Seducing the Rake (Mad, Bad and Dangerous Heroes) (2 page)

And then the Earl of Morland came into view.

Midnight froze. An odd whine filled her head. Around her all time and movement seemed to halt.

So long. Yet not long enough to dim the pain of bittersweet memories.

He was still strikingly handsome, she thought. His hair was longer than was currently fashionable, falling thick and straight, the color of antique bronze. His lips were full and faintly cynical, and his smile was wickedness itself as he placed the candle on the mantel and turned to rummage through the gaudy waterfall of lingerie dangling over the ornate lacquer screen.

Anthony Morland. The love of her life, he had wooed her and then betrayed her ten years before.

Only inches away, hidden behind the screen, Midnight waited, afraid to breathe, afraid to move.

Afraid to do anything except concentrate on being completely invisible.

A frothy length of sheer Valenciennes lace went flying over the carved black lacquer. “Yes, I rather like this one.” Morland smiled darkly, holding a cloud-soft peignoir up to his mistress’s lush form.

Dumb with embarrassment, Midnight closed her eyes, her ears, her every sense.

But each rustle of clothing struck her with the force of an earthquake. Every moan touched her skin with flame.

Silk pooled onto the floor with a soft hiss.

“Lovely. Now, I think, for the garters…”

Midnight tried to force her thoughts far away, tried to keep her heated gaze above the narrow crack between the panels of the screen. But she failed utterly.

She saw his powerful fingers flex and inch skillfully over pink skin and rounded thighs.

“Tony! Oh, p-please. “

“Of course, pet. But first things first…”

Midnight heard a squeal of delight, saw the flash of eager, grasping fingers. “My lord! But these are from the matched set we saw at Rundell and Bridge’s last week! Eliza will be
green
with envy!”

“I’m delighted to hear it,” the earl said dryly.

Behind the screen the rustling reached a furious peak. Whatever this matched set was, they were provoking a great deal of ardor, Midnight thought angrily. All this commotion for a few jewels! Why didn’t the two take themselves off to Vauxhall like ordinary people and pursue their idle pleasures there, leaving her in peace?

But the Earl of Morland, she was about to discover, was anything but
ordinary
when it came to seduction. He had a reputation for infinite patience when it suited him.

And just now it suited him very well.

“Ah, how wonderful is this thing called greed,” the earl mused. “I adore how it spurs your passionate, conniving little heart, Germaine.” Once again his voice held an edge of cynicism.

“G-greed? It is no such thing! It is only—I am overcome. Yes, positively
overcome.
With your gift. And with you too, of course,” Germaine added, hastily.

As if to prove it, her pink fingers attacked the earl’s exquisitely tied neckcloth. A moment later the pristine linen slid free and came flying over the edge of the screen. Midnight barely checked an instinct to duck out of range as the white linen fell against her shoulder, still warm with the heat of its owner’s body.

Her breath fled at the contact.

She felt her cheeks flame hotly as she caught his scent, citrus and leather and male. Dear heaven, they were so close that she could hear every sigh, every breath. And any minute they were going to—

She went completely still, summoning the image of a lotus opening in pristine silence amid a dawn garden. Petal by white petal, the perfect bud unfolded while green leaves spread slowly, rocked on cool waters.

Better. Yes, much better.

Low giggles filled the confined space, along with more rustling of cloth. A jacket of blue superfine struck the screen, rocking the lacquer frame.

Midnight’s fingers squeezed to fists. She caught her breath as the elegant panels swayed wildly, then finally righted themselves. Meanwhile the sounds behind the screen became more urgent. Each rustle and sigh made her unsettled, thinking of hot, hungry skin and searching kisses.

They made her remember how those warm lips had felt on
hers,
on a moonlit night ten years before.

“Oh, T-Tony!”

“Ummmmm,
have I told you lately that your skin is like silk? That your eyes are like—”

“Emeralds?” came the hopeful reply, “Very
large
emeralds? With matching diamonds?”

Dry laughter spilled through the small room. “What a greedy minx you are, to be sure.” Abruptly the earl’s voice trailed away.

Curious in spite of herself, Midnight inched closer to the crack in the screen. In taut silence she watched the tall Englishman, white shirt opened to midchest, ease back the sheer lace folds of his mistress’s peignoir around a very fetching necklace of diamonds and a perfect, marquise-cut emerald.

The trespassing Midnight felt her face flush beet-red when Morland’s strong fingers feathered over the taut peaks outlined beneath Germaine’s sheer lace garment.

“T-Tony! You know how dizzy I become when—oh!
Tony,
you must not!”

But these breathless protests were ignored, as they were meant to be. The earl’s head dropped. He parted the froth of ruffles with his mouth and slowly eased one lush pink nipple between his teeth.

Stricken with embarrassment, Midnight jerked her head away. This was impossible! It
couldn’t
be happening.

Eyes squeezed shut, she concentrated on repeating the opening lines of Sun Tzu’s classic study on the art of war. But she got only as far as “All warfare is based on deception,” before her concentration failed. The sensuous rasp of skin upon naked skin could no longer be ignored.

A raw cry tore from Germaine’s lips. “Oh, Tony, yes! You know how I adore—” The screen shook hard. Then her limp body slid down the wall into Morland’s arms.

Inches away, Midnight fought to ignore the pounding of her heart, and the odd tremor in her legs. It was merely the logical and physical resolution of opposites, she told herself sternly. Merely the male element of yang seeking its natural complement in the female element of yin.

Oh, absolutely! And you’re the Queen of Sheba,
a mocking voice answered.

“I believe we may now dispense with this piece of froth
.”
Wolfish laughter filled the room.

“My
lord!”

“Exactly what I was thinking, Germaine. Shall we adjourn to—er, more comfortable quarters?”

About time you did
, Midnight thought irritably.

Bed linens rustled in the room next door, and wood creaked. “I really must remember to give you emeralds more often,” Tony murmured.

His partner answered with a soft moan.

“Now, my sweet. Open your eyes,” Morland ordered hoarsely.

“T-Tony!” It was a cry of amazement, of shock, of wanton delight.

The sound made Midnight flush to the very ends of her toes.
But they were
—

A moment later Germaine’s voice broke in a tight moan of pleasure, and her virile protector groaned in his own powerful release.

Hidden and silent, Midnight fought to calm her pounding heart. After all, she had more
important
things to worry about than the sexual excesses of the depraved English aristocracy.

Only somehow she couldn’t quite convince herself of that fact…

~ ~ ~

The silence stretched on. Finally Midnight came to her feet, stretching like a cat. Carefully she inched from her hiding place. A velvet curtain flapped idly in the breeze as she slipped into the neighboring room. And there she froze.

It was an elegant room with silk-covered walls, gilt-framed prints and a pair of velvet armchairs.

But it was not the furniture that drew Midnight’s eyes. It was certainly not the prints, which were of little artistic skill.

It was the two bodies sprawled amid rumpled sheets that held her fascinated gaze. The blond woman lay snoring slightly. Her companion slept with his back curved away, his pillow scrunched into a lump beneath his neck.

Spellbound, Midnight found her eyes tracing the muscled arms to a bronze chest dense with darker bronze hair. His leg was bent, disappearing into the mound of white bed linens. His calves were lean but rope-hard.

He was utterly beautiful.

With a professional’s keen eye, Midnight studied those hard limbs, wondering what sort of exercise the earl pursued to keep his muscles so well toned. In her innocence, she did not consider that the activity she had just observed might provide a fair amount of exercise.

A gust of wind tugged at the curtains. The man on the bed shifted. He dragged a hand across his forehead and turned to his back.

Midnight’s face filled with heat.

Dear Lord, he was completely—that is, the man was absolutely naked.
She could see every bronzed inch of him
.

Redfaced, she wrenched her gaze away. Desperately she set about searching the dressing room, from the cluttered lacquer table to the half-opened
armoire
in the corner.

But she found nothing of interest, certainly not the priceless, jewel-laden book she had come in search of.

A wave of despair washed over her. One more wasted night, with all its raw futility. Would she ever find the fabled Chinese book, or was this whole search a maniacal game devised by her father’s cunning enemies?

He had enough of them, Midnight knew. She remembered the Portuguese merchant who had never forgiven her father for tricking him out of a cargo of stolen ginseng. And there was the Frenchman who had absconded with the accumulated artifacts of a whole season’s digging in the islands off the South China coast. She and her father had come close to losing a boatload of remarkable Han jades before they discovered the man’s treachery.

The Frenchman had lost three teeth in the fight that ensued. His back would wear the mark of her father’s cold lash forever, she suspected.

Had one of
them
kidnapped her father for revenge?

She had no answer, though she had thought of little else since the news of her father’s kidnapping had reached her three months before. Hard on the heels of that had come the first anonymous note ordering her to search for the sole object that would buy her father’s freedom.

The price was a book worth a man’s weight in jewels. Diamond-encrusted and bound in gold, with illustrations designed to kindle the jaded appetites of an emperor who had tasted every pleasure and possessed every treasure among the four seas.

The pillow book was said to be a thousand years old, each exquisite page detailing a different path to erotic pleasure. And that book was the only way to buy her father’s release.

Midnight frowned. Misbegotten son of a turtle!
Where was the accursed book?

The bed creaked, interrupting her musings. The earl muttered hoarsely and rolled to his side. A hard bronze thigh slid from the white linens. His long fingers flexed, cupping the pink-tipped breast only inches from his face.

Sighing, Germaine snuggled closer.

Dear heaven, not again! Had the two been taking Siberian ginseng for stamina?

Caught between fury and an unsettling curiosity, Midnight slipped along the wall toward the door. Her cloth-soled slippers moved in silence. She was halfway down the corridor when she heard a low curse.

“Damn it, Germaine, it’s freezing in here! Did you leave another window open downstairs? You’ll have every cutthroat and gallows-bird in London in the hall. “

Clothing rustled. Midnight darted to the window, raised the pane and slid one foot onto the roof.

The curtains tossed about her head, blanketing her head and hitting off her vision.

“Got you, you little beggar!” Hard fingers seized her shoulders and hauled her back over the windowsill. “Thought it was all bob, did you?”

Her breath flew out in a
whoosh
as she was yanked backward and crushed against a wall of muscle.

Hot, straining muscle.

Wildly she twisted, trying to fight free of the hard fingers digging into her wrists.

“Bring a candle, Germaine!”

Down the hall silk rustled. “I-I’m coming.”

Midnight closed her eyes, trying to forget that her captor was wearing only the thinnest of dressing gowns.

Wildly, she struggled to pull free, but her focus and training were lost. She grappled blindly, trying to ignore the pressure of his naked chest and then his powerful thigh.

She had to
focus
.

Dear heaven, she could
not
let him discover her identity!

Catching a long breath, she went completely slack, not resisting when her captor’s hard thighs pinned her to the wall.

“Give up, do you? Damned good idea, unless you want your arm broken. What did you take, you little thief? Silver? One of Germaine’s bracelets?”