Vexing The Viscount (13 page)

Her skin was warm and smooth and covered with a fine sheen of perspiration. Deirdre smelled of musk and earth and green growing things. He found her mouth and joined his breath with hers in a kiss tinged with desperation. His
soul flowed out of his body and mingled with hers, a bonding too complete to ever sever without damage to both.

Without knowing how, he found himself atop her on the fragrant grass. He worshiped her breasts with his mouth, reveling in the small sounds of helpless pleasure that escaped her when he suckled and nipped.

She was wet and hot. Her legs wrapped around his hips as she urged him deeper. He lost himself in her dark womb and didn’t care. He heard the rhythm of her secret music, moving in time with the silent Celtic rondelet.

His ballocks tightened as her wet sheath pulsed around him. He emptied his love into her, all his hopes, his desires, all he was; he gave himself without thought.

Afterward, they lay twined together without speaking. The stars wheeled in his head and the smiling moon blessed them.

The next morning dawned fair enough, but Lucian barely dragged himself out of bed. He blamed Blanche for his sleeplessness. She’d whipped him into an aching fury, then shoved him away like the heartless courtesan she was. He knew it was stupid to expect more.

The callow aspirations of inexperience.

She’d made no bones about the fact that she was a woman of pleasure. If he wanted a more intimate relationship with her, he’d have to produce the coin. Even though she’d seemed pleased by the Faunus statue, Lucian realized it would take something much shinier to induce her to reveal more of herself to him.

And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it than just his lack of funds. Something else had made Blanche pull away. He’d bet his last good shirt she’d been as breathlessly excited by their explorations as he. He’d felt her tremble with need.

Was that usual for a courtesan? Surely one so well versed in the pleasures of the flesh would possess more self-control?

Or less.

She was nothing like he’d imagined a
fille de joie
would be.

Lucian tugged the bellpull for Avery.

“Good morning, sir.” The butler appeared so quickly,
Lucian almost suspected Avery had taken to sleeping across his threshold like a faithful hound. “Will you be venturing out this day?”

Lucian knew Avery was wondering if he should lay out Lucian’s only remaining decent suit of clothes. Since Daisy Drake had spoiled his other set by emptying her inkwell on it, he was left with only the black with pewter buttons.

“No, I’ll be working at the site.” Lucian ambled to his nightstand and poured some water from the pitcher into the basin. He leaned over and dashed a couple handfuls on his face. The bracing liquid drove the last cobwebs of fatigue from his mind.

“Very good, sir.”

Avery disappeared into Lucian’s threadbare wardrobe and emerged with a serviceable pair of breeches and a simple shirt. The butler handled the garments with as much aplomb as if they were the latest foppery from France.

“How do you do that, Avery?”

“Do what, sir?” He laid the garments across the foot of the bed and produced a small whisk broom from his pocket to give the breeches a quick brushing.

“Act as if things were as they used to be,” Lucian said. “I know you’re working harder than ever since the staff’s been pared to the bone. We can’t begin to pay you what you’re worth, and yet you stay on, treating Father and me with the same deference, the same respect as when Montford was in its glory days.”

“One does what one can,” Avery said modestly. The tips of his ears flushed scarlet with embarrassment under Lucian’s praise. “But if one may be so bold, sir, it has been my observation that whatever the underlying truth, things are as one perceives them to be. It has been my honor to serve the house of Montford all my life. I believe it to be a worthy pursuit, despite appearances to the contrary.”

“A worthy pursuit.” That described Blanche as well as
anything. A slow smile spread over Lucian’s face. “You’re a secret philosopher, Avery.”

“Ah, young sir, you flatter me. Though I must admit I hold the venerable library at Montford one of the finest benefits of my position. I merely borrow the thoughts of greater minds,” Avery said with a thin-lipped grin and a twinkle in his gray eyes.

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 laboring. 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 oversize, 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 of direction, she
hadn’t noticed Lucian’s approach. Lucian crossed his arms over his chest and indulged in looking at 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 about a group of workmen, her pale hands gestured with unexpected grace. She was round where Lucian liked a woman round. He suspected her corset didn’t labor 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 unmaidenly 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 what ever 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 bottom 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 labor 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 of 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 where Lucian and Daisy could retrieve it easily.

“There,” she said 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 brief y 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.” His disappointment stripped an edge from his previous
excitement. “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 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.