Scoundrel:. Zoe Archer

      HER RECOLLECTION

       HAD NOT PLAYED HER FALSE

      Here, in this perfumed evening garden, he was just as athletic, just as seductively handsome, perhaps even more so. Nighttime felt appropriate, a milieu that suited him, with its promises of dalliance and danger.

      She found her voice. “I did not hear you.”

      He came closer, skirting the edges of light. “Rotten habit of mine, sneaking around. Used it to great effect taking strawberry tarts from the buttery when I was supposed to be in bed.”

      “So I am the strawberry tart, in this analogy.”

      He chuckled, warming her. “I’d never call you a tart, my lady.”

      London wanted to be a little daring, almost as daring as he was. “But if I was a berry, I wonder what kind I’d be,” she said with a teasing smile.

      “Something sweet and wild,” he said, voice low and husky.

      London had only just mastered her breath, and his words made it catch again. Her gaze strayed toward his mouth, the mouth that said such wicked things. She made herself turn away, play with her ebony-handled fan. What was wrong with her? All she wanted to do was cross the small distance that separated her from this veritable stranger and pull his mouth down to hers, learning what he tasted like.

      The Blades of the Rose

      WARRIOR

      SCOUNDREL

      Coming Soon

      REBEL

      STRANGER

      SCOUNDREL

      The Blades of the Rose

      Zoë Archer

      ZEBRA BOOKS

      KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      For Zack,

       who is just enough of a scoundrel

      Contents

      Chapter 1: A Chance Encounter

      Chapter 2: Unexpected Connections

      Chapter 3: Agendas

      Chapter 4: Mrs. Harcourt’s Education

      Chapter 5: In the Ruins

      Chapter 6: At Sea

      Chapter 7: Natural Wonders

      Chapter 8: Natives, Both Friendly and Hostile

      Chapter 9: The Glimmer in the Water

      Chapter 10: The Sleeping Witch

      Chapter 11: The New World

      Chapter 12: A Dangerous Strait

      Chapter 13: The Sorcerer’s Plan

      Chapter 14: The White Temple

      Chapter 15: Colossus

      Chapter 16: Depths and Heights

      Chapter 17: The Daughters of the Sea

      Chapter 18: The Black Temple

      Chapter 19: The Eye Unleashed

      Chapter 20: The Eye Restored

      Epilogue: Arrivals and Departures

      Chapter 1

      A Chance Encounter

      Athens, Greece. 1875.

      The bloody problem with magic was that he wasn’t allowed to use it.

      Bennett Day ducked as a heavy marble bust of Plato flew toward his head. It smashed into the wall behind him, leaving a sizable hole that could have easily served as the philosopher’s allegorical cave.

      Bennett tutted. “Not very enlightened of you, Captain. What would Plato say?”

      “English swine! I kill you!”

      “How un-Platonic.” He dodged as the German ship captain, graceful as a drunken bear, lunged for him. Somewhere, Elena screamed. Bennett sighed. She proved herself to be all too typical with her theatricalities, a woman who loved show more than substance.

      Bennett easily avoided the German’s paws. Yes, things would have been much simpler if Bennett could use an immobilization spell—that one from the Maldives that had been used on him once before and stung like the devil. But he couldn’t use that spell or any other. He was a Blade of the Rose. He could only use magic that was either a gift or naturally belonged to him. Which left him with precisely nothing.

      Yet, when it came to eluding angry husbands catching him in their wives’ bedrooms, Bennett needed no magic. He was well versed in extricating himself from this very situation. He avoided such entanglements, generally, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped, especially on assignment.

      “Stand still!” roared the captain. “Fight like a man!”

      “Like this?” asked Bennett with a neat jab to the German’s chin. The heavy captain stumbled back but did not, alas, go down as smaller men would.

      Business for the Blades had brought Bennett to Athens, and following a lead brought him to Elena. Her seafaring husband was known as an ally of the damnable Heirs of Albion, and thus a likely wellspring of information as to what the Heirs were doing in Greece, what magical Source they sought. Bennett needed the German’s last manifest to know if those pilfering buggers were here, and, if so, which ones had come. Two choices: break into the German’s house and steal the manifest; or, and here was the possibility Bennett favored, seduce the captain’s wife and nab the manifest along the way. He did so enjoy combining business with pleasure.

      She proved herself ripe and eager for seduction. But no sooner had she and Bennett sequestered themselves in her bedroom than her husband had returned at a most infelicitous moment. Ah, well. At least Bennett was still dressed. He didn’t want to run through the streets of Athens without any trousers.

      Sadly, the captain blocked Bennett’s path to the door. Which left him with only one option. Out the window.

      “I am English,” he said to the German, judging the distance. “A little known fact—I’m also one-eighth Greek, on my mother’s side. From Olympia. Home of the ancient athletic games.”

      “Why do you tell me this when I will tear off your handsome, smirking face?”

      “One of the events of the pentathlon is—” and here he ran for the window, Elena shrieking, and vaulted over the railing before coming to land lightly in a crouch a story below, “jumping.”

      He stood and dusted off his palms, grimy from the cobbled street, while the captain shouted the most ungentlemanly epithets from the window above. Elena wept and tugged at her husband’s coat. She seemed to be enjoying herself, delighting in the theatrics like a melodrama heroine.

      “Come now, sir,” Bennett called back to her husband, “you’ve never met my sister, so I strongly disbelieve your assertions about her.”

      “And your mother is a goat!” With that witty salvo, the captain disappeared from the window, but Bennett knew that, in such situations, husbands seldom retreated to their libraries to indulge in a revivifying and reflective glass of brandy. Sure enough, Bennett heard the captain’s pounding steps as he barreled down the stairs. Bennett decided not to wait for the man to make his appearance on the street, even if it was the polite thing to do.

      “Another event in the pentathlon: running,” Bennett added before sprinting away. He patted his inside jacket pocket, where the manifest rested safe and