London's Last True Scoundrel by Christina Brooke

down.
    This time, they stayed down.
    He was considering what to do with them when Honey burst in.
    “What on earth is going on here?” she demanded, looking wildly from her brothers to Davenport. “What did you do to them?”
    He inspected his knuckles. “Oh, just a friendly bout. Must keep my hand in, you know.”
    “You floored both of them?” she squeaked, betraying a most unladylike knowledge of boxing cant. She ran to bend over Tom, patting his stubbled cheeks.
    Her hair was still wet from her bath—and hadn’t he enjoyed a few fantasies about that activity? The golden tresses were darkened with damp, tied back in a thick braid. Unfortunate, that. He wanted to unbind it, run his hands through it, cloud it around that piquant little face.
    She was calling her brothers’ names, to no avail. The combination of liquor and a Westruther right had done for them.
    “Throw a bucket of water over them,” recommended Davenport. “That’ll wake them up. Though I daresay they wouldn’t thank you for it.”
    She straightened, surveying him coldly. “You cause trouble wherever you go. I asked you to leave before. Why are you still here?”
    “I thought you might need me,” he explained.
    She gave an incredulous laugh. “The last thing I need is for you to brawl with my brothers.”
    “That was not planned,” he admitted.
    “Then why did it happen?”
    “I told the lovely impures to leave. Your brothers took exception.” He thought it best not to mention the insult to Honey. No good could come of that.
    She sighed and shook her head. “There’ll be more where they came from. And now that you’ve goaded my brothers, they’ll behave even worse tomorrow.”
    She was probably right about that, but he didn’t regret punching Tom and Benedict deVere. The two of them needed a lesson.
    “Honey,” he declared, “you cannot stay here.”
    She stared up at him. “No,” she said. “That is just what I was thinking myself.”
    Again, she surprised him. A speculative expression gathered in those lovely eyes of hers. “You offered to take me to London.”
    Was it going to be this easy? He suppressed a wolfish grin. “Of course. It’s the least I can do.”
    “Yes,” she said crisply. “It is.”
    “Well, that settles it. We’ll be off, shall we? I daresay there’s a carriage in your stables we can borrow.”
    “We cannot go now,” she said, glancing at the clock. “If we leave at first light, we can reach London before evening. That way, we shall not be obliged to put up at an inn overnight, which would be most improper.”
    Not so much of a greenhorn as he’d like. Well, it wasn’t as if he’d never managed to be amorous in a carriage before. “All right. But you’ll have to protect me from your brothers until morning.”
    Honey eyed them with a raised eyebrow. “I should have said you were capable of taking care of yourself.” She squared her shoulders. “There are conditions.”
    “But of course.” He tilted his head, trying to appear interested.
    “First, you must stop calling me Honey.”
    “I’ll try. But the thing is, you see, that it keeps popping out of my mouth. Look at you. You’re all gold and cream, and that color of your eyes … I’ve never seen that color before. You make me think of honey. And then before I know it, out it pops again.”
    She made a frustrated kitten sound, a cross between a “harrumph,” a choke, and a spurt of unwilling laughter.
    He smiled at her.
    She scowled back. “I am Miss deVere to you. I will not entertain any other appellation. Next. You will not brawl while in my company. I do not wish to draw attention to our journey. We must try to remain inconspicuous.”
    Honey eyed him doubtfully. “Do you think you can manage that?”
    He bowed. “I’ll do my poor best.”
    She pointed a finger at him. “Do you promise you will not punch anyone?”
    Briefly he thought of his shadow. But if the man hadn’t harmed him in the past few months, he