A Rake's Midnight Kiss (25 page)

As if to protest that description, Sirius opened one eye from where he snoozed on the hearth rug. Richard bent to fondle the dog’s ears. “I know I’ve made a deuced mess of it, old fellow. No need to scowl at me as though I’m a bottle short of a dozen.”

“I’ve never known you unable to charm your way into a woman’s good graces—and more.” Cam, ever the perfect host, rose to refill his friends’ glasses.

Three armchairs ranged before the flames. Jonas sat on the left, his scarred face masklike. Cam subsided into the center chair, watching Richard with an annoyingly knowing expression.

Enduring friendship and the loosening effects of liquor meant that Richard could no longer pretend an impersonal interest in Genevieve’s safety. Especially as he’d dearly love to enlist Jonas’s help.

“For you, one woman is much the same as the next,” Jonas said easily. “If this one resists, however lowering to your vanity, you’ll find another quickly enough.”

Cam understood him better than anyone, even Jonas. “I believe in this case, Richard has discovered that no other woman will do.”

Good God, he was blushing. What the hell was wrong with him? “Putting it too strongly, chum.”

Cam’s eyebrows rose eloquently although he merely said, “No doubt.”

Richard’s fist clenched against the marble. “I’m sure she blames me for this last break-in.” Either that or she felt devilish guilty about what they’d done at Oxford. “When she must know that I’d never place her family at risk.”

Cam’s brows remained elevated. “Must she?”

“Hell, yes.” Richard prowled across to stare out the window. The night was stormy, the wind rattling the sash windows, not at all like the idyll when he’d kissed Genevieve by the pond.

Jonas, who had heard a condensed version of Richard’s adventures in Little Derrick, spoke. “Perhaps she’s guessed that you’re an imposter.”

Richard shook his head. “If she had, she’d have me tossed out on my arse.”

“Maybe she merely discourages your interest,” Cam said from his chair. “She was a virtuous woman.”

“She
is
a virtuous woman,” Richard said shortly, wheeling restlessly to survey his friends.

“Good. I never approved of you ruining a girl who has to hold her head high in a small village.”

Richard felt his cheeks heat, like a naughty schoolboy brought before the headmaster. Cam always did the right thing. The fellow was no monk, but he confined himself to women who suffered no harm from his attentions, and like everything the duke did, he pursued his sexual interests in moderation.

Richard would lay money Cam had never been as hungry for a woman as he was for Genevieve. Lucky sod.

“So where is the jewel?” Jonas asked. Until his legitimacy had been confirmed, he’d lived outside high society, amassing a fortune that wouldn’t disgrace an emperor.
He still thought like a man of business instead of a louche aristocrat.

Richard shrugged. “She wouldn’t tell me. Damn it, she won’t give me the time of day. I’m guessing from the lack of panic that it’s still stashed somewhere. If I were wagering on Genevieve outwitting a band of sneak thieves, Genevieve would win hands down. Her brainbox puts even yours to shame, Jonas.”

His childhood friend laughed softly. “I never thought the day would come when I’d hear you praising a female’s intelligence.”

Richard sighed. His friends’ mockery grew tiresome. They acted as if he’d bedded anything in skirts, whereas he’d always had high standards of beauty if not wits in his amours.

Cam stood and strolled forward. “Don’t you think it’s time you gave this up?”

“Gave what up?” His friends should know to take that dangerous tone seriously.

Of course Cam didn’t quail. “This whole misbegotten scheme. You set your heart on the jewel in a fit of temper. What difference will possessing it make? It can’t undo your bastardy.”

Richard’s hands curled at his sides. From any other man, that remark would invite a punch in the nose. “It confirms the succession.”

Cam’s expression conveyed his scorn. “Nothing can change Sir Lester Harmsworth’s sixteen months in St. Petersburg before your arrival.”

“Take care,” Richard murmured.

Cam sighed. “You’re wasting your time here. And getting in much deeper than you should, both to your detriment and to the detriment of Little Derrick’s residents.”

Richard flung away, knowing he behaved like a boor but unable to stop himself. Where, oh where was the sophisticate who had adorned a thousand London ballrooms? He’d felt likely to split into pieces ever since Genevieve had turned her back on him.

How right he’d been to fear her power. Although his wariness had done bugger all to stop him tumbling head over heels in love. What would his friends say if he declared that mawkish sentiment? They’d laugh themselves into next Sunday.

“Do forgive me,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “I’d so hate my racketing to smear your sterling reputation, Your Grace.”

Cam didn’t fly into a rage. He never did. Devil take him, Richard occasionally wished that something would ruffle that perfect façade, unearth some passion beneath the decorum. Instead Cam’s face tightened with sympathy. Hell, he didn’t want his friends feeling sorry for him.

“You know that’s not my primary concern.” Cam paused. “Although, yes, the longer this continues, the more likelihood of disaster and scandal. For you. For Dr. Barrett. For Miss Barrett. For me. After all, I introduced you to the neighborhood.”

“I want the jewel,” Richard said through tight lips.

From under lowered lids, Jonas observed his friends. “You’re doing precious little to get it.”

“I’d say he’s doing nothing at all,” Cam affirmed.

Richard shifted uncomfortably. He’d never taken advantage of the secrets he’d unearthed at the vicarage. Cam had a point, to Hades with him.

“I’m waiting for the optimum moment.” He paused. “Right now, I can’t do a blasted thing because bloody Fairbrother has posted a watchdog.”

His festering resentment since that perfect day in Oxford
had only been exacerbated by the arrival of the bruiser Hector Greengrass. Fairbrother had infiltrated Greengrass into the vicarage ostensibly to protect the inmates. More likely to spy on Genevieve and Christopher Evans. But the decision had been made before Richard could lodge an objection. Greengrass slept above the stables and devoted his days to dogging Richard’s footsteps.

Aside from the man’s presence stymieing all attempts to get Genevieve alone, Greengrass struck Richard as a criminal type. It was like setting the cat to defend the mouse hole.

“Keep an eye on Fairbrother, Richard.” Jonas’s expression was serious. “Cam asked me to make inquiries. I hear disturbing rumors about sharp practices and stolen goods.”

Now, that was interesting. “Enough to set the law on him?”

Jonas shrugged. “Nothing substantiated, but my sources indicate that he’s a man with expensive tastes and an eye to acquisitions fit to empty a maharajah’s treasury.”

Richard frowned. “There. I can’t leave Miss Barrett at the swine’s mercy.”

“You’ve got a barrel of excuses for staying, old chum,” Cam said.

“If you wanted the jewel, you’d have it by now,” Jonas said ruthlessly.

“I want it.”

“Not enough,” Jonas retorted.

Cam sighed. “Stop glaring at me like an angry bear and come back to the fire. You need another drink.”

Richard didn’t comply with his friend’s half-humorous invitation. The reference to his bastardy had cut. It underlined how much he liked being legitimately born Christopher Evans.

“What can you achieve?” Jonas’s unreadable black eyes
sent a cold chill through people who didn’t know him or who had reason to fear him. Even Richard, who considered him a man of unshakable honor, suppressed a shiver as that obsidian regard settled upon him. “Surely you don’t plan to devote your life to playing a rustic Romeo?”

Richard stiffened and stared down his friend. He spoke the thought that had crept into his mind so many nights when he’d lain awake longing for Genevieve down the hall, impossibly far away. “I could stay here. Why not?”

Cam groaned with disbelief. “Why not? A million reasons why not. You’ve taken leave of your sanity.”

Stubbornly Richard turned to the duke. “What million reasons? Name them. Name one.”

Again Cam sighed. “Let’s start with the fact that you’re not Christopher Evans, landowner from Shropshire. You’re Sir Richard Harmsworth and sure to be exposed as such. Sooner rather than later. You’ve been lucky so far that nobody has recognized you.” He made another irritated sound. “You have a real life outside this backwater. You have friends and family and responsibilities to your estates. What is your mother to think if you disappear off the face of the earth?”

The mention of his mother conjured a black mist behind Richard’s eyes. Cam, it seemed, liked living dangerously. He might yet get that fist in the mouth. “My mother has her own life.”

Cam didn’t back down. “Which doesn’t mean she’ll accept you vanishing like the morning dew. You could end up the subject of a criminal inquiry.”

“Tosh. Nobody—especially Augusta Harmsworth—cares if I leave London.”

“When I was at White’s last week, your absence was a hot topic. You surely can’t expect to disappear from the civilized world without people wondering where the hell you’ve
gone—and why. There are even bets in the book about your whereabouts.”

“Anything I can make money on?” Jonas asked with a flash of the dark amusement so essential to his nature. “After all, I’ve got inside information on the elusive baronet.”

Irritated, Cam turned to him. “Dear God, I don’t know. There are a hundred theories as to where this dunderhead is skulking. He’s joined the army. He’s run off with an opera dancer. He’s decamped for the Continent because he murdered his tailor.”

“Sykes died?” Richard asked in shock. He was genuinely fond of his tailor, which was more than he could say for the frivolous clodpolls wagering on his location.

“Not as far as I know. But the general consensus is that only a sartorial mishap is likely to rouse Richard Harmsworth to murder.”

“Ha ha,” Richard said flatly. “And to think I looked forward to a pleasant evening with my oldest friends.”

Cam’s voice lowered to urgency. “Richard, this masquerade can’t continue forever.”

Defiance surged. “I like Little Derrick. They’re good people, better people than I’ve met hanging around society, pretending that nobody sneered at me. No one here gives a rat’s arse about the fall of my cravat or the cut of my coat. Damn it, they like Christopher Evans.
I like Christopher Evans.
I never had much truck with Richard Harmsworth. He was a dashed scurvy fellow.”

Cam’s expression softened, but his tone remained uncompromising. “That’s as may be. But you can’t spend your life hiding under an alias in deepest Oxfordshire. You know you can’t.”

“No, I don’t know,” Richard said stubbornly. “Does this mean you intend to expose me as an imposter?”

“Of course I won’t.” Cam sighed again and turned to Jonas. “Can you talk some sense into him?”

Jonas shrugged, then surprisingly smiled with a spark of devilry. “You know, I’d pay good money to set eyes on Genevieve Barrett. She must be one exceptional woman.”

F
rom the chaise longue, Genevieve surveyed her glittering surroundings. The Duke of Sedgemoor had invited his neighbors to dine and the guests gathered to begin the evening. So far, all she’d had to do was smile, but still she felt out of her depth.

His Grace’s drawing room at Leighton Court probably couldn’t compare to the accommodations in his larger houses. But to a girl from a humble vicarage, the gilt and white room with its ormolu mirrors was breathtaking. No wonder her father had returned from his first visit babbling with excitement.

She sipped her champagne, wryly amused that the expensive wine almost seemed part of everyday life. Whatever else she thought of Christopher, he’d broadened her horizons. Recalling the afternoon when he’d ignited those horizons into a thousand blazing suns, she shifted on her chair.

She hated him. Or at least she tried very hard to hate him. But nothing banished her heated recollections of that day on the river. She loathed the way that, despite knowing he was a
liar and a thief, her body didn’t despise him at all. Her body wanted him to do it all again.