Page 25 of The Lawrence Browne Affair
Georgie knew a swindle when he saw one. He would have bet his life that Radnor was being duped by this Standish bastard. The man was using all the tricks Georgie himself would have used: asking too many questions, paying too many compliments, insinuating his way into a mark’s life.
He was outraged by the idea of Radnor being cheated, even though he had hoped to do precisely that. Outraged, as if there were a swindlers’ code of professional ethics, for God’s sake. But he was absolutely certain that any proper confidence man ought to be ashamed of stealing from such a complete innocent. Radnor had spent too long in isolation to develop the sixth sense that alerted most people to fraudulence and connivance.
Hell, if he had any sense he wouldn’t trust Georgie. Georgie hardly trusted himself at this point. He didn’t know whether he was more annoyed with himself for wanting to deceive Radnor or for taking so long to do it. And it wasn’t simply that a couple of kisses had clouded Georgie’s judgment. No, his judgment had been dangerously fogged to begin with and had been for months. Time with Radnor had obfuscated it completely.
He took out a clean sheet of paper and wrote a letter to Standish, or whoever he was, purporting to keep the fellow apprised of Radnor’s latest experiments and making sure to get all the details catastrophically wrong. With any luck, the bastard would shock himself to death if he tried to recreate the device. At the very least the man’s plans would be useless, and it would buy Georgie a little bit of time.
Time for what, though? Georgie hardly knew. Time to put the device through another series of tests? Time to get to the bottom of village gossip about stolen cauls, time to figure out why Penkellis hadn’t been looted? Time to kiss Radnor some more, time to feel the press of those strong hands? God, but he wanted that time. He wanted to ignore the rest of the world, everything that had ever mattered to him, and instead crawl into bed with Radnor, just to find out what it would be like.
But he knew what it would be like, didn’t he? Radnor, strong and demanding, on him and in him and making him crave things that were best left alone.
No. Georgie steeled himself, forced himself to think with the part of his brain that had seen him through cold nights and hungry winters. He doubted whether Radnor’s device alone would be sufficient to purchase Mattie Brewster’s clemency. But now, if he were clever, he might be able to trade information about Standish as well. Brewster hated competition. He liked to have his hands in all the right pies. That was why he had acquired Georgie’s services, after all.
“Radnor!”
“In here.” Radnor’s voice was faint, coming from behind the heavy oak door that separated the study from the earl’s bedchamber.
Georgie moved to stand by the door. “What are you going to do with the telegraph when it’s complete?”
There was silence from behind the door.
“Radnor?”
He heard the ominous sound of water dripping. The last thing this shambles of a house needed was a leak in the roof. He pushed the door open, which he knew to be rude, but manners as he knew them didn’t seem to exist at Penkellis.
There was no evidence of a leak in Radnor’s bedchamber. Instead Radnor stood by the side of a great old-fashioned tin bathing tub, his hips wrapped in a sodden piece of linen toweling that left nothing to the imagination.
Georgie made a sound that was mortifyingly like a squeak.
“Oh God,” Radnor said.
Georgie didn’t even bother trying to feign composure. The earl was every bit as gorgeously massive unclothed as he was fully dressed, of course, only the sheer fact of his size was harder to ignore without the distraction of clothes. Georgie didn’t know where to look first. There seemed too many options, too much acreage of exposed skin. His eyes traveled up, over narrow hips and ridged belly, over a thickly haired chest and broad shoulders, until he reached the earl’s face.
“Your lips are blue.” Georgie could almost feel the chill on his own lips. “Did you just take a cold bath?” There was a heap of clean-looking shirts on the clothes press, and he handed one to the earl.
“The water had gone cold by the time I had finished carrying it up here.” He started to put the shirt over his head.
“No, stop that. You’re still wet. Dry off first, or you’ll catch a chill.” He started dabbing at Radnor’s chest with a dry length of toweling. Radnor’s nipples were pink and hard, and Georgie wanted to take each of them in his mouth and find out whether the earl preferred having them bit or sucked.
Radnor took the cloth out of Georgie’s hand and scrubbed roughly at his hair.
“Next time, have a servant carry up hot water,” Georgie admonished.
“The girl was busy.”
Georgie raised an eyebrow and gave Radnor a pointed glance. “This is why most people have more than one housemaid.”
“Maids are loud. Forever clattering around, opening and closing doors, and yammering their heads off. I’d be in Bedlam by Christmas.”
“You don’t mind me yammering my head off.” There was a bead of water trickling down the center of Radnor’s hard chest, and before Georgie knew what he was doing, he had brushed it away, tracing its path with his finger.
Radnor froze, then took a half a step backwards. “Yes, well, if I had a household of servants like you, I’d have other troubles. Wouldn’t get anything done at all.”
Then Radnor flashed him one of his rare smiles, and Georgie felt simultaneously like he had been given a precious gift and like he had been hit in the head with a shovel.
And the earl thoughthewas likely to go to Bedlam. Georgie was halfway there already. As soon as he got out of the bedchamber, he stood with his back to the closed door, trying to catch his breath and collect his thoughts. What the devil had gone wrong in his brain? He had wanted to know whether the patents to Radnor’s inventions were in his own name or Standish’s or someone else entirely—that way he would know exactly how big a swindle he was uncovering, and how much value the information would hold for Brewster. Instead he had been distracted by an eyeful of hard muscle and then was put even more absurdly off course by the prospect of the earl’s getting a chill.
A chill, for God’s sake. He wanted to smack himself in the face. A man as rugged as Radnor wasn’t going to waste away by taking too cold a bath. And even if he did, what of it? All the lords and ladies in Britain could drop dead and it shouldn’t make the least difference to Georgie. It was an embarrassing error, a raw novice’s mistake, to care about a mark. It was one thing—bad enough, really—to let one of them take him to bed. It was quite another to start worrying about them as if they mattered.
