“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
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 t
he 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.
“I’m sure this is a mistake.” Her body lost its stiffness and she curved into his hand.
“I’m sure it’s not.” Which wasn’t completely true, damn it.
He was accounted a master of seduction. He couldn’t recall his first kiss. His first fuck had followed too closely upon it. But this tremulous, delicate anticipation made him feel like a boy with his sweetheart. He lifted the hand he held and placed it over his heart. Through his thin cambric shirt, her touch melted all remnants of calculation.
Experimentally she flexed her hand, spurring his heart into a gallop. “You’re so warm.”
“Let me warm you,” he whispered.
Her chin tilted until glittering eyes met his. What he read in her gaze was no surprise. Trepidation. Questions. Courage. And something else. Something he’d longed to see since he’d climbed through her window little more than a week ago.
Desire.
He’d imagined when he kissed Genevieve, he’d be eager to stake his claim. That wasn’t how he felt, holding her tall, trembling body in the moonlight and staring into her beautiful face. Perhaps the night indeed possessed magic. Or, much easier to believe, the woman did.
Genevieve remained motionless as Mr. Evans’s mouth skimmed hers. The brief contact set her lips tingling. In the second between that kiss and the next, her head swam with a multitude of impressions. His height, his heat, the constrained power in his arms. The satiny texture of his lips. His clean, masculine scent.
He kissed her with a purpose and fervor that curled her toes against the grass and turned her knees to water. Lost, dazed, she hooked one hand around Mr. Evans’s shoulder to keep her balance. That first tentative kiss had provided little hint of what was to come. Her girlish imaginings even less. This was like a whirlwind.
Behind closed eyes, the darkness was blacker than a starless night. Hot darkness. Beckoning darkness. Her hand clenched in his shirt, over his frantic heartbeat. She whimpered with longing against his lips.
He gave another of those low growls that reverberated not just in her ears but in her bones and slid his tongue between her lips. She tensed with surprise and tried to withdraw.
“Open for me, Genevieve,” he whispered, brushing kisses across her nose and cheeks and forehead. It was the way one kissed a child, except that his determination mocked innocence.
“We’ve kissed now,” she stammered, hardly aware what she said. “You can let me go.”
“Devil take that for an idea.” He cradled her face between his strong palms. “That wasn’t a kiss.”
“It felt like a kiss.” She struggled to sound resolute, but only managed breathless and bedazzled. She could hardly blame Mr. Evans for responding with wry amusement.
“How would you know, my sweet little lamb?”
He kissed her again. This time his tongue’s invasion didn’t seem so alien. A thrill coursed through her, tightening her breasts and settling heavily between her legs. She shifted to relieve the building pressure.
The sensation wasn’t uncomfortable. It was just… odd.
A kiss was astonishingly intimate. Her mind might insist that Mr. Evans meant trouble, but close to his big, strong body, she felt safe. Safe, yet brave and verging on some marvelous discovery. It was like entering a hitherto forbidden section of the library.
She should be frightened, but she wasn’t. His touch was inexplicably familiar, as though he’d touched her before. As though she belonged in his arms. As though she’d waited all her life for this man to set his lips to hers.
By offering her mouth, she surrendered something of her soul. The experience was overwhelming, too complex to analyze. Instead she drifted into velvety pleasure where his lips lured her with what even a novice recognized as breathtaking expertise.
Tentatively she moved her tongue, copying him. This time Mr. Evans’s growl expressed satisfaction. What remarkable communication he achieved without words.
Encouraged, she slid her tongue over his, then more daringly, she slipped it between his lips, tasting him as he tasted her. At first the activity had seemed outlandish. No longer.
Mr. Evans plunged his hands into her hair and angled her upward, changing the pleasure. This time the moan was hers. After exploring every inch of her mouth, he lured her with delicious nips and nibbles. She loved his rich taste. She pursued him, seeking more soul-melting kisses.
She was vaguely aware of Mr. Evans stroking her hips. When his hands cupped her buttocks, she started.
An intimation of danger pricked.
As her skirt inched upward, the breeze brushed her bare legs. A warning strove for purchase in her foggy mind. Mr. Evans had promised a kiss to enlighten ignorance. Now this encounter escaped those boundaries.
As if to confirm that thought, he pressed the small of her back, bringing her nearer. Inexperienced she might be. Stupid she wasn’t. And she’d lived in the country all her life. She couldn’t mistake that throbbing hardness against her stomach.
Roughly she broke away. “No.”
She wasn’t sure he heard. Or if he heard, whether he’d take note. Fear, long overdue, crammed her throat. Then to her relief, he released her and her skirt flopped to her ankles with a damp slap. He breathed unsteadily, but otherwise seemed unaffected.
Genevieve, on the other hand, felt like she’d barely survived a tempest. For one traitorous moment, her heart leaped with hope that his kiss had required feelings as well as technique. Then she reminded herself that she was safer by far if it hadn’t.
Unexpectedly his expression turned sheepish. “I apologize, Miss Barrett. You were right to stop me.”
She panted, still quivering with reaction. How could she have been so stupid to let this go so far? How could she have started at all?
The ghosts of his kisses lingered on Genevieve’s lips and in her mind. Grimly she suspected the ghosts of his kisses would haunt her for too long. Well after Mr. Evans forgot her.
For the first time, she comprehended the full extent of her rashness. She’d trusted his honor, and thank goodness, he hadn’t disappointed her. But after this glimpse of pleasure, the door to desire didn’t close as readily as she’d hoped.
“I must go.” Just as before, she didn’t move.
“Yes.”
Blast him. That monosyllable shouldn’t sound like an invitation to stay and explore new worlds. She leaned forward to claim another drugging kiss before lurching back to reality and stopping herself. Her yen for this man terrified her, as did the possibility that he might reveal her foolishness to the world. “You can’t say anything about this.”
His lips lengthened in an unamused smile. “I thought you intended to tell your father so he banished me from the vicarage.”
Admit that Mr. Evans had caught her swimming naked on Sedgemoor’s estate? Admit she’d kissed Mr. Evans? Lord above, it didn’t bear considering. “No.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
The silence extended. She knew they both relived those heady moments. She must go. Before he reached for her. Or heaven forbid, before she sprang at him and begged him to kiss her again and never stop.
“Good night, Mr. Evans.” The formality was ludicrous, but she desperately needed to establish some distance between them.
When he wasn’t being superior, he had a nice smile. “Good night, Miss Barrett.”
Dear God, what was wrong with her? She mooned after him like a twelve-year-old. She straightened and struggled to summon the scowl that usually greeted his attempts at charm. Except he wasn’t attempting charm. He was charming. And she was in dire trouble.
“To Hades with it,” he muttered. He seized her shoulders in an uncompromisi
ng grasp. Before she could protest or run—not that she tried to do either—he hauled her into his arms and kissed her hard.
That inexplicable feeling of familiarity returned. Before she could examine it, he released her and strode away under the trees, Sirius following.
Genevieve stood trembling where he’d left her. The moon slipped behind a cloud and the night turned dark and lonely. She drew a breath redolent of clean male scent. Clean. Tangy. Lemony.
Lemon verbena…
Chapter Nine
Mr. Evans was Genevieve’s inept burglar.
The next morning as she struggled to work in her study, the revelation still appalled her. How she kicked herself for taking so long to realize. The clues had always been there. The height. The subtle elegance. The beautiful voice. Curse him, the confidence with women. Although he’d been masked then, and now he dyed his hair. That dull brown had always seemed incongruous on such a spectacular man.
Now she understood why every instinct had leaped to alert the first time he’d sauntered into the parlor. No wonder his touch had always felt familiar. It wasn’t some mystical affinity. He’d held her close when he’d disarmed her.
Last night she’d stormed back through the dark woods, determined to denounce Mr. Evans. How she loathed a thief. Her father had spent the last ten years stealing her work without an ounce of compunction. Now the first man to kiss her turned out to be a thief too.
Yet however much the double-dealing devil’s betrayal smarted, bewilderment outweighed anger. While she might call him a thief, so far he’d stolen nothing except her peace of mind and a few kisses. For the life of her, she couldn’t discern his motives for leaving empty-handed and then infiltrating the vicarage.
What did he want? Would she be better to discover his purposes before she exposed him? Even if she accused him, what proof did she have? How could she confess that she’d been close enough to Mr. Evans to recognize his scent?
Did he want the Harmsworth Jewel? It was the only thing here worth stealing. But so few people knew she had the artifact. Dr. Partridge at the Ashmolean Museum, who considered her article for publication. Her father was so focused on his princes that she wasn’t sure he remembered Lady Bellfield’s bequest.
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