closer.
“I’ll have your liver for this,” she snarled, even as his scent continued to prick her senses. What was that smell?
“You’ll have to catch me first.”
She wished she didn’t notice how laughter warmed that deep, musical voice. Any angry response died in furious shock as he brushed his cheek softly against the wing of hair covering her cheek.
“Au revoir, Miss Barrett,” he whispered in her ear, his breath teasing nerves she didn’t know she possessed. Then he shoved her away from him hard.
By the time she’d regained her footing, he’d slammed the door and locked it from outside with the key he must have palmed when he fiddled with the latch.
“Don’t you dare ransack the house, you devil!” she shouted, rushing forward and pounding on the door. But the vicarage doors were of solid English oak and hardly shook under her determined assault. “Don’t you dare!”
Gasping, she stopped and pressed her ear to the door, desperate to work out what he was up to. She heard a distant slam as though someone left by the front door. Could her presence have deterred him from his larcenous plans? She couldn’t imagine why. From the first, he’d had the best of the conflict.
Her hands fisted against the wood as she recalled his barefaced cheek in holding her so … so improperly.
“Improper” seemed too weak a term to describe the sensations he’d aroused when he’d captured her like a sheep ready for the shears. Like that sheep, she was about to be well and truly fleeced. She was in no position to stop the villain from taking what he wanted. Nobody would let her out until her father and aunt returned from the duke’s, and heaven knew when that would be. The Reverend Ezekiel Barrett adored hobnobbing with the quality. He’d be there until breakfast if Sedgemoor didn’t throw him out first. She’d have to go out the window the way the villain had come in.
Tears of frustration stung her eyes. However illogically, she felt the radiating heat of the burglar’s body against hers. It was like he still touched her. She wasn’t afraid anymore, at least not for her person. If the rascal had wanted to hurt her, he’d had plenty of opportunity. Her principal reaction, now that fear and unwilling fascination ebbed, was self-disgust. She’d acted a ninnyhammer, the sort of jittery female she despised. She’d had a gun. Why hadn’t she forced him from the house?
The ominous silence extended. What was the blackguard doing? Would there be anything left by the time he finished? She glanced over to the desk and thanked the Lord that the only genuinely valuable item here had escaped his notice. For a sneak thief, he wasn’t very observant, although he hadn’t struck her as a man deficient in intelligence. Or, she added with renewed outrage, impertinence. Nevertheless, any professional would immediately purloin the gold object on the blotter.
Something landed on the carpet near the open window. Curious, nervous, Genevieve grabbed the candle from the desk and lifted it high. On the floor lay the key.
Astonished and outraged, she rushed to the window, but darkness and the elm’s thick foliage obstructed her view. In the distance someone started to whistle. A jaunty old tune. “Over the Hills and Far Away.” Apt for an absconding thief, she supposed. Not that he’d betrayed any panic. Again, his confidence struck her as puzzling. The music faded as the whistler wandered into the night.
With shaking hands, Genevieve scooped up the key and balanced it on her palm. One completely unimportant fact threw every other consideration to the wind. She’d finally identified the smell that had tantalized her when he’d held her.
Lemon verbena.
Richard drained his brandy and rested his head against the back of the leather armchair in Leighton Court’s library. Housebreaking left a man in dire need of a drink. The black mask draped disregarded from a bookshelf. He’d felt like a confounded mountebank wearing it, but as things turned out, it had been a wise decision. After six months of detective work, he’d found his treasure.
“She’s got the jewel, all right, after playing coy with my agents about whether Great Aunt Amelia left it to her. When I climbed through the only open window I could find, it sat on the desk, plain as that big beak on your face.”
“No need to get personal.” Camden Rothermere, Duke of Sedgemoor, rose from the matching chair across the hearth to refill Richard’s glass. The duke’s green eyes below his ruler-straight black hair lightened with the humor that only his friends saw.
Right now, Richard knew he took advantage of that friendship. Only a good friend would rusticate on this obscure estate to support a pal when he could be enjoying the delights of his principal seat in Derbyshire. Cam’s house in Little Derrick gave Richard a base in the neighborhood. Cam’s name would provide an introduction to the locals.
Cam hissed with impatience. “Why the devil didn’t you steal it then and there if the damned thing was ripe for the taking? Nice quick job. You can slink back to the fleshpots and I can go north to supervise the harvest at Fentonwyck.”
“Bad form to steal it, old man, bad form.” A faint smile tilted Richard’s lips as his free hand dangled to toy with his dog’s ears. Sirius, a hound of indeterminate breed, snoozed on the floor beside the chair, his long nose resting on his front paws. He hadn’t appreciated missing out on tonight’s excitement. “I’ll give the chit a chance to sell it to me first. If I steal it, I can’t brandish the bauble to demonstrate that I’m the title’s incumbent and society had better bloody well respect that.”
Richard spoke more casually than circumstances warranted. Until tonight, he’d only seen the jewel in watercolor sketches in the family papers. The urge to pocket the gold and enamel trinket had been deuced strong, but tonight’s burglary had always only been a reconnaissance mission.
His agents had approached Miss Barrett several times to purchase the jewel and none of them could get the damned woman to admit that she had the troublesome artifact. She’d neither denied nor confirmed, although every trail ended at Little Derrick’s vicarage. Tonight’s burglary had been a last-ditch attempt to discover whether to proceed with the plan that even he admitted sounded outlandish.
The rage that had gripped him in Lord Packham’s ballroom still soured his days. Laying his hands on the jewel had become a quest to assert his worthiness to a world too eager to discount him as a sham.
“I’m glad I don’t have to add theft to your list of misdemeanors.” Cam eyed Richard without favor.
“I’ll try persuasion first.” He sipped his friend’s excellent brandy, his pleasure in recalling the vicar’s fiery daughter vying with the anger that had simmered for six months. Longer. His whole life. “Anyway, Miss Barrett had a gun.”
A surprised gust of laughter escaped Cam. “Did she, by Jove? Good for her. I wondered if you’d encounter the mysterious Miss Barrett when her father and aunt turned up to dinner without her, but it was too late to warn you that the vicarage wasn’t empty. I swear the reverend gentleman could talk the leg off an iron pot. Even if you’d caught a bullet, I had the worst of the evening.”
“I owe you.” Richard stretched his long
