The Scoundrel and the Debutante. Julia London

and afraid to look him in the eye.

      Just before his aunt and uncle had come home, he had decided he would speak to Susannah about her true desires. Perhaps she found him as odious as he found her. Perhaps she was desperate for escape from this loose arrangement.

      But the news his aunt and uncle had brought home trumped everything else. They were all desperate to find Aurora before she was lost to them, and Roan had put aside his own troubles to chase after her. What could he do?

      He could curse Aurora for the weeks it had taken him to cross the Atlantic, that’s what. The longer Susannah Pratt thought he would be her husband, the harder it would be to disengage from her. Roan was even angrier with Aurora for not being in West Lee, or whatever the hamlet he’d been directed to, but in the other West Lee, north. That alone was enough to concern him. Did he really need to fret about another incorrigible, intractable, disobedient young woman?

      No. No, he did not. He didn’t care that Miss Cabot’s eyes were the color of the vines that grew on his family’s house. Or that she had boarded this coach because she’d been attracted to him. Or that he’d teased her and embarrassed her and thereby was probably the cause of her running off.

      She was not his concern, damn it. And yet, she was.

      For the second time that day, Roan swept his hat off his head and threw it down onto the ground in an uncharacteristic fit of frustration. Damn England! Damn women!

      He kicked the hat for good measure and watched it scud across the road.

      And then, with a sigh of concession, he walked across the road to fetch it. But he discovered he’d kicked his hat into a ditch filled with muddy water. Roan muttered some fiery expletives under his breath. He’d find another hat in the next village. He picked up his bag and hoisted it onto his shoulder and walked on.

      Now, to figure out where that foolish little hellion had gone.