A Rake's Midnight Kiss (9 page)

It had been a difficult week. She’d only just come to terms with facing down her charming but inexplicably inefficient burglar. She supposed she should be grateful that Mr. Evans’s arrival at least provided distraction. No longer did she jump at shadows. Instead she jumped at the sound of one particular baritone voice.

Mr. Evans glanced across to where she caught the evening light for her needlework. Behind her, the window was open in hope of attracting a stray drift of air. September had turned abnormally sultry and the parlor was stuffy. Or perhaps the crowded room was at fault. Her aunt, her father, Lord Neville, Mr. Evans. Not to mention Sirius and Hecuba.

Irritated with the heat, Genevieve brushed back stray tendrils escaping her chignon. Mr. Evans continued to stare. Did his gaze hold a conspiratorial light? Or was that her guilty conscience speaking? The secret of her father’s work wasn’t hers alone. She’d had no right revealing it to a stranger.

When the vicar had invited fifteen-year-old Genevieve to collate some notes on local churches into an article, she’d leaped at the chance. Any adolescent girl with pretensions
to intellectual achievement would find such a request flattering. Especially motherless Genevieve Barrett who craved her father’s attention. Even more exciting when the piece she wrote appeared in a journal.

So the deception had continued and thickened until Genevieve’s work shored up the vicar’s fame and any suggestion that he share credit made him sulk like a child. Her resentment had curdled over the last year, as she realized that her father was content for this arrangement to last indefinitely.

Then Lady Bellfield had bequeathed her the Harmsworth Jewel and her research had uncovered interesting and potentially explosive facts about the object. The chance of independence from her father had finally become a reality and she meant to seize it with both hands. When she’d told the interfering Mr. Evans that her whole future depended on the Harmsworth Jewel, she hadn’t exaggerated.

But ruthless as she strove to be, that lost young girl still lurked in her heart. Even now when she was so angry that she could strangle her father with his clergy stole, she still loved him. She didn’t want to destroy his reputation, however unjustified it was. She just wanted to claim her work and use it as the basis for a life of her own.

How on earth had Mr. Evans recognized her authorship so quickly? A sharp brain lurked behind those languid manners, but nobody would call her father’s latest pupil an academic specialist. A premonition of disaster shivered through her—and Mr. Evans already made her as wary as a fox in hunting season.

Again she uselessly berated herself for succumbing this morning to guileless blue eyes and a ready smile and a voice that made her blood flow like warm honey. Mr. Evans had everyone dancing to his tune. Why was she the only person in this house to see that?

She stabbed her needle into her embroidery with a savagery that threatened to burst her bloated peonies. Neither her aunt nor her father heeded her suggestions that Mr. Evans should move back into Leighton Court. When Genevieve had insisted that she didn’t trust the way Mr. Evans infiltrated their life, both had said she was unreasonable. Her aunt had gone so far as to accuse her of jealousy now that Mr. Evans monopolized the vicar’s attentions. How ironic to hear that when Genevieve worked so hard to break free of her father.

“Your elephant grows apace, Miss Barrett.” Mr. Evans abandoned his card game and crossed the room to stand beside her, regarding her woeful embroidery with a quizzical expression. Sirius trotted after him to sit at his master’s feet. She liked Sirius. Genevieve wished the dog’s master was nearly as easy to stomach.

“You know very well it’s a peony garden, Mr. Evans,” she said frostily. After this morning, she’d prefer he kept a greater distance, physically and otherwise.

Her chill tone attracted her aunt’s notice, but no rebuke. Perhaps Aunt Lucy finally saw that her matchmaking was futile.

Mr. Evans remained unabashed. Of course. “That explains the pink. I thought perhaps the elephant was embarrassed.”

“You have no manners, sir,” she bit out, and bent over her embroidery frame, but not before she caught the unholy amusement in his eyes. He was a strikingly good-looking man, but when laughter lit his face, he was irresistible. Even she, who mistrusted everything about him, felt her heart beat faster.

“Sincerest regrets, dear lady.”

She knew he wasn’t sorry, so she didn’t grace his apology with acknowledgement. Furiously she stitched at the
central flower which, now she checked, did rather resemble a pregnant elephant. A blushing pregnant elephant, curse Mr. Evans.

Despite lack of encouragement, Mr. Evans showed no signs of leaving. He sat without invitation—he was smart enough to know no invitation would be forthcoming. “Clearly my eyesight fails.”

He was dressed plainly, but even a country mouse like her noted his superb tailoring. He always made Genevieve feel a frump. Last night, she’d caught herself gussying up her yellow muslin with her mother’s silver brooch. She pinned it to her bosom before realizing what she did. With an unladylike imprecation, she’d flung the brooch onto her dressing table.

“Clearly.” She refused to give him the satisfaction of shifting away. Unfortunately, that meant remaining too near his long, lean leg, encased in fawn breeches, extended inches from hers. His boots were so shiny, she could see her face in them. How on earth was he turned out so beautifully without a valet?

Absently, Mr. Evans fondled Sirius’s head with one elegant hand. Yet again, she wondered at the contrast between the man’s sartorial perfection and the scruffy dog. Before she reminded herself that curiosity only inflated Mr. Evans’s pretensions, she spoke. “Your pet doesn’t befit your dignity, Mr. Evans.”

She caught his quick frown and for a moment, he wasn’t the impossibly polished man she feared, but someone considerably more intriguing. Then the expression vanished and he was once again someone whose motives she suspected to her last atom. “On the contrary, Miss Barrett. He’s far too good for a rapscallion like me.”

That she could believe. “I picture you more with a greyhound or a pug.”

His low laugh vibrated along her veins like a distant storm. She didn’t want to be aware of him as a male, but it became increasingly difficult to pretend that some deeply feminine and hitherto unrecognized element in her liked Mr. Evans very much indeed.

“A…
pug
? A hit. A palpable hit, madam. You seek revenge for the elephant, I see.”

“A dog with a pedigree, at least.”

At the mention of pedigree, a haunted expression darkened his eyes. She couldn’t imagine why. He reeked of good breeding. “Pedigrees are overrated.”

She frowned. Something stirred below this prickly, half-flirtatious conversation. Why did he clam up at the mention of pedigree? “How did you become Sirius’s master?”

He smiled more naturally, confirming her instincts that discussions of bloodlines discomfited him. “I’m not sure I’m his master. His colleague, perhaps. He’s been with me for three years. He turned up not far from my estate and seemed of a mind to stay. I’m glad. He’s deuced good company. And far too clever for the likes of me.”

Against her better judgment, Genevieve’s hostility ebbed. It was hard to maintain virulent dislike for a man so openly fond of his dog. She reminded herself that Mr. Evans’s kindness to animals didn’t make him one iota more trustworthy. For once, the warning didn’t strike true.

He glanced up from patting Sirius to stare into her face, catching her brief softening. Without her usual defenses, her heart stuttered to a standstill. Her entire body vibrated to his presence. Speech deserted her. She could only look. And admire. Never before had she been so aware of a man’s beauty. The perfect planes of his face, the glittering dark blue eyes, the long, powerful body—all melted resistance. Mr. Evans was a dangerously beguiling man. Particularly
dangerous if he drew this response despite her inchoate suspicions.

His gaze sharpened. “What is it, Miss Barrett?”

“I—”

With a sharp crack, her embroidery frame snapped in two. He frowned and reached for her hand. “Genevieve—”

Dear Lord, she couldn’t let him touch her. Not when she was so on edge. Even as she cursed her betraying reaction, she jerked away before he made contact.

Her aunt chose that moment to rise and lift Hecuba from her snooze near the empty hearth. The hallway clock struck six. “Perhaps we should move through to the dining room.”

Only the greatest exercise of will stopped Genevieve from bolting for the door. Anything to escape Mr. Evans and that terrifying interval where attraction had turned her into a lunatic.

Pride straightened her spine and insisted that she had nothing to fear. Then she risked a backward glance. Mr. Evans lounged on the window seat and his expression as he watched her tied her stomach into sick knots. She’d expected her erratic behavior to bewilder him. But he didn’t look surprised. He looked like a man who eyed a prize for the winning. He looked like a man who put some great purpose into effect. He looked invincible.

Another chill rippled down her spine and she tore her gaze away. She revolted at the possessiveness that she read in his face. Even as unforgivably, unacceptably, excitement coiled low in her belly, reminding her that she might be a scholar, but she was also a woman. And the woman responded to Christopher Evans in ways that had no truck with intellect.

Slowly, his heavy eyelids lowered, hiding triumph. Her lips tightened and she whirled away to find Lord Neville
regarding her with unmistakable disapproval. Her color rose and shame gripped her throat. As though she’d been caught dancing naked in a tavern or kissing a married man in church. For the love of heaven, was her every move under observation?

On a spurt of temper, she marched through to the hallway. Lord Neville followed. When he took her arm, sensitive as she currently was to overbearing males, she resented his proprietorial air. She tried to withdraw, but his grip tightened. Shocked, she looked up. The parlor door had swung shut, closing Mr. Evans and Sirius inside. Ahead past the stairs, the light from the dining room hardly penetrated this dark corner. For a fleeting moment, Lord Neville’s expression struck her as menacing.

What a fanciful idiot she was. Clearly she still wasn’t as easy with last week’s burglary as she’d hoped. Although perhaps she should blame Mr. Evans rather than the thief for her nerves. She’d known Lord Neville most of her life. He wasn’t her favorite person, but he had never hurt her. Nonetheless, she dearly wished he’d unhand her. And stop looming. She forgot what a substantial figure he made until he stood close.

“I can’t like that young fellow,” he said in a low voice. “He has an insinuating way about him.”

“Papa likes him.” She wondered why she didn’t join Lord Neville in deriding Mr. Evans.

His lordship’s smile was sour. “Your father is one of nature’s innocents. And Mr. Evans flatters him.”

This was nothing she hadn’t thought herself, but still she found herself reluctant to agree. “I doubt that Mr. Evans means any harm.”

What a lie that was. With Mr. Evans, she wasn’t sure of very much at all, apart from his ability to turn her into a nitwit.

“But we don’t know, do we?” Lord Neville’s fleshy lips turned down. “He has no right to use your Christian name.”

Her color rose. Hopefully the shadows concealed her embarrassment. “It was only once—”

“He offers you insult. And he has the run of the house.”

Annoyance made her draw herself up to her full height. This time when she tugged, he released her.

“Do you imply there’s something between Mr. Evans and myself?” Her voice was so cold, icicles practically hung from every word.

Even in the gloom, she read Lord Neville’s dismay at her reaction to his well-meant if inopportune advice. “Genevieve, you’re a woman of unimpeachable virtue. I lay no blame at your door. Any wrongdoing is entirely the gentleman’s fault.”

The apology didn’t mollify. “My lord, none of this is your business.”

Now she’d offended him. “A man of principle must speak when he sees a woman he… respects at risk of making a fool of herself.”

His concern struck her as overweening. After all, he was a colleague of her father’s, not a member of the family. “Lord Neville—”

Luckily for her relationship with her father’s patron, the door opened and Mr. Evans emerged with Sirius at his heels. The parlor faced west, so it was purely a matter of geography that the setting sun lit him like a saint in a painting.

She had no idea what Mr. Evans saw, but he went still and his tall body radiated danger. Sirius stood alert at his master’s thigh.

“Miss Barrett, are you all right?” he asked softly. With his back to the light, she couldn’t read his expression. His voice was steady and he sounded protective. Or he would
if she trusted his sincerity. Even so, she battled a traitorous surge of warmth.

Lord Neville lurched around. “You interrupt a private conversation, sir.”

Did she imagine it or did Mr. Evans deliberately relax back into his easygoing self? “I go through to dinner, my lord.”

No love was lost between them. But tonight for the first time she wondered if mutual antipathy might verge on something stronger. Something approaching loathing. She’d always considered Lord Neville a dominating character. But it was the older man who shifted on his feet and turned to stump into the dining room.