Sweetest Scoundrel

  She pushed the ring onto the third finger of her left hand and was unsurprised to find that it fit perfectly. It was just like Val to know the size of her fingers.

  The letter was sealed as usual, and she pried open the red wax embossed with a rooster crowing. She smiled crookedly at Val’s seal—it had always puzzled her, since it had nothing to do with the Montgomery crest.

  The parchment popped open and Eve read, hearing her brother’s voice as she did:

  Dearest Eve,

  I found this ring in the oddest little market outside Venice and bought it because the girl selling it had a mole in the shape of a heart on her neck. If it amuses, keep it. If not, toss it in the Serpentine for all I care. I hope that the rebuilding of Harte’s Folly is continuing apace. It occurs to me that you might have use of a boy, so I’ve instructed Alf to make himself available in whatever capacity you might need him. Don’t take any lip off of him.

  Your Ever Fond & etc. Brother,

  V.

  Eve stared at the letter a moment longer, bemused by Val’s careless generosity. The ring was beautiful and naturally she’d keep it. What she was supposed to do with Alf’s services was more confusing.

  She looked up in time to meet the boy’s gaze as he wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his coat. “’Imself said as I was to do whatever you should be wantin’ me to. Gave me a month’s worf o’ pay.”

  “Ah,” Eve said cautiously. “That’s quite generous of you—and of course my brother.” She carefully folded the letter. “As it happens I don’t have use of your services at the moment.”

  Alf shrugged. “Jus’ leave a message for me at the One ’Orned Goat in St. Giles when you ’ave need o’ me. Or”—he hastily added at the look of doubt on her face—“if it be easier, you can leave word wif Mrs. Crumb. I’m ’round at ’Ermes ’Ouse near every day.”

  Eve nodded, relieved. “I’ll do that.” Although she really couldn’t imagine needing Alf for anything. Still, she had the feeling it might hurt the boy’s pride to say that aloud.

  Voices came from the stairs and Alf rose, smashing his hat onto his head. “I’d best go, then, miss, if you don’t have work for me now?”

  Eve shook her head absently. She thought she recognized the male voice nearing, and her heart had begun to pound as wildly as it had done at the sight of the dog.

  Alf looked at her curiously, then nodded and slipped from the room.

  Just as Mr. Harte entered… bearing a bunch of daisies.

  Chapter Four

  Now amongst the multitude of the king’s offspring there was a girl. She was born of an unimportant concubine and was neither particularly fair nor wonderfully witty, but her nursemaid, who had raised many of the king’s children, loved her above all others.

  Her name was Dove.…

  —From The Lion and the Dove

  Asa Makepeace eyed the lad, surprised somehow. The boy didn’t seem to fit into Eve Dinwoody’s world.

  Then he looked at the lady.

  Miss Dinwoody was standing, hands clasped together in front of her, not meeting his gaze. She wore the same dove-gray dress she’d had on that morning, the color discreet and retiring, as if she wanted to fade into the background. Strange. She was forthright in her demands of him, fearless even as she confronted him in his own gardens, and yet she was terrified of dogs.

  And she was quiet and hidden in her own house.

  Eve Dinwoody seemed to be made of two halves that didn’t completely fit together. She puzzled him.

  When she continued to avoid his eyes, Asa cleared his throat and held out his offering. “Brought these for you,” he said, sounding gruff even to himself.

  In his hand was a simple bouquet of daisies, bought on impulse from a flower girl as he’d walked to her house. It was a cheap present, childish even, and he began to feel like a bloody prize ass as he held it out to her.

  She was the daughter of a duke. No doubt she was better used to hothouse roses and diamonds—gifts he couldn’t afford. Gifts from a different life than his.

  But when she looked up, her face lit with a small smile.

  “Thank you,” she said shyly as she took the small bunch of daisies.

  Asa felt his chest expand. “You’re welcome. I came to… er…” He gestured vaguely with one hand.

  She touched one of the daisy petals. “Yes?”

  If he brought up the dog, told her he’d come to make sure she was well and to see if she’d still back his garden, it’d just make her stiffen up.

  So instead he lifted one of his eyebrows. “Came to model for you.”

  She blinked. “Now?”

  “Why not?” He deliberately fingered the stock at his neck, watching her blue eyes widen in what looked like alarm. “Oh, that’s right. I’m to stay properly clothed at all times.”

  He couldn’t help his mouth’s curving at her expression. She was so prim, so easily shocked.

  “Yes, you are.” She pressed her lips together. “Just let me give these to Ruth to put in water and have a word with Jean-Marie.”

  And she hurried out.

  He was left to glance around the room. The dove was still on the table, and he strolled over to feed her a few kernels before wandering to the bookshelf and glancing at the titles. His eyebrows rose when he realized that half the volumes were in French.

  He turned when she came back in. “You read French?”

  “Yes.” She looked him up and down. “Please sit down.”

  He flung himself down on the settee, both arms spread across the back, legs canted in front of him, and raised an eyebrow. “Like this?”

  “I suppose that will do.” She crossed to her table and rummaged around the top with her back to him.

  He found his gaze lingering on her slim waist, the sway of her skirts. If he tilted his head he could almost glimpse her ankles beneath them.

  She turned and he straightened, widening his eyes innocently.

  She shot him a suspicious glance before seating herself on a chair across from him. She held a large sketchbook and a pencil.

  Asa jerked his chin at her sketchbook. “I thought you wanted to paint me.”

  “I do,” she muttered absently. “But first I need some preliminary sketches. Turn your head to the left.”

  He turned.

  She gave him a look. “Your other left.”

  He rolled his eyes and obeyed. “Why do you need—”

  “And tilt your chin down.”

  He lowered his chin and gave her a look from under his brows. “—to make a sketch?”

  “It gives me an idea of the painting I want to make,” she said, and her pencil scratched across her book.

  Her movements were graceful. Swift and decisive, in the manner of a professional used to a particular job, and he realized that she knew exactly what she was doing.

  “How long have you painted?” he asked.

  “Don’t move.”

  He huffed in exasperation. He had a sudden need to scratch his nose.

  “I started when I was thirteen,” she murmured, bending closer to her work. “When Val sent me to Geneva.”

  That bit of information made him curious. “Montgomery sent you, not your father?”

  She froze for a fraction of a second, and he wondered what nerve he’d hit. Then she relaxed and resumed her drawing, saying casually, “Val always cared for me more than our father.”

  “Your father the duke,” he drawled, watching.

  “Yes.” Her eyelashes fluttered, then stilled. “The old duke was a very cold sort of man. I lived in his house as a child, but I rarely saw him.” Her eyes were lowered, intent on her drawing, and he couldn’t read them. “That was just as well.”

  He had a gut feeling that there was more to it than that. “And your mother?”

  She didn’t answer for a moment, drawing in silence, then she said, “What of her?”

  He smiled hard. “Who was she?”

  She glanced up then, meeting his gaze with blue
eyes so cold they might as well have been ice. “She was a nursemaid.”

  He waited, holding her gaze, but she said no more. After a moment she looked down and continued drawing.

  He shrugged his shoulders, working out the tension from holding them still.

  “Don’t move,” she murmured absently.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Is that where you learned French? In Geneva?”

  “And German.” She held the sketchbook at arm’s length, examined it, then turned her gaze to him, studying his face with a sort of abstract dispassion, disconcerting in its intensity. “I attended a small, exclusive school for girls. During the summers I lived with an elderly brother and sister—along with Jean-Marie, who came to me when I was fifteen. The brother was a quite well-known miniaturist. When he discovered I had some talent in portraiture, he took me on as a sort of apprentice.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “I only returned to England five years ago,” she said, bending to peer at something in her sketchbook. “By that time both the brother and sister had died of old age.”

  Her words were blunt, but he detected a trace of sorrow in them and pounced on it like a cat on an unwary mouse. “You miss them.”

  “Of course.” She paused to stare at him, her brows drawn together over those sky-blue eyes. “They took me in, fed me, clothed me, and taught me.”

  “Because your brother paid them,” he pointed out cynically.

  “Maybe so.” Two spots of color appeared high in her cheeks as she narrowed her eyes at him. He felt a spurt of satisfaction: finally he’d poked her in a tender spot. “But affection cannot be bought. Monsieur Laffitte did not need to teach me to paint, nor did Mademoiselle Laffitte need to bake me my favorite little rosewater cakes. They did it out of affection. They did it out of love.”

  That was important to her, was it? That people love her for herself rather than her brother’s money?

  “Stand down, stand down,” Asa said, easily, palms raised. “I didn’t mean to impugn your foster family.”

  “Didn’t you?” Her eyes were still narrowed, and he couldn’t help but think how regal she appeared as she looked at him as if he were a piece of shit in the gutter. “You seem to delight in bringing everything down to money.”

  He tilted his head, his jaw clenching even as he drawled, “Well, for some—those born without a golden tit in their mouths—much of life does come down to money. How to get money, how to keep money, how to have enough of it to live decently.”

  “I am aware—”

  “Are you?” His voice was hard. How dare she bloody judge him? “But you’ve never wanted for money, have you? Your brother supplies whatever you need whenever you need it without a thought from you. What can you know, then, about how desperate the lack of money can make a man?”

  She looked at him a moment before asking softly, “What do you know about it?”

  “I know that I’m judged upon what money I have and what money I lack. I have no name, no title, no talent beside rousing people to work in a theater. What else, then, is there to judge me on than the weight of my purse?” He leaned forward, caring little that he’d destroyed the pose, and stared at her hard. “And I know there was a time when, had the Devil appeared before me, I would’ve sold my soul for a thousand pounds and a pair of diamond buckles for my shoes.” His lip curled and he flung himself back on the settee, looking away from her. “Don’t lecture me on my love of money. It’s how other people find worth in me.”

  There was a pause and he clearly heard her swallow in the silence of the room. “Who judged you for your lack of money?”

  For a moment a pretty, faithless face swam before his eyes. But that was ten years ago and he’d made himself forget the bitch’s name in the interim. He turned back to her, his cynical grin firmly in place as he stared at her in challenge. “Who has not?”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. “I don’t.”

  “Don’t you, luv?” he growled softly. Warningly. He tolerated polite lies in other people but for some reason he couldn’t let hers go. “I wouldn’t be sitting in this room with you had you no control over my funds.”

  But she didn’t back down. “I control your funds. I don’t control you. And I think, Mr. Harte, that had you all the money in the world, or sat penniless in a gutter, I still would not find you very likable.”

  He stared at her a moment before throwing back his head and shouting with laughter. There she was! That was the harpy he was beginning to know. It was several seconds before he could control himself again, and when he did, he wiped tears of mirth from his eyes as he said, “Damn me, Miss Dinwoody, I’d rather your acid tongue than any number of sweet lies from pretty lips.”

  He half expected her to be insulted by his blunt words, but when he looked, she had a small, satisfied smile.

  It cleared soon enough, though. “Yes, well, perhaps you can assume your pose again?”

  “With pleasure,” he drawled, and tilted his chin down in the way he had before.

  In this position he was gazing at her from beneath his eyebrows, and he watched as she lost herself in her drawing again. Her eyes flicked from his forehead to his nose to his chin, and then to his mouth. She bent to her work, sketching rapidly before she glanced up at him again, her gaze meeting his eyes almost challengingly. Her nostrils flared ever so slightly, her soft bottom lip caught between her teeth as she stared at him, blue eyes narrowed. It was a frank scrutiny, analyzing and bold, and it felt sexual.

  Asa could feel his cock hardening and he spread his legs farther, holding her gaze. He felt his voice rumble softly in his chest as he asked, “What do you see when you look at me?”

  WHAT DID SHE see when she looked at him?

  Eve inhaled, trying and failing to tear her gaze from his.

  Mr. Harte sprawled across her dainty settee like a Viking marauder in a pillaged Christian church. His broad shoulders took up more than half the width, his arms lazily draped over the back. His scarlet coat was spread open, contrasting with the sedate gray-blue of the cushions almost shockingly. One long leg was thrust straight before him, the other cocked open and resting on a booted heel. The pose made the apex of his thighs very… obvious… and even as she kept her eyes locked on his she could feel heat rising in her cheeks.

  What did she see?

  She saw violence and anger, kept under a control that was tenuous at best. She saw power and a strength that could hurt her—kill her—if he so chose. She saw the innate brutality that was, in larger or smaller part, in all men.

  She saw her most terrible fears.

  But—and this was the truly unprecedented part—she saw more in him. She saw temptation—her temptation—alluring and frightening at the same time, his virility so strong it was nearly a visible miasma in the space between them.

  She wanted him. Wanted that brash gaze, those long, muscled thighs, that mocking, insulting mouth, and the shoulders that went on forever, big and brawny and so very, very male.

  This was madness—she knew that intellectually. She’d never wanted a man before—was in fact afraid of almost all men, let alone one so obviously, blatantly sexual.

  She took a breath, hoping that he couldn’t read all this from her gaze—and knowing it was a lost cause already. His heavy-lidded green eyes were far, far too perceptive.

  “I see…” She paused to lick suddenly dry lips. “I see that your hairline is nearly a perfect arc across the expanse of your forehead. That your eyebrows tilt ever so slightly up at the ends and that the right has a scar through it. I see that when you are solemn, the outer edges of your lips reach just to the midpoint of your eyes, but when you smile, they go beyond the corners. I see that your chin and jaw are almost in classical proportion and that a small white scar forms a comma on your chin just to the right of center.” She finally glanced away from him, breathing heavily, certain that she’d not thrown him off the track with her artist’s eye’s impressions. She inhaled again and ended, “I see eve
ry line of your face, every line’s intersection and how they relate. That is what I see when I look at you.”

  “And is that all you see? Lines?” His voice was deep and amused.

  She chanced a peek.

  He still watched her, his gaze utterly unperturbed by her observations about his countenance.

  No, she’d not fooled him at all.

  She licked her lips again, buying time. “I see,” she said carefully, cautiously, “a very self-possessed man.”

  “Self-possessed,” he drawled. “I’m not sure what that means, frankly. It sounds, just a bit, like a coward’s answer.”

  Her gaze flew to his, outraged.

  But before she could take him down a peg, he chuckled softly. “Tell me, Miss Dinwoody, would you like to know what I see when I look at you?”

  She shouldn’t. She really, really shouldn’t.

  “Yes,” she blurted, and then winced because she knew well enough what men thought when they looked at her: ordinary, if they were charitable.

  Plain if they were not.

  She braced herself for mockery, but when she glanced again at him, his gaze was hot and hard. Certainly not gentle. Certainly not kind. But he wasn’t dismissing her, either.

  He looked at her as if they were equals. As if he really saw her, a woman to his man.

  “I see,” he said, his deep voice musing, “a woman afraid, but fighting her fears. A woman who carries herself like a queen. A woman who could rule us all, I suspect.”

  She gazed at him, her breath caught in her throat, afraid to exhale and break the spell.

  A corner of that wicked mouth tilted up. “And I see a woman who has a deep curiosity. Who wants to feel but is worried—of herself? Of others?” He shook his head. “I’m not sure.” He leaned forward slowly, destroying his pose, and she had to fight herself not to scoot her chair away from him. “But I think she has a fire banked within her. Maybe it’s only embers now, glowing in the dark, but if tinder were to be put to those embers…” He grinned slowly. Dangerously. “Oh, what a conflagration that would be.”