A Rake's Midnight Kiss. Anna Campbell
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about Mr. Evans’s smile made her step back. She’d feel less foolish if she could identify one particular element in his manner that unnerved her. Well, until he smiled at her the way he smiled now. He looked like a hungry tiger contemplating a lamb chop. Trepidation shivered along her veins and her heart thumped chaotically against her ribs.
“As long as it takes,” he said softly. His eyelids lowered, lending him a disconcertingly saturnine air. For most of the evening, he’d played the perfect guest. But in the space of a second, he transformed into a man who clearly intended seduction.
She told herself she let the fright she’d suffered from the burglary turn her into a nervous wreck. Surely she mistook him. A dull bluestocking past first youth couldn’t attract this Adonis.
“Stop flirting,” she said firmly. “You’re only doing it because there isn’t another woman here.”
This time he laughed out loud. The sound was attractive. Open. Joyful. Genuine. “You defeat me, Miss Barrett. How am I to work my wiles when you undo me at every turn?”
She didn’t smile back, although something in his unabashed delight tugged at her heart. “I don’t want you to work your wiles, Mr. Evans.”
“Your aunt likes me.”
Genevieve’s huff approached a snort. “My aunt likes any man who’s breathing and unmarried.”
Curse him, he shouldn’t laugh again. Her glare did nothing to quell his amusement. “The longer we’re alone, the keener she’ll be to see your ring on my finger.”
He slouched against the newel post and regarded her as if she provided marvelous entertainment. She was sure she did. He probably hadn’t toyed with such an awkward female since his first dance lessons. Among the reasons he set her bristling like an angry cat was that she felt irredeemably gauche in his presence.
“You mention marriage with disdain worthy of a rake,” he said drily.
“You’d know.”
He arched one eyebrow. “I’m merely a country gentleman pursuing intellectual interests.”
“Not even I’m green enough to believe that.”
“Ah,” he said softly. “So it’s not that you don’t like me, it’s that you don’t trust me.”
She retreated until she collided with the wall. For one frantic moment, she wished she’d spent fewer nights over her books and more at the local assemblies. She was completely out of her depth with this urbane man. “Can’t it be both?”
He stepped closer. “Is it?”
She stared at him, her heart racing. She’d never been kissed. Until this moment, she hadn’t marked the lack. Right now, she had a horrible feeling that her unkissed days were numbered. Might perhaps end this second. She wondered why the prospect left her excited rather than outraged. She should itch to slap this Lothario’s face.
“Please go.” She cursed her husky tone. “Aunt Lucy will post the banns if I’m not back in the library within the next five minutes.”
“You’re not really at your last prayers, are you?”
Color flooded her cheeks and she spoke sharply. “I’m not praying at all. I’m not interested in marriage.”
“Miss Barrett, you shock me.”
She frowned, then realized he’d misunderstood. Deliberately. “I’m a scholar, not a courtesan,” she snapped.
Did he lean a fraction closer? Or did her imagination play tricks? Heaven help her. He was moving into the vicarage. Eons of this torment stretched ahead. How on earth would she survive?
“Pity.” He straightened and set his hat at a jaunty angle. “Until tomorrow, Miss Barrett.”
And the day after that, she thought despairingly. Her father welcomed a wolf into the sheepfold.
She drew herself up, reminding herself that she was clever and strong and had never fallen victim to a man’s stratagems. Not that the distant adoration she’d incited in her father’s previous students compared.
She spoke with commendable conviction. “I can’t see what amusement you’ll find with a country vicar and his ape-leader of a daughter.”
Did she mistake the sudden fire in his eyes? “I’ll let you know if I’m bored.”
“What do you want, Mr. Evans?” she asked dazedly.
He stepped back and bowed with an aplomb she envied. She must have mistaken that brief, intense flash of sexual awareness. A deep breath loosened the invisible band around her chest.
“Miss Barrett, once I thought I knew. But now? Now, the game has changed.” He touched his hat with a confidence that reminded her why he irked her. “Good evening.”
He lifted a candle with a gesture that stirred memory. Somewhere, sometime recently she’d watched a man like this lighting a candle in a shadowy room. But in her agitation, she couldn’t tease any sense from the scrap of recollection.
“Good evening, Mr. Evans.”
She wished she didn’t sound so breathless. Dear Lord, he hadn’t touched her, hadn’t come within a foot of her. Yet she dithered like a besotted milkmaid. She needed to rush upstairs and bury herself in something dry and dull like the local shire rolls. Something as dull as she’d promised Mr. Evans his stay at the vicarage would prove.
Instead she lingered in the hall after he left. She didn’t shift until she heard his carriage rattle away over the cobblestones.
Once Richard moved into the cramped back bedroom, his visions of lazy days flirting with Genevieve Barrett evaporated under the reality of vicarage life. Dr. Barrett was overjoyed to have an assistant who paid generously for the privilege, and even more welcome, an audience for his endless theorizing. Lucy Warren provided more agreeable company and was remarkably confiding about her niece. But Richard was staying ostensibly to widen his knowledge of all things Middle Ages, so he couldn’t devote too much time to the aunt without rousing suspicions about his historical interests. Lord Neville visited every day and proved an inconvenient presence, dogging Richard’s footsteps as if fearing for the church plate.
While his acquaintance, congenial or not, developed with the vicarage’s other denizens, Miss Barrett proved elusive. As did any chance to worm the Harmsworth Jewel away from her. If Richard hadn’t seen the jewel the night he’d broken in, he’d begin to doubt the artifact was in the house. Nobody, including Miss Barrett, mentioned it.
After three frustrating days meeting her only at meals, not to mention learning more than he’d ever wanted to know about the Princes in the Tower, Richard resorted to drastic measures.
Quietly he opened the door to the small upstairs room where he’d first encountered Genevieve. It was so early, the sky was dark. In Town, he often saw the dawn, but as the end of a night’s entertainment, not the start of a day’s scholarship. Across the faded carpet, candlelight formed a circle around the woman bent writing over the desk.
His breath caught as he stood transfixed, astonished anew at her beauty. She sat slightly turned away, revealing her profile. Straight, autocratic nose; determined chin; lashes lowered against high cheekbones as she concentrated too deeply to notice her observer. The sleeve of her faded dimity dress drooped from her shoulder, revealing the strap of her shift. A striped pinafore protected the front of her gown.
In Richard’s glittering world, female beauty was no rarity. But this dauntingly clever vicar’s daughter was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen.
He