Scandal And The Duchess
Why did that statement make her all the more excited? “Yes,” she managed.
“You are the loveliest lass I’ve ever had the fortune to meet.”
Rose clung to every word. “Yes,” she whispered again.
Steven chuckled, his breath warming her. “They don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve you. But I promise you my fidelity, lass. My everything.”
Rose had no idea what he was talking about, but hearing him say it in his growling Scots was enough.
Steven hands were on her h*ps once more, his mouth again opening hers. Rose daringly ran her fingers down his back, finding the tightness of his bu**ocks through the wool of his kilt. She tentatively caressed his hard, tight hip.
Steven broke the kiss and gave her a swift smile. “Rosie, lass, you’re dancing with the devil.”
“I am?”
“Doesn’t matter though, does it?” Steven brushed another kiss to her mouth. She was pressed so tightly against him that his shirt and waistcoat warmed her bare skin. “I’m going to marry you, after all.”
Rose returned his smile. “Yes, I forgot we were betrothed.”
“Forgot, did you?” Something hot flickered in his eyes. “Then I’ll have to remind ye.”
The next kiss showed Rose he’d been holding himself back until now. His mouth burned, his hands were strong, his body hard under her touch. The fact that she was able to hold this virile, amazing, athletic man took her breath away.
Something moved under her bu**ocks, but it had nothing to do with Steven. She shifted her weight and something well and truly pinched her.
Rose gasped, breaking the kiss, sliding forward into Steven’s arms. Steven, surprised, caught her, then he started to laugh.
“Look at that, Rosie,” he said, his gaze drawn to the cabinet behind her. “I think we’ve discovered the first secret compartment opened by ardor.”
***
As Rose turned to look, Steven struggled to catch his breath. He never thought he’d damn a piece of furniture, but he was damning this one. His need shouted at him to forget about the bloody cabinet and drag Rose to the carpet and finish this.
With any other woman, he’d have done it. Steven would have coaxed her to the floor by now and had her clothes off, her cabinet and her settlements be damned.
Rose was delectable with her bodice unbuttoned as she gazed in curiosity at the piece of inlay that had slid aside beneath her hips. A small drawer had popped up, right against her backside, lucky drawer.
“There’s something in it.” Rose reached an eager hand for it, but Steven caught her wrist.
He’d lived in Africa too long, he decided—a man never thrust his hand into a shadowy opening or lifted a rock without being very careful. All manner of things could be living there. Even in England, ticks, spiders, and other nasties could exist in a drawer closed for so long inside a wooden cabinet.
Steven moved her hand and then gingerly tugged out the papers she’d spied. Rose leaned to look, forgetting to be modest in her curiosity, and Steven clenched the pages to keep from dropping them. Her open bodice bared her to the waist, her plump br**sts filling her corset. A dark red love bite marked the pale skin of her breast. She was beautiful, decadent, and innocent, all at the same time.
“They’re drawings,” Rose said in surprise.
Of furniture. Of course, more bloody furniture. Five sketches in all, done in colored pencils, depicting pieces from the same period as the cabinet.
One was of another cabinet with small drawers, this one shaped like an obelisk whose point had been sawn off. The artist had noted that it was mahogany with silver inlay, in the latest “Egyptian” style. Two pictures showed chairs with gilded arms, the arms of each capped with carved, gilded Egyptian-looking heads like those found on canopic jars. One picture showed a pair of large candelabras, each base in the form of a stele covered with hieroglyphic-like writing. A figure of a woman, carved in ebony, knelt on the top of each stele, holding the gold curlicues of the candelabra on her head.
The last drawing was of a settee. Its green and gold striped cushion rested atop a boxlike structure made of ebony and studded with gold. Scenes from ancient Egypt were carved into the settee’s arms and burnished with gold, and a sphinx—half lion, half woman—capped each corner.
The settee was a masterpiece. And hideously ugly.
Rose started to laugh. “I always hated this settee. It brought over from Paris by one of Charles’s ancestors after the war with Napoleon. Ancient Egypt was all the rage then, even though they didn’t yet know much about it.”
Steven studied the sketch, every gilded, overly ornate inch of it. “I’ve seen the wonders of the pyramids at Giza and the tombs at Thebes,” he said. “And I assure you, Rosie, that no Egyptian pharaoh ever sat on something like this.”
“Of course they didn’t. It was for French ladies in their salons. It’s horrible.”
Steven flipped through the sketches again. “This settee is in your husband’s house?”
“All those pieces are. His Egyptian collection, he called them. Been in the house for generations. They’re somewhere about.”
“Then why didn’t we see them? I’d have remembered these.”
“I don’t know.” Rose managed to look thoughtful and alluring at the same time. “We didn’t have time to do much more than the main floors. Albert might have had them removed to the attics to put them out of my reach. With all the gold on them, they must be worth something.”