The Wrong Way to Catch a Rake by Lara Temple

Author:Lara Temple
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2022-09-20T17:36:58+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Dominic was right. She did feel better after a hot bath.

Especially a hot bath in a large claw-legged tub set in the middle of a cosy boudoir warmed by a crackling fire. Phoebe dried herself and slipped into the elaborate purple and gold dressing gown the maid had left when she’d taken away Phoebe’s soaked clothes. She sat down at the mahogany dressing table and began brushing her hair with a heavy silver-backed brush, watching her almost unfamiliar reflection as her hair slowly dried, turning from dark to light. She felt like a medieval queen.

There was a tap on the dressing-room door and, expecting the maid, Phoebe bade her enter and paused in mid-stroke, all her post-bath languor disappearing in an instant as Dominic stepped over the sill. He wore long, dark trousers and a white linen shirt and nothing else. The light of the fire turned his eyes black and gold and accentuated the shadow of the corridor behind him so that he seemed to materialise from darkness.

The devil coming for her soul.

Why not? He already had her heart.

All the warnings—remember who he is, remember what he is, and mostly—remember who you are—went up in a puff of sulphurous smoke.

Any other night must...must be tonight.

‘You look like you belong here, Rosie,’ Dominic said, surveying her from her head to her bare feet. ‘A Venetian princess with fiery eyes ready to command us lesser mortals.’

Her heart hitched but she laughed. ‘And here I was, thinking you looked like the devil come to claim my errant soul.’

‘Huh. That’s not very nice. Besides, your soul is far too pristine to interest any devil.’

She looked away and went back to her brushing. It should not matter that that was what he thought of her. After all, that was what she wanted people to think of her. Her efficacy as a spy depended upon it.

He sat down on the matching chair beside her and brushed her cheek with his fingertips. ‘What did I say wrong?’

She shook her head. ‘Won’t your cousin be upset I am using her dressing gown and brush?’

‘Gina will only be upset she was not here to meet you...’ He paused as the maid re-entered with a tray and set it down on the table beside her with a smile at her and a wider one for Dominic. When she was gone Dominic poured Phoebe a glass of wine and she drank a little and picked up the brush again, tugging at a damp knot.

‘Here, I’ll do that.’ He took the brush from her and turned her gently back towards the mirror, drawing her damp hair over her back as he shifted his chair to sit behind her. Her shoulders clenched but she said nothing. She had never liked people brushing her hair. Her mother had done that when she was little but she’d always been hurried and abrupt, always half-listening to Phoebe’s father’s movements in the next room and jumping up when he called. Phoebe preferred doing it herself. She almost hoped there would finally be something she could dislike about Dominic’s touch.

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