Sinfully Yours (Hellions of High Street 2)

“On the contrary. When I choose to wield my tongue like a rapier, I do so only against opponents who know how to defend themselves,” he replied.

McClellan’s eyes darkened to a shade of gunmetal grey. “Just what, precisely, are you accusing me of, Lord Davenport?”

“Bad manners,” answered Devlin. “I don’t know you well enough to say for sure whether you are a cowardly cur.”

“I should call you out for that insult,” snarled McClellan through his clenched teeth.

“It would be a waste of breath. As I told you, I consider duels to be a nonsensical waste of energy as well as sleep.”

“There are other ways of settling a matter of honor,” growled McClellan. But before he could elaborate, Lady Dunbar approached with Count Rupert and Colonel Polianov in tow.

“Alec, might I draw you away from your present company to answer a few shooting questions these gentlemen have?”

“It would be my pleasure,” he muttered. Inclining a curt bow to Anna, he moved off to join his cousin.

“Well, well,” remarked Devlin, as the Russian envoy began to argue loudly with McClellan over what type of gunpowder performed best in the damp conditions of the Scottish moors. “What a jovial group of guests have been assembled here. It will be a miracle if the only blood shed this month is that of the game birds.”

Chapter Eleven

You appear to have made an enemy of the baron,” said Anna.

Devlin shrugged. “I assure you, he is not the first.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Despite McClellan’s boorish behavior, a part of her was grateful to him for the distraction. The exchange of heated words had kept her from feeling unspeakably awkward in her first meeting with the marquess since…

“But I find it curious that you went out of your way to defend Caro,” Anna went on. Or perhaps she had only imagined the spark of real anger in his eyes. At the moment, her usually solid judgment was subject to question. “You keep insisting that you have no sense of gentlemanly honor.”

“Don’t mistake my needling for nobility,” shot back Devlin. “McClellan takes himself too seriously. I merely felt his pride needed a prick or two.”

“You are not concerned that he possesses a volatile temper and a dislike of English aristocrats?” asked Anna.

“Not particularly.”

“And yet,” she replied, “it seems to me that he has a great deal of anger seething inside him.”

“Oh, yes, he is angry.” A sardonic twitch pulled at his mouth. “Mostly at himself because he is attracted to your sister and doesn’t wish to be.”

Anna wanted to dismiss the statement as absurd, but a momentary reflection on the baron’s behavior around her sister compelled her to admit that the marquess raised an interesting point. “You think he’s deliberately seeking to make her dislike him, so that there’s no chance of an acquaintance developing?”

“Something like that,” said Devlin, looking rather smug.

“You have a devious mind, Lord Davenport.”

“Well, apparently we think alike.”

For someone who took pains to appear a frivolous wastrel, he had a very clever wit.

To go along with his very clever imagination. And his very clever hands.

At the thought of his skilled fingers, and how adept they were at manipulating the most delicate of mechanisms, Anna felt her flesh begin to prickle with heat.

Don’t, she warned herself. Don’t blush. Don’t betray how much his maddeningly masculine presence affected her rebellious body. Forcing her thoughts back to the baron, Anna suddenly recalled the list she had found in his work room.

“Speaking of devious, McClellan was one of the names you had marked with an ‘X’ on the paper hidden in your book. Why the interest in him?”

“Miss Sloane, as I’ve said before, you really ought to cease poking your nose in places it doesn’t belong.”

The condescending comment made her forget any lingering feelings of embarrassment. “Oh? And just how do you propose to stop me?” she challenged. “Here, in the drawing room, you can’t resort to the same sort of distraction you used earlier today.”