A Devil's Touch (The Devil DeVere #4.5)(19)

"You revile me!" Diana spat. "I will expect your call with a full explanation at nine o'clock on the morrow."

"An ungodly hour," he replied. "I doubt I shall have risen before two."

Diana spun toward the door. "You will call, my lord, or you will much regret my methods of rousing you."

She had meant it as a threat, but Ludovic could picture her face behind the veil, the high color staining her cheeks, the passion borne of righteous indignation blazing in her green eyes, the very things that had most appealed to him four years ago, aside from her magnificent breasts, that is. "I doubt that, my dear," he replied. "You may rouse me any way you like."

The room rumbled with snickers and guffaws.

Though he'd only meant to goad her, he felt himself growing rock hard at the vision of her once again in his bed. He had determined upon their first meeting that he would have her one way or another. She had been a challenge, but in the end he had, indeed, had her. Several ways in fact, but still not enough to satisfy him. She was the only lover with whom he hadn't grown bored. He told himself it was only the brevity of their liaison; it simply hadn't had sufficient time to grow tedious. The realization had sprung from nowhere, but there it was, just as she, staring him in the face.

"A tolerable, handsome figure," Lord Malden remarked to her departing back, "but a tongue like a shrew." He added sotto voce, "Perhaps you can teach her a better means of employing it, eh DeVere?"

Oh, he had done that and more. He had taught her many things and she had proven both eager and wonderfully sensuous, but her education remained incomplete. Unless…He wondered with a stab of something-he-didn't-care-to-identify, if Diana had taken other lovers in his absence. Would it really matter if she had? He paused to examine that question and found it didn't diminish his desire for her in the least. His brother was now out of the picture, not that he would have allowed that courtship to have progressed any further.

At the door she abruptly turned to confront her detractors, her bitterness a living, breathing force. He could almost see her livid gaze penetrating through the veil. "Better a shrew than a sheep, my lord. For hapless sheep are devoured by ruthless wolves."

He chuckled as the door clicked behind her. So that was the way of it. He had introduced her to passion and left her to her own devices, and for that she resented him. For there was no doubt in his mind that this sheep desired nothing more than to be devoured slowly and deliberately by a wolf's mouth, and he would be only too happy to oblige her.





Excerpt: DEVIL IN THE MAKING

Westminster School – 1764



"The epic poets of ancient times composed histories of Greek heroes in rhyming verse, chanted by the Rhapsodes in accompaniment by the cithara. The meter employed was dactylic hexameter…" Dr. Trasker's droning monotone faded to the far periphery of Simon's consciousness as he reviewed the first lines of his own poetic composition, An Ode to a Milkmaid of St. James Park.

Lovely Lavinia, a comely lass,

With ripe pink teats and plump white arse,

Ha’penny paid will fill your cup

He thoughtfully chewed the nub of his quill.

But for a shilling, she’d liefer tup…

He flourished the last line with a self-satisfied smirk.

"Master Singleton." The stentorian voice halted the rhythmic scratch of Simon's quill.

Simon looked up blankly.

"I await your response," the schoolmaster intoned.

"Homer and Hesiod," Ned coughed from behind.

"Master Chambers!" The schoolmaster's rebuke turned upon the second offender.

"Sir?" Ned answered.

"Since you are so desirous to impart your scholarship, you shall now stand and enlighten the class on the Elegiac couplet."

"The Elegiac couplet?" Ned repeated.

"Now, Master Chambers," the taskmaster commanded.

Ned stood, his ears reddening with the snickers of his classmates.

"You seem unprepared, Chambers," the pedagogue accused.

"N-no, sir. Indeed not. I only wish to understand. Is it the meter for elegy, or the couplet itself that you wish me to explain?"

"You are stalling."

"Beware, Ned," DeVere whispered from across the aisle, "lest you inspire him to invoke the holy name of the birch. The goddess of discipline. The handmaiden of higher learning."

Ned cleared his throat to disguise a choke of laughter and then recited, "The Elegiac meter is customarily described as a dactylic hexameter followed by a dactylic pentameter, which together form an Elegiac couplet."

Trasker's beady eyes narrowed. "That is correct, Master Chambers. Now then, let us hope your benighted classmates have been equally attentive." With visible disappointment the pedagogue took up his notes to resume his lecture.

Perceiving his chance to share his bawdy masterpiece, Simon reached across the aisle to DeVere— just as Trasker's bespectacled gaze rose from his notes. Simultaneously, Simon and DeVere snatched back their hands, leaving the lone sheet of parchment to drift slowly to the floor with the quiet grace of an autumn leaf.

"What is this?" Trasker snapped, advancing upon them with a militant look.

"Bugger!" Simon muttered.

The sixth form collectively inhaled as Trasker retrieved the fallen parchment and scanned the brief lines. He then transfixed a sulfurous stare back upon his first victim, demanding, "Master Singleton? Are you the author of this lewd and scurrilous verse?"