Table of Contents
Title Page
Praise for A Scoundrel’s Kiss
The Escape with a Scoundrel Series
A Note from Shelly
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Also by Shelly Thacker
Bonus Excerpt: Forever His
About Shelly Thacker
Copyright
PRAISE FOR
“Marvelous and moving. A dynamite novel with great chemistry between the characters. If books were jewels, this one would be a diamond!”
–Journey’s End Books
“Exciting and exquisitely romantic. Shelly Thacker is a virtuoso beyond compare when it comes to creating the perfect romantic adventure tale.”
–Affaire de Coeur
“One of the best romances of the year. Marie and Max are another winning pair of lovers for Thacker, a rising romance star.”
–The Detroit Free Press
A full-length novel of 115,000 words
Originally published by Avon Books under the title A Stranger’s Kiss
This new Author’s Preferred Edition has been revised by the author
Search keywords: historical romance, sexy romance, Georgian romance, England, France, Paris, romantic adventure, amnesia, secret identity, spy, secret agent, scientist heroine, fake marriage, action adventure, enemies to lovers
THE
SERIES
These sexy bad boys are on the wrong side of the law—and willing to break all the rules to protect the women they love. Each book in the Escape with a Scoundrel Series is a stand-alone historical romance, so you can enjoy them in any order:
Book 1: ESCAPE WITH A SCOUNDREL (Nicholas and Samantha)
Book 2: HER SCOUNDREL EARL (Marcus and Elizabeth)
Book 3: ONE NIGHT WITH A SCOUNDREL (Saxon and Ashiana)
Book 4: A SCOUNDREL’S KISS (Max and Marie)
More Scoundrels coming soon! For the latest news and sneak previews of upcoming books, visit http://www.shellythacker.com/contact to subscribe to Shelly’s free email newsletter.
A NOTE FROM
Dear Reader: My assistant and I carefully proofread each of my books before publication. We work hard to produce ebooks that are 100% free of typographical errors. But typos are sneaky little devils, and sometimes they slip past us. If you spot any typos lurking in this book, please visit http://www.shellythacker.com/contact to email them to me. Thank you! Together, we can stamp out sneaky typos.
A special note about A Scoundrel’s Kiss: the way Marie hears spoken language is impaired for a brief time in the early part of the book. These are not typos but an intentional creative choice.
The D’Avenant brothers would also like me to take this opportunity to remind everyone that their family name is pronounced dahv-inant, not dee-avinant. Happy reading!
To agent Rob Cohen, editor Tina Moskow, and research specialist LaVerne Coan.
Thank you for helping to make this book a treasure.
France, 1759
Someone had made a mistake. A very grave mistake. Marie Nicole LeBon only hoped it wasn’t her.
Moonlight spilled in through the ballroom windows, competing with the glow from a half dozen crystal chandeliers. Massive gilded mirrors lining one wall reflected the brilliance, sending it sparkling over the glass beakers, funnels, jars, and strainers that cluttered her late grandfather’s mahogany tables.
Pushing up the sleeves of her ill-fitting gray cotton gown, she bent closer to the table and lifted the magnifying glass that dangled from a ribbon around her neck. Her hand trembled. Hope and fear made her heart pound so hard she could feel it in her throat.
She concentrated on the wooden box before her. Not on the wheat seedlings it held or the rainwater pooled around their roots, but on the gray substance sprinkled over the dirt: a few granules of red and yellow phosphorous mixed with dephlogisticated flakes of charcoal, sea salt, and a new element, one she had obtained by leaching water through wood ashes. She had thought her latest discovery a miracle…but if Monsieur Cousino was right, it was a disaster.
A major disaster.
Wiping her dark hair back from her damp forehead, she stared through the magnifying glass, waiting. She managed only short, shallow breaths of the humid air, barely noticing the familiar scents of sulfur and vinegar and mineral acids.
Monsieur Cousino must have made a mistake. Perhaps he hadn’t followed her instructions correctly when conducting the field test.
A creaking noise at the far end of the room startled her. She spun around, dropping her magnifying glass—and immediately felt foolish: it was only the sound of the ballroom’s ornate double doors being pushed open.
“Marie?” Her sister’s voice echoed across the vast chamber. “Are you ever going to bed tonight?”
Marie ignored the question and bent over her experiment once more. “Véronique, you shouldn’t be in here. This could be dangerous.” She watched her compound for any sign of change—but saw none.
“Do you realize it’s well after midnight?”
“I’ll be done soon.”
“How soon?” Véronique stepped inside, picking her way around the dozen boxes of wheat seedlings that crowded the ballroom floor.
“An hour or so.” Marie flashed her sister a concerned glance. “Don’t come any closer. I told you, this could be dangerous.”
“Oh, pooh.” Véronique frowned prettily—she did everything prettily—and tiptoed her way to an S-shaped tête-à-tête couch that had been pushed against the far wall. “Your experiments have left me with singed hair and purple fingers and awful rashes so many times, I’m used to it.”
“This one is different. I don’t want you to help. Go back to bed. Please.”
“I promise I’ll stay over here where it’s safe, but I’m not leaving.” Véronique swept aside the issues of Journal des Sçavans and Philosophical Transactions piled on the couch and curled up on the worn damask seat, wrapping her threadbare cotton nightdress closer around her. “I’m going to make sure you get to bed before dawn at least once this week,” she scolded, sounding more like an older sister than a younger one.
Marie realized it was a waste of valuable time to keep arguing. “All right,” she agreed grudgingly. “But stay on that side of the room.”
Leaning over the box once more, Marie peered through the magnifying glass and added another cupful of water to the soil. Watching it soak in, she held her breath.
But when the liquid touched her compound…nothing happened.
So far, her new chemical had reacted just as she had expected. Just as it had in countless other experiments.
But if her compound was not at fault, why had the first field test gone so terribly wrong? Why?
That troublesome question had possessed her for the past month, ever since Monsieur Cousino, a local farmer, came to report—rather angrily—the results of her test.
Her miracle compound, the fertilizer that she had been working on for three years, the one that might finally end the dreadful famines in Fr
ance, had caused his wheat crop to burst into flame during a rain shower.
Marie frowned, still examining the box of soil and seedlings before her. It was impossible. Unthinkable. She had tested her invention quite thoroughly, both in the laboratory and in her own modest garden here at the manor house. The fertilizer had produced lush crops of wheat and rye, along with peas, cabbages, spinach, cauliflower, and haricots verts. Never had water initiated any deleterious effects.
In the past month, she had duplicated the field conditions here—on a smaller and less dangerous scale—using soil and seedlings from Monsieur Cousino. She had tested them with a veritable ocean of water: gentle showers, pounding torrents, cold water, hot water, and now puddles of water. Her compound appeared completely stable.
It was maddening. Why had the field test gone so terribly wrong? Why?
How could a rain shower start a fire?
Marie reached behind her and pulled up a chair, sinking onto the upholstered seat, her every muscle stiff and sore from long hours bent over the table. Her stomach growled. When had she eaten last? She couldn’t remember. She didn’t care.
Rubbing her bleary eyes, she leaned forward on the table and rested her chin on her crossed arms. She fastened her gaze on the gray substance sprinkled in the dirt, watching. Watching and waiting and willing the experiment to surrender up an answer.
Perhaps it wasn’t the water at all. Perhaps it was something about the soil. Or the warm weather. Or a combination of causes.
She heard a sigh from the far side of the ballroom. “I’m attending a card party tomorrow,” Véronique said conversationally. “The Viscomte LaMartine will be there.”
“Hmm?”
“At the card party. The Viscomte LaMartine will be at the card party I’m attending tomorrow?”
“Hmm.” Marie kept staring at her experiment.
“You might consider joining me now and then, you know, instead of puttering away your life in this lab making odd concoctions. There’s a whole world out there that you’re missing, Marie. Picnics. Dances. Masquerades. It hasn’t been nearly as difficult to get on the invitation lists this year. With so much new gossip coming out of Paris and Versailles, people have almost forgotten our family history and they’re…”
Only half listening as her sister kept chattering, Marie looked steadily at her chemical, feeling her spirits sinking. She was so afraid this compound wasn’t going to work—and she wanted so badly for it to work. Wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything.
Of all the “odd concoctions” she had created in the last fifteen years, none had ever proved useful. But if this one worked…
This new chemical might be one of the most important discoveries of the century.
A shiver coursed through her. The thought that she, Marie Nicole LeBon, illegitimate daughter of the ancient, noble, impoverished, disreputable LeBon family, might be responsible for a scientific and agricultural revolution that would save thousands of lives—it made her feel something unfamiliar, a mixture of excitement and pride that was almost like…giddiness.
She envisioned herself standing before the stodgy lords of the Académie des Sciences, the men who had so roundly rebuffed and ridiculed her. The men who had lectured her with pointed fingers and angry looks about the place of women in society. About how inappropriate it was for a female to pursue an interest in chemistry.
Inappropriate. That was a word Marie had heard far too often in her life.
Perhaps…perhaps she would even be allowed to make a formal presentation before the Académie in Paris. The first presentation ever by a woman.
“Marie, did you hear what I said?”
Marie shook herself from her reverie and glanced across the ballroom, embarrassed that she had been caught daydreaming. It was so unlike her. “Yes of course, Véronique. Something about the Duc de La Fontaine and a garden party.”
Véronique muttered something most unladylike, a word no proper eighteen-year-old should know, and rose from her seat, her blue eyes sparkling despite the late hour. “The Viscomte LaMartine and a card party. I swear by all the saints! You have to get out of this room once in a while, Marie Nicole LeBon. You’re becoming as dusty and boring as a piece of your own chemistry equipment.” She stalked to a table piled with glassware and pinged a beaker with her fingernail. “All you ever talk about anymore are things like combustion and phlogiston and Tournefourt’s experiments with gases—”
“Mariotte’s.”
“What?”
“Tournefourt was a botanist. It was Mariotte who experimented with compressed gases.”
Véronique threw up her hands in a gesture of exasperation. “That’s exactly what I mean! Marie, do you really think Grandfather would want you to live this way? I don’t think he would have taught you about chemistry at all if he had known you would become so obsessed with it. At least when he was still alive, you went out riding once in a while.”
Marie felt a familiar rush of sadness—and quickly changed the subject. “LaMartine, did you say? Hasn’t he been paying quite a bit of attention to you of late?”
Véronique blushed—prettily—and shrugged, picking at the worn lace that edged the sleeve of her nightdress.
“I…h-he…I’ve seen him at a few parties, that’s all. And he…um…oh, pooh, Marie, I can’t pretend I’m not mad about him! I’m in love. Really and truly this time.” Her face took on a familiar, dreamy expression. “He’s so handsome! Handsome and dashing and…wonderful! And charming, too. He’s not like all those other bores who won’t discuss anything but the war with England. He’s so very funny, and…”
Marie smiled indulgently as Véronique chatted on and on about this latest object of her impetuous affections. It was the third time this spring that her younger sister had been “really and truly” in love.
Stretching, massaging her sore neck, Marie glanced down at the box again, at her compound. It looked perfectly fine. Soggy, but fine. Puddling water was clearly not what had caused the combustion problem. Her shoulders slumped. Perhaps she had wasted an entire month testing water when she should have been testing another variable.
Her throat constricted. She shifted her gaze to the flicker of gold on the wall closest to her, to the framed certificate from the Académie des Sciences flanked by gold medals won for work in microscopy and metallurgy. All had belonged to her grandfather. If only he were here.
From the age of eight, she had known some of her happiest moments in this room, at his side. They had started work on this fertilizer together, hoping to end the devastating famines that France had endured for decades: winters when there was no bread to be had, and people sold all they owned for a few scraps of food, and resorted to eating dogs and rats. Hundreds dying of starvation every day. Children rooting through the snow in search of acorns and grass to eat.
No, despite what Véronique said, Marie didn’t think Grandfather would disapprove of her for working so hard. All her life, others had teased her for being too serious or “odd,” but Grandfather had understood her.
He was the only one who ever had.
She closed her eyes, willing away the grief. It was time to clean up and turn in for the night. Tomorrow, she would begin testing another variable.
Véronique was still waxing poetic about the Viscomte. “…And he kissed me—”
“He what?” Marie suddenly snapped to attention.
“He kissed me. Last week at the Poitous’ garden party.” Sighing, Véronique leaned on a nearby table as if her legs had turned to jelly. She touched her cheek, lashes half lowered. “Just on the cheek, but it was so romantic!”
Marie frowned and rose from her chair. “You know you should be more careful, Véronique. He might try to take advantage of you, given half a chance. And where exactly was Madame Tallart when all this was going on?”
“Oh, pooh. I managed to slip away from her as soon as we arrived. She can’t see past her nose even with her spectacles. And she’s such a bore. I do wish you would sto
p asking her to accompany me. Just because of what happened to Mother, you can’t go about thinking all men are cads. Lucien—um, I mean, the Viscomte, has always been a perfect gentleman. And he lives at Versailles. Can you imagine, Marie? Versailles!”
Marie couldn’t imagine. She had never been to Versailles. And she had no wish to see that glittering capital of royalty and riches. The city their mother had always spoken of with such wistfulness and reverie…where she had met her ruin at the hands of an unscrupulous man.
Marie’s father.
Who was only slightly less a cad than Véronique’s father.
No, Marie far preferred the simple, honest, country life she and her siblings had always known. Véronique might crave the excitement and romance of Paris and Versailles, but Marie did not. “He may seem a gentleman now, Véronique, but please be cautious. He must know that you’ve no dowry.”
“Yet,” Véronique corrected. “I have no dowry yet. But I will soon. We both will. Armand said that this chemical of yours will make us all wealthy!”
Marie winced. Her twin brother was in Versailles, attempting to secure financial investors, filled with dreams of restoring the LeBon family name and ancestral manor and opulent way of life—but she doubted anyone would give them a single sou after the disaster at Monsieur Cousino’s farm. “I did not intend this compound to make us wealthy, Véronique. I intended it to save lives. A great many lives!”
Turning away, trying not to be angry, she maneuvered through an obstacle course of soil samples, coiled tubing, and volumes of the Encyclopedie piled on the Aubusson rug, until she reached the china cabinet on the far wall.
The last of the china had been sold months ago. She began taking out the rags and supplies she used for cleaning her equipment.
“Yes, yes, of course it will save lives,” Véronique said a bit more calmly. “I know that. And I know it’s important. But it might also make us wealthy! Can you really say you don’t care about that at all?”
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