Touch of a Scoundrel (Touch of Seduction 3) Read Free Page B

forward to meet his brother, hand extended in welcome.
    “You weren’t due home for another week, Ted. If you’d sent a wire, I’d have met you at the pier.”
    “Plans change, brother. And I’ll confess to being too preoccupied to send word.”
    Theodore’s handsome face was thinner than it had been when Devon had seen him last, but his skin was so deeply tanned, his smile was blinding. Ted’s half-year tour of the major cities ringing the Mediterranean had obviously agreed with him. He pumped Devon’s hand while peering around him to smile at the woman. She had risen from the bench and approached them with graceful steps.
    “I say, old chap,” his brother said, “you’re not trying to steal my girl, are you?”
    “What? No.” His girl? Devon’s gut churned furiously. “What do you mean?”
    Teddy pushed past him, put his arm around Miss Farnsworth’s waist, and cinched her close. “Emmaline, I’d like you to meet my curmudgeon of a big brother, Lord High and Mighty, the Earl of Devonwood. Call him Devon, if you like. We all do.”
    Then Teddy turned to him with a triumphant grin. “All our lives, you’ve been first, brother. First to ride a pony, first to go away to school, first at everything. But I always intended to be first at something. Devon, may I present to you Miss Emmaline Farnsworth?” The gaze Teddy cast toward her was filled with such adoration, it bordered on idolatry. “My fiancée.”

C HAPTER 3
    D evon’s smile felt so brittle, he feared his face might crack.
    “Theodore, please,” Miss Farnsworth said, neatly extricating herself from his embrace. She hadn’t blushed a bit over the naked statue, but now her face flushed crimson over Teddy’s public declaration of affection.
    “Oh, all right, she hasn’t exactly said yes yet,” Teddy admitted with a laugh. “But she’s promised to consider my suit. It’s only a matter of time before she succumbs to the Nash charm, and she knows it.”
    Less than twelve hours to be precise, but she’ll be succumbing to the wrong Nash.
    Devon made a bow over Miss Farnsworth’s hand and tried to murmur an appropriate greeting. He must have managed something because over the roaring in his ears, he heard the low rumble of conversation continuing around him. All Devon could think was that as sure as his heart kept beating, his brother’s soon-to-be fiancée was going to be sighing in someone else’s arms before midnight.
    His arms.
    Teddy beamed at them both.
    Devon felt like excrement on the bottom of a pig-farmer’s boot. He was destined to kiss Miss Farnsworth thoroughly and there was no stopping it. Then he remembered that in his vision, the lady had definitely kissed him back.
    His teeth clenched. What sort of woman would toy with his brother’s affections by kissing someone else?
    “And this, of course, is Emmaline’s father, Dr. Montague Farnsworth,” his brother was saying.
    “Delighted, milord.” The man doffed his bowler, revealing a thinning head of iron-gray hair. He peered over the tops of his half-rimmed glasses and gave Devon’s hand the limp shake of an academician. “Forgive my lack of specific knowledge about the English system. I believe Devonwood is among the older peerages, is it not?”
    “My brother is the fifteenth earl of the name,” Teddy said. “So yes, it’s rather older than dirt.”
    “Though not so ancient as the Egyptian dynasties I have the honor to study, milord.”
    The man puffed himself up like a sparrow fluffing his feathers against a breeze. Now that Devon considered it, Dr. Farnsworth really did put him in mind of a drab little bird. His gaze flicked to Emmaline.
    How had this unremarkable fellow sired such a lovely creature?
    “Theodore Wainwright Nash,” a fluty feminine voice called from the French doors leading out to the garden. bedevil your brother without greeting your maman first?”
    Their mother might only have been a countess, but she waited with empress-like dignity for her