Lord of Deceit (Heiress Games Book 2) by Sara Ramsey Page B

Maidenstone, it would be too mortifying for words.
    But it wasn’t her upcoming criminal adventure that made her heart beat faster. It was her accomplice — and the knowledge that, for all the experience she’d gained in the last four years, she wasn’t sure she could handle Rafe.
    She had thought she’d handled him the previous night. He would make an excellent accomplice. He had agreed to her plan and helped her to refine key points. He even seemed excited about it.
    But she still didn’t quite understand why he wanted to help her. He claimed to be enamored with her — but that excuse didn’t hold water. An enamored man would have courted her, not helped her invade her childhood home.
    And none of that had explained why she’d spent most of the night dreaming of the way he’d kissed her hand. He’d done it again at the end of the night, right before she’d left the pub. This time, in the darkened room, with the candles guttering and all the villagers gone, it had somehow felt even more erotic.
    She’d looked into his eyes as he’d caressed her knuckles. The warm, dazed shock of connection had nothing to do with whisky. It was as though the touch of his lips on her skin — skin, this time, since she’d taken off her gloves — had sealed something between them that was bigger than the conspiracy they’d agreed to.
    If that was the case, she might be in more danger from him than she ever would be sneaking around Maidenstone.
    The drawing room clock tolled eleven o’clock as she walked down the stairs to the main floor. A rap sounded on the front door as she took the last stair, exactly on time. In London, one of her footmen would have answered the door, taken Rafe’s card, and settled him in the drawing room — perhaps the second-best drawing room — to wait for her.
    This wasn’t London, though. This was a small hunting lodge in Devonshire, with a highly improper, secretly desperate hostess in charge of it. So she answered the door herself.
    Rafe didn’t bow as a gentleman might have. He looked her up and down, holding his lamp up and examining her as though assessing a new recruit. He seemed more fascinated by her dress than he did with her figure. “You look better suited for adventuring than I expected,” he said.
    “I grew up in Devonshire. I trust I still remember how to dress for a promenade in the country.”
    His grey eyes sparkled. “I’d wager you haven’t promenaded in the country in ages. You stole the dress, didn’t you?”
    She gasped, putting her hand against her heart. “Never say you’d think such a thing of me.”
    Rafe shook his head with mock disapproval. “You intend to destroy Lucretia and you’re willing to poison wells to do it. Stealing a dress is exactly the sort of petty crime I should have you arrested and transported for, before you fully become a murderess and a menace to the rest of us.”
    “Promise you’ll transport me to the Caribbean, then. Australia is too far away for my delicate constitution.”
    He appeared to give this serious consideration. She had to stop herself from giggling — she wasn’t fresh from the schoolroom, and she knew she couldn’t seem too impressed by him.
    “No, I shan’t have you transported,” he finally said, as though giving her a reprieve. “How else am I to entertain myself while I am in Devonshire? Lucretia was on the verge of allowing Sir Percival Pickett to give a reading of his poetry when I escaped tonight.” He shuddered, as dramatic as any gesture she’d made. “Have you ever heard his poetry? It cannot be borne. I must make my bed with you, I fear.”
    It was the sort of flirtatious double entendre she’d heard in London many times. But alone, and without the advantage of champagne in her veins, Octavia squirmed.
    Octavia never squirmed.
    “No bedmaking, my lord,” she said lightly. “Not until I’ve ruined Lucy.”
    “You are determined to pursue a life of crime, aren’t you?”
    “I’m no worse than