Anna Campbell - A Rake's Midnight Kiss

“Please go.” She cursed her husky tone. “Aunt Lucy will post the banns if I’m not back in the library within the next five minutes.”

“You’re not really at your last prayers, are you?”

Color flooded her cheeks and she spoke sharply. “I’m not praying at all. I’m not interested in marriage.”

“Miss Barrett, you shock me.”

She frowned, then realized he’d misunderstood. Deliberately. “I’m a scholar, not a courtesan,” she snapped.

Did he lean a fraction closer? Or did her imagination play tricks? Heaven help her. He was moving into the vicarage. Eons of this torment stretched ahead. How on earth would she survive?

“Pity.” He straightened and set his hat at a jaunty angle. “Until tomorrow, Miss Barrett.”

And the day after that, she thought despairingly. Her father welcomed a wolf into the sheepfold.

She drew herself up, reminding herself that she was clever and strong and had never fallen victim to a man’s stratagems. Not that the distant adoration she’d incited in her father’s previous students compared.

She spoke with commendable conviction. “I can’t see what amusement you’ll find with a country vicar and his ape-leader of a daughter.”

Did she mistake the sudden fire in his eyes? “I’ll let you know if I’m bored.”

“What do you want, Mr. Evans?” she asked dazedly.

He stepped back and bowed with an aplomb she envied. She must have mistaken that brief, intense flash of sexual awareness. A deep breath loosened the invisible band around her chest.

“Miss Barrett, once I thought I knew. But now? Now, the game has changed.” He touched his hat with a confidence that reminded her why he irked her. “Good evening.”

He lifted a candle with a gesture that stirred memory. Somewhere, sometime recently she’d watched a man like this lighting a candle in a shadowy room. But in her agitation, she couldn’t tease any sense from the scrap of recollection.

“Good evening, Mr. Evans.”

She wished she didn’t sound so breathless. Dear Lord, he hadn’t touched her, hadn’t come within a foot of her. Yet she dithered like a besotted milkmaid. She needed to rush upstairs and bury herself in something dry and dull like the local shire rolls. Something as dull as she’d promised Mr. Evans his stay at the vicarage would prove.

Instead she lingered in the hall after he left. She didn’t shift until she heard his carriage rattle away over the cobblestones.

Once Richard moved into the cramped back bedroom, his visions of lazy days flirting with Genevieve Barrett evaporated under the reality of vicarage life. Dr. Barrett was overjoyed to have an assistant who paid generously for the privilege, and even more welcome, an audience for his endless theorizing. Lucy Warren provided more agreeable company and was remarkably confiding about her niece. But Richard was staying ostensibly to widen his knowledge of all things Middle Ages, so he couldn’t devote too much time to the aunt without rousing suspicions about his historical interests. Lord Neville visited every day and proved an inconvenient presence, dogging Richard’s footsteps as if fearing for the church plate.

While his acquaintance, congenial or not, developed with the vicarage’s other denizens, Miss Barrett proved elusive. As did any chance to worm the Harmsworth Jewel away from her. If Richard hadn’t seen the jewel the night he’d broken in, he’d begin to doubt the artifact was in the house. Nobody, including Miss Barrett, mentioned it.

After three frustrating days meeting her only at meals, not to mention learning more than he’d ever wanted to know about the Princes in the Tower, Richard resorted to drastic measures.

Quietly he opened the door to the small upstairs room where he’d first encountered Genevieve. It was so early, the sky was dark. In Town, he often saw the dawn, but as the end of a night’s entertainment, not the start of a day’s scholarship. Across the faded carpet, candlelight formed a circle around the woman bent writing over the desk.

His breath caught as he stood transfixed, astonished anew at her beauty. She sat slightly turned away, revealing her profile. Straight, autocratic nose; determined chin; lashes lowered against high cheekbones as she concentrated too deeply to notice her observer. The sleeve of her faded dimity dress drooped from her shoulder, revealing the strap of her shift. A striped pinafore protected the front of her gown.

In Richard’s glittering world, female beauty was no rarity. But this dauntingly clever vicar’s daughter was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen.

He suffered a momentary pang that he didn’t pursue her as his real self. But then, Genevieve would despise the shallow Sir Richard Harmsworth. Hell, she didn’t much like Christopher Evans.

Without Sirius’s interruption, he might have watched forever, but he must have left his bedroom door along the corridor ajar. Sirius squeezed past him now and trotted up to the desk.

“Hello. Where did you come from?” Genevieve spoke with a warmth she’d never directed at Richard, damn it. When she glanced up, she started. Then her closed expression felt like a winter wind. To his regret, she tugged her sleeve over her pale shoulder. “Mr. Evans.”

“Miss Barrett.” At this hour, he couldn’t help thinking that they’d both be better off in bed. His bed. Not that wanting did much good. Lusting after a chaste woman promised only frustration.

“You surprised me.”

“Are your nerves on edge?”

She shrugged. “I’m jumpy after the break-in.”

Guilt stabbed him. She’d been so indomitable facing down his burglar self, it hadn’t occurred to him that she’d been genuinely frightened.

Masking her vulnerability, she extended a hand to scratch Sirius behind the ears. Ridiculous to be jealous of a dog, but Richard was.

“What are you doing awake?” she asked.

To confirm the uncivilized hour, a lark burst into a torrent of silvery song outside. He decided to be honest. Well, as honest as a man sporting a false name could be. “You’re avoiding me.”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “Nonsense.”

“I moved in three days ago and we’ve hardly exchanged a word since.”

“You’re here to work with my father.” Her dry tone indicated that she questioned his dedication to scholarship. Clever girl. With a doggy groan, Sirius stretched out beneath the windowsill.

“You’re more decorative.”

She pursed her lips. The expression didn’t look forbidding. It looked like she meant to kiss him. The thought lit the cool dawn to flame.

Gently he closed the door and stepped into the bookcase-lined room. Books and papers littered every flat surface. The shambles was endearing. The rest of the house was dauntingly ordered. When he’d broken in, he hadn’t noted his surroundings. The woman had occupied his attention. The woman and the Harmsworth Jewel.

She set down her pen. “I need to help Dorcas with breakfast.”

He didn’t shift. “Dorcas is still enjoying the sleep of the just.”

“We’ll wake everyone if we talk here.”

“I’ll keep my voice down.” The vicarage was old. Seventeenth century, he guessed. The walls and doors were so thick, no sound penetrated. After he’d locked Genevieve in, he’d barely heard her protests.

“It’s inappropriate for us to be alone.” She jerked to her feet, upsetting the horn cup of water on the desk. “Bother!”

He surged forward to hold her wrist. Her skin was warm and he caught a drift of her morning scent. Flowers and woman. “Let me.”