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  How To Vex A Viscount

  Mia Marlowe

  Novel Ideas (2009)

  * * *

  Rating: ***

  Tags: Romance, England, Love Story, Historical Fiction, Regency Romance

  As children they'd sparred with wooden swords. She'd scarred his chin and he broke her heart. Now that they're all grown up, the true battle is only beginning...

  Daisy Drake needs Lucian Beaumont. Tired of being "on the shelf," she craves adventure and Lucian holds all the clues to a long-buried Roman treasure. Too bad the devilishly handsome viscount doesn't want her help.

  Until she masquerades as a French courtesan who offers to teach him all she knows of the pleasures of the love couch. Of course, all Daisy knows about that she learned from the memoirs of a real courtesan, but she's always been a fast learner.

  In each other's arms, will they discover a treasure neither of them expected to find?

  This book was previously published with the title "Vexing The Viscount"

  HOW TO VEX A VISCOUNT

  BY

  MIA MARLOWE

  CRITICS ARE CHARMED BY MIA MARLOWE!

  HOW TO PLEASE A PIRATE

  “For me, you could call this book, How to Please a Reader.” —Barbara Vey, Publishers Weekly’s Beyond Her Book Blog

  “Touches of humour, naughty bawdy dialogue and colourful descriptions capture the era, adding dimension to this charming tale of a landlocked pirate, the hellion who tames him and their wild adventure.”—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

  “A delightful, witty romance...with a pace fast enough to keep me fully engaged. The dialogue between Jacquelyn and Gabriel is clever and full of such sly fun that the pages really flew by. A perfect 10 in my book, and I know that readers will love reading Jacquelyn and Gabe’s story.”—Romance Reviews Today

  “With precious nieces underfoot, a friend of dubious character, a hunt for treasure, lots of sexual tension, and danger and action woven throughout the story, many will find Gabriel and Jacquelyn’s story to be a page-turning read.” —All About Romance

  “A refreshing tale with a fantastic spin on the classic theme of two hopeless romantics who have everything in common except the wealth they need to make it work (or so they think).” —Once Upon a Romance

  MORE PRAISE FOR MIA MARLOWE!

  HOW TO DISTRACT A DUCHESS

  Mia Marlowe “has a great handle on the material and her characters, creating a charming, colourful story with an intricate, fast-paced story line.”—Publishers Weekly

  “A delightfully unique tale....Great dialogue and quite a bit of humour add to this enjoyable tale. There are some sizzling hot love scenes that will have readers fanning themselves! A totally fun read.”—Romance Reviews Today

  “A sexy, fast- paced romp that will appeal to fans of Cheryl Holt, Lisa Kleypas and Celeste Bradley.”—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

  “Wickedly witty writing and wonderfully entertaining characters are the key ingredients in Bryan’s sinfully sexy historical romance, which touches shrewdly on many key elements of the Victorian era, from extreme decorum to empire building to passions for the classical past, science (including anatomy), and art.”—Booklist

  “Fun, fresh and sexy!”—Dear Author

  Winner Takes All

  “Right now, you and I are partners in my search for the Roman treasure, split in half when we find it,” Lucian said. “For each hand I lose, one percent more of the money we find will be yours.”

  “Ah! And if I lose, that one percent shifts to you,” Daisy guessed.

  “No.” A slow smile spread across his face. “I’ll take my winnings now in satin.”

  “How do you mean?” she asked, thankful he couldn’t see her puzzled frown from behind the half mask.

  He reached forward and gave the top ribbon on her camisole a tug. The knot gave and her bodice sagged open enough to bare the meeting place of her breasts above her pounding heart.

  “Do we have a wager?” he asked. “Or are you afraid you’ll lose?”

  A true courtesan wouldn’t be able to resist such a naughty game. “Ah! Monsieur le Vicomte, either way, I win.”

  OTHER BOOKS BY MIA MARLOWE

  The Touch of Seduction series: Touch of a Thief, Touch of a Rogue, Touch of a Scoundrel, Touch of a Lady

  Collaborative novels with New York Times bestseller Connie Mason: Sins of the Highlander, Lord of Fire and Ice

  Rock*It Reads: How to Please a Pirate, How to Distract a Duchess, Erinsong, Maidensong, A Duke for All Seasons, My Lady Below Stairs

  Anthologies: Improper Gentlemen

  COPYRIGHTS

  How To Vex A Viscount

  By Mia Marlowe

  Copyright @ 2009, 2012 by Diana Groe

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Previously released as Vexing the Viscount

  ACKNOWELDGEMENTS

  To my dear husband, a man who knows a woman only vexes the one she loves.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Critics Are Charmed By Mia Marlowe!

  More Praise For Mia Marlowe!

  Other Books By Mia Marlowe

  Copyrights

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Item: One clay lamp after the fashion of an erect phallus —from the cache of Roman oddities, found near London, England, 3 July, in the Year of Our Lord 1731

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Hmm! I wonder if that’s life-size,” Miss Daisy Drake murmured. She leaned down to inspect the ancient lamp on display in the corridor outside the Society of Antiquaries lecture hall. Talking to herself was a bad habit, she knew, but since none of her friends shared her interest in antiquities, she often found herself without companions on this sort of outing.

  “Of course, it would be on the most inaccessible shelf in the display case.” Solely to vex her, she suspected. Daisy scrunched down to get a better look at it.

  The clay lamp was only about four inches long, but in other respects, so far as Daisy knew, was perfectly lifelike. The terra-cotta scrotum served admirably for an oil cruse, but even though she knew the ancients decorated their homes with such unseemly things, she still wondered about how the lamp worked. She open
ed her small valise and drew out paper, quill and inkpot in order to take a few notes. “Where does the flame come out?”

  “Right where one would expect,” a masculine voice sounded near her.

  Daisy’s spine snapped suddenly upright. The crown of her head clipped the man’s chin with a thwack and she bit her tongue.

  “Jupiter!” One of her hands flew to her throbbing mouth, the other to the top of her head, where her cunning little capote was smashed beyond recognition. Her sheaf of papers fluttered to the polished oak floor like maple leaves. The small inkwell flew into the air and landed squarely on the white lawn of the man’s shirtfront.

  “Oh, I’m so dreadfully sorry.” Daisy dabbed at the stain with her hankie and succeeded only in spreading it down his waistcoat. A black blob dribbled onto his fawn-coloured breeches. She decided not to chase that stain with her handkerchief.

  At least, thank heaven, plastering the man with ink covered her unmaidenly interest in that lewd little lamp. It was clearly a mistake to come to the museum today, but the topic under discussion at the Society of Antiquaries was the possible discovery of an ancient Roman treasure. The lure of an adventure drew her like a lemming to the sea.

  “How clumsy of me!” She made the additional mistake of looking up at the man. Her mouth gaped like a cod’s.

  Lucian, she almost said aloud. When she saw no trace of recognition in his dark eyes, she drew her lips closed by sheer strength of will.

  He’d grown into himself since she’d seen him last. His fine, straight nose was no longer out of proportion to the rest of his face. As he rubbed his square jaw, Daisy saw that the little scar on his chin was still visible, a neat triangle of pale, smooth skin. She’d recognize that anywhere.

  After all, she’d given it to him.

  His dark hair was hidden beneath a dandy’s wig. Oh, she hoped to heaven he hadn’t taken to shaving his head, as some did. Daisy’s uncle was a dogged opponent of the fashion. Said it was nothing but French foppery. Since Uncle Gabriel’s opinions were only slightly less authoritative than a papal bull, his aversion to wigs had rubbed off. Besides, hiding a head of hair like Lucian’s was a sacrilege. Or ought to be.

  An ebony wisp escaped the wig near his left ear.

  Good. Daisy breathed a sigh of relief. His dark mane was one of Lucian’s finest points, after all. Not that there weren’t plenty of others.

  His lips twitched in a half smile.

  “An interesting piece, isn’t it?” He was still the same old Lucian. Still direct, even at the expense of propriety. He wasn’t going to play the gentleman and pretend he hadn’t caught her ogling that Roman phallus.

  “Indeed.” She met his gaze, determined to make him understand that her interest was purely intellectual. “Obviously a cultic object of some sort. It is certainly a curiosity.”

  “It is gratifying to find a young lady who is . . . curious.”

  Daisy lifted her chin in what she hoped was a confident manner. “Of course I’m curious. Such an item makes one wonder what the people who used it were like.”

  “I suspect the ancients were more like us than we want to admit. People have been born into this world with the same wants and needs since Eden. Though I’ll grant you our taste in home decoration has changed,” he said with a laugh.

  “Actually, I read a treatise only last week on the new fashion of tassels. The writer felt they were merely phallic symbols in subtle form.”

  “Hmph. I shall never look at a tassel the same way again.”

  His eyes narrowed in speculation. Daisy hoped he might show some sign of remembering her, but it had been more than a decade since they’d met. She’d been a flat-chested ten-year-old, and he’d been a haughty woman hater of twelve. With soulful eyes and a blinding smile.

  Now he turned that charming smile on her without a hint of recognition in his intense gaze. “You must possess an unusual library.”

  The library Daisy frequented most often belonged to Isabella Haversham, her great-aunt. Isabella had once been a famous courtesan. But even now that she was a married lady—the wife of an earl, no less—she still entertained philosophers and artists and “freethinkers” with regularity. Lady Wexford might be painted with scandal’s brush, but an evening in her company was far more diverting than squirming through the tortured clavichord recitals that took place in other parlours around the city.

  Daisy wangled an invitation to Isabella’s soirees as often as she could. For that reason, as well as her great-aunt’s library, Daisy suspected her education was considerably broader than that of most young women her age.

  “Innocence and ignorance need not forever clasp hands,” Isabella was fond of saying.

  Daisy looked pointedly back at the lamp. There was no denying she’d been studying it before. She might as well put a bold face on it.

  “I was wondering if there is any kind of mark on that lamp,” Daisy said. “One that might indicate who the maker was.”

  “He left no mark,” Lucian said.

  “He? So you believe a man fashioned it?”

  “Men were the artisans in antiquity,” he said with confidence.

  “Hmm. That surprises me,” she said with wide eyes. “I can’t imagine a man wanting to set one of those alight.”

  Lucian coughed out a laugh. “But you can see where a woman might have reason.”

  “Certainly. Male domination of nearly every field of endeavour springs to mind.” As well as possession of the memory of a gnat, she added silently. “But the lamp poses a host of questions.”

  “Ah, yes, and you raised an intriguing one.” One of his dark brows arched, a reminder that he’d overheard her. “I’d be happy to help you discover the answer.”

  Was he suggesting something improper? If he was, it would serve him right if she gave him another scar.

  “You owe me no further assistance. Not after I ruined your shirt. And your waistcoat. And your . . .” She shouldn’t have allowed her gaze to travel the ink’s path down the front of his breeches. For a moment, she imagined an appendage shaped like the lamp affixed to his groin, and felt her cheeks heat. To cover her embarrassment, she sank to the floor to retrieve her scattered notes.

  “Think nothing of it.” His voice was no longer the adolescent squeak she remembered. “I should be more careful where I put my jaw. I do hope you have not suffered an injury to your head.”

  The way his deep baritone rumbled through her, the fact that she even had a head temporarily escaped her notice.

  “Please allow me.” Lucian set down the valise he’d been carrying and knelt beside her. He helped her reassemble her pages. Then he offered his hand to help her up, and she took it.

  Had someone loosed a jar of June bugs in her belly? “Thank you, my lord,” she murmured, for lord he was. Lucian Ignacio de Castenello Beaumont. Son and heir of Ellery Beaumont, Earl of Montford. Daisy assumed Lucian was now styling himself Viscount Rutland, one of his father’s lesser titles, since the earl was still very much alive.

  But Daisy remembered Lucian as Iggy.

  His ears had turned an alarming shade of red when she called him that. “Iggy” was not dignified, he’d complained. As if a skinny, dirty-kneed twelve-year-old were capable of anything remotely like dignity.

  But Lucian was no longer twelve. He was a man. And the last time Daisy heard his name bandied about in polite society, the sober matron doing the talking lowered her voice, but the words reclusive and wastrel were unmistakably used.

  Neither of which did anything to slow her racing heart, Daisy admitted with a sigh.

  She accepted the stack of papers from him. “There’s no salvaging your ensemble, I fear. Please permit me to have a new suit of clothing made for you.”

  She could afford to be generous. After all, her uncle had discovered the family fortune beneath the stones of Dragon Caern Castle just when other members of the nobility were losing theirs in the South Sea stock swindle.

  “I wouldn’t hear of it,” he assur
ed her smoothly, though she knew Lucian’s father had invested heavily in the failed company. Perhaps his mother’s family was still solvent. She’d been a noblewoman in her homeland. Nearly all the vestiges of Lucian’s Italian accent were now gone. Daisy thought that a terrible shame.

  “There’s no need for you to replace this ensemble. I’ve been meaning to retire this suit in any case,” he informed her.

  That would be a pity, since the cut of that green frock coat does wonderful things for his shoulders, and as for those bree—Daisy caught herself before her thoughts completely ran away with her, but lost her fight with the urge to flick her gaze to where his breeches moulded to his thighs.

  He caught the direction of her gaze and an amused grin tilted his lips. “My! You are a keen observer, aren’t you?”

  “Forgive me. Ruining your clothing’s has upset me,” she said, her cheeks flaming. “I’m acting like some pudding-headed debutante.” Instead she was firmly on-the-shelf spinster of one and twenty.

  “If you were a debutante, I’d have remembered you,” he said.

  Daisy doubted it. Especially since he showed no signs of recognizing her yet. Surely she bore some resemblance to the young girl who’d followed him about like a puppy so many years ago. His family had spent only a week in residence at Dragon Caern, but it had been the most frustrating, most splendid, most memorable week of her young life.

  “However, if you want my advice,” he continued, “your chances of remaining unmarried will decrease if you try not to douse every man you meet with ink.”

  “Perhaps remaining unmarried is my choice.” She frowned until she noticed the way he flashed his teeth at her, clearly teasing. Lucian was the sort of man a woman might forgive anything so long as he smiled at her.

  Daisy bit her lip to keep from babbling further. She sidled away from the case where the phallic lamp was on display.

  Lucian looked around the nearly deserted exhibit hall. “It seems there is no way for us to be properly introduced, but perhaps you will allow me the honour of giving you my name.”