Sherry Thomas - Beguiling the Beauty

Her footsteps quickly crossed the parlor, back to the tetrapodichnites.

Her interest intrigued him. “Are you a naturalist yourself?”

“No, but I make an exception for dinosaurs.”

He imagined her pressed rapturously against the slab and smiled at his puerile turn of mind. More likely she was tracing the imprints with reverence and awe. “They were marvelous creatures.”

“Yes, they were. I dug one up myself.”

That was something he didn’t hear every day. “When? Where?”

“I came across a near-complete skeleton when I was sixteen, on holiday with my family. It was a massive beast. Of course I didn’t know when I saw part of the rib cage poking out of the ground that it would be quite that big, but I spent the rest of my holidays happily finding out.”

“You did all the digging all by yourself?”

“No, of course not. My siblings helped, as did children from a nearby village, and some young men who wanted to see what the fuss was about.”

“What species was it?”

A long beat of silence. “A—um—a Swabian dragon.”

“A Plateosaurus? I like those—handsome beasts. What did you do with the skeleton?”

“I wanted to display it at home, of course, but no one would let me.”

He laughed softly. “I can see why.”

An adult Plateosaurus could reach more than thirty feet in length. Even in a palatial home like Algernon House, such a display would dominate the tone and tenor of the entire place.

“I came to my senses after a while and donated it to a museum instead.”

The sound of charcoal scratching upon paper—she’d started to make an impression of a footprint. “Which museum?”

“It shall remain anonymous.”

“Are you afraid I’d go and find out your identity?”

“I’m sure you have far more important things to occupy your time, but I’m not taking chances.”

“Why not, when you are already taking the biggest chance you have in a long time?”

The scratching of the charcoal ceased—then resumed more furiously. “It’s precisely because I can disappear into the ether that I have taken a chance. What do you think this is?”

It took him a second to realize she was speaking of the fossilized footprints. She’d changed the subject on him again. “A juvenile iguanodon, possibly. Or perhaps a predator of some description.”

“How old do you think it is?”

“My guess is late Jurassic to early Cretaceous.”

“Amazing,” she murmured, “that something as fragile and ephemeral as a set of footprints can be preserved for a hundred fifty million years.”

“Anything can happen under the right conditions.” He touched the blindfold with his fingertips. She had tied it securely. But it was not black behind the lids of his eyes—more a dark ocher crisscrossed with beams of bronze. “Have you done any other sort of fossil hunting?”

“No.”

“Why not, if it delights you so?”

She gave no answer.

“Please remember, my dear, I cannot see you. So shrugging and rolling your eyes are not answers enough.”

“I didn’t roll my eyes.”

“But you did shrug?”

He took her silence to mean yes. “You said you were sixteen when you came upon your Swabian dragon. How old were you when you married?”

“Seventeen.”

“Did your late husband believe mucking about with sharp implements and old bones to be an improper pastime for a woman?”

Another silence—another silent assent, then.

“If memory serves,” he said, “some of the most significant finds in British paleontological history must be credited to a woman.”

“Yes, Mary Anning, I’ve read about her. My husband said her finds were due to blind luck.”

He snorted. “If God saw fit to give a woman that much blind luck, he can’t possibly object to such endeavors on a woman’s part.”

The scratching of the charcoal stopped. Her footsteps headed toward the desk—for another sheaf of paper? “You are trying to seduce me with words,” she said, her voice arch.

“That doesn’t mean I’m insincere. Come along with me the next time I go on a dig, if you don’t believe me.”

“I thought it was understood I would disappear into thin air the moment we sight land.”

“But there is nothing preventing you from coming back to me, is there? You know who I am. You know where to find me.”

“You will be married soon, and that will be obstacle enough for me.”

“I can delay my marriage.” His stepmother would have his head, but for the baroness, he’d willingly endure one of the dowager duchess’s rare bouts of umbrage.

“It will make no difference.”

He shook his head. “You are heartless, baroness.”

She did not miss a beat. “And you, duke, want too much.”

He left her in peace after that, but Venetia’s concentration was already ruined.

Why must he of all people prove himself so open-minded? And to invite her on an organized expedition! She’d daydreamed of one for years. Anytime she’d heard of a significant new discovery, she’d wished that she had been the one gifted with a rich vein of sedimentary layers and the privilege of unveiling the hidden history of the geological past.

After a quarter of an hour, she gathered the impressions she’d taken and set her hat back on her head. It would be discourteous to make him wear the blindfold for much longer. “Thank you, sir. It has been quite a pleasure. I will show myself out.”

Did she intentionally pass by too close to the chaise longue? She certainly felt all too giddy when he pulled her down on top of himself. Knocking away her veiled hat, he kissed her ravenously. Her blood simmered. Certain unmentionable regions of her body throbbed with need.

“I don’t want too much,” he whispered against her lips. “If you are going to vanish at the end of the crossing, it’s only fair that you do not leave my sight for the remainder of it.”

He should look helpless in his blindfold. But he was all purpose and confidence. Her heart thudded. “I need to go.”

“When will I see you again?”

“You don’t need to see me again.”

“I do, most assuredly—I haven’t enjoyed anything half as much as your presence in a very, very long time.”

Then why did he not ravish her on the spot? She could feel his arousal pressed against her. She wanted him to carry her off like a plundering Visigoth and overpower her will.

“I am immune to sweet nothings,” she declared—an avowal full of shaky syllables.

“I have never uttered a sweet nothing in my life,” he said solemnly. “When I’m with other women, it’s as if only part of me is there and the rest of me wants to be elsewhere, elsewhen. But with you I’m not split in two. I am not plagued by other thoughts and other wishes. You cannot begin to guess how gratifying that is—to be altogether here, altogether present.”

And he could not begin to guess how gratifying it was to have such magical properties attributed to her person. She had nothing to do with the alignment of her features, but she could take some credit, couldn’t she, when it was her presence, rather than her face, that held a man riveted?

“You don’t need to go anywhere,” he murmured.

“I do.” She was afraid to take responsibility for the choice. The last time she’d plunged ahead with such a decision, she’d opened herself to years of anguish and misery.

“But you will be back,” he said, autocratic at last. “That is not negotiable. You will have dinner here, with me.”

She gazed at the fine shape of his lips, the clean, chiseled line of his jaw, and the perfectly undisturbed blindfold. Beneath her palm, his chest rose and fell. She had to clench her hand to not begin to undo the buttons of his shirt at once.

“All right,” she said. “But only dinner.”

I feel deprived,” said Christian.

She had honored her word and come for dinner. He’d dined beforehand so she wouldn’t feel obliged to feed him while he remained blindfolded. Afterward, she’d walked him to the chaise longue for him to enjoy another glass of wine and withdrawn to the opposite corner of the parlor to further admire the fossilized footprints.

“I’m in your rooms—you should be ecstatic.” She gave no quarter.

“I am ecstatic. But that does not change the fact that I am deprived. If I can’t see your face, then I should be able to see the rest of you. And if I can’t see anything of you at all, I should be able to touch you at will.”

She snorted, not at all sympathetic toward his plight. He smiled. With his title and his often unapproachable demeanor, he intimidated most women—and a large swath of men. She, however, had no compunction about putting him in his place.

His fingers encountered something, her hat. He picked it up and turned it around in his hand. “Tell me what you are doing.”

“Ogling the footprints, of course. Why else would I be here?”

He amused himself by imagining her licking the slab. “Same reason you came here last night—to get to know me better.”

“I had enough last night to last me a few years.”

He chortled, setting her hat on the far end of the chaise. “I can’t decide whether that is a compliment or an insult.”

“When I compliment you, sir, you will know.”

“Ha. You have stiffened my resolve, madam. You will compliment me before the night is out.”

“You have very nice fossils, sir—and that’s all the compliment you are getting.”

He smiled again and took a sip of his wine. “I do love a challenge.”

Such easy, lucid confidence. And nothing of Tony’s brittle braggadocio, which she did not recognize for what it was until it had been too late.

“Tell me, do you come from an enlightened clan?” she asked.

He, comfortably reclined on the chaise, his face raised toward the ceiling, moved not a finger. Yet somehow she had the impression that he’d become more alert, more … predatory. He’d scented the interest she shouldn’t have displayed.

“No,” he said, his voice perfectly calm and friendly, giving not the least indication that he might be on the prowl. “If anything, the de Montforts have always been hidebound. We didn’t deign to speak English until Shakespeare’s time.”

She rubbed a gloved hand across one of the smaller footprints. “Did you not encounter any objection from your family when you took up the life of a naturalist?”

“My father disapproved intensely.”

His tipped back his glass. She could not look away from the line of his throat. “Did that cause any unpleasantness?”

He set the glass down on the carpet. Was it a signal that he was ready to pounce? “He put in a few tirades here and there, but it is not easy to turn me aside from a path I wish to pursue. I ignored him by and large.”

His fingers lightly traced the rim of the glass. She could not help remembering how he’d played with her tight-strung body the night before with such deft touches. “Most young men find it difficult to put aside paternal edicts.”

He sat up, his long arms braced along the back of the chaise, an expansive, assertive gesture. “My father had tremendous regard for himself, but he was frivolous, which made it easy for me to turn a deaf ear to him. Besides, I knew where the kitchen was, so sending me to bed without supper was not something I feared.”

She had all but pressed her back into the slab. “My family was always particular that I not become a self-indulgent person. That and my husband’s views were enough to convince me that if I deliberately sought out fossils to excavate, I would be yielding to a flighty and selfish impulse.”

He smiled very slightly. “Are you so easy to daunt?”

Were they still speaking of fossils? “I did not altogether approve of my own interest. I want to find fossil skeletons that are bigger, better, and more unexpected than anything that has been discovered to date, not because I am a serious naturalist trying to make sense of the world.”

He rose to his feet. “There is nothing wrong with wanting bigger, better, and more unexpected. The thrill of the hunt is what drives all of us, whether we are seeking the next planet, a new principle of physics, or that elusive fossil that would shed light on exactly how life left the ocean and walked on land.”

He was still all the way across the room, still blindfolded. Already she couldn’t breathe. “I should go,” she blurted out.

He tilted his head a few degrees to one side. “You are safe with me. You know that.”