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TWICE THE TEMPTATION
by
Suzanne Enoch
Chapter One
June, 1814
Connoll Spencer Addison, the very intoxicated Marquis of Rawley, watched
Miss Munroe’s coach as it rolled over someone’s cigar – probably his –
and a thick book – probably not his. Leaning a hand against his
carriage’s wheel to steady himself, Connoll squatted down and retrieved
the tome.
“The Rights of Women,” he read, flipping it over. “Not a bit surprised
by that.”
“M’lord?”
“Nothing, Epping,” he said to his coachman. “Take me home, and for God’s
sake don’t hit anything else. It’s been the devil of a night, and I do
not wish my sleep interrupted again.”
“Yes, m’lord.” The driver climbed back up to his perch. Connoll returned
to the coach’s dim interior, tossed the book onto the seat opposite, and
sank back to resume his sleep and try to forget about a certain mistress
who’d decided to marry – though thankfully not him. Blasted Daisy
Applegate.
Abruptly he sat forward again. He’d kissed the chit, Miss Mun . . . Mun
something. Yes, he’d kissed Miss Someone, and that could be bad. Not
unpleasant, but bad. Kissing a Miss in public was always bad. He was
generally much more careful about the setting for that sort of activity.
Finally he realized that the coach had stopped rocking, and that the
usual noise of London seemed rather subdued. And his head ached like the
devil. “Damnation,” he muttered, and thumped on the ceiling with his
fist. “Epping, if we’re lost, I will toss you out of my employment on
your bloody backside.”
Nothing.
“Epping!”
Frowning, Connoll stood and shoved open the coach’s door. They were
indeed stopped. They were stopped to such a degree that the horses were
gone from their harnesses, and a pair of geese waddled between the near
wheels in his stable yard.
He grabbed up the chit’s book. Avoiding the geese, he stepped to the
ground and stalked around the side of the house to his front door. It
swung open as he topped the steps.
“Good afternoon, Lord Rawley.”
Afternoon. “Winters, how long was I asleep in the damned coach in the
damned stable yard?”
“Nearly three hours, my lord. Epping said you’d expressly requested that
you not be disturbed.”
“By his wrecking the coach again, yes, that halfwit. I didn’t mean for
him to leave me boxed up and ready for delivery.”
“I shall inform him of his error, my lord.”
Connoll headed for the stairs, shedding his coat as he went. “And send
me Hodges. I want a bath.”
“Very good, my lord.”
He needed a bath, and a shave, and a change of clothes. With a glance at
the book he carried, Connoll shook his head. However much he would have
liked to busy himself in his office study until nightfall, he’d done
some damage – and he needed to determine its extent. The chit was a Miss
with a good-quality carriage, and she read progressive literature. And
that was all he knew about her. That and the fuzzy memory of
frighteningly intelligent hazel eyes, a soft, subtle mouth, and curling
honey-blonde hair. And what had she been saying about a diamond?
“Winters!”
“Yes, my lord?” echoed up from the foyer.
“I want to have a word with Epping.” He could hear the unspoken query in
the ensuing silence. “No, I don’t mean to sack him, but I make no
promise about murdering him.”
“I’ll send him to you at once, my lord.”
He wanted an address – to return a book, and to inquire after any
damages to a coach. And to discover whether that female’s dismissive
practicality had been a ruse to set him off balance while she chose a
wedding gown. Women had attempted to trap him into marriage over the
Seasons, but he’d never made it so bloody easy for any of them before.
Damnation. And still he continued to contemplate that kiss.
June, 2007
Richard Addison went up the stepladder and peered into the small,
irregularly-shaped hole in the wall of his old stable. After several
renovations in over two hundred years, and especially with the massive
one he’d commissioned seven years earlier, the fact that this hiding
place had remained intact was something of a miracle.
Deep in the far left corner his fingers touched something, and he pulled
it free. An old lead soldier, its paint flaked and faded away to
nothing, emerged into Sam’s expertly-lit exhibit room.
“What is it?” she asked, standing on her tiptoes to look.
“A fusilier,” he returned, handing it to her and stepping down. “George
the Third, I would think.”
She gave him a quicksilver grin. “I knew you were an expert in Georgian
painters, but I had no idea about the toy soldiers.”
“I was an English lad, you know.” He glanced around the cluttered room.
“Where’s Armand?”
“Mr. Montgomery took your diamond outside to examine it in the
sunlight.” Samantha handed him back the soldier. “I’ve never seen an
English guy look so excited.”
Richard lifted an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
She snorted. “Well, not outside a bedroom, anyway.”
“I just hope he doesn’t try to run off with it.”
“I could totally run him down if he tried,” she commented, heading with
him to the door. “Besides, jewels are his life. And that one’s a
stunner. Even if it is bad luck.”
“There’s no such thing as an object causing luck,” he said, taking her
hand as they left the stable and walked over to where Armand Montgomery
stood with the diamond in one hand and his cell phone in the other.
“Peoples’ reaction to an object, yes,” he continued. “The object itself,
no.”
“How logical of you, Mr. Spock.” She pulled free of his hand as Armand
ended his call. “So, what do you think?” she asked him.
“It’s a blue diamond,” he returned, a muscle beneath his left eye
jumping. “Expertly cut.”
In his career as a buyer and seller of properties, Richard had become
very proficient at reading people. Their Mr. Montgomery was upset about
something. “Armand? What’s troubling you?” he asked.
“I, um, was just called back to London. A question about the
authenticity of a very prominent item in the museum collection.”
“But the exhibit opens here in three days.”
“Yes, I know. I’ll send my assistant up here with the delivery
tomorrow.” He cleared his throat. “Abysmal timing, I know. And it’s been
a pleasure working with you, Miss Jellicoe. And you again, Mr. Addison.”
He opened the door of his Mercedes and slid onto the seat.
“Eventually, I will convince you to call me Rick. And Armand?”
The assistant curator looked up. “Yes?”
“The diamond?”
Montgomery blanched. “Oh, good God.” He handed the necklace over. “My
apologies. I’m just, well, a bit distracted.”
Richard took a step back from the car. “No worries. Have a safe trip.”
As soon as the Mercedes left the gravel parking lot, Samantha clapped
her hands together. “Great. I get the assistant’s assistant to help me
put together a showing of a shitload of jewels.”
“You don’t need anyone else, my dear,” he commented, beginning to regret
leaving the house barefoot if they were going to keep treading about on
the gravel. “You know Montgomery was just window dressing.”
“Except that the exhibit belongs to his museum and goes where he says.
And this is my first big gig like this, and I only got it because you
own half the countryside, and the–“
Richard grabbed her around the waist, pulling her in for a long, soft
kiss. Green eyes, auburn hair, slim and athletic – she’d attracted him
the moment he set eyes on her, and that had been while she’d been in his
Palm Beach house, trying to rob him. But it was the rest of her, the way
she could disarm an alarm system in five seconds flat but refused to rob
museums, the way she would full-on tackle an armed bad guy but hated
killing spiders – she mesmerized him.
Obsession, heart, whatever he chose to call her, he loved her. So much
that it frightened him sometimes. And she’d thought he had planted the
diamond for her to find. And she hadn’t screamed and run away into the
night. She’d thanked him, and kissed him – which made a certain item
he’d picked up a few weeks ago even more interesting.
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