Touch of a Scoundrel (Touch of Seduction 3)

by Mia Marlowe

  “I beg you.” She wished he knew what it cost her to whisper those words.

  Devon straightened to his full height and looked down at her, something like anger glinting in his burnished pewter eyes. He gave a shuddering snort of frustration as he took a half step away from her.

  “Well, this is an improvement over a knee to the groin,” he said with a sardonic smile. “But only by the slimmest of margins. Perhaps next time we should fit you with a bell. Like a pugilist who’s had enough, you can ring to signal when the round has ended.”

  She shoved her tender breast back into the bodice, biting her lower lip against her body’s riotous protest. She definitely hadn’t had enough.

  “That would presume you know how to fight fair, and we both know that’s not the case,” she accused.

  “How so? Whatever the rules are, they don’t seem to apply to us,” he said, his tone still husky with lust. “And if there are any, you set them for this little interlude yourself when you kissed me, so you can’t rightly complain. You don’t seem a stickler for fairness. I’ll set the rules next time.”

  How could she admit her own body had turned against her, causing her to trample every rule she’d ever embraced? “There will be no ‘next time.’ ”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he grumbled under his breath. “We’ve been alone exactly three times and you’ve been in my arms for two of them. At least, tell me you’re not still considering my brother.”

  “You know I haven’t accepted Theodore’s suit and . . .” Her mouth fell open. “That’s why you made sure this would happen again. You don’t care a thing about kissing me. Your only interest is in seeing Teddy and I go separate ways.”

  “Yes, er, no. That’s not why I kissed you. Christ, you make me sound like a monster, ravishing my brother’s intended solely for the sake of controlling him. And for the record, you kissed me this time!” He paced the small space, nervous energy crackling off him like static electricity. “I want only the best for him. If that turns out to be you, Miss Farnsworth, so be it. Whatever you may think, I do care about Teddy.”

  “As do I.” Emmaline folded her hands before herself, fig-leaf fashion. They were trembling and she didn’t want him to see. The earl was a powerful man. No doubt he wouldn’t be moved by weakness. It would only encourage him to press her for further indiscretions. She had to be strong. “I don’t want to hurt him. If Theodore and I part ways, I don’t want it to be because of a scandal between you and me.”

  He stopped pacing. “I don’t want that either.”

  She drew courage from their shared affection for Teddy. Surely Devon wouldn’t want to injure him with the unsavory little truth that they couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other if they were left alone for longer than a few minutes. “We must simply make sure we aren’t presented with an opportunity for foolishness again.”

  “It didn’t feel foolish to me,” he admitted.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. No, foolish was the wrong word. It felt wonderful . . . exhilarating . . . strangely right. But of course it couldn’t be, could it? That was her body reasoning, not her head. Certainly not her heart. “I mean we must try not to be alone with each other.”

  “That will be easier said than done.”

  “Not if we both commit to it.” Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, in her chest, and lower down where the wicked ache still throbbed. “I don’t know what else to do. In all honesty, Lord Devonwood, this sort of thing has never happened to me before.”

  One of his brows arched in surprise. After their shared passion, she almost wouldn’t blame him for not believing her a virgin.

  “Oh, I rather think we’re past the Lord Devonwood stage, don’t you?” He fixed her with a pointed gaze.

  At least he didn’t doubt her innocence aloud. She could’ve kissed him again.

  “I liked when you called me Griffin,” he said.

  “Yes, well . . .” She liked calling him that. It suited him far better than Devon. “But using your Christian name implies the sort of intimacy we’ve agreed is not in Theodore’s best interests.”

  “What about our best interests?”

  In that one word she saw a logical way out of her quagmire. Cynical, but logical.

  “Our? There is no ‘our,’ no ‘us.’ You were upset enough that my name might be linked with your brother’s, and he’s not a true titled lord. As I understand your system, he’s actually as common as I. But you, you’re not a man who can ignore such things, milord. You’re a . . . an embodiment of an estate, for pity’s sake. There’s no way you’d ally your earldom with an American commoner. You and I both know there can never be anything between us other than a liaison that involves a wink and a nod.” She lifted her chin. “I may not be a titled lady, but I’ll be no man’s mistress.”

  Why should she when Theodore offered her marriage? His suit glittered with more hope now that she considered it afresh. Her chest brimmed with equal parts affection for Teddy and loathing for herself. True, he had never made her knickers twitch like his brother’s mere presence did, but Theodore had also never tried to seduce her into wantonness either.

  He respected her.

  More than she respected herself, evidently.

  What had she been thinking when she’d kissed Lord Devonwood? If she were being truthful with herself, she’d admit she hadn’t been thinking. She had simply acted on instinct, and that was not the best course. Hadn’t Monty told her about strange little Scandinavian rodents called lemmings that hurled themselves into the sea for no apparent reason? She’d kissed Theodore’s brother on the same sort of self-destructive impulse.

  She hadn’t expected he would kiss her back with such devastating disregard for sense, too.

  Emmaline cleared her throat. “Now, milord, if you’ll please convey my regrets to the rest of the party in the parlor, I think it’s high time I retired for the evening.”

  She dipped in a shallow curtsey and started past him. He caught her by the elbow.

  “No, you don’t. You’re not getting off that easy. If I have to face Teddy with the scent of you still in my nostrils, you have to be there, too,” he said harshly. “Call it a condition for not going to my brother immediately with word of our indiscretions.”

  “You would hurt him like that?”

  “Better a nick now than a dagger thrust later.” He offered her his arm, his glare daring her to take it.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. He liked walking the edge of a parapet and wouldn’t be happy unless she tottered on the ledge beside him.

  “Very well, milord.” She rested her trembling fingertips on his forearm, dismayed over the way his heat radiated through the fabric of his jacket. “But do not ask me to visit any other part of your home with you alone again. I don’t care how public the invitation. I don’t care if my refusal embarrasses you, I will still refuse.”

  “Duly noted,” he said as he covered her fingers with his for a searing moment. Then he removed his hand and led her from the orangery with a step full of purpose. “And if you’re waiting for such an invitation, I advise you not to hold your breath.”

  The sensual tension between them was so potent, Devon felt it humming in the air about them. The raging need was still there, seething beneath the surface of their even gaits and perfect grooming. They walked in silence toward the parlor, but he could hear her occasional hitched breath. It made his own catch in his throat.

  She didn’t dare be alone with him. She was afraid of him, for God’s sake.

  It confirmed what he’d always suspected.

  He was a monster.

  He’d long recognized that his unusual gift of touch imparted a sort of “otherness” to him that could be sensed even if one knew nothing of his ability. He doubted anyone could point to a specific reason why being around him made people uneasy. No one could say definitively, “This is why Lord Devonwood is different from the rest of us.” It was simply the sort of thing that raised the hair on the back of one
’s neck for no apparent cause, left a vague uneasiness in the belly, and made a person shift subtly away from the source of difference.

  Even his closest friends, whom he could count on the fingers of one hand, would charitably name him “a hard man to know.”

  Theodore’s voice wafted toward them from beyond the open parlor door, his tone excited. Teddy was always one for great passions—French paintings and German composers, the latest medical advances, and new cartography from the South Pacific. His knowledge of arcane subjects was broad as the ocean, but shallow as a puddle. He never stuck with anything long enough to get bored. The long string of his past fixations would stretch from London Bridge to the Cliffs of Dover.

  This Egyptian phase was only the latest.

  Perhaps the woman on Devon’s arm was also a passing fancy. Maybe he worried for nothing. Emmaline Farnsworth might have no greater tenure in his brother’s attention than that canal-widening project Teddy had thought would make them a fortune. By the time Theodore had lost interest in it, Devon had already invested heavily on the strength of his brother’s enthusiasm. The family might have seen a devastating loss had Devon not guessed correctly that the rail system would eclipse canals for transporting goods. Fortunately, he moved his holdings to railway stocks before the market turned on the canal company.

  All their lives, Devon had cleaned up after Teddy, making sure he didn’t suffer for his fecklessness. It was what an older brother was expected to do, especially once their father had died. He was six years Ted’s senior. There was enough difference between them that fourteen-year-old Devon must have seemed like a man already grown to Teddy when they’d buried their father and Devon had ascended to the earldom.

  Or maybe it was only the weight of his guilt over their father’s death that made him seem so much older.

  Devon slanted a gaze at the woman on his arm. Emmaline Farnsworth was just another of Theodore’s canal certificates. The sooner Devon moved her out of the family portfolio, the better.

  “I tell you, the Tetisheri statue will revolutionize the way we view Egypt,” Theodore pontificated to his mother and sister as Devon entered the parlor with Miss Farnsworth on his arm. “It’s nothing short of a sea change in the body of knowledge on the subject.”

  On the low table from which his mother usually served tea stood an object about twelve inches high. It was draped with a square of black silk, as if it was a new work of art about to be unveiled before an adoring public.

  “Ah, Devon, there you are.” Ted waved a hand toward the covered object. “Will you do the honors?”

  Devon supposed he should be grateful his brother was so wrapped up in his new amusement that he couldn’t be bothered to notice his intended was pale as parchment. It wouldn’t do to allow Teddy time to detect that something was amiss. Without thinking, Devon strode forward, reached out, and grasped the black silk.

  Everything went suddenly hazy, as if watered gauze had been drawn across his vision.

  Devon advanced toward a phantom table where a tall wicker basket stood. A musty, withering scent filled the room with an unwholesome tang.

  His hand sank into the basket’s narrow opening, but he drew it back sharply when he heard the hiss. Coiled in the bottom of the basket was a black asp, its scales glittering like polished jet. The serpent reared its triangular head and flicked a bifurcated tongue, tasting the air. Its lidless eye fixed on Devon.

  Death was hungry for its next meal.

  Devon dropped the silk and the vision melted away, like steam evaporating from a mirror. He was back in the familiar parlor with his family and the Farnsworths with neither a bit of wicker nor a single reptile in sight. His mother and sister “ooh-ed” and “ah-ed” over the artwork he’d exposed, but he didn’t want to even glance at the Tetisheri statue.

  The stench of evil surrounding it was too strong.

  CHAPTER 9

  Devon blinked hard, wondering if the flash vision had lasted long enough for anyone to notice. Aside from Emmaline, who’d gravitated toward the fireplace and seemed to be fascinated by the tips of her own shoes, almost everyone’s attention was riveted on the Tetisheri statue. Only his mother, the lone other member of his immediate family who was occasionally afflicted with the gift of touch, cast him a questioning look.

  He’d been Sent an odd vision. Usually his glimpses of the future were much more concrete. He’d even class them as hideously vivid in detail. Since he couldn’t imagine any situation in which he’d be called upon to reach into a basket that held an actual snake, this vision had the illusory feel of an allegory. It was a mere impression, not a factual representation, of what was to come.

  The realization that he’d likely not be confronted by an asp in the next twelve hours gave him no comfort. In fact, given the hazy nature of the vision, he doubted the twelve-hour rule applied. The danger of which he’d been warned was likely of an extended duration. The moldering scent of a crypt still lingered in his nostrils.

  “What did I tell you?” Ted enthused. “Isn’t the statue amazing?”

  Devon forced himself to look at the cursed thing. At first glance the carving seemed typical of Egyptian art. The granite sculpture rested on a basalt base, the darker stone emphasizing the lighter coloration of the schist. The work depicted a young woman seated on a throne wearing a braided wig and serpent crown. Her arms were crossed over bared breasts and in her clenched fists she held the crook and flail that bespoke royal rule.

  Devon wasn’t an aficionado of Egyptian relics, but he’d visited the British Museum often enough to be aware of some of the conventions of the ancient culture’s art. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in the work until he observed her features closely.

  Devon snorted in surprise. “She’s as European as a Botticelli angel.”

  “Exactly!” Teddy slapped him on the back. “No flies on my brother, eh? I told you he’d see it straight away.”

  Devon frowned at him. “All I can see is this must be a forgery of some sort. That girl is no more Egyptian than our Louisa.”

  “I confess I thought so myself, milord,” Dr. Farnsworth said, “At first. But then I began working on the hieroglyphs along the base. They are absolutely genuine.”

  “Based on what?”

  “In this endeavor, I confess to standing on the shoulders of giants. It’s been more than sixty years since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone first unlocked the key to this ancient tongue and I relied heavily on an English translation of the work of Antoine-Jean Letronne.” Dr. Farnsworth smiled at Theodore. “However, may I add that your brother has been instrumental in assisting me with the translation?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Teddy said with a self-deprecating smile. “Dr. Farnsworth does the work. I merely take notes most of the time.”

  “Nonsense, my boy.” Farnsworth patted Devon’s brother on the back. “You’re invaluable.”

  Devon squinted at the squiggles and abstract beasts parading across the base of the statue. “What does the inscription say?”

  “Translating hieroglyphs is not an exact science, you understand. However, we are confident we have settled on a fair approximation of the original for the front section of the base. We continue to work on the rest.” Dr. Farnsworth adjusted his spectacles so they perched on the end of his nose and then ran a finger over the markings along the front. “Tetisheri, beloved of Isis and Anubis. Pharaoh of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of the Nile.”

  “I thought “pharaoh” was the designation for a male ruler,” Devon said with a skeptical scowl.

  “Normally, yes, but there is precedent for a female pharaoh in Egypt. Remember Cleopatra. She reigned without benefit of a permanent male consort. If you’ll kindly direct your attention to this portion of the work . . .” Farnsworth pointed to the statue’s chin. “There’s a rough patch just there in the granite, if you’d care to feel it.”

  Devon shook his head. Touching the silk that had covered the benighted thing was bad enough.

/>   “At any rate, it suggests the statue once sported a false beard—an affectation common for female rulers of the Double Kingdom,” Dr. Farnsworth explained.

  “But why does she look so . . . un-Egyptian?” Louisa asked, leaning forward to peer at the statue intently. “Give her a bonnet and a parasol and your Tetisheri would be perfectly at home strolling in Hyde Park.”

  “And she’d turn more than a few heads,” Ted said. “But the more interesting question is how she arrived in Egypt. We have a theory on that. Dr. Farnsworth, if you’d care to do the honors?”

  “You can explain it as well as I,” the old man said with a beneficent wave of his hand. He beamed at Theodore with the self-satisfied glow of a professorial soul basking in the accomplishment of his protégé. “Go on, lad.”

  “We know that Egypt was overrun from time to time by other population groups. For example, about the era of the thirteenth dynasty, the Hyksos came down out of Syria with their chariots and conquered the Lower Nile and its rich Delta.” Ted spoke with confidence, but Devon noticed he tucked his hands in his pockets to keep from gesticulating nervously. It was an old trick their tutor had taught him. “The Egyptians had never seen a horse before that time so the Asiatic chariots made quite an impression.”

  “Never seen a horse?” Louisa said with a giggle. “Can you imagine it?”

  “Don’t laugh,” Theodore said. “I bet you’ve never seen a camel.”

  Louisa pulled a face at him. “But at least I know they exist,” she grumbled.

  “At any rate,” Ted said, determined to soldier on despite his sister’s interruptions, “the Egyptians must have thought horses were demons of some sort because the Theban royal court fled up the Nile and lived as exiles for years while the Hyksos intruders occupied their homeland.”

  “Glad to see you’ve decided to get serious about studying history, Ted,” Devon said, impressed that his dilettante brother actually seemed to have learned something.