Free Loretta Chase - The Devil's Delilah by Loretta Chase

forgotten about returning Mr. Desmond's property. Not that Jack had forgotten the property itself, though. The manuscript had rarely left his hands. He'd felt guilty, at first, about continuing to read, given Miss Desmond's violent opposition to his doing so. However, she was not by to harass him, and the book was irresistible. Now his neglected conscience sprang to agitated life. What had he been thinking of, to keep the manuscript overnight? He should have returned it immediately.
    The trouble was, he was extremely reluctant to confront Miss Desmond. He had managed, with the memoirs' help, to put her out of his mind during his waking hours. When he slept, though, she crept into feverish dreams — of tumbled black tresses and hot, angry eyes and silken white skin… of heated struggles that subsided into long and languorous joinings of another kind. He would awake perspiring, to find the bed-clothes tangled into knots and his breath coming in gasps.
    Jack Langdon was accounted an eccentric and known to be shy of women. All the same, he had the normal urges of any healthy young man. He knew what desire was and how to assuage it, but he had never felt anything like desire — rather the opposite — for women of his own class. Only Catherine Pelliston had awakened in him something like passion. Certainly it had thrilled him to discover a kindred spirit in female form. Whenever he'd dared imagine an ideal mate, such was the character he'd conjured up.
    Miss Desmond was no kindred spirit. She was wild, brazen, hot-tempered, and completely unpredictable. Every time she spoke to him she set his nerves jangling so he couldn't think straight. With Miss Desmond, Jack's normal discomfort in feminine company increased a hundredfold, because added to his usual consciousness of his dull inadequacy was the disconcerting awareness that he'd wanted her from the moment he'd knocked her down.
    Jack forced a bit of his omelette into his mouth and with a mighty effort, swallowed it. He must go, like it or not. He dared not entrust the ersatz book to his uncle, because the viscount was certain to open it and read it on the way, as he walked.
    Jack would have to return it himself. He would have to converse with the Desmonds and hope the ugly thing consuming him was not evident in his countenance. Then he would be done with them. As to the thing itself — this unspeakable desire was nothing more than an appetite. Like others, it might be channelled into more appropriate directions, if he would but apply himself.
----
    Chapter 6

    Mr. Langdon was so eager to be rid of the manuscript and thereby end all reasons for communicating with the Desmonds that he hurried his uncle out of the house well in advance of the time appointed for tea.
    Lord Rossing and his nephew entered the vestibule just as Mr. Atkins was being handed his hat by a haughty Bantwell. Mr. Atkins did not appear happy. Miss Desmond, who stood beside her father, appeared even less so. Lady Potterby, who'd evidently conceived a keen dislike for Mr. Atkins, threw him a baleful glance before taking up the introductions.
    "Ah, yes," said Mr. Atkins, when Lady Potterby had condescended to acknowledge his existence. "Mr. Langdon and I have briefly met, though not formally."
    Jack pronounced himself pleased at the acquaintance, though he felt anything but. The sham book was under his arm, and Mr. Atkins was eying it with curiosity.
    "What a handsome volume you have there, Mr. Langdon. I fancy myself rather a connoisseur, and it seems a rare specimen. Greek, is it?" he asked, oblivious to the company's blatant impatience with him to be gone.
    "Yes," said Jack, looking to Mr. Desmond for guidance. That gentleman, however, had turned his attention to Lord Rossing to commence a review of their mutual acquaintance.
    "It was a gift from Lord Streetham," Jack added uneasily, "and — and I brought it to show Miss Desmond."
    "How thoughtful," said Lady Potterby with an indulgent smile. "A book of