A Rake's Midnight Kiss Read Free Page B

thing was ripe for the taking? Nice quick job. You can slink back to the fleshpots and I can go north to supervise the harvest at Fentonwyck.”
    “Bad form to steal it, old man, bad form.” A faint smile tilted Richard’s lips as his free hand dangled to toy with his dog’s ears. Sirius, a hound of indeterminate breed, snoozed on the floor beside the chair, his long nose resting on his front paws. He hadn’t appreciated missing out on tonight’s excitement. “I’ll give the chit a chance to sell it to me first. If I steal it, I can’t brandish the bauble to demonstrate that I’m the title’s incumbent and society had better bloody well respect that.”
    Richard spoke more casually than circumstances warranted. Until tonight, he’d only seen the jewel in watercolor sketches in the family papers. The urge to pocket the gold and enamel trinket had been deuced strong, but tonight’s burglary had always only been a reconnaissance mission.
    His agents had approached Miss Barrett several times to purchase the jewel and none of them could get the damned woman to admit that she had the troublesome artifact. She’d neither denied nor confirmed, although every trail ended at Little Derrick’s vicarage. Tonight’s burglary had been a last-ditch attempt to discover whether to proceed with the plan that even he admitted sounded outlandish.
    The rage that had gripped him in Lord Packham’s ballroom still soured his days. Laying his hands on the jewel had become a quest to assert his worthiness to a world too eager to discount him as a sham.
    “I’m glad I don’t have to add theft to your list of misdemeanors.” Cam eyed Richard without favor.
    “I’ll try persuasion first.” He sipped his friend’s excellent brandy, his pleasure in recalling the vicar’s fiery daughter vying with the anger that had simmered for six months. Longer. His whole life. “Anyway, Miss Barrett had a gun.”
    A surprised gust of laughter escaped Cam. “Did she, by Jove? Good for her. I wondered if you’d encounter the mysterious Miss Barrett when her father and aunt turned up to dinner without her, but it was too late to warn you that the vicarage wasn’t empty. I swear the reverend gentleman could talk the leg off an iron pot. Even if you’d caught a bullet, I had the worst of the evening.”
    “I owe you.” Richard stretched his long legs across the blue and red Turkey carpet. Pleasant weariness weighted his limbs.
    “You do indeed. Although I have to say Leighton Court is dashed appealing. I should have been quicker to check out Uncle Henry’s bequest after he turned up his toes last year.” Cam subsided into his chair. “So was the scholarly spinster what you imagined? Bad skin? Round shoulders? No bosom? A squint from poring over all those dusty tomes?”
    A surge of purely male appreciation warmed Richard’s blood. The body he’d held had definitely sported a bosom. Quite an impressive one if he was any judge of women. Which of course he was.
    “The lady is… interesting,” he said musingly, fingers stilling on Sirius’s shaggy head. The dog grumbled softly at the cessation of attention.
    “If she countered your nonsense with a pistol, she certainly is. I take it you’re proceeding with this ramshackle scheme.”
    Richard smiled, recalling the girl facing him down as cool as you please. Instead of a dried-up old maid, he’d encountered a glorious Amazon. Tall. Blond. Flashing silver eyes to make mincemeat of his unflattering expectations.
    “Richard?” Cam prompted when the silence extended.
    “Hmm?”
    “Stop mooning over the damned filly. I gather she was something of a beauty. Answer me.”
    “Of course I’m going on.” Richard rose and without invitation refilled his glass. He waved the decanter at Cam, but his famously abstemious friend shook his head. “I can’t see I’ve got much choice. I could go through the courts and prove Aunt Amelia had no legal right to bequeath the jewel to Miss Barrett,