To Catch an Earl - Kate Bateman Page 0,38

catch air into her lungs. Her legs felt like jelly. She placed one shaking hand over her heart and took as deep a breath as her stays would allow. Good God.

He stepped back, straightening his shirtsleeves, then ran a hand through his hair.

“Emmy!” Luc’s voice echoed through the thick door, fainter this time.

Harland caught the handle of the door and swung it wide. Light flooded in. He shot Emmy a fierce look. “Go home, Emmy Danvers. And stop playing with fire.”

Emmy scooped up her mask from the floor and ran.

Chapter 15.

Seb wrinkled his nose when Alex entered the Tricorn’s private sitting room the following afternoon.

“Phew! Where have you been? You smell like a tart’s boudoir.”

Alex raised his sleeve to his nose, sniffed, and grimaced. “I’ve been at Floris, the parfumier over on Jermyn Street.”

“Still trying to pin down our fragrant thief?” Seb surmised. “Any luck?”

“Indeed. Monsieur Fargeon confirmed what I’d suspected—that the scent on the feathers left by the Nightjar is the same as the one provided to us by Miss Danvers.”

“And?” Seb shrugged. “What does that signify? She can’t be the only woman in London with that particular perfume.”

“As a matter of fact, she probably is. It’s a rather unusual scent, by all accounts. As individual as personalized snuff.” Alex pulled out his penciled notes. “It was invented by a Frenchman named Houbigant, who made perfumes for Marie Antoinette and the Empress Josephine. According to Fargeon, he’s been making the same scent for Miss Danvers ever since her sixteenth birthday. He makes it only for her.”

Alex squinted at the paper, trying to read his own handwriting. “He says it evokes ‘a classic French garden’ with ‘headnotes of bergamot and lemon, a midrange of jasmine, rose, and orange blossom, and base notes of sandalwood and ambergris.’ Whatever that means.”

Fargeon had been quite the character. He’d maintained that every scent told a story, weaved a spell. He claimed that just by un-stoppering a bottle, he could transport a man to Arabia or the shores of the tropics.

Or to a moonlit garden, with an armful of fragrant, deceitful woman.

Alex frowned. The scent of her still haunted his bedroom, thanks to the bottle he’d commandeered. The taste of her still lingered in his mouth, even after a day. What in God’s name had he been thinking, to kiss her like that? He was deranged. He should have been trying to trick a confession out of her, not kissing her senseless up against a bloody wall.

Seb raised his brows. “A heady concoction. But can he be certain it’s exactly the same? Beyond reasonable doubt?”

“He’s an expert. His opinion’s good enough for me,” Alex said grimly. “When you put it together with her family history and Vidocq’s deductions, it seems clear that she’s the Nightjar.”

“Well, hell,” Seb sighed. “I suppose you’re going to catch her now?”

Alex nodded. “There are only two of the major jewels left to steal. Lady Carrington’s ruby, and the sapphire in Kent.”

“I don’t mind taking a trip out to Kent,” Seb said easily. “I’m getting a bit sick of London. I’ll see if I can drag Benedict away from marital bliss to accompany me.”

“All right. You go; I’ll talk to the Carringtons.”

* * *

“You’ll never guess who I just saw in Covent Garden,” Sally said as she breezed into the salon with her arms full of freshly cut flowers. “Your Lord Melton.”

Emmy’s teacup clattered back into her saucer, but she managed a frown. “He’s not my anything.”

Camille raised her own teacup to her lips and exchanged an amused glance with Sally, which made Emmy want to grind her teeth. “Of course not, darling.”

Emmy hadn’t been thinking about him, or that earth-shattering kiss, for the better part of two days. Not at all. She definitely hadn’t woken that morning from the most wickedly erotic dream of her life with her body throbbing on the verge of climax because she’d been imagining herself beneath Harland. On a bed instead of against a wall.

Do you find this irritating, Miss Danvers?

Not. At. All.

She cleared her throat. “What was he doing?”

Sally fluffed the flowers in a vase. “I was on my way to Floris, to get you another bottle of scent, since he took the last one, and he was just leaving.”

The image of such a masculine man in such a feminine place was an amusing contradiction. A lesser man might have been overawed, but Emmy couldn’t imagine Harland being intimidated by anything. He was the kind of man who made himself at home in a