I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series (12 page)

And then suddenly a word throbbed at her from the sea of all the other foreign words. Lacao.

She froze. That bloody word was seared into her brain.

Her brother Miles, the explorer, had inadvertently become all the rage in ton circles after he’d returned from an expedition to Lacao, where butterflies as big as silk fans and snakes as thick around as…well, as the earl’s biceps…dropped onto passersby unexpectedly from trees and affectionate women who apparently wore nothing at all above their waists greeted men with enthusi—

Well, well, well.

Hope yawned, stretched, and sprang from its coffin.

She stared at the word until it seemed to ripple in the parchment sea. So she possessed the facts. All she needed now was aim.

It was something the male Redmonds seemed to be born with. Jonathan had won the darts tournament at the Pig Thistle, and he’d been as proud of that trophy as he would have if he’d brought down a three-pronged buck. Miles could blow a tiny apple to smithereens with a musket at fifty paces. Lyon excelled at swordsmanship and musketry, and had won competitions year after year. And her father had won Sussex shooting competitions, too…when some Eversea or another wasn’t winning them.

No one was eager to hand both Jacob Eversea and Isaiah Redmond guns while they stood within twenty feet of each other.

The earl continued encouragingly as she stared at the map. “The wind is still fair and should be through the day. I expect we’ll reach port by tomorrow morning.”

He made a great show of thumbing his watch open, reviewing the time, tucking it back into his pocket. He threw a yearning glance at the door. A glance back at her. I have vastly better things to do than converse with you, Miss Redmond. Widened his eyes ironically. Her eyes shot to the southern corner of the map, where she supposed England ought to be, and considered the long perilous journey homeward if she had to manage it herself. She was furious that the earl was correct. She would be disgraced and humiliated…if she made it home alive, that was. Miles could travel the world and become celebrated; she would become a pariah for her escapade, because surely her journey home would outlast her lie about the fortnight house party.

And then she thought of Lyon. Who might be on the high seas, and whom this large dangerous man avidly pursued.

It wasn’t madness. She had to try.

She held out her hand for a dart. Winged her eyebrows up with a nonchalance she was far from feeling.

That mountain range of a shoulder lifted in a shrug and he handed it over. The pointed metal tip seemed to wink conspiratorially in the light. The other end featured what appeared to be a small fluff of split pheasant feathers.

God only knew how one hurled the little missile. She fingered it, as if its heft alone could reveal its secrets to her. She was a fair shot in archery; then again, firing arrows at large targets while one’s eyes were closed was discouraged, lest one skewer wandering peacocks or footmen.

The earl gestured to the map with his chin. “Go on, then. And remember: you need to do it with your eyes closed.”

The evil man sounded so pleased with himself.

She gripped her barbed missile with dampening palms. She silently made rash promises about future good behavior to every god she could remember, including the ones from her lessons in Latin and Greek, and apologized to the gods she may have forgotten, just to be safe. Lacao. She stared at the name on the map.

She closed her eyes, inhaled extravagantly, drew her arm up. Exhaled. Took another breath for propulsion…jerked her hand…

…and shot the dart forward as if the word Lacao were prey about to bolt. Thunk.

A ringing quiet followed. During which she knew a moment of fear that the “thunk” had been the sound of the dart striking the earl straight through the heart through that great wall of a chest.

Her eyelids furled up slowly. That whooshing sound in her ears was surely her heart hammering the blood violently on its journey through her body. The dart was vibrating dead center in the O of Lacao.

Thank goodness for full skirts. Her knees had gone watery and began to bow. She locked them before they could betray her with a sway.

She stared at her triumphant throw, admiring it passionately. She tried to look deeply concerned rather than relieved to the threshold of losing consciousness.

“La…cayo?” She deliberately mangled the pronunciation and wrinkled her brow in feigned consternation. Then pressed her fingers against it to smooth it out. There were only so many sacrifices she was willing to make for this charade, and forehead wrinkles were not among them.

“Lacao,” he corrected somberly. “Rhymes with ‘cow.’ Tiny South American country.”

“I can see it’s in South America,” she replied with convincing testiness. She drummed her fingers against her chin thoughtfully. “Have…have you visited it?”

“I have indeed. I was a boy on my first voyage on The Steadfast. I’ll never, ever forget it. Please don’t stall, Miss Redmond.” He was impatient now. Impersonal. But the word boy—Thunk—unexpectedly pierced her like a dart. Shocking and disorienting, as it didn’t seem a word one would ever associate with him: surely he’d sprung from the sea, fully formed and immoveable as Gibraltar. And yet she suddenly saw him as he must have been: gangly, toffee-haired, tender-faced, those blue eyes saucer-sized with wonder at the sight of half-dressed women and the snakes and butterflies, ordered about by other men—imagining him following orders was a stretch, indeed—and thought: what a marvelous thing to be a boy and to have seen that.

Why had he been a boy on a voyage?

Had he ever been afraid? Worried about the food? Impossible to imagine.

“Miss Redmond. I can see you’re enjoying a reverie of some sort, but would you kindly share what you know—or confess to what you don’t know—about Lacao?”

“Ah. Mmm. Well…perhaps there are…” she allowed her eyes to wander across the ceiling, as if desperately searching for inspiration there “…butterflies…in Lacao?” She bit down on her bottom lip as though the guess worried her terribly.

Then she brought her gaze down again and looked up at him through her lashes. There followed a silence. During which the very air in the room seemed to shift, like spectators at a boxing match realigning allegiances after recognizing the inevitable winner. He narrowed his blue gaze. “Perhaps.”

“Blue… butterflies?” She shyly nibbled the tip of her little finger for effect now. His spine went mizzen mast stiff. His stare was decidedly competitive now.

“Yes,” he admitted curtly, after a moment. “There are blue butterflies in Lacao. Tell me more.”

“Mmm!” She nodded, demurely pleased and surprised.

His eyes narrowed even further and he beamed suspicion at her.

“Blue butterflies the size of…silk fans, or thereabouts?” She held her hands apart to illustrate.

“Iridescent shades of blue and purple and green in the sun, but primarily blue?” She looked up at him hopefully. Eyes as wide and innocent as a spring sky.

He looked at the space between her hands, and up into her wide hopeful eyes. And there was another hesitation. “Yes.”

The word was strangely muffled. Was he trying not to laugh? Or was he choking on his pride?

His eyes glinted some complex emotion. Some of it was amusement.

“Would you like to know their Latin name?” she offered brightly. “It’s Morpho He—”

“Oh no, that won’t be necessary, Miss Redmond. But thank you for offering. Why don’t you tell me the next thing you know about Lacao? The next salient thing. And quickly.” He folded his arms across his chest.

They regarded each other across the chessboard the room had once again become. When deciding upon the next fact she could bring forth of the many she possessed, Violet, naturally, considered strategy. She stared at that great arrogant insurmountable wall of a man, and that felt that familiar fizzing of recklessness, that childlike impulse to conquer what wasn’t meant to be conquered. She wanted to jar loose that veneer of distance and arrogance. She wanted him to see her.

“Well,” she said, her eyes wide, her face the picture of innocence, but her voice soft, soft as dusk, which made his expression instantly and almost comically wary and reluctantly very interested, “I’ve heard that the women who live there walk about nude above the waist. Breasts exposed to the world.”

She actually saw his breath stop.

Heard the surprised catch of it, as though it was his turn to take a dart to the chest. Saw the quick flare in his pupils, like a nova bursting, dispersing.

And then his posture gradually eased, and something dangerously speculative settled in his gaze. She remembered this look from the moment at the ball. She was certain he was imagining her in his bed doing some of the work, as it were. And wondered yet again why she’d wanted to court it. This wasn’t the calf-eyed wonder in which she’d routinely basked in London. It was something much more sophisticated and perilous. It was carnal intent, stirred then tamped of necessity. But still simmering there beneath the surface.

The man was indeed a savage.

He did not enjoy being baited.

And yet he couldn’t help but respond to her voice and to her words. Because he was a man, and she was a woman, and words like naked and breasts were conjuring words as surely as abracadabra and no doubt he was picturing her right now walking about wearing nothing above her waist.

I can take you whenever I please.

He took a step toward her. And stopped. Close enough for her to smell him again. Suddenly the image of him shaving with that sharp soap was poignant.

And as they regarded each other, the air changed again. Became dense as opium smoke, each breath Violet took now a pleasure and struggle, as anticipation of consequences, be they fatal or something more interesting, made her breathing shallow. Once again she was in far deeper than she knew how to navigate, and there was no escaping, only surviving, only negotiating, only maneuvering.

She was aware that she liked this feeling far more than she ought to. Almost as much as she feared it.

“Why yes,” he said evenly, softly. “It is true the women in Lacao wear nothing at all above their waists for clothes, Miss Redmond.”

He smiled then. It was a slow, faint, knowing smile and she felt it peculiar places: at the back of her neck, as surely as though his finger had delicately drawn a curve in the same of that smile there. As one of those blue butterflies fluttering low in her belly. As a finger touched lightly to her nipples, which were markedly alert.

He was seeing her, all right.

Right through her.

Bloody hell.

This was maddening! Why, why, why did she want him to admire her? Perhaps because she’d never before needed to earn admiration. She’d never even craved it, as it had been in the very air she breathed since she was born, and likely only character-tempering sibling disdain and the occasional terrifyingly quelling looks from her father’s cold emerald eyes saved her from becoming completely unbearable. And she suspected that despite what the invocation of half-naked women might do to any man’s imagination, what the earl reluctantly admired was her strategy. Not her dusky lashes and sweet curves and all the other nonsense about which young men had yammered to her while feverishly gripping her fingers during a waltz. All the things the Earl of Ardmay could doubtless take or leave, as he’d seen it before, on dozens of continents, on dozens of women.

She sighed heavily in defeat, even though she’d won.

He grinned another of those beautifully lethal grins. Perversely, now the bloody man seemed charmed.

“Very well, I’ll take the bait, Miss Redmond,” he said, dismissing the topic of topless women, his mood almost sunny now; then again, envisioning topless women could be what cheered him. “How do you know so much about an obscure little South American country like Lacao?”

“My brother is Mr. Miles Redmond. He’s—”

“—the explorer? Mr. Miles Redmond?” His head went back in surprise. And then he laughed. A wonderful sound, huge and so warm it could coax crops out of barren ground. “Of course!

Well played.” He shook his head. “Minx.” And the word was almost affectionate. He strolled over to the bookshelf and retrieved a red leather-bound book, words etched in gold on it, and handed it to her with a flourish.

My Journey to Lacao, Volume I, by Miles Redmond.

She smiled wonderingly at it. Miles’s reach encompassed all the world. His words had even wound up in the hands of the savage earl!

She traced her brother’s name with a finger, a soft smile on her face. Missing him suddenly unbearably. Regretting what her absence would do to all of them, once they learned—if they learned—she wasn’t in Northumberland at a house party after all. She stubbornly ignored her conscience.

“I should have guessed at the relation,” he said, his voice even, soft. He was watching her closely. “Didn’t he almost lose his life there?”

She flinched. She jerked her head up, startled. Only to meet his steady, probing gaze. She’d never heard it put quite like that before. Didn’t he almost lose his life?

She didn’t like it.

She stared at him warily, hesitated before answering. As if a hesitation would make it less true.

“Yes. First he almost died of a fever. And then he was almost eaten by cannibals.”

These were things Miles had been glib about and had written and lectured about and which had contributed to his notoriety, but which, yes, added up to the fact that he may never have come home again. Despite the fact that Violet had of course taken for granted that he would, since until Miles had rather lost his mind to love but gained a wife recently, he’d been as solid as the cliffs of Dover.

“Perhaps it’s why you remember everything about Lacao in particular, though Miles has traveled all over the world.”

Oh.

He’d ambushed her with truth again.

Her breath left her in a shocked gust.

She was suddenly sharply angry in an unspecific way. She bit down on her lip to chase the temper away.

“Perhaps.” The hand gripping the book fell to her side; the fingers of her other hand twisted in her skirt. And she never fidgeted. Particularly with clothing, as wrinkles might encroach. She stopped, closed her fingers tightly to discipline them.