A Rake's Midnight Kiss
Anna Campbell
‘I’ll soften her up with a bit of flirtation, a few weeks of masculine attention, then leave her with a smile and the jewel in my pocket.’Tired of rumours of his mother’s sin, of being the Harmsworth bastard, indolent rake Sir Richard Harmsworth decides to hunt down the jewel that will confirm his claim as the rightful heir. But the quest isn’t as easy as he expects…The Harmsworth Jewel’s custodian is scholarly virgin Genevieve Barrett and the treasure is coveted by others as well as Sir Richard. Genevieve won’t part with the jewel easily - his only option is to seduce it from her.Frustratingly, deceiving the innocent beauty is much tougher on his conscience than he ever imagined…Book Two in THE SONS OF SIN seriesA Sensuous Regency DelightTHE SONS OF SINSEVEN NIGHTS IN A ROGUES BEDA RAKE’S MIDNIGHT KISSWHAT A DUKE DARESA SCOUNDREL BY MOONLIGHTDAYS OF RAKES AND ROSES (Novella)
PRAISE FOR ANNA CAMPBELL (#ulink_7220e2d0-a496-5290-9afd-49123bf5c1a5)
‘Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed is a lush, sensuous treat. I was enthralled from the first page to the last and still wanted more.’ —Laura Lee Guhrke, New York Times bestselling author
‘The fast pace and slightly gothic atmosphere make the pages fly. She keeps readers highly satisfied with the plot’s tenderness and touching emotions that reach the heart.’
—Kathe Robin,RT Book Reviews
‘Campbell matches up two proud, wary victims of abuse in this smart Regency romance … delightful insight and … luscious love scenes. Readers will cheer for these loveable and well-crafted characters.’
—Publishers Weekly
‘Truly, deeply romantic’
—Eloisa James, New York Times bestselling author on Captive of Sin
‘Regency noir—different and intriguing’
—Stephanie Laurens, New York Times bestselling author on Claiming the Courtesan
‘You’ll find nothing worth stealing in this house. I suggest you leave. Immediately.’
Instead of reacting with the horrified dismay she sought, the man took his time straightening. Still with that leisurely air, he raised his candle to illuminate Genevieve where she stood. His face was covered with a black silk mask such as people wore to masquerade balls. Not that she had any experience of such events. ‘You’re dashed well protected if there truly is nothing worth stealing.’
Her hand steady, she raised the gun she’d taken from the drawer. ‘We live on the edge of the village, as you no doubt noted when you chose this house as your target.’ A horrible thought struck her and she waved the pistol at him. ‘Are you armed?’
He stiffened with shock, as though the question offended. To demonstrate his non-violent intentions, he spread his hands wide. ‘Of course not, dear lady.’
This rapscallion was a most bizarre burglar. Her knowledge of the criminal fraternity was limited, but this man’s assurance struck her as remarkable. He spoke like a gentleman and didn’t seem particularly concerned that she had a weapon. Her lips tightened and she firmed her grip on the pistol. ‘There’s no “of course” about it. In your line of work, you must expect opposition from your victims.’
‘I make sure the house is unoccupied before I start work.’
‘Like tonight,’ she said coldly.
He shrugged. ‘Even master criminals make the occasional mistake, Miss Barrett.’
ANNA CAMPBELL was the sort of kid who spent her childhood with her nose buried between the pages of a book. She decided when she was a child that she wanted to be a writer. When she’s not writing passionate, intense stories featuring gorgeous Regency heroes and the women who are their destiny, Anna loves to travel, especially in the United Kingdom, and listen to all kinds of music. She has settled near the sea on the east coast of Australia, where she’s losing her battle with an overgrown subtropical garden.
The first book in THE SONS OF SIN series, Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed, has generated some wonderful reviews and a number of awards, including favourite historical romance from the Australian Romance Readers Association. Anna was also voted favourite Australian romance author at the ARRA Awards.
Anna loves to hear from her readers. You can contact her through her website at www.annacampbell.info (http://www.annacampbell.info).
A Rake’s Midnight Kiss
Anna Campbell
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#uf5291496-7b4d-5b51-9807-835a0a883436)
PRAISE FOR ANNA CAMPBELL (#ulink_278bc80e-de56-545c-9dd0-b06f38f36775)
Excerpt (#ue44b942b-3617-5ee9-8543-0b7b4b375a3a)
About the Author (#u0d137f30-ec4e-505d-b48b-9b442fb4045a)
Title Page (#u60c5c6a0-8f57-5efd-9c75-43aa8060454d)
Prologue (#ulink_ccb05f47-105a-5620-b953-e0b433f39f45)
Chapter One (#ulink_fad3e9e7-f6d9-5b03-b151-d56f00c8b1c2)
Chapter Two (#ulink_84ad3be2-9645-50d7-b704-104a88c179ed)
Chapter Three (#ulink_95759d1b-f517-53ba-bc78-bf053105497e)
Chapter Four (#ulink_a9d6e844-e486-5af8-a9a8-4ab3204c7cd9)
Chapter Five (#ulink_c79870a2-d35e-5166-8e66-b26b85438116)
Chapter Six (#ulink_0227e16a-800a-540b-b751-e86396cc35ee)
Chapter Seven (#ulink_2186507b-6f9b-5acb-a0b3-a76e0d614120)
Chapter Eight (#ulink_a497377e-05fe-5f48-8d81-3d6d74ce7ee5)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_00bccdde-dfd4-5a04-b3a5-ad7f73491954)
Packham House, London, March 1827
The whole world knows you for a slut, madam.”
The impassioned declaration dropped into one of those lulls that occasionally affected a crowded room. Like everyone else crammed into Lord Packham’s ballroom this uncommonly warm spring night, Sir Richard Harmsworth craned his neck to see who had spoken. And, more interesting, to whom.
His height offered an advantage and he quickly identified the players in the conflict. Then wished to God he hadn’t. Damn it to hell, the family dirty linen endured another public washing.
Near the main doors, a pale-haired stripling faced down a beautiful older woman with dark hair. A faintly pitying smile curled the woman’s lips and she betrayed no trace of chagrin. While Richard couldn’t place the furious boy, he had no difficulty identifying the lady labeled a trollop.
Augusta, Lady Harmsworth, was his mother. Much good it had ever done him.
From long habit, Richard plastered an affable expression on his face, as if none of this could possibly matter. Still, his gut clenched with old, futile anger as he started toward the brouhaha. What a dashed pity that he was thirty-two years too late to prevent scandal.
The extravagant crowd parted before him as if he was Moses contemplating a seaside stroll. He felt hundreds of eyes burning into his back. As an acknowledged arbiter of fashion, he was accustomed to attention. Tonight, that attention contained no admiration. Instead the avid interest indicated that society scented blood. Richard and his mother knew better than to give it to them. He wasn’t so sure about the distraught young man.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his best friend Camden Rothermere, Duke of Sedgemoor, striding in the same direction. Then his gaze focused on his mother. It must be five years since he’d seen her and she’d hardly aged a day. Clearly sin was good for the complexion, he thought sourly.
“No need for that, Colby.” Lord Benchley, one of his mother’s regular escorts, raised his quizzing glass and subjected the trembling youth to a derisive inspection. “Take your dismissal in good part and don’t make a fool of yourself.”
Richard identified his mother’s accuser. Lord Colby was just out of Cambridge and new in Town. Augusta always gathered a coterie of handsome young men although, to give her what little credit she deserved, she rarely accepted these greenlings into her bed. She saved that privilege for more experienced paramours like, reportedly, Benchley.
Richard might resent his mother, but some painful compulsion meant that he kept track of her admirers. To the world, he pretended not to care a fig for her or her behavior. Beneath his languid, fashionable shell, he reluctantly admitted that was far from the truth.
“And here comes her bastard,” the boy said bitterly as Richard approached. “Or at least the one we know about.”
Everyone in the glittering gathering seemed to release a combined gasp of horrified delight. The musicians scratched into silence. A lanky fellow behind Colby grabbed the youth’s arm. “Shut up, Colby. Harmsworth’s a crack shot. Do you want a bullet for your trouble?”
Colby shook him off. Now that Richard was near, he saw that the young lordling verged on tears. Blast her to Hades, yet again his mother wreaked havoc, as she’d wreaked havoc throughout her son’s life.
“Good evening, Mother. I see you still know how to make an entrance,” he said drily, pointedly ignoring the obstreperous cub. One would imagine that after being tarred a bastard so long, the word would lose its sting. Unfortunately the rancor knotting his stomach indicated that it hadn’t.
Knowing how closely they were observed, Richard bent over her hand in a show of respect. Long experience had proven that the slightest betrayal of genuine emotion would have society tearing at him like wolves.
His mother was even better at hiding her reaction, if any, to insults. Or to meeting her estranged son after such a protracted interval. She stared back at Richard steadily and her lips curved in the smile that had caused untold trouble among the masculine half of the population. Going right back to Richard’s father, whoever the hell he’d been.
Spiteful gossip had long speculated that a stablehand had tupped Lady Harmsworth while Sir Lester was away on a diplomatic mission to Russia. When Sir Lester returned to an heir after a sixteen-month absence, there was no hiding his wife’s adultery. The scandal didn’t upset the succession. Sir Lester had never openly questioned Augusta’s faithfulness and Richard was duly accepted as the next baronet, however dubious his bloodlines.
“One would so hate to be dull,” his mother said coolly.
Richard tilted an inquiring eyebrow at her as his rage coiled like a cobra. Since his schooldays, he’d suffered mockery, scorn, and violence because of his mother’s wantonness. Pride might have taught him to hide resentment but had done nothing to soften it. “Indeed.”
“Lady Harmsworth, a pleasure to see you.” Cam finally made it through the crowd.
“Your Grace.” Her exquisite curtsy conveyed a hint of defiance. Richard would dearly love to hate everything about his mother, but he couldn’t quite make himself despise her courage. He knew what it cost to hold one’s head up against the world’s contempt. “Here to pour oil on troubled waters?”
Cam smiled at her. “Merely to offer myself as a partner for this dance.”
Augusta turned to Richard. “And, my son, what are you doing here? Don’t tell me you mean to fight a duel over my honor.”
A faint titter from behind him greeted that outrageous statement. Richard read the devil in her eyes as she dared him to challenge her claim to honor. Part of the agony of all this was that he and his mother weren’t so different, even down to the way they deployed imperturbable elegance to discourage insolence.
Usually it worked.
His neutral expression didn’t falter. “I don’t shoot inebriated children, however naughty they are.”
Colby’s friend latched more firmly onto his arm. “Come away, Colby. And be grateful that you escaped with your life.”
“Yes, I’ll go.” Stubbornly Colby stood his ground and glowered at Richard. His voice was raw with emotion. “I’ll forsake the lady’s raddled charms and I’ll overlook the presumption of a blackguard who can’t name the man who sired him. Not even the Harmsworth Jewel could make either of you fit for decent society. Your names are filth.”
This time the snickers were more pronounced and the crowd surged forward like a turbulent sea, threatening to suffocate Richard. God rot Colby; why must he parade his broken heart in the middle of this crush? The urge to flatten the unmannerly whelp with one blow jammed in Richard’s throat, even as he forced out a light reply. “The Harmsworth Jewel? Good Lord, nobody’s seen that bauble since the Wars of the Roses.”
He was astonished that Colby knew of the jewel’s existence or the legend that its possession confirmed the Harmsworth heir. Richard exaggerated to say that the artifact had been missing since the fifteenth century, but it had certainly been lost to the main branch of the family for more than fifty years.
“Raddled charms?” At his side, Augusta’s silvery laugh rang out. “My dear Colby, you wound me.”
“You’re in remarkable looks, Lady Harmsworth. Ignore this puppy.” Cam, no stranger to family scandal himself, stepped forward, his air of authority cowing even the fuming Colby. “Shall we dance?”
Cam signaled to the orchestra as if he were the host rather than Lord Packham. A waltz began as he and Augusta proceeded to the floor with a regal assurance that dared anyone to utter an impertinent word. Not for the first time, Richard was grateful for his friend’s aplomb in a sticky situation.
With palpable disappointment, the eager audience began to disperse. Yet again, the Harmsworths had skirted outright disgrace, although Colby’s tantrum would provide a delicious on-dit to spice reminiscences of the ball.
“Take his lordship home,” Richard said to Colby’s companion. For once he couldn’t conceal his weariness. He was so bloody tired of all this. Tired of disdain. Tired of pretending that every insult slid off his immaculately dressed hide without leaving a mark. Tired of his mother’s sins crashing down upon his head. Tired above all of being the Harmsworth bastard.
The rage twisting in his belly cooled, set into a determination as hard as an iron bar. He’d find the deuced Harmsworth Jewel and he’d turn the gewgaw into a pin for his neck cloth. He’d brandish it beneath the ton’s noses like a banner of war until they admitted that while he mightn’t be the right Harmsworth, he was the only Harmsworth they were going to get.
Then let any man call him bastard.
Chapter One (#ulink_99631db9-342c-57e8-8678-4448bd6f2147)
Little Derrick, Oxfordshire, September 1827
Damnation!”
A thud followed by a low masculine curse stirred Genevieve from sleep. Even then she needed a few seconds to realize that she was slumped over the desk in her study upstairs at the vicarage. Her candles had gone out and the room’s only illumination was the dying fire. In that faint glow, she watched a dark shape below the windowsill lengthen upward until a man’s form blocked faint starlight from outside.
Choking fear held her motionless. Fear and outrage. How dare anyone break into her home? It felt like a personal affront. Her father and aunt were out, dining with the Duke of Sedgemoor at his local estate. The duke never visited this isolated corner of his vast holdings, so everyone was agog to see him. Genevieve had been invited too, but she’d wanted to stay and work on some research. The servants were away for the evening.
The man at the window remained still, as if checking that the room was empty before launching his nefarious activities. The charged silence extended. Then the tension eased from his lean body and he stepped toward the fire. From her dark corner, Genevieve watched him set a candle to the coals.
Blast his impudence, he’d soon learn he wasn’t alone.
Quickly her hand found the desk’s second drawer and tugged it open, not bothering to conceal the noise as she grabbed what lay hidden inside. The candle flared into life, the intruder turned his head sharply in her direction, and Genevieve lurched to her feet.
As she stepped around the desk on shaky legs, she forced a confidence she didn’t feel into her voice. “You’ll find nothing worth stealing in this house. I suggest you leave. Immediately.”
Instead of reacting with the horrified dismay she sought, the man took his time straightening. Still with that leisurely air, he raised his candle to illuminate Genevieve where she stood. His face was covered with a black silk mask such as people wore to masquerade balls. Not that she had any experience of such events. “You’re dashed well protected if there truly is nothing worth stealing.”
Her hand steady, she raised the gun she’d taken from the drawer. “We live on the edge of the village, as you no doubt noted when you chose this house as your target.” A horrible thought struck her and she waved the pistol at him. “Are you armed?”
He stiffened with shock, as though the question offended. To demonstrate his nonviolent intentions, he spread his hands wide. “Of course not, dear lady.”
This rapscallion was a most bizarre burglar. Her knowledge of the criminal fraternity was limited, but this man’s assurance struck her as remarkable. He spoke like a gentleman and didn’t seem particularly concerned that she had a weapon. Her lips tightened and she firmed her grip on the pistol. “There’s no ‘of course’ about it. In your line of work, you must expect opposition from your victims.”
“I make sure the house is unoccupied before I start work.”
“Like tonight,” she said coldly.
He shrugged. “Even master criminals make the occasional mistake, Miss Barrett.”
Her belly knotted with dread. This time not even her strongest efforts steadied her voice. “How do you know my name?”
The lips below the mask twitched and he stepped closer.
“Stay back!” she snapped. Her heart banged so hard against her ribs, surely he must hear it.
Ignoring her pistol with insulting ease, he lifted the candle and subjected her to a lengthy and unnerving inspection. Genevieve’s sense of unreality built. Everything around her was familiar. The shabby comfort of her favorite room. The jumbled items on the desk. The pile of pages covered in her writing. All was as it should be, except for the tall masked man with his indefinable air of elegance and his smile of indulgent amusement. She had an irritating intuition that the reprobate played with her.
Bracing under that assessing regard, she made herself study him like she’d study an artifact, although with his face covered she would never be able to describe him to the authorities. Candlelight glinted on rich gold hair and found fascinating shadows under the open neck of his white shirt. He wore breeches and boots. Despite this basic clothing, his manner screamed privilege. And while she couldn’t see his face, something about the way he carried himself indicated he was a handsome man.
A most bizarre burglar indeed.
“A good thief does his research.” He answered the question that she’d forgotten she’d asked. “Although research occasionally lets one down. For example, village gossip indicated that you attended a soiree at Leighton Court tonight.”
“I wanted to—” She realized she responded as if to any polite enquiry. The hand holding the gun showed a lamentable tendency to droop, pointing the barrel harmlessly at the floor. She bit her lip and hoisted the gun in what she prayed was a convincing gesture. “Get out of this house.”
“But I haven’t got what I came for.”
He shifted closer, making her feel more at risk than at any time since he’d arrived. At risk as a woman was at risk from a man. Her skin tightened with awareness of their isolation. She hadn’t missed how his gaze had lingered on her body. Before recalling that any show of vulnerability delivered him the advantage, she backed away. She pointed the gun at his chest. “Get out now or I’ll shoot.”
His frown indicated that her demand galled his sense of decorum. “Dear lady—”
She stiffened. Somewhere she’d lost control of this encounter. Which was absurd. She was the one with the gun. “I’m not your dear lady.”
As if acknowledging that she’d scored a point, he bowed. “As you wish, Miss Barrett. I’ve done you no wrong. It seems excessive to menace me with murder.”
Astonishment almost made her laugh. “You broke into my house. You threatened me with—”
He interrupted. “So far, any threats have emanated from your charming self.”
“You mean to steal,” she said in a low, vibrating voice.
“But I haven’t. Yet.” The expressive mouth above the intriguingly hard jawline curved into a charming smile. “Temper justice with mercy. Let me go free to seek redemption.”
“Let you go free to find some other innocent to rob,” she said sharply. “Better to lock you in the cellar and summon the local magistrate.”
“That would be unkind. I don’t like small, confined places.”
“In that case, you’ve chosen the wrong profession. Somewhere someone will catch you.”
Disregarding the gun, he took another step forward. “Surely your compassionate heart abhors the thought of my imprisonment.”
She retreated and realized that he’d boxed her against the desk. She tightened her grip on the gun to counteract her slippery palms. “Move away or I swear I’ll shoot.”
He lit one of the candles on the desk and blew out his own smaller candle, dropping it smoking to the blotter. “Tsk, Miss Barrett. You’ll get blood on the carpet.”
“I’ll—”
Words escaped on a gasp as with surprising speed he grabbed the hand holding the gun. A few nimble turns of that long body and he caught her against him, facing the open window. Pressed to him, she was overwhelmingly conscious of his power. His leanness was deceptive. There was no denying the muscles in the arms holding her or the breadth of the chest behind her. He embraced her firmly across her torso, trapping her arms. While she still held her weapon, she couldn’t shift to aim it.
The barbed but oddly flirtatious conversation had calmed immediate dread. Now fear surged anew. What in heaven’s name was she thinking, bandying words with this scoundrel? As if she enjoyed herself, when if she despised anything in this world, it was a thief.
She caught her breath on a frightened hiccup and struggled. “Let me go!”
His arms tightened like straps, controlling her with mortifying ease. Genevieve was a tall, strong girl, no frail lily, but the thief was taller and stronger. She’d never before measured her strength against a man’s. It rankled how easily he restrained her. She’d never been so aware of another person’s physical reality. The experience was disturbing beyond her natural terror of an intruder. “Hush, Miss Barrett. I give you my word I mean no harm.”
“Then release me.” She panted, her wriggles achieving nothing beyond the collapse of her never very secure coiffure.
“Not unless you put the gun down.”
She maneuvered to elbow him in the belly, but his grip made it impossible. “Then I’ll be at your mercy,” she said breathlessly.
A grunt of laughter escaped him. “There’s that to consider.”
He was so close that his amusement vibrated through her. The sensation was uncomfortably intimate. A few more of those blasted deft movements and he snatched her weapon. He placed it beyond reach on the desk.
“I’ll scream.”
“There’s nobody to hear,” he said carelessly, and in that moment, she truly hated him.
“You’re despicable,” she hissed, trying and failing to free herself. Her heart galloped with fright and anger. With him, and with herself for being a stupid, weak female, prey to an overbearing male.
“Sticks and stones.”
He drew her into his body and took a sliding step backward. She became conscious not just of his size and strength—those had been apparent from the moment he caught her up—but also of his enveloping heat and the way that he smelled pleasantly of something herbal. Fresh. Tangy.
This ruffian took the trouble to wash regularly.
He reversed another step and opened the door with a rattle, containing her struggles beneath one arm with humiliating ease. Fear spurred rage. She wrenched hard against him and tried without success to sink her fingernails into his forearm.
“No, you don’t,” he huffed, tugging her closer.
“I’ll have your liver for this,” she snarled, even as his scent continued to prick her senses. What was that smell?
“You’ll have to catch me first.”
She wished she didn’t notice how laughter warmed that deep, musical voice. Any angry response died in furious shock as he brushed his cheek softly against the wing of hair covering her cheek.
“Au revoir, Miss Barrett,” he whispered in her ear, his breath teasing nerves she didn’t know she possessed. Then he shoved her away from him hard.
By the time she’d regained her footing, he’d slammed the door and locked it from outside with the key he must have palmed when he fiddled with the latch.
“Don’t you dare ransack the house, you devil!” she shouted, rushing forward and pounding on the door. But the vicarage doors were of solid English oak and hardly shook under her determined assault. “Don’t you dare!”
Gasping, she stopped and pressed her ear to the door, desperate to work out what he was up to. She heard a distant slam as though someone left by the front door. Could her presence have deterred him from his larcenous plans? She couldn’t imagine why. From the first, he’d had the best of the conflict.
Her hands fisted against the wood as she recalled his barefaced cheek in holding her so … so improperly.
“Improper” seemed too weak a term to describe the sensations he’d aroused when he’d captured her like a sheep ready for the shears. Like that sheep, she was about to be well and truly fleeced. She was in no position to stop the villain from taking what he wanted. Nobody would let her out until her father and aunt returned from the duke’s, and heaven knew when that would be. The Reverend Ezekiel Barrett adored hobnobbing with the quality. He’d be there until breakfast if Sedgemoor didn’t throw him out first. She’d have to go out the window the way the villain had come in.
Tears of frustration stung her eyes. However illogically, she felt the radiating heat of the burglar’s body against hers. It was like he still touched her. She wasn’t afraid anymore, at least not for her person. If the rascal had wanted to hurt her, he’d had plenty of opportunity. Her principal reaction, now that fear and unwilling fascination ebbed, was self-disgust. She’d acted a ninnyhammer, the sort of jittery female she despised. She’d had a gun. Why hadn’t she forced him from the house?
The ominous silence extended. What was the blackguard doing? Would there be anything left by the time he finished? She glanced over to the desk and thanked the Lord that the only genuinely valuable item here had escaped his notice. For a sneak thief, he wasn’t very observant, although he hadn’t struck her as a man deficient in intelligence. Or, she added with renewed outrage, impertinence. Nevertheless, any professional would immediately purloin the gold object on the blotter.
Something landed on the carpet near the open window. Curious, nervous, Genevieve grabbed the candle from the desk and lifted it high. On the floor lay the key.
Astonished and outraged, she rushed to the window, but darkness and the elm’s thick foliage obstructed her view. In the distance someone started to whistle. A jaunty old tune. “Over the Hills and Far Away.” Apt for an absconding thief, she supposed. Not that he’d betrayed any panic. Again, his confidence struck her as puzzling. The music faded as the whistler wandered into the night.
With shaking hands, Genevieve scooped up the key and balanced it on her palm. One completely unimportant fact threw every other consideration to the wind. She’d finally identified the smell that had tantalized her when he’d held her.
Lemon verbena.
Chapter Two (#ulink_8b24696e-f3fb-5529-b8a7-86e29d318579)
Richard drained his brandy and rested his head against the back of the leather armchair in Leighton Court’s library. Housebreaking left a man in dire need of a drink. The black mask draped disregarded from a bookshelf. He’d felt like a confounded mountebank wearing it, but as things turned out, it had been a wise decision. After six months of detective work, he’d found his treasure.
“She’s got the jewel, all right, after playing coy with my agents about whether Great Aunt Amelia left it to her. When I climbed through the only open window I could find, it sat on the desk, plain as that big beak on your face.”
“No need to get personal.” Camden Rothermere, Duke of Sedgemoor, rose from the matching chair across the hearth to refill Richard’s glass. The duke’s green eyes below his ruler-straight black hair lightened with the humor that only his friends saw.
Right now, Richard knew he took advantage of that friendship. Only a good friend would rusticate on this obscure estate to support a pal when he could be enjoying the delights of his principal seat in Derbyshire. Cam’s house in Little Derrick gave Richard a base in the neighborhood. Cam’s name would provide an introduction to the locals.
Cam hissed with impatience. “Why the devil didn’t you steal it then and there if the damned thing was ripe for the taking? Nice quick job. You can slink back to the fleshpots and I can go north to supervise the harvest at Fentonwyck.”
“Bad form to steal it, old man, bad form.” A faint smile tilted Richard’s lips as his free hand dangled to toy with his dog’s ears. Sirius, a hound of indeterminate breed, snoozed on the floor beside the chair, his long nose resting on his front paws. He hadn’t appreciated missing out on tonight’s excitement. “I’ll give the chit a chance to sell it to me first. If I steal it, I can’t brandish the bauble to demonstrate that I’m the title’s incumbent and society had better bloody well respect that.”
Richard spoke more casually than circumstances warranted. Until tonight, he’d only seen the jewel in watercolor sketches in the family papers. The urge to pocket the gold and enamel trinket had been deuced strong, but tonight’s burglary had always only been a reconnaissance mission.
His agents had approached Miss Barrett several times to purchase the jewel and none of them could get the damned woman to admit that she had the troublesome artifact. She’d neither denied nor confirmed, although every trail ended at Little Derrick’s vicarage. Tonight’s burglary had been a last-ditch attempt to discover whether to proceed with the plan that even he admitted sounded outlandish.
The rage that had gripped him in Lord Packham’s ballroom still soured his days. Laying his hands on the jewel had become a quest to assert his worthiness to a world too eager to discount him as a sham.
“I’m glad I don’t have to add theft to your list of misdemeanors.” Cam eyed Richard without favor.
“I’ll try persuasion first.” He sipped his friend’s excellent brandy, his pleasure in recalling the vicar’s fiery daughter vying with the anger that had simmered for six months. Longer. His whole life. “Anyway, Miss Barrett had a gun.”
A surprised gust of laughter escaped Cam. “Did she, by Jove? Good for her. I wondered if you’d encounter the mysterious Miss Barrett when her father and aunt turned up to dinner without her, but it was too late to warn you that the vicarage wasn’t empty. I swear the reverend gentleman could talk the leg off an iron pot. Even if you’d caught a bullet, I had the worst of the evening.”
“I owe you.” Richard stretched his long legs across the blue and red Turkey carpet. Pleasant weariness weighted his limbs.
“You do indeed. Although I have to say Leighton Court is dashed appealing. I should have been quicker to check out Uncle Henry’s bequest after he turned up his toes last year.” Cam subsided into his chair. “So was the scholarly spinster what you imagined? Bad skin? Round shoulders? No bosom? A squint from poring over all those dusty tomes?”
A surge of purely male appreciation warmed Richard’s blood. The body he’d held had definitely sported a bosom. Quite an impressive one if he was any judge of women. Which of course he was.
“The lady is … interesting,” he said musingly, fingers stilling on Sirius’s shaggy head. The dog grumbled softly at the cessation of attention.
“If she countered your nonsense with a pistol, she certainly is. I take it you’re proceeding with this ramshackle scheme.”
Richard smiled, recalling the girl facing him down as cool as you please. Instead of a dried-up old maid, he’d encountered a glorious Amazon. Tall. Blond. Flashing silver eyes to make mincemeat of his unflattering expectations.
“Richard?” Cam prompted when the silence extended.
“Hmm?”
“Stop mooning over the damned filly. I gather she was something of a beauty. Answer me.”
“Of course I’m going on.” Richard rose and without invitation refilled his glass. He waved the decanter at Cam, but his famously abstemious friend shook his head. “I can’t see I’ve got much choice. I could go through the courts and prove Aunt Amelia had no legal right to bequeath the jewel to Miss Barrett, but chancery cases take forever and you never know how those blasted judges will rule. Miss Barrett won’t deal with my representatives, even after they said I’d give ten thousand guineas for the jewel.”
“Money clearly doesn’t move her.”
“Something will, and I’ll discover what that is. Luckily for me, her father takes in paying students. It’s a matter of infiltrating the household and keeping an eye for the main chance. Everybody has a price—I’m sure I’ll learn the female prodigy’s.”
Cam still looked unconvinced. “She’ll know what you want the minute she hears your name.”
Richard’s lips curled in a sly smile as he lounged against the mantel. “Meet Christopher Evans, rich dilettante from Shropshire.”
Cam’s voice flattened. “You mean seduction.”
For one blazing instant, the prospect of plundering Genevieve Barrett’s Viking charms dazzled Richard, until reluctantly he shook his head. “No need to sound so disapproving, old chum. I’ll soften her up with a bit of flirtation, but I won’t ruin her. I don’t mean the girl any harm, whatever dance she’s led me over the jewel’s whereabouts. I’ll give her a few weeks of masculine attention and a nice fat purse, then leave her with a smile and the jewel in my pocket.”
“A female who holds you off at gunpoint mightn’t be an easy conquest.”
Richard shrugged. “I know enough to get round an innocent country miss. She’ll be eating out of my hand in no time.”
“If tonight’s any indication, she’s more likely to bite your fingers off. You’re sounding like such a coxcomb, I’d almost like to see that.”
Richard’s laugh held an acid note. “I can act the charmer when I have to. Good God, I learned that lesson long ago. My amiable ignorance in response to insult saved me a parcel of beatings from our dear schoolfellows.”
He shuddered, recollecting the tortures their friend Jonas Merrick, also illegitimate, had undergone at Eton because he was too stiff-necked to play the game. Well, Jonas had had the last laugh last year when he’d been named Viscount Hillbrook. Richard intended to have the last laugh too, even if only to irritate the high sticklers by flashing the legendary Harmsworth jewel under their supercilious noses.
Cam looked unimpressed. “Nothing will change the circumstances of your birth.”
“Perhaps not,” he said with a bitterness that he’d reveal to nobody else. “But surely you of all men understand the need for defiance.”
The murky details of Cam’s conception had been subject to even more spiteful gossip than Richard’s. Cam’s mother, the duchess, had divided her favors between her husband and his younger brother. Nobody, including reportedly the duchess, knew which Rothermere had fathered her son. Scandal of that magnitude at the highest levels never lacked repeating.
All their lives, Richard and Cam had paid for their parents’ sins. At Eton with Jonas, they’d forged a bond based in shared adversity. Until recently, Jonas had gone his own way, but Cam and Richard’s friendship had never faltered, despite Cam being a pattern card of decorum and Richard’s flair for outraging the prudish. In a rare contemplative moment, Richard had concluded that Cam strove to live down his notorious parentage by proving himself worthy of his title.
Still, through his harum-scarum existence, Richard had reason to be grateful for this steadfast friendship. Take the case in point. Loyalty brought Cam, even if vociferously objecting, to this small Oxfordshire estate.
“Any victory will be purely symbolic,” Cam said.
“Symbols can be powerful.” He summoned a smile as he returned to his chair. “Come, Cam. Let me have one last adventure before life becomes odiously flat. This next season, I intend to become a respectable married man. High time I set up my nursery with a virgin whose unimpeachable pedigree will restore some prestige to the sadly tainted Harmsworth name.”
Cam didn’t look any happier. “Marrying a woman you love can be an adventure.”
“Love, my dear fellow?” Richard’s laugh rang with cynicism. “I plan a fashionable marriage. No mawkish attachment. All I require of a wife is an unquestionably legitimate heir.”
“You’re selling yourself short. If any man deserves a happy family life, it’s you.”
Richard shifted uncomfortably. That was the confounded problem with old chums; they saw beyond civilized boundaries to places in a man’s soul that he never wanted to visit. “Dash it, Cam, I never thought to hear you turning sentimental.”
Cam’s expression remained grave. “I can’t help envying what Jonas and Sidonie have. He’s a better man for knowing her. It makes me think love is worth seeking, whatever the risks.”
Richard wasn’t fool enough to dismiss the genuine love Jonas shared with his wife, nor the joy he’d found as father to his daughter. “Jonas is a lucky devil. But Sidonie’s one in a million. I wouldn’t wager sixpence on the chances of finding a woman to equal her.”
But as Richard lounged in Cam’s luxurious library, so different from the dilapidated room he’d invaded earlier, he couldn’t help thinking of another woman. Prickly, clever, and surprisingly appealing Genevieve Barrett with her sharp tongue, snapping gray eyes, and voluptuous body. After tonight’s escapade, he found himself anticipating the coming days with an eagerness that would have astounded him this afternoon. Luring the vicar’s daughter into surrendering the Harmsworth Jewel promised entertainment beyond compare.
Chapter Three (#ulink_9d654b4a-e9af-57b3-9ec7-84ec44f8ebf2)
First Genevieve noticed the dog.
She sat by the window staring vaguely outside, her embroidery ignored on her lap. The vicarage’s parlor overlooked a back lane running off the Oxford road. Across the room, her widowed aunt strove to entertain Lord Neville Fairbrother, who had called to see her father. This afternoon the vicar was with a parishioner and Lord Neville, to Genevieve’s regret, had decided to wait instead of returning to his nearby manor Youngton Hall. His lordship funded her papa’s scholarly endeavors, but she couldn’t like the man. Something about his deep-set eyes made her skin crawl and his oppressive presence sucked the air from a room.
When a large mongrel trotted along the lane, she straightened with surprise. In Little Derrick, stray dogs received scant welcome. The brindle hound sat on his haunches and checked back toward the corner. Within moments, a high-perch phaeton of an elegance rarely seen in these parts bowled into view.
Curiosity glued Genevieve to the window. The driver wore a beautifully cut coat and a beaver hat tipped at what even she recognized as a rakish angle. With the merest touch of his fingers, he controlled the pair of showy chestnut horses drawing the yellow and black carriage.
What brought such a swell to deepest Oxfordshire? He must be lost. The narrow lane led only to the vicarage’s stables. No man of style would find their humble abode of interest. Actually she couldn’t imagine why a man of style associated with such a déclassé mutt. The gypsies camped by the river would disdain such a dog, yet it was clear from the animal’s cheerful bark that he belonged to the driver.
The carriage and its spectacular horses, trailed by the less spectacular hound, disappeared around the wall surrounding the back garden. The man would discover his mistake soon enough and turn around, she supposed.
Genevieve waited for the man and his dog to reappear. A small drama to punctuate a dull afternoon. An afternoon that would have been considerably less dull if Lord Neville hadn’t hindered her scholarly pursuits. She had plans in train to change her life and his lordship’s presence interfered with their progress.
When the carriage didn’t immediately return, she lifted her needle with a sigh. She had little talent for embroidery, but it gave her an excuse to avoid talking to their visitor.
Dorcas, their maid, opened the door, clutching a small cardboard rectangle in her hand. Aunt Lucy had struggled to inculcate the habit of placing calling cards on a salver, but Dorcas couldn’t see the necessity. So far, Dorcas was winning that particular war. “Begging your pardon, missus, but the vicar has a visitor.”
Aunt Lucy stood to take the creased card, then passed it to Genevieve. Christopher Evans. The name meant nothing to her. “Did you say my father isn’t home?”
“Yes, miss. But he asks to wait.” Dorcas’s cheeks flushed a becoming shade of pink. “He’s ever so handsome, miss. Pretty as a picture. And such a gentleman.”
Despite herself, Genevieve glanced at Lord Neville. He didn’t bother to hide his disapproval of Dorcas’s flutterings. “Tell the fellow to make an appointment, girl.”
How Genevieve would love to remind the arrogant oaf to mind his manners, but her father would never forgive her for alienating his patron. The vicar’s living and scholarly work covered essentials, but luxuries came thanks to Lord Neville’s support. “It could be something important.”
“Indeed.” Aunt Lucy ignored his lordship’s interjection. “Please invite Mr. Evans to step into the parlor.”
Genevieve laid aside her embroidery frame. Rising, she smoothed the skirts on her plain green muslin gown. The man who strolled into the room was the phaeton’s driver, as she’d expected. Although for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine what business such a tulip of fashion had with her father.
While Dorcas might lack refinement, there was nothing wrong with her eyes. Mr. Evans was, indeed, handsome. Remarkably so.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Evans. I’m Mrs. Warren, the vicar’s sister-in-law.”
“Your servant, Mrs. Warren.” Mr. Evans bowed over Aunt Lucy’s hand. Genevieve noted her aunt’s dazed admiration. “Please forgive my intrusion. Last night at Sedgemoor’s, the vicar was kind enough to ask me to call.”
Last night, the vicar had attended another dinner at Leighton Court. He’d come home in an incoherent lather at the attentions he’d received from the duke and his guests.
The newcomer’s voice was smooth, educated, and oddly familiar. Genevieve frowned as her mind winnowed where they’d met. Unlike her father, her life was not awash with new acquaintances. The only stranger she’d encountered recently was her mysterious burglar four days ago on the night of the vicar’s first visit to the manor.
Half-formed thoughts hurtling through her mind, she studied the stranger. Mr. Evans shared the burglar’s height but not his bright gold hair. This man’s hair was dull brown. His hair was the only dull thing about him. His face was lean and distinguished. His jaw was firm and determined. His clothing was remarkably elegant, for all that he dressed for the country.
What a fool she was to imagine a fleeting similarity. The Duke of Sedgemoor would hardly play host to a sneak thief. Her nerves were still on edge after the break-in.
“He didn’t mention your call,” Genevieve said steadily.
Mr. Evans turned to Genevieve and dark blue eyes, guileless as the sky, surveyed her top to toe. Lord Neville inspected her in a similar manner at every meeting. This time instead of aversion, she felt a frisson of feminine awareness. Every nerve tightened with warning. This man had predator stamped all over him.
“Is this an inconvenient time? I can come another day.” A quizzical expression lit Mr. Evans’s face and Genevieve realized he’d misunderstood her scowl. Apparently awkward social behavior at the vicarage wasn’t confined to the maid. Color pricked at her cheeks.
“Mr. Evans, I’m—”
A storm of screeching and hissing drowned her answer. Hecuba, her aged black cat, leaped onto Genevieve’s shoulder, dug her claws in, then launched herself at the high shelf lined with china plates. The dog barked once, then settled at his master’s heel.
“Good God!” Lord Neville jumped back. Aunt Lucy shrieked and cowered against her chair. Mr. Evans, who had until now struck her as a rather languid gentleman, moved with impressive speed to save a blue and white Delft plate that Genevieve had always hated.
“I’ll put Sirius outside,” he said calmly, handing her the dish.
The dog regarded her with reproach. He was behaving perfectly, so she felt like a traitor when she agreed. “That might be wise.”
“But first I’ll rescue your cat.”
“Hecuba doesn’t like men,” Genevieve said quickly, but Mr. Evans had already reached up. To her astonishment, Hecuba dived into his arms as fast as a gannet plunged into the sea after a herring.
“I see that,” he said solemnly. Somehow she knew that beneath his grave demeanor, he laughed at her.
“How bizarre,” she said, momentarily distracted from the chaos. Even from a few feet away, Genevieve heard purrs of delight as the big, lean man cradled Hecuba to his dark brown coat. She’d rescued Hecuba as a kitten from neighborhood lads attempting to set fire to her tail. Since then, the cat couldn’t abide the touch of any human male.
With a gentleness that made Genevieve’s foolish heart skip a beat, Mr. Evans passed Hecuba across. Hecuba’s reluctance to forsake her new beau was audible. The man snapped his fingers at the dog. “Come, Sirius. Outside.”
Genevieve still recovered from her odd reaction to the sight of those capable, deft hands handling her cat. She bent over Hecuba, hoping that nobody noticed that the usually unruffled Genevieve Barrett was indisputably ruffled.
Who was this fellow? Gentlemen of such address never came within her orbit. Or her father’s. Well, apart from the Duke of Sedgemoor. But he was so far beyond her touch, he hardly counted as a mortal man. Lord Neville might be wellborn, but he lacked the newcomer’s polish.
“Let Sirius stay.” She cursed her breathless tone. What on earth was wrong with her? At twenty-five, she was well past the giggly stage. Yet Mr. Evans had an extraordinary effect on her. He made her feel as though her world span out of control. And he’d done it with an ease that she couldn’t help resenting.
The man glanced at her and the laughter in his eyes stirred another shiver of awareness. She straightened against unwelcome giddiness. Mr. Christopher Evans was far too charming for his own good.
Or for hers.
“Thank you. He really is well trained.” As if to prove it, he clicked his fingers again and Sirius trotted to his side. Once more, Genevieve was struck by the contrast between the man’s breeding and the dog’s disreputable appearance.
“Allow me to make introductions.” She hoped Mr. Evans wouldn’t notice the catch in her voice, but she had a sinking feeling that he knew his power over susceptible women—among whom, apparently, she must count herself.
“This is my father’s friend, Lord Neville Fairbrother.” Genevieve couldn’t help contrasting Lord Neville’s blunt, swarthy features with Mr. Evans’s spare elegance.
“I hope I’m your friend too, Genevieve,” Lord Neville sniffed. He gave the stranger a distinctly condescending nod. “Evans.”
“Lord Neville.”
“And I’m Genevieve Barrett. Please sit down, Mr. Evans.” Her aunt had abdicated her duties as hostess in exchange for the delights of ogling their visitor. “I’ll ring for tea.”
“Thank you.” With a flourish, he settled on the spindly chair beside her aunt. The dog, as promised, behaved perfectly and lay at his side without glancing at Hecuba.
“My father is on parish duties.” Genevieve retreated to the window seat, still cuddling Hecuba.
The man smiled and Genevieve’s heart, which had almost settled into its usual rhythm, jumped again. Handsome? Mr. Christopher Evans, whoever he was, was downright beautiful.
“No matter. I hoped to extend my acquaintance in the neighborhood.”
Her skin prickled with preternatural warning. This didn’t sound good. This didn’t sound good at all. This sounded like he wasn’t just passing through. She wasn’t usually at the mercy of animal instinct, but every atom insisted that Mr. Evans wasn’t what he seemed. The moment he’d spoken, her heart had known him for a liar. And just what was he doing in Little Derrick?
“You’ll find no entertainment in this backwater,” Lord Neville said snidely as he resumed his chair.
“La, Lord Neville, you are unkind.”
Genevieve cringed at her aunt’s archness.
“Not at all.” He barely disguised his derision. “Beyond our scholarly circle, there’s precious little of interest.”
“His Grace recommended the scenic beauties of this corner of Oxfordshire.” Mr. Evans focused on Genevieve with intent that even a bluestocking couldn’t misread. “He didn’t exaggerate.”
Stupid, stupid blushes. She tried to hold Mr. Evans’s gaze, but her nerve failed and she stared out the window. She could already tell that he was an accomplished flirt. Even when the only female within reach was tall, awkward Genevieve Barrett with her ink-stained fingers.
Her hands tightened in Hecuba’s silky coat. The cat complained and wriggled free. Ignoring the dog, she twined around the furniture to leap into Mr. Evans’s lap. Immediately those hard capable hands curled around the black cat. Genevieve suppressed another discomfiting reaction.
A rattle along the back lane diverted her troubled thoughts. “Papa is here.”
“Excellent,” Lord Neville said. “He promised to show me that illuminated manuscript Carruthers sent.”
“I hear it’s a peach.” Mr. Evans’s enthusiasm wouldn’t shame the keenest medievalist.
Shocked, Genevieve met his brilliant eyes. “You’re an antiquarian, Mr. Evans?”
The doubt in her question had her aunt frowning. Poor Aunt Lucy. She’d lived at the vicarage since her sister’s death fifteen years ago, and she’d spent most of that time struggling to instill manners into her niece. With little success, Genevieve regretted to admit.
The mobile mouth quirked, although Mr. Evans answered politely enough. “In this company, I’d hesitate to describe myself as such.”
Too smooth by half, my fine fellow.
Her father bustled into the room, saving her from responding to their guest’s false modesty. “Lord Neville! An unexpected pleasure.” Then he turned and spoke with an unalloyed joy that set Lord Neville wincing. “And Mr. Evans! If I’d known you visited, I’d have put off my business. I so enjoyed our discussion last night. Have they given you tea? No? Goodness, what will you think of us? A bunch of country mice, begad.”
The vicar wasn’t a quiet presence. His voice bounced off the walls and set the dog twitching. Genevieve’s father strode across the room to wring Mr. Evans’s hand with a zeal that made Genevieve, inclined to disapprove of the newcomer, bristle with resentment. Her father was a man of international reputation, however ill-deserved. He didn’t need to toady to the quality.
She sighed, heartily wishing that Mr. Evans would slouch back to wherever he came from. Already she could foresee conflict between him and Lord Neville, and she didn’t feel up to dealing with another of her father’s crazes.
Fleetingly Genevieve observed her father as a stranger might. Tall, graying, distinguished, with a distracted air that indicated a mind fixed on higher things. Once she’d believed that. Now however much she loved him with a stubborn affection that never wavered, she couldn’t contain the coldness that crept into their relations. Her father looked like an Old Testament prophet, but at heart he was a selfish, weak man.
Dorcas chose that moment to bring in the tea tray. The small parlor became uncomfortably crowded. Advancing toward the table, the maid danced around the vicar. Genevieve blushed to see milk splash from the jug. Mr. Evans really would think they were bumpkins. Then she reminded herself that she didn’t give a groat what Mr. Evans thought.
Genevieve managed to serve tea without tripping over any of the room’s occupants, animal or human. Lord Neville drew her father into a discussion of some scholarly point. Her aunt engaged Mr. Evans in conversation about local amenities. Genevieve retired to the window seat and retrieved her embroidery.
She inhaled and struggled for calm. Absurd to let a handsome face affect her so. She’d always accounted herself immune to masculine attractions. Certainly none of the men in her father’s circle had set anything but intellect buzzing. Her reaction to Mr. Evans had nothing at all to do with intellect and it frightened her.
“How charming to see a lady at her sewing.”
Skeptically Genevieve glanced up. Mr. Evans leaned against the window frame, watching her. In his arms, that hussy Hecuba looked utterly enraptured.
“I like to keep busy, Mr. Evans.” She didn’t soften the edge in her voice. He needed to know that not every denizen of Little Derrick’s vicarage was ready to roll over and present a belly for scratching. However, the picture of lying before him begging for caresses was so vivid, her wayward color rose. She prayed he didn’t notice.
When he placed Hecuba on the floor, the cat regarded both humans with sulky displeasure before stalking away. He plucked the embroidery frame from Genevieve’s hold. She waited for some complimentary remark. For purposes that she hadn’t yet fathomed, the man seemed determined to charm.
A silence fell. Genevieve dared a glance. He maintained a scrupulously straight face.
“It’s a peony,” she said helpfully.
His mouth lengthened but, to give him credit, he didn’t laugh. “I … see that.”
“Really?” She retrieved her embroidery and inspected it closely. Even she, who knew what it was supposed to represent, had trouble discerning the subject.
Without invitation, Mr. Evans settled on the window seat. He crossed his arms over his chest and extended his long, booted legs across the faded rug. Surreptitiously she inched away.
“I believe you assist your father with his work.”
Unfortunately, he couldn’t have said anything more liable to annoy her. Her eyes narrowed and old grievances cramped her stomach. “I am most helpful, sir,” she said flatly.
The evening light through the window lay across his hair but caught no shine in the brown. Hecuba rubbed against his ankles, purring fit to explode. Catching Lord Neville’s glower from across the room, Genevieve bent over her sewing. Surely he didn’t imagine she encouraged this decorative interloper. And even if he thought that, he had no right to censure her behavior.
“At Leighton Court last night, the vicar praised your abilities.”
“Are you surprised to hear of a woman using her brains?” she asked with a sweetness that would warn anyone who knew her.
He sighed and leveled a surprisingly perceptive regard upon her. “I have a nasty feeling that somewhere I’ve taken a wrong step with you, Miss Barrett.”
For a bristling moment, she stared into his face and wondered why she was so certain that he had ulterior motives.
“It hardly matters.” She should turn his comment aside. After all, he wasn’t likely to become a fixture in her life. Even if he lingered in the neighborhood, the vicarage’s fusty medievalists would soon bore him.
“If I’ve inadvertently offended, please accept my apologies.”
Curse him, he’d shifted closer and his arm draped along the windowsill behind her. She stiffened and, abandoning pride, slid toward the corner. “Mr. Evans, you are presumptuous.”
His lips twitched. “Miss Barrett, you are correct.”
“Pray be presumptuous at a greater distance.”
His laugh was low and attractive. “How can I argue when you’re armed?”
She realized that she brandished the needle like a miniature sword. Despite her annoyance, the scene’s absurdity struck her and she choked back a laugh. She stabbed the needle into a full-blown peony that sadly resembled a sunburned chicken. “You waste your attentions, sir.”
“I hate to think so,” he said with a soft intensity that had her regarding him with little short of horror. Was that a challenge? And how on earth should she respond?
Luckily her father spoke. “Mr. Evans, Lord Neville wants to see that codex. Are you interested?”
The vicar’s question shattered the taut silence. Mr. Evans blinked as if emerging from a trance. She realized she’d been searching his face with as much attention as she gave a historical document.
He turned toward her father. “Of course, sir. Lead on.”
Without the gentlemen and Sirius, the parlor felt forlorn. As though Mr. Evans’s departure leached the light away. Genevieve glanced across to where her aunt stared into space, hands loose in her lap.
“What a lovely man,” she said dreamily.
Genevieve stifled a growl and stood to collect the teacups and place them onto the tray. “He thinks he is.”
Aunt Lucy’s stare was surprisingly acute. “Because he treated you like a woman and not some moldy book from your father’s library, you’ve taken against him.”
“Don’t be a henwit, Aunt. That kind of man flirts with any female in reach. Today that’s you, me, and Hecuba.” Hearing her name, Hecuba curled around Genevieve’s ankles. “It’s too late to make amends, you minx.”
“I hope he’ll be a regular visitor,” her aunt said. “I worry that you’ll never find a man to marry.”
Shocked, Genevieve nearly dropped the tray. “Aunt! Don’t be absurd. Even if I liked Mr. Evans—and I don’t, he’s too conceited—I don’t want a husband. I’ve got my work.”
It was a familiar argument. Her aunt was a conventional woman and couldn’t bear for her niece to die a spinster. In Aunt Lucy’s eyes, any halfway eligible man who wandered into Genevieve’s vicinity was a likely match. She’d once even suggested Genevieve set her cap for Lord Neville. What a nauseating thought. The man was at least twenty years too old, he was bullying and dictatorial, and his touch made her skin itch with revulsion.
“Work won’t keep you warm at night.” Aunt Lucy paused. “I suspect Mr. Evans would be very … warm.”
Chapter Four (#ulink_85729192-c881-54df-9b90-c56e82fa55aa)
To Genevieve’s chagrin and Hecuba’s delight, Mr. Evans stayed for dinner. Carefully Genevieve watched for any disdain for their humble fare or the country hour of the meal. Obscurely it griped her more than any sneer would when the fellow expressed his pleasure with arrangements and tucked in with hearty appetite.
As usual, discussion focused on the vicar’s scholarly preoccupations. At present, he was obsessed with proving that the younger prince in the Tower had survived. While her father harangued an apparently fascinated Mr. Evans, Genevieve caught the disapproving arch of Lord Neville’s eyebrows. He’d also joined them and now sat beside her. Thank heavens, they had leg of mutton and there was plenty, although plans for using the leftovers for cottage pies faded with every mouthful.
“Do you intend to stay long in the neighborhood, Mr. Evans?” she asked when her father finally lifted his wineglass, allowing someone else to squeeze in a word.
Mr. Evans, on her father’s right beside her aunt, smiled at Genevieve with practiced charm. She could imagine that smile had set countless female hearts fluttering. Unfortunately for Mr. Evans, Genevieve Barrett was made of sterner stuff. Or at least she wished she was.
“I hope so. I’m in the fortunate position of having leisure to follow my inclinations.” A mocking light in his eyes hinted that he guessed how his efforts to please irked her.
“You’re acquainted with Sedgemoor, I believe,” Lord Neville growled, slicing at his mutton as if it were Mr. Evans’s hide.
Genevieve could imagine how Mr. Evans’s friendship with Camden Rothermere grated on Lord Neville. Lord Neville might dismiss what he termed the fribbles and flibbertigibbets infesting London society, but she’d long ago recognized the pique behind his derision. His lordship wasn’t sparkling company and wouldn’t shine outside antiquarian circles. Even in scholarly circles, he earned respect more for his family and fortune than for his intellect. While he was far from a stupid man and he had a magnificent collection that she’d been privileged to work on, Lord Neville remained a dilettante.
Mr. Evans sipped the fine claret that Lord Neville supplied to her father and answered with a coolness that only emphasized his lordship’s churlishness. “We were at school together. I’m proud to call him my friend.”
“Where are your people, Mr. Evans?” Until now, Aunt Lucy had sat quietly. The price of sharing her brother’s roof was enduring arcane discussions that held no shred of interest for her. “Evans is a Welsh name, is it not?”
“My family is in Shropshire. Perhaps we were Welsh originally.” His voice warmed as he addressed her aunt.
“Wouldn’t an enthusiastic amateur historian investigate?” Genevieve had no idea what Mr. Evans hoped to gain from his association with her father, but she’d wager every penny she had that he harbored no genuine interest in the Middle Ages.
Her question didn’t unsettle him. She reached the conclusion that Mr. Evans would retain his sangfroid standing naked between the French and English lines at Waterloo. While she’d never met a rake, something told her that Mr. Evans played the rake to perfection.
If he was a rake, perhaps he contemplated seduction. But surely she was beneath his touch and the only other female under thirty in the house was Dorcas. The idea of elegant Mr. Evans pursuing the scatterbrained maid tempted her to giggle into her gravy.
“I’m hoping your distinguished father will guide my research.”
“Hunting a noble ancestor?” Lord Neville scoffed, earning a frown from Aunt Lucy. “Some Welsh princeling?”
Mr. Evans’s affability didn’t falter. “We’re not a grand family.”
But wealthy with old money, Genevieve could tell. It wasn’t just that everything about him screamed expense. It was also his assurance, as though he found a welcome everywhere because of who he was. This man had never had cause to doubt himself.
“What about your wife, Mr. Evans?” Aunt Lucy asked with wide-eyed innocence.
Genevieve kicked her aunt under the table. Or at least that was the plan. Mr. Evans released a soft huff of surprise and shifted in his seat. Dear Lord. Now she’d demonstrated that she had the manners of a drunken cowherd. She must be as red as a tomato.
“Alas, I’m not married, Mrs. Warren. Perhaps I’ll discover some lovely ladies in Oxfordshire.” His lips curved in pure devilment. “Of course, no ladies could be lovelier than the two sharing this table.”
“Sir, you flatter us,” Aunt Lucy simpered.
She’d been a pretty girl, the toast of Taunton. Much as Genevieve discounted Mr. Evans’s flummery, she couldn’t begrudge her aunt the chance to relive her youthful triumphs. The soldier she’d married had died within a year on the Peninsular campaign. Aunt Lucy was born to mother a brood of children and cosset a doting husband. Instead she’d landed up as companion to an eccentric, self-centered brother and his gawky daughter.
“Not at all, Mrs. Warren.” Mr. Evans raised his glass. “To my beautiful hostesses.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” her father interrupted with his usual insensitivity. “Lucinda’s too old for such flannel. Fifty if she’s a day.”
Genevieve bit back a remonstrance.
“True beauty knows no age,” Mr. Evans said firmly.
The flash of anger in his blue eyes mitigated Genevieve’s hostility, although it didn’t make her trust him any further. She still couldn’t work out why a man who looked ready to grace a royal banquet sat at her lowly table.
Richard enjoyed his evening more than expected, although meeting the beauteous Genevieve four days ago should have prepared him. The prospect of a leisurely flirtation while he convinced her to sell the Harmsworth Jewel became more appealing with each moment.
He even found the scholarly discussion interesting. At Oxford, he’d been an erratic student. Life had offered too many other amusements for a presentable young man of immense fortune. But apparently he’d picked up more in his history tutorials than he’d thought.
Dr. Barrett’s academic reputation was a puzzle. Before Richard embarked on this scheme, he’d read some of the vicar’s articles. They were clever and incisive, revealing a mind of breathtaking subtlety and imagination. After several hours in his company, none of those adjectives matched Richard’s impressions of Little Derrick’s vicar. Richard also picked up a trace of discord between the vicar and his daughter. Now, what in Hades was that all about? And how would it affect his plans?
Under cover of listening, he observed his companions. For an obscure country village, they were an intriguing lot. The aunt was charming and patently interested in forwarding his acquaintance with Genevieve. Lord Neville didn’t appreciate competition and bent more than one possessive glance at the oblivious girl. He wondered why Mrs. Warren didn’t promote that union. All the Fairbrothers were disgustingly wealthy, including this man’s nephew, the Marquess of Leath. Lord Neville was too old for the chit, but otherwise he’d make an enviable husband. Or so common sense insisted. Richard’s gut revolted at the idea of Genevieve’s beauty and spirit in thrall to the condescending rhinoceros.
They retired to the parlor for tea. Richard fell into conversation with Mrs. Warren. Aunt Lucy liked him. As did Hecuba, the man-hating cat, who purred on his lap. Sirius was tied up outside, sulking. What a pity the vicar’s daughter was as far from purring as Richard was from Peking. He had no idea what he’d done to raise her hackles, but she watched him as if expecting him to purloin the silver. She couldn’t recognize him as her burglar. He’d been masked that night, his hair was now a different color, and Sedgemoor had vouched for him.
In fact, it surprised Richard how easily everyone accepted him as rich Mr. Evans from Shropshire. He wasn’t used to meeting people without the scandal surrounding his birth tainting introductions. It was both appealing and galling, reminding him yet again of the barriers his bastardy placed between him and the world.
“Genevieve, leave those dusty books and help me sort my wools,” Mrs. Warren called.
“Papa wants to show me this document.” Genevieve didn’t shift from the table where she, Lord Neville, and the vicar pored over a manuscript.
“Tomorrow. You’re neglecting our guest.”
Richard caught the twinkle in Mrs. Warren’s eyes. He knew what she was up to. And she knew that he knew. Genevieve was aware too, but without overt rudeness, couldn’t ignore her aunt’s request.
He watched Genevieve approach. Today before arriving, he’d wondered whether he’d idealized her attractions, but one glance at that beautiful face, severe in his presence, and he knew that this was a gem worth the mining. A treasure to rival the Harmsworth Jewel. This afternoon, she’d played the cold goddess. Now in candlelight, she was all gold and shadows.
The pity of it was that she was a respectable woman. Honor precluded seduction. Although with all the lies he told, his honor grew grubbier by the hour.
“More tea, Mr. Evans?” Genevieve’s chilly question made him want to shiver theatrically.
“Please, Miss Barrett.”
Mrs. Warren turned to him. “Were you in Little Derrick for last week’s excitement, Mr. Evans?”
“Aunt, I’m sure Mr. Evans has no interest in local trivialities,” Genevieve said repressively.
“On the contrary, I’m all ears.” He hid a smile when she all but lashed her tail. Everything indicated her inexperience with men. A more worldly woman wouldn’t fling challenges with every flash of those arctic-gray eyes. She hoped to freeze him into retreating, whereas with her, ice burned.
“Genevieve saw off a thief!” Mrs. Warren’s breathless announcement earned a derisive glance from her niece. “Only shooting at the rascal saved her.”
Richard regarded Genevieve with exaggerated admiration. “Good heavens, Miss Barrett, you’re Boadicea reborn.”
Her lips flattened as she refreshed his tea. Heat bubbled in his veins as he remembered holding her. She’d been soft and fragrant. Her hair had slid against his skin like warm silk. Hecuba complained as his lap firmed. He stroked the cat and strove for control.
“The man was a coward. When he discovered the house occupied, he scarpered with his tail between his legs.”
For shame, Miss Barrett. It seems I’m not the only liar in the house.
“Isn’t my girl brave?” The vicar left Lord Neville at the table.
“Hardly, Papa,” Genevieve said uncomfortably. “I told the fellow to leave and he went. By then, he’d probably guessed that there was nothing worth stealing.”
She deuced well should be uncomfortable, fibbing to her nearest and dearest. The encounter mightn’t have gone completely Richard’s way, but she hadn’t scared him off like a panicked rabbit.
“You’re quite the heroine,” Mrs. Warren said. “I would have fainted into his arms with terror.”
Richard was pleased to note the color lining the girl’s slanted cheekbones. She hadn’t fainted, but by Jove, she’d been in his arms. At the time, he’d considered kissing her. He’d certainly wanted to.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t, Aunt. He was a most unimpressive specimen. Skinny and half-starved. Why, Hecuba could have taken him.” She glanced at Richard. “Are you all right, Mr. Evans?”
He realized he’d replaced his cup on its saucer with a loud clink. The urge to wring her neck—after kissing her within an inch of her life—rose. His voice remained even. “Perfectly, thank you, Miss Barrett. I’ve realized how late it is.”
As if to confirm that it wasn’t late at all, the hall clock struck nine.
“Must you go?” It was Mrs. Warren, not her niece, who asked. The niece’s expression indicated that she was happy that he left the vicarage and she’d be even happier if he left the neighborhood for good.
We don’t always get what we want, Richard thought as he rose. “Indeed I must. Thank you, Dr. Barrett and Mrs. Warren, for your kind hospitality. Lord Neville.” He bowed to Genevieve. “Your servant, Miss Barrett.”
“Are you sure you won’t stay? Our groom has gone for the night. It’s no trouble to make a bed.” Mrs. Warren gazed at him as if he carried the map to the Promised Land. Poor Genevieve, if her aunt subjected every male visitor to such matchmaking. No wonder she was testy.
He needed to regroup, to shake off Genevieve’s surprisingly powerful influence. And something told him his strategy was better served by leaving. “I can manage my carriage.”
“If you insist.” The vicar didn’t hide his disappointment.
“Genevieve, show Mr. Evans out,” Mrs. Warren said.
Flushing with chagrin, Genevieve put down her tea. “Very well. Mr. Evans?”
“Miss Barrett.” He took her arm as she stood.
She stiffened beneath his touch and the instant they’d passed through the door, she jerked free. “It’s only three steps.”
Genevieve abhorred this fluster. She’d always considered herself above female foibles; the thrill at spying a handsome man, the primping and preening. Yet even now, she was painfully conscious that she’d spilled ink on her sleeve and her hair hadn’t seen a comb since this morning. Next to Mr. Evans’s perfect tailoring, she felt shabby and disheveled and inadequate.
She shut the door to keep Hecuba in the parlor. Mr. Evans stopped, blast him, in the flagstoned hall. The space had never felt so small. He turned to her, puzzlement darkening his features. “Why don’t you like me, Miss Barrett?”
She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. “Hasn’t anyone ever disliked you?”
He had the grace to look slightly shamefaced. “If I say no, I’ll sound like a complete ass.”
“Although nobody ever has disliked you, have they?”
He shrugged. “Generally not young ladies.”
Her lips quirked with wry agreement. “I can imagine.”
He stepped closer. With difficulty she held her ground, although every feminine instinct screamed to run. “I’d like us to be friends.”
Now it was her turn to be puzzled. “Why?”
“Your father hasn’t told you?”
A chill presentiment of disaster oozed down her spine. “Told me what?”
“The vicar has invited me to study with him. I’m moving out of Leighton Court tomorrow and coming here.”
“Oh, no.” Genevieve only realized she’d spoken aloud when humor turned his face to brilliance.
“Tell me what you really think.”
No other man made her blush like this or provoked her to say such idiotic things. And their acquaintance only started. The idea of sharing the same roof made her stomach cramp with dismay. Still, she’d been appallingly rude and to give him credit, he’d taken it in good spirit. “I’m sorry.”
Mr. Evans collected his hat from the stand. “Perhaps you’ll like me once we’re better acquainted.”
And perhaps cows might sing Rossini. But she kept that thought to herself. Was she learning discretion? She’d need to if Mr. Evans became her houseguest. She consigned her father to perdition, not for the first time, for his impetuousness. But he was the master of the house and he expected his womenfolk to obey his whims. The task that currently engaged her became more urgent with every day.
“How long are you staying?” she asked stiffly.
Something about Mr. Evans’s smile made her step back. She’d feel less foolish if she could identify one particular element in his manner that unnerved her. Well, until he smiled at her the way he smiled now. He looked like a hungry tiger contemplating a lamb chop. Trepidation shivered along her veins and her heart thumped chaotically against her ribs.
“As long as it takes,” he said softly. His eyelids lowered, lending him a disconcertingly saturnine air. For most of the evening, he’d played the perfect guest. But in the space of a second, he transformed into a man who clearly intended seduction.
She told herself she let the fright she’d suffered from the burglary turn her into a nervous wreck. Surely she mistook him. A dull bluestocking past first youth couldn’t attract this Adonis.
“Stop flirting,” she said firmly. “You’re only doing it because there isn’t another woman here.”
This time he laughed out loud. The sound was attractive. Open. Joyful. Genuine. “You defeat me, Miss Barrett. How am I to work my wiles when you undo me at every turn?”
She didn’t smile back, although something in his unabashed delight tugged at her heart. “I don’t want you to work your wiles, Mr. Evans.”
“Your aunt likes me.”
Genevieve’s huff approached a snort. “My aunt likes any man who’s breathing and unmarried.”
Curse him, he shouldn’t laugh again. Her glare did nothing to quell his amusement. “The longer we’re alone, the keener she’ll be to see your ring on my finger.”
He slouched against the newel post and regarded her as if she provided marvelous entertainment. She was sure she did. He probably hadn’t toyed with such an awkward female since his first dance lessons. Among the reasons he set her bristling like an angry cat was that she felt irredeemably gauche in his presence.
“You mention marriage with disdain worthy of a rake,” he said drily.
“You’d know.”
He arched one eyebrow. “I’m merely a country gentleman pursuing intellectual interests.”
“Not even I’m green enough to believe that.”
“Ah,” he said softly. “So it’s not that you don’t like me, it’s that you don’t trust me.”
She retreated until she collided with the wall. For one frantic moment, she wished she’d spent fewer nights over her books and more at the local assemblies. She was completely out of her depth with this urbane man. “Can’t it be both?”
He stepped closer. “Is it?”
She stared at him, her heart racing. She’d never been kissed. Until this moment, she hadn’t marked the lack. Right now, she had a horrible feeling that her unkissed days were numbered. Might perhaps end this second. She wondered why the prospect left her excited rather than outraged. She should itch to slap this Lothario’s face.
“Please go.” She cursed her husky tone. “Aunt Lucy will post the banns if I’m not back in the library within the next five minutes.”
“You’re not really at your last prayers, are you?”
Color flooded her cheeks and she spoke sharply. “I’m not praying at all. I’m not interested in marriage.”
“Miss Barrett, you shock me.”
She frowned, then realized he’d misunderstood. Deliberately. “I’m a scholar, not a courtesan,” she snapped.
Did he lean a fraction closer? Or did her imagination play tricks? Heaven help her. He was moving into the vicarage. Eons of this torment stretched ahead. How on earth would she survive?
“Pity.” He straightened and set his hat at a jaunty angle. “Until tomorrow, Miss Barrett.”
And the day after that, she thought despairingly. Her father welcomed a wolf into the sheepfold.
She drew herself up, reminding herself that she was clever and strong and had never fallen victim to a man’s stratagems. Not that the distant adoration she’d incited in her father’s previous students compared.
She spoke with commendable conviction. “I can’t see what amusement you’ll find with a country vicar and his ape-leader of a daughter.”
Did she mistake the sudden fire in his eyes? “I’ll let you know if I’m bored.”
“What do you want, Mr. Evans?” she asked dazedly.
He stepped back and bowed with an aplomb she envied. She must have mistaken that brief, intense flash of sexual awareness. A deep breath loosened the invisible band around her chest.
“Miss Barrett, once I thought I knew. But now? Now, the game has changed.” He touched his hat with a confidence that reminded her why he irked her. “Good evening.”
He lifted a candle with a gesture that stirred memory. Somewhere, sometime recently she’d watched a man like this lighting a candle in a shadowy room. But in her agitation, she couldn’t tease any sense from the scrap of recollection.
“Good evening, Mr. Evans.”
She wished she didn’t sound so breathless. Dear Lord, he hadn’t touched her, hadn’t come within a foot of her. Yet she dithered like a besotted milkmaid. She needed to rush upstairs and bury herself in something dry and dull like the local shire rolls. Something as dull as she’d promised Mr. Evans his stay at the vicarage would prove.
Instead she lingered in the hall after he left. She didn’t shift until she heard his carriage rattle away over the cobblestones.
Chapter Five (#ulink_04ea7708-5c77-5898-a14b-61a8474fa0cb)
Once Richard moved into the cramped back bedroom, his visions of lazy days flirting with Genevieve Barrett evaporated under the reality of vicarage life. Dr. Barrett was overjoyed to have an assistant who paid generously for the privilege, and even more welcome, an audience for his endless theorizing. Lucy Warren provided more agreeable company and was remarkably confiding about her niece. But Richard was staying ostensibly to widen his knowledge of all things Middle Ages, so he couldn’t devote too much time to the aunt without rousing suspicions about his historical interests. Lord Neville visited every day and proved an inconvenient presence, dogging Richard’s footsteps as if fearing for the church plate.
While his acquaintance, congenial or not, developed with the vicarage’s other denizens, Miss Barrett proved elusive. As did any chance to worm the Harmsworth Jewel away from her. If Richard hadn’t seen the jewel the night he’d broken in, he’d begin to doubt the artifact was in the house. Nobody, including Miss Barrett, mentioned it.
After three frustrating days meeting her only at meals, not to mention learning more than he’d ever wanted to know about the Princes in the Tower, Richard resorted to drastic measures.
Quietly he opened the door to the small upstairs room where he’d first encountered Genevieve. It was so early, the sky was dark. In Town, he often saw the dawn, but as the end of a night’s entertainment, not the start of a day’s scholarship. Across the faded carpet, candlelight formed a circle around the woman bent writing over the desk.
His breath caught as he stood transfixed, astonished anew at her beauty. She sat slightly turned away, revealing her profile. Straight, autocratic nose; determined chin; lashes lowered against high cheekbones as she concentrated too deeply to notice her observer. The sleeve of her faded dimity dress drooped from her shoulder, revealing the strap of her shift. A striped pinafore protected the front of her gown.
In Richard’s glittering world, female beauty was no rarity. But this dauntingly clever vicar’s daughter was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen.
He suffered a momentary pang that he didn’t pursue her as his real self. But then, Genevieve would despise the shallow Sir Richard Harmsworth. Hell, she didn’t much like Christopher Evans.
Without Sirius’s interruption, he might have watched forever, but he must have left his bedroom door along the corridor ajar. Sirius squeezed past him now and trotted up to the desk.
“Hello. Where did you come from?” Genevieve spoke with a warmth she’d never directed at Richard, damn it. When she glanced up, she started. Then her closed expression felt like a winter wind. To his regret, she tugged her sleeve over her pale shoulder. “Mr. Evans.”
“Miss Barrett.” At this hour, he couldn’t help thinking that they’d both be better off in bed. His bed. Not that wanting did much good. Lusting after a chaste woman promised only frustration.
“You surprised me.”
“Are your nerves on edge?”
She shrugged. “I’m jumpy after the break-in.”
Guilt stabbed him. She’d been so indomitable facing down his burglar self, it hadn’t occurred to him that she’d been genuinely frightened.
Masking her vulnerability, she extended a hand to scratch Sirius behind the ears. Ridiculous to be jealous of a dog, but Richard was.
“What are you doing awake?” she asked.
To confirm the uncivilized hour, a lark burst into a torrent of silvery song outside. He decided to be honest. Well, as honest as a man sporting a false name could be. “You’re avoiding me.”
She didn’t meet his eyes. “Nonsense.”
“I moved in three days ago and we’ve hardly exchanged a word since.”
“You’re here to work with my father.” Her dry tone indicated that she questioned his dedication to scholarship. Clever girl. With a doggy groan, Sirius stretched out beneath the windowsill.
“You’re more decorative.”
She pursed her lips. The expression didn’t look forbidding. It looked like she meant to kiss him. The thought lit the cool dawn to flame.
Gently he closed the door and stepped into the bookcase-lined room. Books and papers littered every flat surface. The shambles was endearing. The rest of the house was dauntingly ordered. When he’d broken in, he hadn’t noted his surroundings. The woman had occupied his attention. The woman and the Harmsworth Jewel.
She set down her pen. “I need to help Dorcas with breakfast.”
He didn’t shift. “Dorcas is still enjoying the sleep of the just.”
“We’ll wake everyone if we talk here.”
“I’ll keep my voice down.” The vicarage was old. Seventeenth century, he guessed. The walls and doors were so thick, no sound penetrated. After he’d locked Genevieve in, he’d barely heard her protests.
“It’s inappropriate for us to be alone.” She jerked to her feet, upsetting the horn cup of water on the desk. “Bother!”
He surged forward to hold her wrist. Her skin was warm and he caught a drift of her morning scent. Flowers and woman. “Let me.”
“No, I’ll fix it.” Ink-stained fingers fluttered in protest without making contact.
When he released her, he heard her relieved exhalation. Her eyes fixed upon a gold object on the crowded desk. It proved how distracting she was that he only now realized that, as on the first night, the Harmsworth Jewel sat for the plucking, if he was so bold.
He wasn’t so bold.
“I hope the water hasn’t damaged anything.” Drawing his handkerchief from his coat, he mopped up the spillage. Thank goodness, the cup had been nearly empty.
“Only some notes I’m working on.” With little ceremony, Genevieve pushed him out of the way and grabbed a crumpled cloth from the floor. Carefully she sponged the sheet she’d been writing on. The ink blotched and she tossed the cloth into a corner with a sigh.
With every moment, the day brightened. Soon he’d have no excuse to detain her. Richard wondered, not for the first time, if he’d find her so fascinating if she didn’t prickle with hostility. Then he remembered her serene beauty in the candlelight. She’d attract him whatever she did. Something about her made him feel alive. Was it just that she saw him as a man, not as the notorious Harmsworth bastard? Or was it something more?
He looked around with a deliberately casual air. “What do you do in here?”
She cast him a suspicious look as he lifted a pile of papers from the desk and perched his hip on the space. “What do you care?”
He cared more than she imagined. In his peripheral vision, the Harmsworth Jewel shone red, blue, and gold. Strategy suggested an oblique approach to his real interest. His real interests. Genevieve’s lure became at least as powerful as the family relic’s.
He met her challenge with a level stare. “Why so secretive?”
She slumped into her chair and regarded the soaked page with a disgruntled expression. “Do you like working with my father?”
“Yes,” he said, not altogether truthfully. He enjoyed reviving his rusty Latin and Greek, but the vicar wasn’t the intellectual powerhouse reputation indicated. Richard was yet to glimpse the brilliance that illuminated the articles. “I thought you acted as his assistant.”
“I do.” An unreadable expression crossed her lovely face.
He’d caught vague hints of an estrangement between the vicar and his daughter, but now he was sure of it. Genevieve was yet to join one of his sessions with Dr. Barrett. That suddenly struck him as more significant than her merely avoiding a guest’s company.
Idly he lifted a page covered with writing. She had a strong, almost masculine hand.
“Put that down!” She rushed around the desk and snatched uselessly at the paper.
“Indulge me.” He stepped sideways and started to read, then frowned. He put down that page and reached around her for the next. After a few minutes, he replaced the pages and lifted his head to stare at her in shock. “It’s you.”
She scowled, panting with annoyance at his high-handed behavior. He rather liked that she made no attempt to charm him. Women always strove to turn him up sweet, however disreputable his birth. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Dr. Barrett isn’t the brilliant mind here. His daughter is. You write the articles.”
Genevieve paled and backed against the desk. Her hand clenched on her ruined manuscript, crushing the damp paper into a ball. “Don’t be absurd. I’m a mere woman.”
He laughed, genuinely delighted. “That’s the first coy thing I’ve heard you say.”
Her jaw set in a mutinous line. “Any article written in this house is published under my father’s name.”
“It’s all your work.” He watched her struggle to deny the truth. But the lightning intelligence and sharp perception demonstrated in the articles, and lacking in the vicar, were clear from the first line. “Come, there’s no point nay-saying. I know you’re the scholar here.”
Briefly he wondered whether he could turn this knowledge against her, use it to obtain the jewel. Would she sell him the heirloom in return for his silence on her authorship? He tucked the thought away to consider later, even as he recognized his reluctance to resort to blackmail. Ridiculous when the whole purpose of this masquerade was to winkle out the chit’s secrets.
“I have no qualifications.”
“Apart from a brain the size of St. Paul’s. And a lifetime in scholarly circles.” Still, he was impressed at what she’d achieved without formal education. Ignoring her resistance, he lifted the hand curled around the soggy paper and placed a kiss across her knuckles. For once he wasn’t being seductive. “Deny the fact until Christmas, but it won’t do any good. I’m in awe, Miss Barrett.”
She cast him an uncertain glance under her lashes. Another woman might mean flirtation, but he’d concluded that Genevieve Barrett had never learned the wiles of her worldly sisters.
When he let her go, she began to shred the paper, her hands working nervously in front of her extravagantly pocketed pinafore. “You can’t share your suspicions. They could destroy my father’s reputation.”
After lifting some books off the seat, he moved a chair from the wall to the desk. Dust flew and he sneezed. Sirius started up in surprise from where he lay in sleepy contentment. Sitting, Richard surveyed her with unfettered admiration. “Your brilliance should receive acknowledgement.”
Her voice expressionless, she retreated to sit behind the desk. “Papa offered to credit me as coauthor after I turned twenty-one, but that is yet to eventuate.”
Genevieve’s careful neutrality indicated that this was a sore point. No wonder she resented her father. As a man familiar with parental betrayal, Richard felt for her. “Surely people suspect.”
“There’s no reason they should.” In her eyes, he read displeasure at how quickly he’d uncovered her secret.
“I knew the moment I read that first page.”
“A lucky guess.”
“Perhaps we’re particularly attuned, Miss Barrett.”
Her expression didn’t lighten. “Stop flirting. This is serious.”
He laughed softly and leaned back in his chair. “Believe me, flirting is a serious business.” He sobered. “Fairbrother must have an inkling.”
Lord Neville strove to make Richard feel like an interloper. Richard had immediately recognized that the man protected his territory. The question was—what was his territory? Scholarly pursuits? The vicar? The vicar’s dangerously unsuspecting daughter? Or all three?
A cynical light entered Genevieve’s eyes. “Lord Neville’s interest is his collection, not scholarship for its own sake.”
An interesting opinion. And one that wouldn’t please his overbearing lordship, Richard thought with unworthy satisfaction. “You can’t hide in your father’s shadow forever.”
The tension drained from her shoulders and she answered with unexpected readiness. Perhaps the relief of sharing the truth with someone, even his unworthy self, encouraged confidences. “I’m publishing an article about the Harmsworth Jewel under my own name.”
Holy God above. No wonder she didn’t want to sell the artifact. He barely stopped himself choking with appalled astonishment.
He struggled to act as if this revelation incited only mild curiosity. “What?”
“That’s it.” She pointed at the enamel and gold object, as if he needed help locating it. “My findings should set the scholarly world abuzz. Or at least that section of the scholarly world interested in the Anglo-Saxons.” Her tone turned wry as she acknowledged that this esoteric field rarely impinged on the wider public.
She lifted the jewel, her hands sure, almost careless. His belly clenched with conflicting impulses. The urge to grab the girl. The urge to grab the jewel.
“A wonderful old lady bequeathed it to me. She was a disciple of Mary Wollstonecraft and until you, the only person to guess that I wrote most of Papa’s published works. It’s a family heirloom.”
Damn it, it certainly was. And not one that Amelia, Viscountess Bellfield, had any business handing on. Richard gritted his teeth against informing Genevieve that the jewel belonged to him.
“She must have been fond of you.” He hoped to hell his voice didn’t sound as strangled to Genevieve as in his ears. Patience, he reminded himself, patience. He’d get the jewel off her in good time.
“I loved her dearly too.” Genevieve’s admiration for Lady Bellfield was audible. “She was a noted bluestocking and owned an impressive collection of books and antiquities.”
“One would think she’d keep something so valuable in the family.”
“She’d had a falling out with the Harmsworths. She particularly disliked the current baronet. Some family scandal made him unfit to hold the title.”
Despite himself, Richard winced. The hell of it was that the disgrace never died. Call him a slow learner, but he now understood that it never would, whoever possessed the Harmsworth Jewel. Which made him no less determined to restore the trinket to Polliton Place, the family seat in Norfolk. It belonged to the head of the Harmsworth family. And, bastardy or no, that was him.
He’d always liked Great Aunt Amelia, for all her fearsome reputation. A shock to discover that because he was a bastard, she couldn’t abide him. Old anger tightened his gut. Anger and shame.
Luckily Genevieve studied the jewel, not his reactions. “That was a condition of inheriting. Under no circumstances was Lady Bellfield’s great-nephew Richard Harmsworth to obtain the jewel.”
God rot Great Aunt Amelia for an interfering old witch.
“I doubt the executors would prosecute if you sold it.” Richard tried to sound disingenuous. Genevieve cast him a questioning glance that indicated he’d failed. Hardly surprising. Genuine innocence had been a casualty of childhood bullying. “I imagine you’d get a good price.”
“Strange that you say that. A few months ago, Sir Richard discovered I had the jewel. He’s pestering me to sell.”
“At a bargain price?” He’d offered her a fortune. He waited to hear if any amount might change her mind. At least he now understood why his agents had failed. Part of him admired Genevieve’s loyalty to Aunt Amelia, while another part cursed this complication.
“Money seemed no object. Odd when Lady Bellfield indicated Sir Richard wasn’t interested in family history.”
Little do you know, sweetheart. “The jewel is very beautiful.”
“And reputedly powerful. There’s a myth that Alfred the Great presented it to a Harmsworth ancestor for foiling a Viking assassination. The jewel passed from Harmsworth father to son, confirming the heir’s right to inherit. Such tales abound in old families. That’s one fascinating element of my research.”
“Perhaps you should sell.” A critical light in his eyes, he surveyed the shabby room. “Think what you could do.”
She shrugged. “I owe Lady Bellfield better return for her generosity.”
Damn, why must Genevieve be such a stickler? “Did she forbid any sale?”
If there was a ban on disposing of the thing altogether, he’d have to steal it. Which meant he could never display it openly. With every moment, his quest became more tangled.
“It’s mine unconditionally, as long as I never sell to Richard Harmsworth or his heirs.” She paused. “I hope that my article creates opportunities for me. I’d only sell the jewel out of dire necessity.”
Relief flooded him. There was still a chance he could buy it. “Once your article comes out, people will know you wrote your father’s pieces.”
Irritation lit her gaze. “My father’s work has been devoted entirely to the high Middle Ages. He isn’t renowned as a Dark Ages specialist. Any similarities in style will be credited to my father being my teacher.”
Unable to resist any longer, he reached out. “May I see it?”
Her hand curled around the jewel as if she mistrusted his intentions. By heaven, nothing was wrong with the girl’s instincts. “It’s very fragile.”
“I’ll be careful.” He had more reason to respect the jewel than any man in England.
She sighed and he thought she might refuse. But after a hesitation, she passed it across.
The breath jammed in his throat and he lowered his eyes to conceal his possessive excitement. The gold was warm from her hands. What an intimate sensation, like touching her skin instead of inanimate metal. The jewel was unexpectedly heavy, as though it carried the weight of the centuries. Holding this heirloom left him surprisingly moved. Finally he claimed his right to the Harmsworth name.
He rose and stepped toward the window on mortifyingly shaky legs to inspect the piece in the light. And also to escape Genevieve’s all-encompassing stare. She mustn’t guess this moment’s significance.
The drawings he’d seen didn’t do the object justice. The jewel was about five inches long. A chased gold handle shaped like a dragon supported a gold oval containing an enamel image of a saint with large dark eyes like a child’s drawing. It was a thousand years old; beautiful, uncanny, unique. The blue and red enamels were as vivid, he was sure, as the day they were fired.
Here in Oxfordshire, he played at finding the past as fascinating as the present. But touching this tangible link to generations of Harmsworths, he sensed something of Genevieve’s passion for history. The need to guard this talisman was the most powerful emotion he’d ever felt. His hand closed around the relic. Every atom in his body revolted at the idea of relinquishing it.
He forced himself to look toward the woman, the woman he came to want almost as much as he wanted the jewel. “Shouldn’t you lock it away in a strongbox or a bank?”
Genevieve looked troubled. “I need it for my work.”
“The article is important enough to risk this priceless artifact?”
“My whole future depends on it.” For once he had no doubt that she revealed her soul. “If I establish an independent reputation, I can support myself as an antiquarian, doing everything that I currently do for my father. I’ve told you that I’ll never marry—a husband would constrain my pursuits—so I need an income.”
And, he guessed from what she didn’t say, a life away from the vicar.
Inconvenient it might be, but he couldn’t help admiring that she’d refused to sell the jewel to his agents. Ten thousand guineas would set her up in her own household for life. “Does Dr. Barrett know of your plans?”
Guilt shadowed her features. “I haven’t told him yet.”
“He won’t like the competition.”
She raised her head, a plea in her silvery eyes. “I want to present everything as a fait accompli.” She paused. “You must think me unnatural.”
He smiled and moved closer. “It’s time you claimed your due.”
“Thank you.” She flushed and glanced to where he clutched the jewel as though his life depended upon it. Right now, mad as it was, he thought his life did.
Genevieve continued. “I’m surprised the thief last week didn’t take the jewel. Aside from the historical interest, it’s solid gold. I’ve thought over and over about what he hoped to find. Anyone can tell there’s no money in the house, so why break in? The jewel is the most valuable item we have. Yet outside the family and Lady Amelia’s solicitors, the only person who suspects it’s here is Sir Richard Harmsworth. If Sir Richard sent the thief for the jewel, the fellow must have seen it. It was sitting on the desk as clear as day.”
“Perhaps he was blinded by your beauty.” Richard wasn’t entirely joking, even as he cursed her clever brain for narrowing blame for the burglary down to his real self.
She sent him a quelling glance. “He wasn’t much of a thief. We haven’t found anything missing.”
Bloody hell. What a stupid mistake. He should have lifted something worthless from downstairs. A burglar fleeing empty-handed aroused unwelcome curiosity. Too late now. “Would you rather he’d stripped the vicarage?”
“Don’t be absurd.” She sounded uncomfortable. Did she recall that thrilling moment when he’d held her close? It haunted his dreams.
He braced his shoulders. “Will you sell it to me? I’ll double Sir Richard’s offer.”
Silence crashed down. Even his heart seemed to stop beating. Shocked silvery gray eyes focused on him and the hands she laid on the desk closed into fists.
Her reply seemed to take forever. “It’s not for sale.”
His relief made no sense. He was here for the jewel. Buying the bauble after a few days counted as a major victory. Or at least it should.
He forced himself to continue negotiations. “You’d be welcome to keep it until you’ve finished your article.”
She already shook her head. “Thank you, but no.”
So the game played on. He tried to tell himself that he was disappointed. Even he didn’t believe that was true. It was a long time since he’d found a woman as intriguing as he found Genevieve Barrett. He wasn’t ready to abandon her.
Her eyes sharpened. “Can I have the jewel back, please?”
Surrendering the jewel felt like treason. In the transaction, his hand grazed hers. She jerked back as if his touch burned. Heat shuddered through him.
Her gaze leaped to meet his and he read renewed wariness in her eyes. “You offer more than the jewel is worth.” He shrugged and stared hard at her. “When I want something, I go to any length to get it.”
She paled. “You … scare me when you say such things.”
His eagerness threatened to send her fleeing in fright. If he wasn’t careful he’d lose both jewel and woman—it became increasingly inconvenient to remember that only a cad played fast and loose with a lady’s reputation.
He might be a bastard, but he wasn’t quite a cad. Or not yet.
“You mistake me. I merely found myself with a fancy to own a pretty thing.” Two pretty things, in fact. He adopted an innocent air as he stepped away from the desk to stretch ostentatiously. “I’m off for a ride before breakfast.”
“I trust you not to share anything we’ve discussed.” Unsurprisingly she regretted her confidences.
“You have my promise.” His carefree smile didn’t extinguish the doubt in her expression. “I’ll see you later, Miss Barrett.”
Beneath his nonchalance, his thoughts were troubled. Nor had he conquered the turbulent emotions that had stirred when he’d touched the jewel. After this morning, he knew more about the jewel and he knew more about Genevieve, but everything he’d learned fouled his path.
Chapter Six (#ulink_c7c1b854-ab90-5ed9-aa2c-d71d02acef2f)
As everyone sat in the parlor before dinner, Genevieve watched Mr. Evans from her place on the window seat as unwaveringly as she’d watch a cobra. He played some silly card game with her aunt, who would be his willing slave even without her unconcealed ambitions for marrying him to her niece.
Within ten minutes of his departure from her study this morning, Genevieve had realized her terrible mistake. Why, oh, why had she been so forthcoming? She didn’t trust Mr. Evans. She hadn’t trusted him from the moment she’d seen his too-handsome face. Now he knew her authorship and her hopes for the future. Her recklessness placed her firmly within his power. Would he use his knowledge against her?
Years of thankless devotion to her father had taught her that the last thing she wanted was to subject herself to another man’s will. That was why she’d never marry—she longed to use her talents for her own purposes. Any husband would expect her to accept the helpmeet role she’d adopted too long with her selfish parent. Mr. Evans guessing her authorship wasn’t quite as onerous as submitting to a husband, but he still might try to influence her choices. Now that freedom beckoned, she could hardly bear that.
The vicar and Lord Neville swapped opinions over a table covered in folios. New acquisitions of his lordship’s, Genevieve supposed. She should be grateful that he shared his collection with the Barretts. But her charity with her father’s patron was in short supply. Since Mr. Evans’s arrival, Lord Neville had become a ubiquitous presence, like a grumpy rhinoceros guarding his territory. If she wasn’t tripping over one gentleman, she tripped over the other. She wished them both to perdition.
It had been a difficult week. She’d only just come to terms with facing down her charming but inexplicably inefficient burglar. She supposed she should be grateful that Mr. Evans’s arrival at least provided distraction. No longer did she jump at shadows. Instead she jumped at the sound of one particular baritone voice.
Mr. Evans glanced across to where she caught the evening light for her needlework. Behind her, the window was open in hope of attracting a stray drift of air. September had turned abnormally sultry and the parlor was stuffy. Or perhaps the crowded room was at fault. Her aunt, her father, Lord Neville, Mr. Evans. Not to mention Sirius and Hecuba.
Irritated with the heat, Genevieve brushed back stray tendrils escaping her chignon. Mr. Evans continued to stare. Did his gaze hold a conspiratorial light? Or was that her guilty conscience speaking? The secret of her father’s work wasn’t hers alone. She’d had no right revealing it to a stranger.
When the vicar had invited fifteen-year-old Genevieve to collate some notes on local churches into an article, she’d leaped at the chance. Any adolescent girl with pretensions to intellectual achievement would find such a request flattering. Especially motherless Genevieve Barrett who craved her father’s attention. Even more exciting when the piece she wrote appeared in a journal.
So the deception had continued and thickened until Genevieve’s work shored up the vicar’s fame and any suggestion that he share credit made him sulk like a child. Her resentment had curdled over the last year, as she realized that her father was content for this arrangement to last indefinitely.
Then Lady Bellfield had bequeathed her the Harmsworth Jewel and her research had uncovered interesting and potentially explosive facts about the object. The chance of independence from her father had finally become a reality and she meant to seize it with both hands. When she’d told the interfering Mr. Evans that her whole future depended on the Harmsworth Jewel, she hadn’t exaggerated.
But ruthless as she strove to be, that lost young girl still lurked in her heart. Even now when she was so angry that she could strangle her father with his clergy stole, she still loved him. She didn’t want to destroy his reputation, however unjustified it was. She just wanted to claim her work and use it as the basis for a life of her own.
How on earth had Mr. Evans recognized her authorship so quickly? A sharp brain lurked behind those languid manners, but nobody would call her father’s latest pupil an academic specialist. A premonition of disaster shivered through her—and Mr. Evans already made her as wary as a fox in hunting season.
Again she uselessly berated herself for succumbing this morning to guileless blue eyes and a ready smile and a voice that made her blood flow like warm honey. Mr. Evans had everyone dancing to his tune. Why was she the only person in this house to see that?
She stabbed her needle into her embroidery with a savagery that threatened to burst her bloated peonies. Neither her aunt nor her father heeded her suggestions that Mr. Evans should move back into Leighton Court. When Genevieve had insisted that she didn’t trust the way Mr. Evans infiltrated their life, both had said she was unreasonable. Her aunt had gone so far as to accuse her of jealousy now that Mr. Evans monopolized the vicar’s attentions. How ironic to hear that when Genevieve worked so hard to break free of her father.
“Your elephant grows apace, Miss Barrett.” Mr. Evans abandoned his card game and crossed the room to stand beside her, regarding her woeful embroidery with a quizzical expression. Sirius trotted after him to sit at his master’s feet. She liked Sirius. Genevieve wished the dog’s master was nearly as easy to stomach.
“You know very well it’s a peony garden, Mr. Evans,” she said frostily. After this morning, she’d prefer he kept a greater distance, physically and otherwise.
Her chill tone attracted her aunt’s notice, but no rebuke. Perhaps Aunt Lucy finally saw that her matchmaking was futile.
Mr. Evans remained unabashed. Of course. “That explains the pink. I thought perhaps the elephant was embarrassed.”
“You have no manners, sir,” she bit out, and bent over her embroidery frame, but not before she caught the unholy amusement in his eyes. He was a strikingly good-looking man, but when laughter lit his face, he was irresistible. Even she, who mistrusted everything about him, felt her heart beat faster.
“Sincerest regrets, dear lady.”
She knew he wasn’t sorry, so she didn’t grace his apology with acknowledgement. Furiously she stitched at the central flower which, now she checked, did rather resemble a pregnant elephant. A blushing pregnant elephant, curse Mr. Evans.
Despite lack of encouragement, Mr. Evans showed no signs of leaving. He sat without invitation—he was smart enough to know no invitation would be forthcoming. “Clearly my eyesight fails.”
He was dressed plainly, but even a country mouse like her noted his superb tailoring. He always made Genevieve feel a frump. Last night, she’d caught herself gussying up her yellow muslin with her mother’s silver brooch. She pinned it to her bosom before realizing what she did. With an unladylike imprecation, she’d flung the brooch onto her dressing table.
“Clearly.” She refused to give him the satisfaction of shifting away. Unfortunately, that meant remaining too near his long, lean leg, encased in fawn breeches, extended inches from hers. His boots were so shiny, she could see her face in them. How on earth was he turned out so beautifully without a valet?
Absently, Mr. Evans fondled Sirius’s head with one elegant hand. Yet again, she wondered at the contrast between the man’s sartorial perfection and the scruffy dog. Before she reminded herself that curiosity only inflated Mr. Evans’s pretensions, she spoke. “Your pet doesn’t befit your dignity, Mr. Evans.”
She caught his quick frown and for a moment, he wasn’t the impossibly polished man she feared, but someone considerably more intriguing. Then the expression vanished and he was once again someone whose motives she suspected to her last atom. “On the contrary, Miss Barrett. He’s far too good for a rapscallion like me.”
That she could believe. “I picture you more with a greyhound or a pug.”
His low laugh vibrated along her veins like a distant storm. She didn’t want to be aware of him as a male, but it became increasingly difficult to pretend that some deeply feminine and hitherto unrecognized element in her liked Mr. Evans very much indeed.
“A … pug? A hit. A palpable hit, madam. You seek revenge for the elephant, I see.”
“A dog with a pedigree, at least.”
At the mention of pedigree, a haunted expression darkened his eyes. She couldn’t imagine why. He reeked of good breeding. “Pedigrees are overrated.”
She frowned. Something stirred below this prickly, half-flirtatious conversation. Why did he clam up at the mention of pedigree? “How did you become Sirius’s master?”
He smiled more naturally, confirming her instincts that discussions of bloodlines discomfited him. “I’m not sure I’m his master. His colleague, perhaps. He’s been with me for three years. He turned up not far from my estate and seemed of a mind to stay. I’m glad. He’s deuced good company. And far too clever for the likes of me.”
Against her better judgment, Genevieve’s hostility ebbed. It was hard to maintain virulent dislike for a man so openly fond of his dog. She reminded herself that Mr. Evans’s kindness to animals didn’t make him one iota more trustworthy. For once, the warning didn’t strike true.
He glanced up from patting Sirius to stare into her face, catching her brief softening. Without her usual defenses, her heart stuttered to a standstill. Her entire body vibrated to his presence. Speech deserted her. She could only look. And admire. Never before had she been so aware of a man’s beauty. The perfect planes of his face, the glittering dark blue eyes, the long, powerful body—all melted resistance. Mr. Evans was a dangerously beguiling man. Particularly dangerous if he drew this response despite her inchoate suspicions.
His gaze sharpened. “What is it, Miss Barrett?”
“I—”
With a sharp crack, her embroidery frame snapped in two. He frowned and reached for her hand. “Genevieve—”
Dear Lord, she couldn’t let him touch her. Not when she was so on edge. Even as she cursed her betraying reaction, she jerked away before he made contact.
Her aunt chose that moment to rise and lift Hecuba from her snooze near the empty hearth. The hallway clock struck six. “Perhaps we should move through to the dining room.”
Only the greatest exercise of will stopped Genevieve from bolting for the door. Anything to escape Mr. Evans and that terrifying interval where attraction had turned her into a lunatic.
Pride straightened her spine and insisted that she had nothing to fear. Then she risked a backward glance. Mr. Evans lounged on the window seat and his expression as he watched her tied her stomach into sick knots. She’d expected her erratic behavior to bewilder him. But he didn’t look surprised. He looked like a man who eyed a prize for the winning. He looked like a man who put some great purpose into effect. He looked invincible.
Another chill rippled down her spine and she tore her gaze away. She revolted at the possessiveness that she read in his face. Even as unforgivably, unacceptably, excitement coiled low in her belly, reminding her that she might be a scholar, but she was also a woman. And the woman responded to Christopher Evans in ways that had no truck with intellect.
Slowly, his heavy eyelids lowered, hiding triumph. Her lips tightened and she whirled away to find Lord Neville regarding her with unmistakable disapproval. Her color rose and shame gripped her throat. As though she’d been caught dancing naked in a tavern or kissing a married man in church. For the love of heaven, was her every move under observation?
On a spurt of temper, she marched through to the hallway. Lord Neville followed. When he took her arm, sensitive as she currently was to overbearing males, she resented his proprietorial air. She tried to withdraw, but his grip tightened. Shocked, she looked up. The parlor door had swung shut, closing Mr. Evans and Sirius inside. Ahead past the stairs, the light from the dining room hardly penetrated this dark corner. For a fleeting moment, Lord Neville’s expression struck her as menacing.
What a fanciful idiot she was. Clearly she still wasn’t as easy with last week’s burglary as she’d hoped. Although perhaps she should blame Mr. Evans rather than the thief for her nerves. She’d known Lord Neville most of her life. He wasn’t her favorite person, but he had never hurt her. Nonetheless, she dearly wished he’d unhand her. And stop looming. She forgot what a substantial figure he made until he stood close.
“I can’t like that young fellow,” he said in a low voice. “He has an insinuating way about him.”
“Papa likes him.” She wondered why she didn’t join Lord Neville in deriding Mr. Evans.
His lordship’s smile was sour. “Your father is one of nature’s innocents. And Mr. Evans flatters him.”
This was nothing she hadn’t thought herself, but still she found herself reluctant to agree. “I doubt that Mr. Evans means any harm.”
What a lie that was. With Mr. Evans, she wasn’t sure of very much at all, apart from his ability to turn her into a nitwit.
“But we don’t know, do we?” Lord Neville’s fleshy lips turned down. “He has no right to use your Christian name.”
Her color rose. Hopefully the shadows concealed her embarrassment. “It was only once—”
“He offers you insult. And he has the run of the house.”
Annoyance made her draw herself up to her full height. This time when she tugged, he released her.
“Do you imply there’s something between Mr. Evans and myself?” Her voice was so cold, icicles practically hung from every word.
Even in the gloom, she read Lord Neville’s dismay at her reaction to his well-meant if inopportune advice. “Genevieve, you’re a woman of unimpeachable virtue. I lay no blame at your door. Any wrongdoing is entirely the gentleman’s fault.”
The apology didn’t mollify. “My lord, none of this is your business.”
Now she’d offended him. “A man of principle must speak when he sees a woman he … respects at risk of making a fool of herself.”
His concern struck her as overweening. After all, he was a colleague of her father’s, not a member of the family. “Lord Neville—”
Luckily for her relationship with her father’s patron, the door opened and Mr. Evans emerged with Sirius at his heels. The parlor faced west, so it was purely a matter of geography that the setting sun lit him like a saint in a painting.
She had no idea what Mr. Evans saw, but he went still and his tall body radiated danger. Sirius stood alert at his master’s thigh.
“Miss Barrett, are you all right?” he asked softly. With his back to the light, she couldn’t read his expression. His voice was steady and he sounded protective. Or he would if she trusted his sincerity. Even so, she battled a traitorous surge of warmth.
Lord Neville lurched around. “You interrupt a private conversation, sir.”
Did she imagine it or did Mr. Evans deliberately relax back into his easygoing self? “I go through to dinner, my lord.”
No love was lost between them. But tonight for the first time she wondered if mutual antipathy might verge on something stronger. Something approaching loathing. She’d always considered Lord Neville a dominating character. But it was the older man who shifted on his feet and turned to stump into the dining room.
“I take it he warned you against me.” Mr. Evans stepped into the hallway, clever enough not to crowd her. Right now she thought she’d clout the next man who tried to intimidate her with his physical size.
Genevieve glared at her rescuer, fleeting gratitude evaporating. “Shouldn’t he?”
She waited for Mr. Evans to claim ignorance of her meaning, but she misjudged him. He leaned close enough for her to see his half smile in the gloom. “Do I make you nervous, Miss Barrett?”
With a flick of her skirts, she turned and headed for the dining room. “Not at all, sir.”
She waited for him to challenge an assertion that they both knew was untrue. He merely gestured her ahead with the smooth dispatch that both attracted and frightened her.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_f8fe0708-7e06-58db-be79-d70db1a9da1f)
Richard woke with a start. Lying motionless in his monastic bed, he tried to work out what had disturbed him. Everything was silent. Moonlight flooded through his open window. The night was stifling and he slept naked, although his clothes were conveniently to hand across the Windsor chair. His door remained open a crack for air.
Sirius stretched out under the sill, his brindled coat lost in the shadows. His great dark eyes glinted. Something had alerted the dog too.
Richard heard a door squeak down the corridor, then a surreptitious rustle as someone tiptoed toward the stairs. The rumble of the vicar’s snoring next door, audible even through the thick wall, indicated that the old man slumbered. Dorcas slept in the attics. Which meant the nocturnal wanderer was Mrs. Warren. Or most intriguing of all, Genevieve.
Carefully so the bed didn’t creak, Richard sat and reached for breeches and shirt. In this heat, even such light clothing felt constricting. As he tugged his boots on, he heard the snick of the kitchen door. Whoever left was as light-footed as a sylph.
He stood at the window. Below, someone wrapped in a dark cloak slipped through the back garden, plotting a deft path between cabbages and lettuces. The figure was anonymous, but he knew that swift grace to his bones. It didn’t belong to middle-aged Lucy Warren.
No, another quarry roamed the Oxfordshire countryside this quiet night.
He traced Genevieve’s progress toward the stables. If she glanced up, she’d see him. But she remained intent upon her errand, whatever it was. The nearly full moon lit her way.
So where did the enchanting Miss Barrett go?
Did she meet a lover? The thought pierced his gut like a saber. He’d never encountered a female so unaware of herself as a woman. Her unworldliness compounded the challenge, along with her intelligence and determination to dislike him no matter how he tried to charm her. He respected Genevieve’s resistance. Although tonight in the parlor, for one blazing instant, attraction had spiraled unchecked between them. Now he faced the unpleasant possibility that his charm failed because her interest was engaged elsewhere.
Devil take that.
Within moments, he’d followed her from the house. At his side, Sirius padded soundless as a ghost.
Gingerly Richard opened the back gate, then realized he wasted his care. She was no longer in sight. It should be cooler outside, but the air was as still and heavy as a damp blanket. With an impatient gesture, he brushed his hair back from his forehead and bent to whisper in Sirius’s ear. “Find her. Find Genevieve.”
Sirius trotted toward the high brick wall separating the stables from the adjoining Leighton Estate. Feathery tail idly waving, he slipped through the rusty gate that sagged from its hinges. Feeling like he trespassed upon a fairy-tale realm, Richard pushed past the wildflowers tangled around the gate’s base.
Sirius waited on a path leading into the woods. Once his master followed, he loped ahead. Under the trees, progress was more difficult. Richard picked his way forward, keeping an eye on Sirius. Luckily the trail was well trodden, indicating someone—Genevieve?—used it regularly.
It was cooler too. Fresh scents surrounded him. Leaf litter. Green foliage. Sirius’s confident progress indicated that Genevieve was still ahead.
Unless, damn it, Sirius chased a rabbit.
The path ended so abruptly that Richard nearly tumbled into the clearing. Cursing his conspicuous white shirt, he slipped under an oak’s shadow. He sucked in a breath, heart racing. Then another deeper breath as stabbing relief weakened his knees.
She wasn’t meeting a lover. She’d wanted a swim.
As she stroked across the water, each ripple caught the moonlight, turning the pool to silver. No man with an ounce of poetry in his soul could fail to relish this scene.
Richard didn’t know how long he stood, astonished and entranced. Something about her ease indicated she’d done this frequently, probably since she was a girl. She didn’t check nervously for intruders, although surely that was a risk. But who would be about at such an hour? No poacher with his head screwed on right chanced his luck on one of Sedgemoor’s estates.
Without conscious thought, Richard circled the pond, keeping to the dark, seeking to see without being seen. When he stumbled over a bundle under a rowan bush, he smiled with wolfish anticipation.
Reluctantly Genevieve swam toward the bank. The secluded pool in Sedgemoor’s woods had worked its magic once again. She felt better. More like the woman she’d been before the break-in and everything turning topsy-turvy.
Soon after she and her father had arrived in Little Derrick, she’d started coming here in secret. She’d been a bewildered ten-year-old, mourning her beloved mother, coping with unfamiliar surroundings and unfamiliar people, not least an aunt she barely knew. In the fifteen years since, she’d never met another soul during her midnight swims. Sometimes she thought she was the only person on earth to know of the pond’s existence.
Tonight she’d desperately needed the pool’s tranquility. The week’s events had troubled her soul. And fear of encountering Mr. Evans, not to mention memories of the aborted robbery, had confined her to her room every night since he’d moved in. In this oppressive heat, she’d stretched out on her bed, chasing a thousand useless thoughts around her head. She could have worked, but what she’d longed for was freedom.
She’d stayed out longer than intended, but she couldn’t bear to leave the silky water. She found her footing and waded to the bank where she’d left her clothes and towel.
Something rustled in the undergrowth and she stopped, alert. Suddenly her recklessness in coming here while a thief prowled the neighborhood made her stomach cramp with disquiet. Just because there had been no trouble for over a week didn’t make it safe to roam the woods like a gypsy.
“Who’s there?” She cursed the quaver in her voice.
She edged toward her clothes, wondering if fleeing into the trees would be a wiser move. But she couldn’t stay outside naked until dawn. Another rustle set her heart banging like a trip-hammer. If only she’d brought her pistol, but it was safely locked in her desk along with the Harmsworth Jewel.
Frantically her eyes scoured the darkness, but shadows defeated her. Moonlit in the clearing, she was completely vulnerable.
An animal ventured out to stand a few feet away. She was in such a state that she needed a few seconds to recognize Sirius’s shaggy outlines. Relief made her legs feel likely to collapse.
“You scared me, you silly hound.” She stepped forward to collect her clothes with renewed confidence. “How did you escape your infernal master?”
She’d developed a healthy respect for Sirius’s intelligence. If he’d answered, she wouldn’t be altogether surprised. On such a night, animals could talk and frogs might turn into princes.
Fumbling after her towel, she found only her gown. Puzzled, she kneeled, patting around the area. She raised her head. “Have you eaten my towel, Sirius? If you have, I’ll sic Hecuba onto you.”
“Don’t blame Sirius,” a familiar voice murmured from behind.
As she stiffened into horrified stillness, her towel dropped around her naked shoulders.
“Dear God …” Genevieve breathed, frightened, humiliated, and furious. With herself and with the vile Mr. Evans. She stumbled upright on trembling legs and whipped the linen strip around her body. Too little, too late, she acknowledged with a sick twisting in her belly. She whirled around in outrage. “H … how long have you been there?”
From a few feet away, he stood watching. Tall. Lean. Outwardly relaxed. But that didn’t fool her. He was on the hunt and they both knew it. “Long enough.”
Mr. Evans’s calm response didn’t quiet her panic. “You had no right—”
“Of course I had no right. But I defy any man with blood in his veins to abandon you to the moonlight, Miss Barrett.”
She was such a fool. The worst of it, even as shame strangled her, was that he’d destroyed her sanctuary. Whether she never saw another person here, she couldn’t feel safe again. He’d stolen this source of happiness as blatantly as her father stole her work. At this moment, she loathed Mr. Evans.
She chanced a quick glance at his face, his smug expression clear in the bright moonlight. She bit her lip as fury overwhelmed embarrassment. No man had ever seen her naked. This felt like a violation. “You’re no gentleman, sir!”
“Come, Miss Barrett, you can do better than that.” His laugh played a chromatic scale up and down her spine. “A woman with your vocabulary can summon an archaic insult or two.”
“Well, you’re a filthy sneak. Is that better?”
“Much.”
Genevieve’s hands tightened on her inadequate covering as she backed toward her dress. Bored with the conversation, Sirius trotted into the shadows. “This is such a joke to you, isn’t it?” she snarled, fighting tears. “I’ll thank you to go now.”
“Surely the damage is done.”
Carefully she bent, then straightened, her gown dangling from her shaking hand. “Ha ha. So amusing.”
Her temper slid off him like the water trickling down her bare back. She shivered. As she stood dripping with the pond behind her, a wicked little breeze flirted around her.
“This sneak’s reward was a beautiful naked woman.”
Her cheeks threatened to combust. Self-righteousness was difficult to maintain when one only wore a flimsy towel. She struggled for control, even as the need surged to scratch and kick at him until he was bruised and bloody. “Please leave, Mr. Evans.”
“Wild horses couldn’t tear me away, Miss Barrett.” He stepped closer. “Given how our acquaintance has advanced this evening, can’t you bring yourself to call me Christopher?”
“I can bring myself to call you a self-serving rat,” she said coldly. He remained a few feet away, but that seemed too close. She retreated another unsteady pace, the grass scratching her bare feet.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“I can’t dress with you here.”
Moonlight silvered his features into beguiling black and white. “I could promise not to look.”
“You could demonstrate some honor and go.” She struggled to sound defiant. This was the most mortifying thing that had ever happened to her. And she had nobody to blame for this catastrophe but herself. How could she have been so foolhardy as to chance a swim when she knew Mr. Evans watched her like a buzzard watched a field mouse?
“Or I could just turn my back.” He suited actions to words.
For a fraught moment, she stared at him. She couldn’t trust him, but nor could she stand here covered in a strip of linen. She let the sodden towel drop and hurriedly tugged her old muslin dress over her head, fastening it with shaking hands.
“Can I turn around?”
“Yes,” she said sullenly, although she was angrier at herself than him. He’d only followed the dictates of his rodent nature. She should have known better than to come here.
“Do you feel better?” he asked neutrally, although the way his gaze ran over her body made her feel naked again. She resisted the urge to shield herself with her hands.
“Why did you follow me?” Although the answer was no mystery. He’d flirted with her from the first. Even without her flaunting herself, he’d leap at any chance to get her alone.
“I thought you met a lover.” The edge in his statement made her frown in consternation.
“I don’t have a lover,” she said quickly, before remembering that her swains weren’t Mr. Evans’s concern.
He arched one eyebrow in a fashion that made her shiver. Not with cold. “I could fill the position.”
This time she didn’t bother to conceal her retreat. “If my father knew you pestered me—”
“Do you intend to tell him?” he asked, as if her answer was of purely casual interest.
“Yes.” Although how could she? Anyone would say she’d asked for trouble by being out here. Anyone would be right.
Something dangerous flashed in Mr. Evans’s eyes. The breath caught in her throat and she chanced another step back, only to slosh into the pond. The shock of cool water around her ankles made her gasp. She stumbled as her bare toes sank into the mud. Mr. Evans moved swiftly to catch her arm and save her from a spill.
“Careful.” He spoke softly. She realized that he always did. Uncanny how much power that quiet voice exerted.
“Let me go.” She hated her breathlessness. She hated the easy confidence of his hold—and its radiating heat. She hated the way her nipples tightened painfully against her bodice. Fumbling, she raised her skirts above the water. She tried to wrench free, but his grip remained adamant.
“Seeing I’m to be hanged anyway, it may as well be for a sheep as a lamb,” he said thoughtfully.
Her belly dipped with dread and her knees wobbled. “What … what do you mean?”
He always watched her, but this time his gaze felt different. This felt like he placed his mark on her, claimed her in some atavistic way. “I want to kiss you.”
“You can’t.” Although if it cost only a few kisses to escape this disaster, she should be grateful.
“Indeed I can,” he said with one of those flashing smiles that always set her heart pounding. This time, her heart already pounded nineteen to the dozen. With fear, she told herself staunchly. Definitely not with anticipation.
“I … I won’t let you.”
Another laugh. Warm and lazily amused. He lifted his hand and stepped back. “Then by all means, return to the vicarage.”
She frowned, not leaving the water. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Then I wish you good night, Mr. Evans,” she said crisply, still not trusting him but desperate to escape.
Ignoring his proffered hand, she splashed out of the pond. She’d emerge unscathed from this encounter. Which was more than she deserved. Keeping a careful eye on him, she edged toward the trees, her sopping hem slapping her ankles.
She’d almost reached the woods before he spoke. “Such a pity.”
Trembling, she turned. Moonlight transformed him into a statue of silver and ebony. She’d survived twenty-five years happily oblivious to masculine splendor, but something about Mr. Evans made her heart skip a beat. Then another. He might be rotten to the core, but he was disgustingly picturesque.
A bristling silence built and her skin tightened with longing that she refused to examine. Safety beckoned. Still she poised in the shadows. Night scents filled her nostrils, strangely seductive.
Eventually curiosity won out. “What’s a pity?”
He tilted his hip, standing with a loose-limbed elegance that made her pulses race. “That you’re such a coward, my dear.”
“I’m not your dear,” she said automatically.
“I suggest a little harmless flirtation and you retreat to your books and dry old men. For shame, Miss Barrett. I thought better of you.”
He’s taunting you. He just wants you back within pouncing distance. Go while you can.
“I have no intention of being ruined,” she said coldly, while a sensation as far removed from cold as possible rushed through her veins.
“You have my word that I’ll stop at kisses.” He considered her thoughtfully. “Have you been kissed?”
Dear Lord. She felt giddy as forbidden images flooded her traitorous mind. “Mr. Evans, I’m twenty-five years old. It would be very sad if I haven’t.”
She’d hesitated too long. His features sharpened and his stare burned. Heaven help her, he guessed her embarrassing lack of experience. Although the lack only seemed an embarrassment in his company. Her flimsy dress felt invisible. From now until the end of time, she could never forget that he’d seen her as no other man ever had.
She waited for some derisive comment. But he merely nodded once as though confirming a theory. “Ah.”
God above, what did that mean?
Run. Run.
“Men have wanted to kiss me,” she said defensively, moving from one foot to the other but unable to convince those feet to remove her from this discomfiting conversation.
“I’m sure,” he said softly.
She expected mockery but detected none. “I haven’t wanted to kiss them.”
“That may change once you discover how good a kiss can be.”
“With you?” She wanted to sound sarcastic, but the words emerged as barely contained curiosity.
He shrugged, looking irritatingly at ease with himself as he folded his arms across his powerful chest. “Why not? I profess some skill and you’re quite safe.”
“Said the spider to the fly.”
She shifted restlessly, only stopping when she noticed his close attention. His expression indicated that he knew more than she did. Of course he knew more than she did. He was a rake and she was a scholarly spinster who had never been kissed.
Which suddenly seemed cause for regret.
His voice deepened to velvet enticement. “Doesn’t some part of you long for a man to touch you in desire?”
His voice possessed magic. That soft drawl made her think of all the wonderful, unprecedented things he’d do to her if she let him. She might be inexperienced, but some instinct insisted that when he claimed to be a skillful kisser, he wasn’t boasting.
Goodness, likely he could fling her to heaven and back without trying. It was both exciting and terrifying. She began to wish she’d encouraged those callow young men who had shown an interest in the vicar’s intimidating daughter. Mr. Evans had never found her intimidating. She suspected that Mr. Evans found very little intimidating.
She prepared to tell this encroaching charmer to leave her alone. Instead different words emerged. “This is purely an intellectual exercise. I’m not attracted to you.”
His lips quirked. “Understood.”
She stepped into the moonlight. In her loose, light frock with nothing beneath it, she must look completely brazen. Part of her howled protest at her intentions. But fascination and, yes, unwilling attraction kept her here.
After a couple of attempts to clear her throat, her voice emerged with gratifying firmness. “Show me.”
Chapter Eight (#ulink_2d7b8323-cd42-5544-8b46-7dbcef33762c)
God forgive him, he was such a devil. Richard played games with Genevieve, games he knew he’d win. An appeal to her curiosity never failed.
A gentleman would let her go on her way unmolested. A gentleman wouldn’t spy on her in the first place.
As she’d pointed out, he was no gentleman.
Nor was he blind. He counted himself a jaded fellow, accustomed to female beauty. But Genevieve rising from rippling water clad only in moonlight set his heart leaping like a landed trout. She was the most glorious thing he’d ever seen. He couldn’t relinquish this astonishing chance to explore the awareness simmering between them.
Even more astonishing, nobody had ever kissed this incomparable woman. In the name of all that was holy, what ailed the men of Oxfordshire? Did none of them have enough backbone to take her on and turn all that spirit to their service?
Richard Harmsworth was up to the challenge.
He’d have found the double entendre more amusing if he wasn’t aching with need. The memory of her nakedness would haunt him forever. Closing his eyes, he saw every glistening curve, the full breasts, the graceful dip of waist. The long, long legs. Legs that would bend around his back when he plunged into her.
Except that she was a virgin. And a vicar’s daughter. And after he left, she’d have to weather any talk in the village. She wasn’t one of his London lightskirts. He needed to remember that. Difficult when desire thundered through him like a herd of runaway horses.
“Are you quite well, Mr. Evans?” she asked.
He struggled to banish the image of his body thrusting into hers. Intensity would frighten her. He needed to be charming, superficial. Why was it so difficult? He’d spent his life playing a lazy, even-tempered man who cared for little, least of all society’s disdain of his bastardy.
He spoke with unconvincing lightness. “Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“You groaned.” Her tone was dry. “I wondered if perhaps you’d eaten something that disagreed with you.”
Celibacy disagreed with him. Especially when he pursued an alluring, sharp-tongued hussy. The night was so still that he heard the soft pad of her feet as she approached. He fought the urge to seize her. Control, man. Control.
“Genevieve, you are beyond lovely.” Admiration roughened his voice.
The downward flicker of her lashes betrayed a bashfulness that touched him as much as her defiance. “It’s a very old dress.”
That doyen of fashion Sir Richard Harmsworth should scorn the drab garment, but Genevieve’s beauty transformed the worn muslin. He held out a hand, unsurprised to note that it wasn’t steady. A distant warning clanged in his brain that with this woman he risked the detachment that protected him from emotion. But how could he heed caution’s call with her standing so close?
“Come here,” he murmured, taking her hand. Her skin was cool from her swim. Slowly he drew her nearer.
Hesitantly she advanced. Her shyness quieted the rapacious beast inside him, so gentleness came naturally when he slid his hand around her waist. Her innocence seemed precious and fragile. As precious and fragile as the Harmsworth Jewel. His heavily armored heart cramped with poignant longing and his grip turned coaxing, soft. Touch confirmed what sight had hinted. She wore nothing beneath the flimsy muslin.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/anna-campbell/a-rake-s-midnight-kiss/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.