How To Vex A Viscount (14 page)

Things are as one perceives them to be.

Lucian rolled that idea through his brain while he ate his breakfast porridge. He tried it on several different areas of his life to see if the observation would fit.

It certainly worked when one considered the nobility. His peers were no finer men and women than Avery and the rest of Montford’s staff. In fact, he knew several titled gents who were downright scoundrels. And yet because they were
perceived
to be better, taught from the womb that they were somehow a class above, the perception became their reality.

“If I continue down this train of thought, I’ll be on the road to sedition in short order,” he muttered as he pushed back from the table and headed out to the excavation site.

As he neared the pit, he heard the scrape of shovels and the swish of brooms. Work had commenced without him, and from the sounds of it, there were several additional men labouring. On the far side of the site, Daisy Drake was crouched down, pointing into the pit. Her sunbonnet was of such ridiculous proportions, she resembled an oversized, beribboned mushroom.

“Careful, Mr Peabody,” Daisy said. “There’s something protruding by your left foot. Switch to a broom till you’ve discovered what it is. Remember, carefully is better than quickly.”

Even with the large bonnet, her exposed arms were pinking in the morning sun. Intent on her task, she hadn’t noticed Lucian’s approach. Lucian crossed his arms over his chest and indulged in observing her unimpeded.

Here was another case where perception might belie the truth.

She might be trouble with feet, but there was no denying Daisy Drake was an eyeful. Even when she was ordering a group of workmen about, her pale hands gestured with unexpected grace. She was round where Lucian liked a woman round. He suspected her corset didn’t labour too much to narrow her waist. A Roman sculptor would have no complaint if Daisy were his model. Except perhaps that she was too fully dressed.

Ignore her,
Blanche had advised when he asked how to go about showing a young lady he admired her. Daisy Drake was many things, but easy to ignore was not one of them.

Against his better judgment, Lucian
did
admire her. Too bad she was the niece of his father’s bitterest enemy.

She tilted her head, and the bonnet hid the upper part of her face, leaving only her mouth and jawline in view. Lucian narrowed his eyes.

Was lack of sleep playing tricks on him? There was something about the full pout of her lower lip, the sharp point of her chin. He rubbed his eyes.

For just a blink, Lucian thought Daisy Drake could be Blanche La Tour’s twin.

Or was he so besotted with the courtesan that he was seeing only what he wished to see?

Things are as one perceives them to be.

Surely he was mistaken. He searched his memory. Had he ever seen Daisy in the same room as Blanche? No, he hadn’t. Still, that didn’t prove anything.

He looked back over and found Daisy had dropped to her knees. She leaned over the lip of the pit, her posterior pointed to the sky.

A very un-maidenly pose. He’d wager his title she had no idea how erotically appealing she looked.

Blanche, on the other hand, would know full well what she was doing and milk the posture for effect. Daisy’s attention was focused on something wedged in the strata of dirt below. She was so keen on whatever it was, she didn’t concern herself with how she might appear.

Lucian had seen enough Roman art to imagine how she’d look with her skirt flopped up over her head, bare bum smiling at the sun.

“Never a stiff breeze around when you need one,” he muttered, tamping down that thoroughly rakish hope. Lucian walked around the pit and stood behind her for only a little longer than necessary. Then, since no breeze seemed to be coming, he cleared his throat.

“Oh!” Daisy righted herself and glared over her shoulder at him. “I see you’ve finally deigned to grace us with your presence, milord. Has it escaped your notice that half the morning is spent?”

“Seems you’ve managed well enough without me.” Lucian strode forward to inspect the crew she was directing. “Who authorized hiring these men?”

“Your partner, Mlle La Tour,” she said. “She thought her investment would pay their salaries, and their labour will free you to work on . . . well, to work with me on organizing your existing finds.”

“And that was Blanche’s wish?”

She squinted up at him. “Yours as well, I assume. Didn’t you discuss it with her last night? Oh, you there!” Her gaze was dragged back to the pit. “Careful with that.”

Daisy leaned down again, reaching for the newly excavated wax tablet. Her hoops swayed in the breeze. Her skirts pressed against her legs and conformed to the confounded wire contraption she had strapped to her hips, but she remained more or less decently covered. When she sat back upright, she was cradling the tablet.

“This is the third one we’ve found this morning,” she said. She blew across the surface to try to dislodge some of the clinging dirt, but succeeded only in raising a billowing cloud of dust that had them both coughing and sputtering.

That settled it. He was definitely taking a slight resemblance between Daisy Drake and Blanche and multiplying it all out of proportion. Blanche would never risk dirtying her coiffure and gown in order to blow ancient grime from an old wax tablet.

“Here.” He handed her his clean handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and then blew her nose soundly on it.

“I’ll have it laundered and return it to you tomorrow.” She slipped the hankie into a pocket pinned amid the folds of her skirt, then called down into the pit. “Mr Peabody, please take charge of the others and remind them to be careful.”

The new fellow tugged at his forelock and turned back to his task.

“Where did you find them?”

“Mr Peabody was waiting here when I arrived this morning,” she explained. “According to his letter of reference, he’s served in similar capacity as foreman for several excavations on the Continent, Germany and Italy mostly. He’d caught wind of your finds and thought to offer his services.”

Lucian frowned at the back of Peabody’s head. “I’d rather hire my own people. This is a delicate situation.”

“Ordinarily, I’d agree, but since you presented at the Society of Antiquaries, it’s not as if you are working in secrecy,” Daisy said. “Besides, where would you find someone with Mr Peabody’s experience?”

“Experience we cannot readily verify.”

Daisy cocked her head at him. “He’s already kept your stable boy from hacking off the winged foot of an unsuspecting statuette of Hermes.”

She turned and strode toward the shed. Daisy’s words made sense, but doubt still niggled at him.

“Do you want to release them from service?” she asked when he didn’t move to follow her.

As he watched, the team of workmen fetched up a delicate copper chain, the metal green with age. Peabody handled the find with as much care as Lucian would himself, placing it in a canvas-lined wooden tray and hoisting it out of the pit so Lucian and Daisy could retrieve it easily.

“There,” she said from behind him. “Are you satisfied?”

“I suppose.”

“Come, then.” She waved him toward the shed. “You and I have work to do.”

Daisy massaged the bridge of her nose. Both she and Lucian had been working all day translating the newly discovered tablets. They stopped briefly for tea and biscuits when Avery brought out the refreshments, but even then, Lucian had spent the time poring over his notes, hardly speaking three words to her.

She glanced over at him. He’d cleared a space on one of the benches and was bent over a tablet, quill in hand, transcribing the contents of the ancient Roman manifest. His brow furrowed and his tongue was clamped firmly between his teeth in concentration.

I swear the man’s ignoring me,
Daisy thought. Ignoring her? In her guise as Blanche, hadn’t she advised him to ignore the young lady he wanted to impress? Could it possibly be that he . . . ?

“Look here!” he said suddenly.

“You’ve found a clue about the location of the payroll?”

“No, but I have found another reference to our thief.”

Daisy hopped up and strode over to join him.

“Oh! This seems to be a court docket of some kind,” she said as she skimmed over the text. “Plaintiffs, respondents, pleas. Ah!”

Lucian ran a finger beneath the line in question.

“‘Caius Meritus, freedman, requests permission to purchase the freedom of one Deirdre of the household of Quintus Valerian Scipianus,’” he read.

“That’s the same name as the girl he bought as a servant for the proconsul’s wife.” Daisy settled onto the chair near Lucian and folded her hands on her lap. “Jupiter! Do you suppose he loved the girl?”

“The record on the tablet doesn’t say anything about that,” Lucian pointed out.

“Well, of course it wouldn’t, would it?” Daisy said, warming to the idea. “In the process of reconstructing antiquity, some things must be inferred.”

“Or fabricated.”

“Why are you so certain he didn’t love her?”

“My dear Miss Drake, you are assigning much more noble motivations to Caius Meritus than he may deserve. He was a thief, after all.” Lucian’s mouth curved in a crooked smile. “And a man doesn’t have to love a woman in order to crave her company.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Just as you don’t love Blanche.”

“My relationship with Mlle La Tour is not the subject under discussion,” he said.

“And your motivations are ever so noble.” Her tone dripped sarcasm.

His smile took a decidedly wicked turn. “Again, you infer that which is not in evidence.”

Daisy narrowly resisted the urge to box his ears.

“You want evidence. Very well. Here is what we know. Caius Meritus bought the girl in the proconsul’s name to serve in the ruling household. He subsequently attempted to purchase her freedom. It says here”—she stood and pointed to a row of characters on the ancient tablet—“that the request was denied. The only other thing we know about him is that he stole an entire Roman payroll. Is it such a stretch to imagine that these events are connected?”

“There’s only one problem with your theory,” Lucian whispered, leaning toward her.

“What’s that?” Daisy whispered back. She leaned toward him, subconsciously mirroring his movement.

And was shocked to her curled toes when he slid a hand behind her neck and pulled her down for a kiss. His mouth claimed hers in a warm rush. When her lips parted for an instant, he was quick to send his tongue in for a scandalously sexual exploration of her mouth.

She felt herself go pliant as a reed by the riverbank. She could no more stop her body from rousing to him than she could stop her finger from bleeding if she pricked it with a needle. Moist warmth pooled between her legs.

But she didn’t have to let him know it. She pulled back her arm and sent him a stinging blow to the cheek.

He released her at once.

“Why did you do such a thing?” Daisy demanded. His taste was still on her lips, his scent all she could smell.

“Because I wanted to prove my point.”

“Which is?”

“I wanted a kiss, Miss Drake. So I did what most men would do given the opportunity. I stole one,” Lucian said with smugness. “If Caius Meritus wanted the girl, why didn’t he just take her and escape to the hinterlands? Why steal the Roman payroll instead?”

“Maybe she didn’t want to go with him,” Daisy said. “After all, I didn’t want you to kiss me.”

Her tremble damned her for a liar.

“Really? I could have sworn you didn’t mind at first, but that’s a discussion for another day, isn’t it?” He stood and she stutter-stepped back to stay out of his reach. “Don’t worry, Daisy. I’m not going to steal any more kisses to convince you of my point.” He strode to the open doorway, then stopped and turned back to her. His eyebrows hitched upward twice. “Not unless you ask me nicely.”

His dark gaze was so knowing, she felt as if he’d suddenly caught her naked. His lips taunted her, and she realized she wanted him to kiss her again.

Very badly.

When she schooled him in kissing as Blanche, she’d created a monster. A damnably attractive monster.

She pushed past him and stomped out of the shed, her shredded dignity trailing behind her like a broken pair of angel wings.

“There comes a point in every chase when the vixen must slow her pace, lest the hound lose the scent.”

—the journal of Blanche La Tour

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Your face
is
flushed,” the earl said as he stared down at his only son, who still lolled in bed.

Lucian had smacked his own cheeks several times before his father entered the chamber. Now he let his eyelids droop in what he hoped was a sickly fashion. “Please convey my regrets to Lady Brumley and her family.”

“This is deucedly inconvenient.” His father frowned at him. “Damned insolent of you to allow yourself to get sick. We accepted their invitation for a picnic and lawn bowling weeks ago.”

You accepted the invitation weeks ago,
Lucian amended silently. “I don’t feel myself up to it, sir. Pray have me excused.”