Touch of a Scoundrel (Touch of Seduction 3)

by Mia Marlowe

  She had to stop thinking of him like that. He was Lord Devonwood, not Griffin. Griffin was the man who sent her soul flying and brought it safely back. Lord Devonwood wasn’t her magical protector. He was Theodore’s brother. Monty’s mark.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said with only a slight quaver in her voice. She walked toward the door to meet Baxter before the butler sought them in her chamber. She stopped at the door and turned back to look at him.

  She still didn’t understand what he’d done to her. There’d been nothing like this in the medical treatises Monty had given her when he judged she was old enough to be educated in the ways of the flesh. She knew she was technically still a virgin, but something had definitely passed between her and Griffin.

  Something special. He’d seen her spirit bared and she only now realized what it had cost him to give the experience to her without taking pleasure for himself. His chest heaved in shuddering breaths and the bulge in his trousers left no doubt of his frustrated state.

  She wished things were different. She wished his brother wasn’t courting her. She desperately wished she didn’t have to trick him for Monty’s sake.

  But she did.

  So she drew herself up to her full height and decided to put some distance between them. It might make it hurt less later on when he learned what she was and he was forced to hate her. “Thank you, milord. I’ll see to my father by myself.”

  “Thank you, milord?” Devon repeated as her skirt swished through the doorway. She’d melted under his touch, then when it was done she’d gone cold as an ice sculpture. As if he’d merely rendered her a service. “Damnation.”

  She thanked him. For what? Diddling her silly? By God, she made him feel like one of those quack doctors who treated their hysterical patients by massaging them to release and calling it therapy. For tuppence, he’d go to his brother with the musky, sweet scent of her still heavy on his fingers and show Ted exactly what sort of woman he was mooning around about.

  Devon strode to the washstand and scrubbed his hands. The man glaring back at him in the mirror damned him for an indecisive coward. He’d never been at such a loss for what to do next, not even in the moments after his father had died.

  What was it he wanted from Emmaline Farnsworth? Relief from his gift?

  There was that. Each time he touched her, normalcy flowed over him like a healing balm. He didn’t understand it, but he was certain if he could only hold her hand, the fiercest Sending would be unable to harm his mind.

  Did he merely want her body?

  She’d given herself over to him completely for those brief moments, and he’d reduced her to gasping need. It made a man feel like a god to make a woman burn, then watch as her release shivered through her all on account of only his touch. If he and Emmaline actually came together in sexual congress, they’d surely spontaneously combust.

  Or did he want something deeper?

  He’d always imagined a happy home for Teddy, a loving wife and children scampering about. Devon knew he was obligated to wed and produce an heir for the estate, but he couldn’t ever see himself happy with the shadowy figure who would become his countess. If he touched anything of hers, his gift would likely come shrieking in with a peek at their future.

  Invariably, a tragic future.

  It had been horrific enough to See his father’s death. He didn’t think he could bear advance warning of the death of a child. Or the death of a wife.

  Especially since he was powerless to change that fate.

  He’d already decided when he finally wed, he’d have to wear gloves round the clock to avoid touching anything that belonged to his bride.

  But even though he’d received visions from her pencil and her fan, when he touched Emmaline he didn’t fear the future breaking in. When he was with her, he lost his sense of aloneness, his sense of “other-ness.” He wasn’t Griffin, the monster, the freak, the one with the damnable Preston gift.

  He was just Griffin.

  She had sighed his name as she came, and he was reborn.

  When she retreated behind distant courtesy, his solitary existence rushed up to claim him again. Years of self-enforced isolation marched ahead of him. He’d never met anyone besides Emmaline whose mere presence eased his burden. He likely never would again.

  But to make her his, he’d have to betray his brother.

  He walked over to her chifferobe and peered down at the Tetisheri statue nestled amid her lacy chemises and stockings. The figure’s smile had seemed enigmatic before. In this setting it seemed indecently knowing.

  Somehow, everything swirling in his life was tied up with that infernal statue.

  Devon stretched out his hand toward it and a low thrum sounded in his head. If he touched it, he was certain a Sending would come.

  Would it show him what he needed to do?

  He lowered his hand to the cold granite.

  The field of rye stretch to the horizon, the heads of grain ripe for harvest, the air dusty with motes of chaff. The sun was over-bright to his English eyes. Images in the distance wavered in the heat or hovered above nonexistent pools of shimmering water.

  Threshers appeared, wielding handheld scythes. The long curved blades flashed in the sunlight. The workers chanted a song of reaping. Their rhythmic movements perfumed the air with cut grain. Rasping slices of the blades filled Devon’s ears. Bits of chaff worked their way under his clothing and made him itch.

  The overlord of the field drove up in a gilded chariot to survey the work. Once he disembarked, he walked on two legs like a man, but his face was long-muzzled with pointed ears pricked forward.

  Anubis, Devon realized. The jackal-headed guardian of the dead.

  Anubis laughed, the hysterical cackle of a carnivore who’s been reduced to eating carrion. Death hovered around him like a flock of crows. Devon smelled his fetid breath from across the amber expanse of the field.

  Then Anubis pointed to one of the threshers and barked an order. The man straightened.

  It was Teddy.

  Devon’s brother dropped his scythe and began to run, the rye wavering around him like an ochre sea. Anubis gave chase. Devon tried to run after them, but his feet were anchored to the spot. He couldn’t move.

  He bellowed his brother’s name as Anubis closed the distance between him and Teddy with each long stride.

  A phoenix appeared in the sky and streaked to intercept Anubis, but neither had the upper hand so far as Devon could tell.

  Life or death. It appeared they’d both reach his brother at the same time.

  Devon watched, helpless, as Theodore tripped and disappeared into the thick miasma of rippling grain.

  He jerked his hand away from the statue and the vision faded. A vise tightened at his temples but Emmaline wasn’t near to banish the pain. The vision was once again an allegory instead of a clear Sending.

  Instead of showing him what to do, his gift left him with more questions.

  Devon sank onto the foot of Emmaline’s bed to think.

  Anubis was clearly connected to the statue. Hadn’t Ted’s translation of the statue’s base named Tetisheri “beloved of Isis and Anubis”? If that was true, according to the Sending, the statue represented danger to his brother.

  Clearly, he needed to get Teddy away from it. He wasn’t meant to submerge himself in ancient Egypt, slogging away at his studies of dead civilizations, like the threshers in the vision whacking away at the rye.

  But how could Devon persuade Theodore to give up the only intellectual pursuit that had ever captured his imagination?

  And who was the phoenix?

  Devon stalked back into the sitting room of the Blue Suite, his gaze fixed on his feet in concentration. The rapidly blooming migraine made his vision tunnel. Suddenly he stopped and stared at the Turkish carpet with its pair of fighting phoenixes in the center.

  This was Emmaline’s suite. Could she be the magical bird in his vision?

  In the Sending, the phoenix w
as trying to counter Anubis, to protect Ted. If Emma was the phoenix, Theodore ought to spend more time with her. He would if he wasn’t so intent on studying with Dr. Farnsworth. She saved Devon from his dubious gift whenever she was near. Could she save Teddy from being singled out by whatever malevolent force Anubis represented?

  In the Sending, Devon hadn’t been able to help his brother. His feet had been stuck fast. Ted’s only hope was the phoenix. The more he pondered it, the more certain he was that the phoenix could be only Emmaline.

  It was the only interpretation that made sense.

  But his clear Sending in the carriage on the way to Lord Whitmore’s had shown him that she was going to come to his bed. Tonight.

  Devon sank down in one of the Tudor chairs, feeling as stolid and heavy as that age-darkened oak. Shards of pain lanced his brain. He’d known all along he couldn’t betray Teddy. He didn’t need the vision to urge him to do what was right. His heart had been whispering it to him all evening.

  Somehow, when Emmaline came to his bed that night, Devon had to make sure he wasn’t the man in it.

  CHAPTER 20

  “I left a special salve with Mr. Baxter and instructed him on the application of the poultice for your father’s lungs. He’ll relay the information to whomever you engage as Dr. Farnsworth’s nurse. I recommend you hire one full time,” Dr. Trowbridge explained. A strong smell of menthol and camphor oil wafted from the Green Room where Monty rested. “The poultice should give him a modicum of relief.”

  “Thank you, doctor.” Emmaline was relieved not to hear any sound from the room. It meant the cyclic spasm of coughing had been broken. It hurt her heart to hear Monty hacking away his life, unable to stop.

  “I also gave him a tincture of laudanum to help him sleep. If he finds it gives him relief, Dr. Farnsworth may continue with minimal doses. However, you should know that neither the opiate nor the poultice is a cure.”

  The doctor’s eyes drooped at the outside corners. Combined with his heavy jowls, they gave him the appearance of an aging hound. His might not have been a handsome face, but like the Bassett he resembled, the doctor radiated kindness and compassion.

  “I fear there’s not much to be done for cases this far advanced,” Dr. Trowbridge said.

  “I see,” she said woodenly. “Have you any idea . . . I mean . . . how long . . .” Emma couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

  “Could be a month. Could be a year. Could be another ten, but I doubt it in your father’s case,” the doctor said. “Tuberculosis is a deceptive disease. It’s not uncommon for a patient to rally and enjoy long periods when the malady lies dormant. I’ve even heard it said consumption improves a sufferer’s appearance, gives them an otherworldly glow. While he may at times seem hearty, unfortunately, your father’s lungs are badly damaged. He’s likely to weaken and succumb to the illness.”

  “He seemed to do much better in a dry climate,” she said. Another ten years. Please, God, would that be too much to ask? “Suppose we returned to Egypt—”

  “It would be better for him to go to Görbersdorf in the Alps,” Dr. Trowbridge said. “They’re having a good bit of success there, pioneering some new treatments for consumptives. Once your father is fit to travel, that’s what I’d recommend.”

  Which meant they needed money soon, far sooner than it would take to adequately play out Monty’s scheme with the Tetisheri statue. In any other game, he’d have already made up the meanings for the last of the hieroglyphs on the statue. Theodore wouldn’t know the difference since everything he understood of Egyptology he had learned at Monty’s feet.

  But this time, their game had taken an odd turn. Monty seemed to be earnestly trying to decipher the strange lines, squiggles, and stylized beasts. It was almost as if he’d been sucked into the scheme and believed the pitch himself.

  “Have you told him the full extent of his condition?” Emma asked.

  “No. I will, if you wish,” Dr. Trowbridge said. “However, I usually leave it to the discretion of my patients’ loved ones. Some people do not wish to know they are dying. Some family members desire the opportunity to continue living with a degree of normalcy for as long as possible. In my opinion, I believe your father suspects, but doesn’t want confirmation.”

  Emma nodded. Monty wouldn’t appreciate a frank discussion of his mortality. He’d rather try to con the devil with his last breath. “Thank you, doctor.”

  Dr. Trowbridge smiled sadly. “I’ll look in on him from time to time. Send for me at once if he worsens.”

  The doctor waddled down the corridor toward the staircase.

  Emma pressed her palms over both eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath. She smoothed back her hair, tucking a stray curl behind her ear, and pasted on a smile. Then she pushed Monty’s door open.

  Her father lay with his hands on his chest. With his waxy pallor, it was almost as if he were already laid out in his coffin. Emma regretted telling Devon not to accompany her. She missed his steady strength, even if she wasn’t worthy of leaning on it.

  “Someone knows how to finagle a way to be waited upon hand and foot,” she said with forced lightness as she drew near. The pungent smell of the medicine plastered to his chest was almost overpowering. She hitched her hip on the side of the bed and took his icy hand in hers. “Good con, Monty.”

  “I’ve done better,” he said softly between wheezing breaths. He tugged his hand free and cupped her cheek, swiping at the bit of moisture beneath her eye. “My dear girl. Have you been crying?”

  “Crying? No. Well, maybe a little.” It would do no good to lie to Monty. A person who lied for a living could always scent an untruth in others, but she might be able to misdirect him. “You did interrupt my time at the ball, after all, and I had to leave Theodore at the mercy of a certain Lady Cressida. I fear she’s set her cap for him.”

  “Worse luck for her then. Whoever she is, this Lady Cressida can’t hold a candle to my girl.” Even though the laudanum made his eyelids droop, he searched her face as if he hadn’t seen her for a long time.

  “You’re worse than an Irishman for blarney. I’m not really your girl and you know it.”

  “Yes, you are, Emmaline. In all the ways that matter, you’re mine.” His hand dropped from her cheek as if it was suddenly too heavy for him to hold up. “Did I ever tell you why I picked you out from the foundling home?

  She shook her head, not trusting her voice.

  “It’s because you look like your mother. You have her eyes, her sweet mouth.”

  She blinked in surprise. “You knew my mother?”

  “Not only knew her.” His eyes closed with weariness. “I loved her.”

  He’d never wanted to talk about the past before. Emma always figured as far as Monty was concerned, she’d burst into being like Minerva springing from the mind of Zeus on the day he took her from the foundlings home. “Monty, are you . . . really my father?”

  He shook his head. “I wish I was though. Your mother, Mattie O’Sullivan, was the loveliest girl in Flatbush.”

  He was silent so long she thought he’d drifted to sleep, but then he began again, his words whispered as he followed the thread of a distant time.

  “Her parents were moderately well-to-do, a generation off the boat, and established in their own business. Mattie was so pretty, they figured she ought to be able to marry well.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t cut from fine enough cloth for them.”

  Emma’s memories of her mother were hazy at best. She had no recollection of grandparents or any family at all beyond the thin, haggard woman who’d borne her. Now that she thought back on it, her mother couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but in Emma’s memory, she seemed ancient.

  “When her parents forbade Mattie to keep company with me, I left,” Monty murmured. “Went west to seek my fortune in the silver mines of Colorado. I figured once I had plumper pockets, her family would relent and she’d be able to accept me.”

  His chest shuddered
as if he might erupt in coughs again, but then he drew in a lungful of the menthol and camphor and settled into an easy rhythmic breathing instead.

  “I told Mattie I’d be away for a year. Wait for me, I said.” His lips twitched with emotion. “I was gone five. I guess that’s a long time for the belle of the ball to wait.”

  “She married someone else?”

  “I wish she had. No, she was bamboozled by Herman Potts, a fellow who already had a wife upstate. He got Mattie with you and that was the last she saw of him. She died alone.”

  That wasn’t true. Emma had been there in their cheerless little tenement. She remembered the morning she’d toddled to her neighbor lady’s door because she couldn’t wake her mother. It was one of her clearest memories.

  “She’d been gone six months by the time I returned from Colorado without the silver I went for. I made her brother tell me what had happened.” Monty’s jaw worked furiously. “I’m not a violent man, but I’d have done murder if Herman Potts had been nearby that night.”

  His chest heaved for a bit. Then he went quiet, his breathing so even and untroubled, Emma didn’t dare ask any of the questions burning in her. Was her mother’s brother still alive? Why hadn’t her grandparents taken her in when her mother died instead of letting Emma go to the foundlings’ home?

  Monty’s eyes popped open and he winked at her. “But I got even with him the only way I knew. First con I ever pulled was to swindle Potts out of his life’s savings. It was enough to set up the bookstore. And that was enough to convince the people at the foundlings’ home that I could care for you.”

  “I loved the bookstore, Monty.” She smoothed his thinning hair over the freckles showing through on his pate. “Why’d we ever leave it?”

  His shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “I didn’t want you to be a shop girl all your life. It wasn’t enough for my Emmaline. So I started forging those old letters. Then you and I started our games. We’ve had a pretty good run of it, too.” His mouth turned up in a satisfied smile. “Look at you now. Dressed like a duchess.”