Chapter 9 #2
Edgar dragged the rough pad of his thumb along the line of her jaw. She stiffened, locking her chin against his touch.
Andromena sharpened her eyes into a hard glare. “What—” The words died.
The slow slide of his thumb across her lower lip erased every thought in her head. His expression was darker than she had ever seen it.
“You must be guarded and watched, day and night,” the harsh rasp of his voice was more enthralling than any charming endearments uttered.
She wet her dry lips. Edgar’s gaze darkened, violent as a Scottish, winter squall. He dropped his hand and stepped back so fast she was still swaying when the heavy library door swung open to admit her uncle.
“Kerr, my lad! So good of you to come.”
Still firmly under Edgar’s trance, Andromena stared confusedly as her cheer-filled, heavily whiskered uncle approached.
Not Kerr. He greeted the older gentleman with cool, practiced ease.
“A pleasure to be here, my lord.” The words fell from his lips so effortlessly that Andromena mentally added skilled liar to the viscount’s many accomplishments—a talent she knew firsthand from the night he had almost tricked her into eloping.
The kindly patriarch of the McQuoids came over and bussed Andromena on the cheek. “Andy, lass! I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Remember, you asked me to come?”
“Oh, that’s right.” His constantly confused look said the opposite. He, of course, moved on to other things he’d forgotten—like the number of times Edgar had been a guest of the McQuoids and Smiths. “Kerr, meet my niece, Miss Smith.”
Lord Kerr offered a flat: “We are acquainted.”
This from the man who had kissed her breathless before turning on the charm for every other woman alive, making her fingers itch to jab him with her broken pencil.
He finally caved to a bow. “How are you faring after your incident, Miss Smith?”
Oh, he wanted to carry on this topic, did he?
“Given how callously I was handled, my back is quite sore.”
“How unfortunate.”
Of course, it would take a great deal more to either shame or shock the devilish pirate. “And my buttocks are badly bruised.”
He yawned—and didn’t even stifle it; the bounder.
There—a reaction. Curse him.
“My belated apologies, Miss Smith.”
At last, some sheepishness.
Naturally, the gentleman ruined it in his next breath. “It is in bad form to yawn in good company.”
“Given your reputation, my lord, I cannot imagine you are familiar with any.”
A wicked smile touched the corner of his mouth. “I’m not.”
Andromena gave up on the whole ‘show goodwill to all creatures’—she was going to hell, anyway—and searched for the flanged mace she’d spotted earlier.
“What trouble did you get yourself into, Andy?”
She exploded. “I didn’t—”
Andromena tracked Edgar’s smug grin without turning; she reined her temper in. “I was nearly killed crossing New Bond Street—”
“You should have a care with complex tasks like crossing the road,” Edgar baited her.
To keep from screaming, Andromena smiled at him. The viscount was bloody fortunate they weren’t near a street now, for she’d have pushed him into traffic.
The earl frowned. “Who would hurt my lass?”
“Lord Kerr.”
The earl tsk’ed the same tsk he did for cousins quarreling over spillikens. “Tried to kill my niece, Kerr? That’s in bad form.”
But apparently not in bad enough form for the earl to show the viscount the door.
“My apologies, my lord,” Edgar said, with a sober set to his infuriatingly handsome features that she didn’t believe for a moment.
“I tried—and with success—to save your niece from certain peril. Apparently, I’m more imposing than a carriage and horse.
” He fisted a hand. “I have already promised not to intervene in the future.”
His whitened knuckles gave her pause.
“Ah, it’s all cleared up then. Lord Kerr promised he won’t interfere in the future.” Her uncle thumped the taller, bigger, broader, more everything gentleman between his shoulders. Never mind, the earl was nearly half a foot shorter than the young lad.
“He is already interfering, Uncle.” Andromena felt inclined to point out that important detail.
The earl’s high, balding brow sprang several new creases.
“My work, Uncle.”
“Ladies don’t work, m’dear.”
Andromena pointedly tapped a broken half of her pencil on her open page. Naturally, the earl couldn’t pick up on a clue if it was written into her pad—which it was. His blank stare persisted.
“The recordings, Uncle,” Andromena said calmly.
“Ahh, that’s right. Now, I recall.”
The slight pause before he’d spoken cast doubt on that.
But then, her uncle was singing her praises.
“There isn’t a finer artist than my Andy.
” And he was beaming like a proud papa, and throwing an arm around Andromena’s shoulders, as her own father used to do.
“She’s begun cataloging my collection—her idea.
” And she was no longer annoyed with her uncle or irritated with Lord Kerr, because she was equally heavy-hearted with the loss of her late father and touched by the earl’s devotion.
She didn’t deserve his love or his loyalty or—the guilt and misery kept coming.
“I’ve got someone stealing from me, and Andromena said, “Why don’t I make a visual archive of all your pieces, not just a list, as I have several pages that have gone missing…”
Now she was going to cry, because she, at the behest of some blackmailing blackguard, was being made to continue stealing from the earl. And everyone thought the earl’s losses were merely the imaginations of an absent-minded old man.
Edgar’s unexpected praise pierced her misery. “What a resourceful lady.” He ruined it with his next breath. “For one who struggles crossing streets.”
She shifted from sadness and anger to pure rage, ready to strike him again. She cursed his mocking, sinful smile and his dark, devilish eyes.
Because even though her uncle, in his pride for his family, carried on with his laudations, as clueless as Silly Billy at Almack’s to Edgar’s mockery, Andromena was not.
Despite the aspersions Edgar cast on her intelligence, any chance he could, the fact was, she did possess an artist’s eye, and few details escaped her.
“The pair of you are both clever as they come,” her uncle said. “You’ll work together well.”
Andromena and Edgar snorted.
They glared at each other; eyes narrowed in open challenge.
They were so absorbed in defiantly staring each other down it took a moment to realize what her uncle said.
She swung her focus back to her dotty uncle. “Work with…the viscount?”
“The lad is helping me investigate.”
Andromena searched for another lad—a true scholar, like those who’d curated for the earl—but her gaze landed on Lord Kerr: sharp, arrogant nose, scars claimed as trophies. None of that should leave her breathless, nor explain the heat in her cheeks—or elsewhere.
Yet, faced with a real-life pirate—eye-patch absent—it did.
The viscount sent a dark eyebrow sailing up.
“This gentleman?” She arched a brow. “As in Lord Kerr.”
Her uncle nodded. “Culross assured me there isn’t a better—”
Andromena burst out laughing.
“Swallow wrong, did you, gel?” the earl fretted.
She schooled her features. “Quite recovered, Uncle.”
Lord Kerr’s eyes darkened like a deep, secretive sea, holding every mystery but one—a clear urge to turn her over his knee. She knew precisely what he was thinking, because he’d told her so clearly in French in the Rookeries.
She’d like to see the bastard try.
While her uncle pointed out his most coveted artifacts—items that changed with impressive frequency—Andromena tossed Edgar a look.
“Never say you have traded the seas for honest work, my lord.”
“I’m a man of many talents, Miss Smith, and capable of doing a great many things.”
Is that so?
She meant to say it.