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Authors: Mia Marlowe

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BOOK: Touch of a Scoundrel (Touch of Seduction 3)
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Instead of showing him what to do, his gift left him with more questions.
Devon sank onto the foot of Emmaline’s bed to think.
Anubis was clearly connected to the statue. Hadn’t Ted’s translation of the statue’s base named Tetisheri “beloved of Isis and Anubis”? If that was true, according to the
Sending
, the statue represented danger to his brother.
Clearly, he needed to get Teddy away from it. He wasn’t meant to submerge himself in ancient Egypt, slogging away at his studies of dead civilizations, like the threshers in the vision whacking away at the rye.
But how could Devon persuade Theodore to give up the only intellectual pursuit that had ever captured his imagination?
And who was the phoenix?
Devon stalked back into the sitting room of the Blue Suite, his gaze fixed on his feet in concentration. The rapidly blooming migraine made his vision tunnel. Suddenly he stopped and stared at the Turkish carpet with its pair of fighting phoenixes in the center.
This was Emmaline’s suite. Could she be the magical bird in his vision?
In the
Sending,
the phoenix was trying to counter Anubis, to protect Ted. If Emma was the phoenix, Theodore ought to spend more time with her. He would if he wasn’t so intent on studying with Dr. Farnsworth. She saved Devon from his dubious gift whenever she was near. Could she save Teddy from being singled out by whatever malevolent force Anubis represented?
In the
Sending
, Devon hadn’t been able to help his brother. His feet had been stuck fast. Ted’s only hope was the phoenix. The more he pondered it, the more certain he was that the phoenix could be only Emmaline.
It was the only interpretation that made sense.
But his clear
Sending
in the carriage on the way to Lord Whitmore’s had shown him that she was going to come to his bed. Tonight.
Devon sank down in one of the Tudor chairs, feeling as stolid and heavy as that age-darkened oak. Shards of pain lanced his brain. He’d known all along he couldn’t betray Teddy. He didn’t need the vision to urge him to do what was right. His heart had been whispering it to him all evening.
Somehow, when Emmaline came to his bed that night, Devon had to make sure he wasn’t the man in it.
C
HAPTER
20
“
I
left a special salve with Mr. Baxter and instructed him on the application of the poultice for your father’s lungs. He’ll relay the information to whomever you engage as Dr. Farnsworth’s nurse. I recommend you hire one full time,” Dr. Trowbridge explained. A strong smell of menthol and camphor oil wafted from the Green Room where Monty rested. “The poultice should give him a modicum of relief.”
“Thank you, doctor.” Emmaline was relieved not to hear any sound from the room. It meant the cyclic spasm of coughing had been broken. It hurt her heart to hear Monty hacking away his life, unable to stop.
“I also gave him a tincture of laudanum to help him sleep. If he finds it gives him relief, Dr. Farnsworth may continue with minimal doses. However, you should know that neither the opiate nor the poultice is a cure.”
The doctor’s eyes drooped at the outside corners. Combined with his heavy jowls, they gave him the appearance of an aging hound. His might not have been a handsome face, but like the Bassett he resembled, the doctor radiated kindness and compassion.
“I fear there’s not much to be done for cases this far advanced,” Dr. Trowbridge said.
“I see,” she said woodenly. “Have you any idea . . . I mean . . . how long . . .” Emma couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
“Could be a month. Could be a year. Could be another ten, but I doubt it in your father’s case,” the doctor said. “Tuberculosis is a deceptive disease. It’s not uncommon for a patient to rally and enjoy long periods when the malady lies dormant. I’ve even heard it said consumption improves a sufferer’s appearance, gives them an otherworldly glow. While he may at times seem hearty, unfortunately, your father’s lungs are badly damaged. He’s likely to weaken and succumb to the illness.”
“He seemed to do much better in a dry climate,” she said.
Another ten years. Please, God, would that be too much to ask?
“Suppose we returned to Egypt—”
“It would be better for him to go to Görbersdorf in the Alps,” Dr. Trowbridge said. “They’re having a good bit of success there, pioneering some new treatments for consumptives. Once your father is fit to travel, that’s what I’d recommend.”
Which meant they needed money soon, far sooner than it would take to adequately play out Monty’s scheme with the Tetisheri statue. In any other game, he’d have already made up the meanings for the last of the hieroglyphs on the statue. Theodore wouldn’t know the difference since everything he understood of Egyptology he had learned at Monty’s feet.
But this time, their game had taken an odd turn. Monty seemed to be earnestly trying to decipher the strange lines, squiggles, and stylized beasts. It was almost as if he’d been sucked into the scheme and believed the pitch himself.
“Have you told him the full extent of his condition?” Emma asked.
“No. I will, if you wish,” Dr. Trowbridge said. “However, I usually leave it to the discretion of my patients’ loved ones. Some people do not wish to know they are dying. Some family members desire the opportunity to continue living with a degree of normalcy for as long as possible. In my opinion, I believe your father suspects, but doesn’t want confirmation.”
Emma nodded. Monty wouldn’t appreciate a frank discussion of his mortality. He’d rather try to con the devil with his last breath. “Thank you, doctor.”
Dr. Trowbridge smiled sadly. “I’ll look in on him from time to time. Send for me at once if he worsens.”
The doctor waddled down the corridor toward the staircase.
Emma pressed her palms over both eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath. She smoothed back her hair, tucking a stray curl behind her ear, and pasted on a smile. Then she pushed Monty’s door open.
Her father lay with his hands on his chest. With his waxy pallor, it was almost as if he were already laid out in his coffin. Emma regretted telling Devon not to accompany her. She missed his steady strength, even if she wasn’t worthy of leaning on it.
“Someone knows how to finagle a way to be waited upon hand and foot,” she said with forced lightness as she drew near. The pungent smell of the medicine plastered to his chest was almost overpowering. She hitched her hip on the side of the bed and took his icy hand in hers. “Good con, Monty.”
“I’ve done better,” he said softly between wheezing breaths. He tugged his hand free and cupped her cheek, swiping at the bit of moisture beneath her eye. “My dear girl. Have you been crying?”
“Crying? No. Well, maybe a little.” It would do no good to lie to Monty. A person who lied for a living could always scent an untruth in others, but she might be able to misdirect him. “You did interrupt my time at the ball, after all, and I had to leave Theodore at the mercy of a certain Lady Cressida. I fear she’s set her cap for him.”
“Worse luck for her then. Whoever she is, this Lady Cressida can’t hold a candle to my girl.” Even though the laudanum made his eyelids droop, he searched her face as if he hadn’t seen her for a long time.
“You’re worse than an Irishman for blarney. I’m not really your girl and you know it.”
“Yes, you are, Emmaline. In all the ways that matter, you’re mine.” His hand dropped from her cheek as if it was suddenly too heavy for him to hold up. “Did I ever tell you why I picked you out from the foundling home?
She shook her head, not trusting her voice.
“It’s because you look like your mother. You have her eyes, her sweet mouth.”
She blinked in surprise. “You knew my mother?”
“Not only knew her.” His eyes closed with weariness. “I loved her.”
He’d never wanted to talk about the past before. Emma always figured as far as Monty was concerned, she’d burst into being like Minerva springing from the mind of Zeus on the day he took her from the foundlings home. “Monty, are you . . . really my father?”
He shook his head. “I wish I was though. Your mother, Mattie O’Sullivan, was the loveliest girl in Flatbush.”
He was silent so long she thought he’d drifted to sleep, but then he began again, his words whispered as he followed the thread of a distant time.
“Her parents were moderately well-to-do, a generation off the boat, and established in their own business. Mattie was so pretty, they figured she ought to be able to marry well.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t cut from fine enough cloth for them.”
Emma’s memories of her mother were hazy at best. She had no recollection of grandparents or any family at all beyond the thin, haggard woman who’d borne her. Now that she thought back on it, her mother couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but in Emma’s memory, she seemed ancient.
“When her parents forbade Mattie to keep company with me, I left,” Monty murmured. “Went west to seek my fortune in the silver mines of Colorado. I figured once I had plumper pockets, her family would relent and she’d be able to accept me.”
His chest shuddered as if he might erupt in coughs again, but then he drew in a lungful of the menthol and camphor and settled into an easy rhythmic breathing instead.
“I told Mattie I’d be away for a year. Wait for me, I said.” His lips twitched with emotion. “I was gone five. I guess that’s a long time for the belle of the ball to wait.”
“She married someone else?”
“I wish she had. No, she was bamboozled by Herman Potts, a fellow who already had a wife upstate. He got Mattie with you and that was the last she saw of him. She died alone.”
That wasn’t true. Emma had been there in their cheerless little tenement. She remembered the morning she’d toddled to her neighbor lady’s door because she couldn’t wake her mother. It was one of her clearest memories.
“She’d been gone six months by the time I returned from Colorado without the silver I went for. I made her brother tell me what had happened.” Monty’s jaw worked furiously. “I’m not a violent man, but I’d have done murder if Herman Potts had been nearby that night.”
His chest heaved for a bit. Then he went quiet, his breathing so even and untroubled, Emma didn’t dare ask any of the questions burning in her. Was her mother’s brother still alive? Why hadn’t her grandparents taken her in when her mother died instead of letting Emma go to the foundlings’ home?
Monty’s eyes popped open and he winked at her. “But I got even with him the only way I knew. First con I ever pulled was to swindle Potts out of his life’s savings. It was enough to set up the bookstore. And that was enough to convince the people at the foundlings’ home that I could care for you.”
“I loved the bookstore, Monty.” She smoothed his thinning hair over the freckles showing through on his pate. “Why’d we ever leave it?”
His shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “I didn’t want you to be a shop girl all your life. It wasn’t enough for my Emmaline. So I started forging those old letters. Then you and I started our games. We’ve had a pretty good run of it, too.” His mouth turned up in a satisfied smile. “Look at you now. Dressed like a duchess.”
A duchess who’d be out on her ear if the truth about them was known.
“Theodore and me,” Monty mumbled, the laudanum clearly working on him. “Did I tell you we translated another side of the base?”
“No. What did it say?”
“Herein is life long lasting, treasure beyond reckoning, for he who understands and dares to open the portal.” His eyes closed and his head lolled to one side as he drifted off.
“Open the portal? What does that mean?”
“Open the door to Tetisheri’s tomb, I expect. Life long lasting. Treasure beyond reckoning. We’ll find it, girl. There are two more sides to the base and they’re full of clues, I’ll warrant.” He licked his papery lips. “Tomorrow, Emma. Tell Ted to bring the books and the statue round tomorrow. I’ll be . . . better then.”
He slipped into the light sleep of advancing years.
“Oh, Monty. There is no tomb. There may not ever have been a Tetisheri. It’s just a con,” she whispered, her lips barely moving. “Have you forgotten?”
He didn’t open his eyes so his voice startled her. “I dream about it every night. We find Tetisheri’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings and when the stone is rolled back, there are wondrous things awaiting us.” He was quiet for so long she was sure he’d drifted off again, but then he rasped, “Maybe this con isn’t just the big one. Maybe it’s the real one.”
 
“I ought to have gone home sooner,” Theodore said as he handed his mother and sister from the carriage. “Why didn’t you tell me Emmaline’s father took sick?”
“It’s been so long since you were out in Society, I didn’t have the heart to pull you away,”
Maman
said. “You were having such a lovely time at Lord Whitmore’s; it seemed a shame to interrupt your pleasure. Besides, I’m certain everyone’s fine. Devon took care of things.”
Ted scowled. “Devon always takes care of things.”
He ought to have been grateful to his brother, but his nattering conscience wouldn’t let him. It flailed him for not taking care of Emmaline’s father. Instead, he’d been enjoying himself far too much at the ball, especially when he danced with Lady Cressida.
Who’d have expected Louisa’s skinny little pigtailed friend would have blossomed into such an engaging beauty? So engaging Theodore neglected to notice that the woman he hoped to wed had been forced to leave the party to tend to her father with his brother standing in his stead.
Ted was too guilt-ridden to face up to his brother’s goodness.
And he wasn’t anxious to explain himself to Emmaline either. It was all an innocent mistake, of course. Theodore had merely done what was expected of any young man on such an occasion. He danced every dance with the young ladies he’d been assigned.
It had been his duty as a good guest.
Lord Whitmore’s ball had turned into such a successful rout; Ted hadn’t even noticed Emmaline was gone till the time came for the last waltz. He was slated to dance it with her, so he searched everywhere in the press of people. When he was supposed to collect the woman who was the love of his young life, she was nowhere to be seen.
And he hadn’t missed her.
It certainly made him seem like a selfish lout. Why hadn’t he looked for her earlier?
He’d noticed who Cressida was dancing with once or twice throughout the evening.
Teddy cringed. That made him feel even worse. He loved Emmaline.
Why had his eye been drawn to another?
“Lady Cressida was certainly in her looks this evening, didn’t you think, Louisa?” His mother asked as they approached the front door of Devonwood House.
Ted didn’t hear his sister’s answer. An image of Cressida had risen unbidden in his mind, all pink and gold and delicate. He tamped down the vision and conjured up Emmaline in his imagination. She was entirely lovely in a different way, but she had none of Cressida’s devastating vulnerability.
Emma was such a capable sort. It was part of what drew Theodore to her, since he’d never had to be responsible for anyone but himself, and that only once he’d moved out from under his brother’s shadow.
But Cressida wakened an urge Teddy hadn’t realized he possessed—the desire to protect someone else. He didn’t know what to make of it.
BOOK: Touch of a Scoundrel (Touch of Seduction 3)
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