Page 272 of From Rakes to Riches

That Gallic shrug again. “I have many reasons not to panic, not the least of which is that I don’t want to give them thesatisfaction of knowing they ruffled my feathers.” He raised one dark, expressive eyebrow at her.

Mercy felt her frown turn into a scowl. Every person in a five-city-block radius categorically understood the current state of her feathers. They hadn’t been merely ruffled. But plucked.

Fit to be tied, she was.

Drat.

Mercy sagged back and let her head fall against the wall, squeezing her eyes shut.

She didn’t want to look at him.

What was he about calling her adorable? Had he meant it as a slight? A condescending jab at her youth? She was only all of twenty, but she was well educated. Well read.

Not to mention...one just didn’t go around calling people adorable, did one? Not unless they were your nine-year-old niece or something equally perturbing.

She was awoman.

And some part of her wanted him to know that. To acknowledge it.

Raphael Sauvageau was pure, unmitigated male. His voice deep. His manner predatory. His gaze unapologetically lustful.

When he spoke, his voice purred against her skin.

And yet, he could seduce a woman without saying a word. Make her aware of all the deep, empty places she ignored.

He was wickedly, no,ruthlesslyattractive. Roguish and virile with sharp bones that cut a portrait of indolent cruelty.

That was why she refused to open her eyes, because sometimes, looking at him made her brain turn to a puddle of useless, feminine liquid that threatened to leak out her ears, leaving her with no wits at all.

With no logic. No reason to resist...

Regardless of her attempt to ignore him, she could feel his eyes upon her like the gaze of some ancient divinity. Pulling ather sinew and bone. Sucking at her veins as if he could drink her in.

Whatwashe?

How many women were charred in the combustible heat of such a gaze?

She didn’t want to know.

Furthermore, she refused to be one of them.

Their first and only previous encounter had been the summer before. She’d gone with her eldest sister, Honoria—whom they called Nora—and Felicity in search of a missing fortune to save the man Nora had loved her entire life.

When they’d found the fortune in gold, they’d also found Raphael Sauvageau, the half-Monégasque, half-English leader of the fearsome Fauves—a French word meaning “wild beasts.” He and his brother, Gabriel, laid claim to the gold that had been stolen by Nora’s criminally atrocious first husband, the Viscount Woodhaven.

Their meeting had been fraught with intensity and the suggestion of threat.

Mercy and Raphael had sparred verbally, and she’d gone away with the feeling that he’d enjoyed it.

Or perhaps that she had.

Mercy’s brothers-in-law, Chief Inspector Carlton Morley and Dr. Titus Conleith, had found out and come for the sisters, confronting the Sauvageau brothers.

Instead of a war breaking out between the men, Raphael and Gabriel had relinquished their gold to Titus and Honoria, which had been a substantial amount, with a promise to return for some mysterious future medical procedure.

According to Titus, he’d not heard from the Sauvageau brothers in the months since.

None of them had.

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