Page 24 of The Forbidden Lord (Lord Trilogy #2)

Having Jordan facing her, however, proved no better.

His carriage was roomy, to be sure, but not roomy enough to keep his booted feet from meeting her slippered ones.

As the carriage set off, he stretched one leg out next to the door.

Then Emily felt his calf brush against hers, the movement blocked from Lady Dundee’s view by her skirts.

She sucked in a breath as her gaze shot to him. Had he done it purposely?

His gaze met hers—knowing and sinful. Oh, yes, he’d done it purposely. When he smiled, letting his gaze trail meaningfully over her attire, she went all liquid inside.

It didn’t matter that she was wearing a perfectly respectable walking gown, with a pelisse layered over it and thick stockings beneath. It didn’t matter that gloves covered her hands, and a bonnet nearly all of her hair, leaving the oval of her face as the only bare skin showing.

She might as well have been naked. She felt his gaze over every inch of her skin beneath her clothes … like a forbidden caress. Then he stroked her leg with his foot, slowly, deliberately, making her blood pour hot through her veins, a fiery liquor warming every extremity.

She inched her leg away as unobtrusively as possible. The wretch merely inched his over in the same direction, and this time he laid it against hers with abject insolence. She couldn’t move any farther away without the others noticing. Curse him!

She tried to ignore the limb pressed so intimately against hers, tried to tell herself it meant nothing because he was wearing Hessians and she was wearing stockings.

But when he rubbed his calf against hers in another long, sensuous stroke, her breath stopped in her throat.

She couldn’t look at him. All her attention was focused on that terrible, delightful contact between them.

He stroked again and again, his leg making love to hers with an easy, subtle motion.

The carriage was suddenly far too small. When his next caress sparked a deep, sinful urge in her most private areas, she shuddered involuntarily.

“Are you cold, Lady Emma?” Jordan asked in a mocking tone.

She cast him a pleading look, but he smiled impudently and very deliberately ran the toe of his boot halfway up her calf, eliciting another shudder.

He grinned. “Would you like a blanket? I’m sure I have one somewhere.”

“I’m … I’m fine, Lord Blackmore,” she managed to stammer. “I’m quite comfortable, thank you.”

Lord St. Clair shot her a searching glance, and when Jordan traced the curve of her ankle with the toe of his boot, he scowled, making her wonder if he’d seen it.

“Let’s tell them about the marbles, shall we, Jordan?” the viscount suddenly remarked in a hard voice.

Jordan smiled at her, oblivious to his friend’s disapproval. “Certainly. You tell them.”

Lord St. Clair hesitated. Then with a calculating glance at Jordan, he said, “The marbles are beautiful, priceless sculptures from the Parthenon. Lord Elgin brought them back to England during his tenure as ambassador to Greece, and sold them to the British Museum two years ago. Now they’re on display. ”

“Brought them back?” Jordan scowled, and his leg went still against hers. “He stole them, you mean, just as surely as if he’d crept into someone’s house at night and palmed their silver.”

This was obviously a subject that Jordan and his friend had discussed before.

Lord St. Clair glanced down at her skirts, then went on, a mischievous smile on his face. “But Jordan, Elgin had permission from the Ottoman government to take them.”

Jordan snorted and straightened in his seat, thankfully moving him out of range of her leg.

“You might as well say he had Napoleon’s permission.

The Ottomans invaded Greece as surely as Napoleon invaded Italy.

They have no right to give the Parthenon away.

The Greeks are the ones Elgin should have asked.

But he didn’t, and from what I’ve heard, they were none too happy about it. ”

Now that Jordan had stopped tormenting her, the conversation was beginning to interest Emily. “I don’t understand. He just took these sculptures from the Parthenon and carted them back here?”

“That’s exactly what he did.” Jordan’s eyes burned with a sudden zeal. “Thanks to Elgin, half of the Parthenon has been sent piecemeal to England. It defaced the building abominably.”

“But Jordan,” Lord St. Clair said, “the building had already been defaced by the Turks and God knows who else. The Greeks weren’t taking care of it. And if it hadn’t been for Elgin, the French might have taken those sculptures.”

“At least the French wouldn’t have let them sit in a dank storage shed for six years deteriorating while Elgin tried to persuade the British Museum to buy them.

Do you think that did the marbles any good?

My contact at the museum—a man charged with cleaning them—said they were terribly damaged by sitting in the damp London air all that time.

What right had Elgin to destroy a historical monument of enormous importance for his own personal gain? ”

“But how could anyone allow him to do such a thing?” Emily asked as the enormity of it hit her.

Jordan let out a sound of disgust. “How indeed? Our countrymen didn’t so much as censure the devil.”

“That’s not true,” Lord St. Clair said dryly. “You’ve publicly censured him enough to make up for the rest of us. I’m surprised you even agreed to come along to see them.”

“I’m on the museum’s board of directors. I like to keep an eye on how the marbles are treated.” For a moment, his mouth was taut, his expression angry. Then he looked at Emily, and his anger seemed to fade. “Besides, I couldn’t resist the chance to accompany two such lovely ladies.”

When he punctuated his comment by stretching out his leg again and laying it against hers, Emily glared at him, then ground the heel of her slipper into the top of his boot—a totally pointless endeavor. His only response was to hook his boot behind her calf and caress her halfway to the knee.

Curse him!

Lady Dundee said, “Well, I, for one, am quite eager to see the sculptures, no matter how they got here. We seldom have the opportunity for such enrichment in Scotland, do we, dear?”

That gave Emily an idea. “Oh, don’t say that, Mama. You will only confirm Lord Blackmore’s poor opinion of our country.” She smirked at Jordan.

“Poor opinion?” the countess asked, eyes narrowing.

Emily eagerly enumerated all his insults to Scotland from the breakfast party, forcing Jordan to explain his words to Lady Dundee. Let him fend off the countess for a while—the scoundrel deserved it.

As Jordan frowned, she and Lord St. Clair exchanged congratulatory looks.

By the time they’d reached the British Museum, Lady Dundee had been waxing poetic over Scotland’s glories for several minutes, and Jordan was scowling as thunderously as the god of war himself. It was all Emily could do not to laugh.

Her glow of triumph continued when Lord St. Clair made sure he handed both women down from the carriage. Even better, Lord St. Clair took her arm, leaving Jordan with Lady Dundee. Emily wanted to kiss the man. Obviously, he had been completely aware of how Jordan had been annoying her.

But she was surprised a few minutes later when Jordan suddenly expressed a desire to show Lady Dundee a painting in a separate room, and Lord St. Clair said that he and Lady Emma would stay behind to finish viewing the works in the room they were in.

She hadn’t expected this, though it was certainly convenient. Not only was she rid of Jordan for a while, she was also able to speak to Lord St. Clair in private.

With a quick glance to make sure their companions had gone, Lord St. Clair led her into the one of the rooms that contained the Parthenon Marbles Exhibit.

Emily caught her breath when she saw the first one—a horse’s head so intricately carved that each hair on its mane bristled and the jaw muscles flexed.

How exquisite! It was almost worth Jordan’s misbehavior to see this.

From there, they circled the room to admire first the headless sculpture of two women whose draped gowns left nothing to the imagination, and then the caryatid, a full sculpture of a woman that had served as a column in the Parthenon.

That’s when Lord St. Clair finally spoke. “She looks a bit like Sophie.”

“Yes, she does, doesn’t she? It’s the eyes. They’re so innocent.”

He touched the marble briefly, then dropped his hand. “How is she?”

“She’s doing better. You needn’t worry about her.”

“She’s been ill for weeks. When I visit, she doesn’t even send down any messages.” His brow was furrowed. “Did she know you were to be with me today?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And she gave you no message for me, no word of anything.”

Emily debated making something up. But the greater the supposed silence on Sophie’s part, the more anxious he would become and thus the more likely to confess something. “No.” She couldn’t resist adding, “But she was sleeping when I left.”

He raked his fingers through his hair in distraction. “When I visited yesterday—while you and Lady Dundee were out—the servants wouldn’t even let me see her. What kind of illness could be so awful that visitors aren’t allowed?”

His obviously genuine concern was touching. What if he had been the one? And what if he truly were in love with Sophie? Would it be so terrible to let them be together? Lord St. Clair didn’t seem a bad sort, no matter what Lord Nesfield thought.

“It’s not the nature of her illness that keeps visitors from her, but simple female vanity, I assure you,” Emily lied. “What young woman wishes her friends to see her when she looks pale and sickly and cannot dress in her best gowns?”

His mouth tightened into a thin line. “That doesn’t sound like Lady Sophie. She never struck me as vain. Indeed, I’ve never met a more straightforward, simple girl. That’s why I chose to offer her my attentions.”