by Mia Marlowe
He needed something from her and her body wept to give it to him. Emma heard herself moan, and she began kissing him back with a fierceness that surprised her. She nipped at his lower lip. She suckled his tongue.
Good heavens! I’m kissing a man I dare not call by his Christian name. Why, I don’t even know his proper name, in point of fact!
The realization shamed her, but did nothing to quench the sense of longing.
Lord Devonwood ground his body against hers till her back pressed the uneven spines of the books. His hard maleness rocked against her belly. Even through the layers of her skirt and crinoline, the contact was both alarming and arousing. Moist warmth pooled between her thighs.
Emmaline broke off the kiss and wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling a little like a drowning victim trying to climb atop her rescuer.
Or was Lord Devonwood the undertow trying to drag her down?
His long fingers found the buttons marching down the front of her bodice. Her nipples perked to hard awareness.
And so did her reason.
He was trying to ruin her. He intended to drive a wedge between her and Theodore. Worse, he’d ruin the scheme she and Monty were running. They’d be out on the street with Monty’s hacking cough growing worse every day before she could say Titus Andronicus three times fast.
She pressed against his chest, but he didn’t release her. She tried to speak into his mouth, but even to her own ears, her vocalizations sounded more like passionate babble than protestations.
Finally Emmaline did the only thing she could think of. She brought up her knee into Lord Devonwood’s groin as sharply as her skirts allowed.
Pain exploded in his ballocks, followed by debilitating nausea. Devon released her with an oath and bent double, clutching his belly. She tried to dart away, but he grasped her forearm before she could escape.
“Why did you do that?” he said between gasps.
“Why did you kiss me?” she returned tartly.
“Damned if I know.” It had seemed the right thing to do at the time. If he exposed Miss Farnsworth as a lightskirt who’d submit to anyone’s caress, Theodore might be furious at first, but in time he’d come to thank Devon for saving him from a life-altering mistake.
How could he have suspected she’d try to unman him for daring to kiss her and prove him wrong, destroying his plan utterly?
Along with his balls.
“You’re hurting my arm, milord.” Her voice quavered. She wasn’t nearly as calm as she pretended to be. “Of course, since you made advances to me, it’s obvious you don’t mind wounding your brother. I suppose it’s of little consequence to you if you injure me.”
“I’ve never hurt a woman in my life.” He released his grip and, to her credit, she didn’t bolt. Devon forced himself upright, swallowing back the aching misery between his legs. Surprisingly enough, his headache was gone, but he’d willingly wish it back for the off-chance that he’d still be able to father children someday. He stifled a groan. “Let me assure you, Miss Farnsworth, you’re in far less danger from me than I obviously am from you.”
“But you kissed me.”
“And you liked it.”
Her mouth opened and closed a few times as she tried several retorts on her tongue and discarded them unspoken. Finally one corner of her mouth turned up. “Yes, I suppose I did.”
“You have an odd way of showing it.” Devon winced as another twinge of discomfort coursed through his groin. At least she was honest. A woman who could admit to enjoying physical pleasure was an oddity in a land where brides were admonished to grip the bed frame securely on their wedding night and “think of England.”
“I apologize for having discomfited you,” she said. “But you surprised me, milord.”
“The feeling is mutual.” Few men had ever blindsided him so. Certainly no woman.
“However, we ought not wonder at the fact that we enjoyed the kiss,” she said. “You’re a man and I’m a woman. It’s human nature to take pleasure in such things.”
“Indeed.” Amazingly enough, his traitorous cock stiffened at her words despite his still aching balls.
“However, it is of no significance. While we humans share animal passions, unlike lower creatures, we do not have to be governed by them,” she said, careful to keep beyond his reach. Her breathing was shallow and hitched uncertainly at times. “As soon as I collected my wits, I realized that however much I enjoyed your kiss, it was wrong, in the worst possible way. And it had to be stopped.”
“Also in the worst possible way,” he grumbled.
She crossed her arms over her chest. He knew she was continuing to talk because her lips moved and he heard the flatly accented sound of her Yankee voice, but no meaning registered in his brain.
Devon was distracted by the top two buttons of her bodice. They were still unhooked and the white expanse of her throat beckoned so loudly that her words faded to unintelligible noise. Despite everything, Devon’s mouth watered to suckle that tender skin, to make her cry out his name, to make her ache so that she wouldn’t fight him, wouldn’t order him to stop. Instead she’d beg him not to . . .
“. . . and so it makes no sense whatever to burden Theodore with this,” she was saying.
He refocused on her words in time to realize she wasn’t going to tell his brother that he’d kissed her. He had to admit that was damned decent. The true account would only make Devon look like a scoundrel for trying to encroach on his brother’s would-be fiancée.
“From the time we passed Gibraltar, all I heard from Theodore was how wonderful his brother Devon was and how he couldn’t wait to see you again,” she said. “It would devastate him to hear of this.”
“Agreed,” Devon said, shoving his hands into his pockets to disguise his semi-roused state. “Of course, you realize why I kissed you, don’t you?”
“I don’t believe that reason has changed much since our first parents were driven from Eden.”
He shook his head. “The only reason I kissed you was to test your regard for my brother.”
Her mouth formed a silent “oh.” The skin of her neck flushed to the peachy color of the tea roses in his garden. Then the blush rushed upward to paint her cheeks with a most beguiling stain.
“It didn’t feel like a test,” she said, one hand straying to stroke her kiss-swollen bottom lip.
The simple gesture rendered Devon rock hard again. He looked away. “Well, it was.”
“Then since I rejected your advances, I assume I passed,” she said after a few heartbeats. “I have no wish to hurt your brother.”
“Which is not to say you love him.”
The words had tumbled out of Devon’s mouth before he could stop them. He was not one for sentiment. The idea that Miss Farnsworth had fallen in love with his brother after such a short acquaintance sounded ridiculously soppy, even to his own ears. He had no idea why he’d even brought it up.
“No, it isn’t,” she said without a flinch. “I have not claimed to love Theodore.”
It was difficult to catch a person up if they wouldn’t indulge in a self-serving lie. Whatever else she might be guilty of, Emmaline Farnsworth seemed devoted to baldly telling the truth.
“However, whether or not I love your brother is an intensely personal matter and not a topic of discussion I ought to pursue with you, milord.” She dropped a shallow curtsey. “If you don’t mind, I’ll be on my way now.”
She turned and headed toward the door.
“Without anything to read?” he called after her. Wasn’t that why she’d invaded his library in the first place? He waved a hand toward the Shakespeare she’d left on the floor. “What about Titus Andronicus?”
“I’ve read it,” she said. “Too violent for my taste.”
“I find that difficult to believe from a woman who’s just done her best to geld me.”
She flashed him a grimace and slipped out the door. Devon stood perfectly still until the swish of her kid soles on the marb
le floors faded completely.
He expected his headache to descend once more. He had no idea why it had miraculously disappeared. It usually took all of a day to recover from a full-blown migraine after spending the night using his gift, but from the first moment his lips had touched Miss Farnsworth’s, his head had felt perfectly fine.
He wished he could say the same for his balls.
So, Emmaline Farnsworth wasn’t the light-heeled chit he took her for. She was honest. Painfully honest about both her reaction to his kiss and her relationship with his brother. Devon couldn’t find reason to fault her.
He ought to have been satisfied, except for the niggling worry that there was something else afoot, something besides a misalliance in the making in Miss Farnsworth’s attachment to his brother. Instead his gut roiled in a jumbled mess. Something was very wrong here. There was nothing specific he could point to, but he’d learned to trust his instinct in such matters.
He’d watch the American lady and her father like a mastiff guarding the estate grounds.
Devon started to bend down to pick up the discarded Titus Andronicus, but stopped himself before his fingertips brushed the tome. The last time he’d retrieved something Emmaline had dropped, he’d seen himself kissing her.
What if the next vision showed him shagging her silly?
While his body applauded this line of thinking, his head rejected it as disloyal to Teddy in the extreme. Even if Emmaline would let him take her to bed, how could it be worth betraying his brother?
Devon swallowed down the tightness in his throat.
She was so soft and sweet, a disreputable part of him thought she’d definitely be worth it.
He might have been able to rationalize kissing the girl to save his brother from her. Swiving her was another thing altogether.
He strode from the room, leaving Shakespeare on the floor. Baxter would pick it up later. Devon couldn’t chance it. He didn’t want to know.
If he was destined to defile his brother’s fiancée, he preferred to let the fact that he was a Judas come to him as a surprise.
“You’re certain the old man still has it?” The gentleman raised the pint to his lips and sipped the sour ale, pinky out, dainty as a doily.
Thomas O’Malley suppressed a grunt of disgust. Whatever contempt he might feel for his employer, it wouldn’t do to openly disrespect the man who paid the bills.
The jacket his lordship sported was shiny in spots with wear. O’Malley suspected he’d dressed carefully, probably borrowing threadbare clothing from his valet in order to blend in with the working-class pub patrons. His true breeding, however, showed in every foppishly aristocratic movement.
“O’ course, Farnsworth still has it.” Thomas O’Malley tossed back half of his pint and then swiped his mouth with a grimy sleeve. No fancy-arsed manners for the likes of him. “I tailed him from the ship straight to Devonwood House, didn’t I? He ain’t put his nose out of doors since.”
“I don’t know why you couldn’t have relieved him of the item while you were still shipboard.”
“With him and his daughter traveling first class courtesy of the earl’s brother and me stuck in steerage? Not bloody likely,” O’Malley said. “They don’t let us salt-of-the-earth types mingle with the hoity-toity so free, ye know.”
His lordship’s aquiline nose crinkled a bit as if he wished such stringent rules applied everywhere. Between rancid wool and the unwashed bodies beneath it, even O’Malley had to admit a number of the pub’s patrons were pretty ripe.
“Beastly rotten luck that chap in Cairo made such a mistake in the first place.”
“Never ye fear, milord. He paid for it.” O’Malley had seen to that, strangling the skinny Egyptian with his beefy bare hands. How the poor bloke had confused an American for the Irishman he was expecting still had O’Malley scratching his head.
This was supposed to be such a simple job. He only had to travel to Cairo, go to a certain shop in the bazaar, and pick up the item for His Nibs. Whatever the blasted thing was, it had already been paid for, but the item wasn’t the sort of article a body put in a crate and shipped in some rat-infested ship’s hold. It required hand delivery, his lordship had said. But when O’Malley had arrived in Cairo, the bloody thing was already gone—given by mistake to that Farnsworth fellow. Now, his lordship wasn’t making so free with the ready coin till O’Malley corrected the error.
“Whist, don’t ye be frettin’ yourself, your lordship,” O’Malley said. It was unfair that he should be blamed for something which was clearly no fault of his, but them what got the chinks got to make the rules. “I’ll have the item for ye before ye know it.”
The gentleman’s fingers closed over O’Malley’s wrist in a surprisingly painful grip. “Do not presume to tell me what to do.”
“No, no, o’ course not.” O’Malley’s fingers curled inward from the pressure being exerted on his wrist. The bones ground together beneath his tough skin with a series of soft clicks. Agony made him clench his teeth. He had no idea the gentleman was so strong. “I think—”
“I’m not paying you to think,” his lordship snapped. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with. You’re not equipped for thinking. I pay you to obey me.”
He released O’Malley’s wrist and turned his attention back to his pint as if nothing had happened. O’Malley narrowly resisted the urge to cradle his injured paw.
“What d’ye want me to do, then?”
“First, hope that Farnsworth is as blithely ignorant of what he has as you are of what you’ve lost,” his lordship said. “Now that the American has come under the Earl of Devonwood’s protection, our course is more difficult, but not impossible. I want you to simply watch for now.”
“Watch?”
“Keep track of Farnsworth’s comings and goings. Find out what social events Lord Devonwood and any of his party will be attending,” the gentleman explained with an annoyed scowl. “I’d hoped not to involve myself in this, but there seems to be no help for it.”
His lordship’s eyes had gone quite as dark and hard as obsidian. For the first time, O’Malley realized that beneath the silks and jewels the gentleman usually wore, he was a man to be reckoned with.
And feared.
O’Malley gulped. “And when we see the main chance to retrieve the item—”
“Then I may allow you to earn your over-large retainer, Mr. O’Malley.” His lordship stood and looked down his noble nose at him. The chill in his eyes froze O’Malley’s soul. “If by that time you’ve proven to me you are still worth my trouble, of course. Pray for your sake that you do.”
CHAPTER 6
Emmaline strongly contemplated begging off on supper that night.
It wasn’t because she didn’t have an appropriate gown. Her cream and rose tulle was exceptionally fine and its bodice fitted her like a second skin. Even that crusty butler Baxter wouldn’t be able to fault it. The gown had cost the earth, but Monty claimed it was worth the investment. She might have worn it to dine with a duke and not have been out of place.
Of course, the décolletage was a bit more daring than she wished, but Monty insisted that a woman could provide an excellent distraction when needed merely by displaying that she was a woman. It would be a sin not to take advantage of the fact.
It wasn’t because she didn’t want to see Theodore after the debacle in the library. She missed his uncomplicated presence. She was beginning to need his unfailing adoration as much as an opium fiend craves her next draught of laudanum. It bolstered her confidence to have a man she could bring so neatly in line with her wishes with so little effort.
Nor was it because she had given up on Monty’s plan. The bones of the game were sound and there was no time like the present to sow the seeds. She suspected Monty might need her during the meal if the opportunity arose to drop a few well-placed hooks. It would be a shame to waste a captive audience because she . . . well, she might as well admit it.
She was afraid.
>
She drew a deep breath as Monty escorted her down the long hall toward the formal dining room. Afraid. Her belly contorted like a Chinese acrobat.
There was no doubt about it. She’d rarely experienced this gut-wrenching sensation, but she recognized it for what it was. Fear.
The clack of Monty’s heels on marble echoed against the walls as they processed to the dining room. The sound seemed to repeat “a-FRAID, a-FRAID” with a heavy soled accent on the second syllable. Emma couldn’t escape the sensation that she was marching to her doom.
How could she bear being in the same room with that scoundrel Lord Devonwood?
Or maybe she was the scoundrel. It was hard to have any moral certitude when one lived as she and Monty did. After the way her body had responded to the earl’s advances, she felt doubly false in her role as the professor’s blue-stockinged daughter. Surely like Hester Prynne, a scarlet “A” would materialize on her breast and everyone would know her body had nearly capsized the wobbly boat of her faux respectability. Not to mention the way she’d endangered the success of Monty’s plan.
And over nothing more than an ill-considered kiss.
Even though he’d agreed not to mention the unfortunate interlude in the library to his brother, she had no way of knowing whether the earl would keep their tawdry little secret.
She didn’t love Theodore. But even though she was set on making off with some of his money, she liked him immensely. If she focused solely on absconding with a good deal of cash, perhaps she wouldn’t have to see hurt on his boyishly handsome features. Some betrayals cut far deeper than being taken by a pair of confidence professionals.
“There you are, darling.” Teddy caught up with Emmaline and her father as they entered the elegant dining room.
He pressed an ardent kiss on her gloved knuckles. Judging from his clear-eyed gaze, it was safe to assume his brother had not spoken to him. He turned her hand over and kissed the center of her palm.
“Teddy, please,” she murmured. “Not in public.”
Open displays of affection made her feel naked somehow, as if her reactions might be gauged by others for depth of feeling. Since her depth with Theodore was only about an inch, it was scrutiny she didn’t welcome.
