain whether he was actually there.
    “Did you fall asleep and think you dreamed me?” Hawk asked. “Or would that have been more of a nightmare?”
    “I dreamed, but I did not sleep,” Alex said enigmatically. “And as to whether you might be a dream or a nightmare, if you do not already know that