An Unexpected Pleasure (The Mad Morelands #4)(43)

The heat of anger rose in Megan, shoving aside her nerves, and she looked straight back at Theo, her eyes as hard as his.

She had one thing in her favor, Megan knew. The key was not in the pocket of her skirt nor anywhere in her room. She had checked and rechecked that thoroughly. Even if Theo suggested a search, they would find nothing to incriminate her.

The rest of the meal passed with agonizing slowness. Megan had lost all hunger. She had to force down each bite of food. Pretending to listen with interest to the conversation, smiling and nodding at others’ remarks, even answering when she had to, she fumed inside, her anger at Theo growing.

A man of courage, she thought, would have confronted her last night. Instead, he had stolen kisses from her before he set her up to be discovered by his father. She should have known, of course, that he was the sort of man who would do such a thing. She knew better than anyone else the extremes of which he was capable.

When the meal was finally over, the duke escorted Megan to the study, along with Anna, who had not yet seen the collection, and her husband Reed, and Theo, who had elected to tag along. Megan felt his eyes on her, but she refused to look at him.

“I must just get the key, you see,” the duke told them when they reached his study, and he walked past them into the room.

Megan tensed, waiting, as he crossed the room to the large desk and reached inside the top left drawer. He pulled out a key, closed the drawer and started back toward them. Megan stared, astonished.

He had the key? How had it wound up back in his desk drawer?

She whipped her head around to look at Theo. He gazed back at her, saying nothing, the same faintly amused smile playing about his lips.

Megan realized that he had known the key would be there. He had played out this little charade just to show her that he knew what she had done and that the key was once more in his father’s possession.

The key must have fallen out on the floor right here in the study, Megan thought, and Theo had seen it after she left and had returned it to the drawer. She narrowed her eyes, meeting his bright green gaze. The light that she had seen in his eyes before was there again, intense and seductive. His eyes dropped slightly to her lips, and it was then that the realization struck her with all the force of a heavy stone dropped on her: Theo had taken the key from her.

She remembered how he had kissed her until she was dizzy. She remembered how his hand had crept down her side and onto her leg, sliding up and down, clenching her skirts in his fist. She had felt only the wild, delirious passion that had thrummed through her in response to his touch. But he had used the opportunity to slip his hand into her pocket and retrieve the key.

Looking into his knowing eyes, Megan was certain that it had happened as she thought. He had kissed her just to retrieve the key!

She flushed hotly in a combination of embarrassment and anger. He had deceived her, used her own desire against her to get what he wanted. And she—she had been a fool to respond as she had, desiring him, believing that he desired her.

Megan felt as if she might choke on her fury. It was all she could do to stand there and keep silent, not to turn on him and vent all her hatred. She ached to reveal to his family what kind of villain he was and what he had done ten years ago.

But she would wait. When she revealed his wickedness, she would have the proof to back it up.

Whirling around, Megan followed the duke down the hall, carefully keeping Anna and Reed between her and Theo. She refused to look at him again. She would not give him the satisfaction of letting him see that he had upset her.

Broughton unlocked the door that lay just beyond the library and stepped into the room, turning up the gas lights. Anna and Megan followed him, the other two men bringing up the rear.

“Oh, my!” Megan said, looking around the room in some astonishment.

She knew that the duke was an avid collector, but she had not expected this museumlike room. Small tables and pedestals of varying height were scattered throughout, and on them stood statues and vases and other pottery. The walls were all lined with shelves, about half of them open, the rest closed with glass doors and locked. She did not know much about any of the periods of Greek art, but even she could tell that the duke’s collection was impressive.

“I had no idea….” Anna said, echoing Megan’s own thoughts.

The duke beamed, his pleasant face alight with joy. “It is only part of my collection. The rest is back at the Park. I have a much larger storage area there, of course.”

Megan trailed around the room, looking at the various artifacts carefully. The duke obligingly opened the locked cabinets for them, showing the smaller and more valuable pieces that lay within. Megan poked her head into each one, looking for something that might have come not from Greece or Macedonia or Italy, but from South America.

Of course, she admitted, she knew even less about South American art and culture than she did about Greek. But it seemed to her that something from South America should stand out among the classical Greek jewelry and bowls and beads.

But nothing did. Everything fit with the duke’s obsession with classical antiquities.

Megan had more or less expected that, given the way Theo had engineered their tour. He would hardly urge her into a room where there was something that would incriminate him.

Megan took a last, careful look at a collection of jewelry—necklaces made of glass beads or chunky, semiprecious stones, carved broaches, wide metal bracelets for wrists and upper arms. She turned away, swallowing her disappointment, and found herself looking straight at Theo.