Teresa Medeiros by Thief of Hearts Page A

in his dark blue broadcloth coat with its gleaming brass buttons and gold-braided hem. In nineteen years, she’d never once seen him out of uniform. She always felt somewhat smaller in his presence, dwarfed by the grandeur of his rank and authority. She tapped her foot nervously, halfway surprised it would still reach the floor.
    She’d been searching for just this opportunity since returning from the Howells’ yesterday, but as she stole another glance at her father, her tongue was seized by that same painful mingling of adoration and guilt that had plagued her since childhood. Guilt for so frequently failing to live up to his expectations. Guilt for constantly having to battle her inherited moral flaws. Guilt for being born to a woman who had been fool enough to scorn such an exceptional man.
    He made her feel five years old again, as if she were standing on the dock, gripping Smythe’s hand and watching him disembark from some heroic voyage to the approving roar of the crowd. She had always wanted to yell “That’s my papa!” but never dared.
    She drew in a steadying breath. “Father, there’s something I really must—”
    The newspaper crackled disapprovingly. “Speak up, girl. You know I can’t tolerate mumbling.”
    She took a sip of the tea, silently damning Claremont for goading her into making the foolish boast that she would be rid of him. “Father, it’s imperative that I—”
    The words lodged in her throat as the cause of her discomfiture strolled into the room, inclining his head graciously in her direction. “Miss Snow.”
    She coolly returned his nod. “Mr. Claremont.”
    Ignoring the expressionless footman standing at attention at the Admiral’s elbow, Claremont captured a plate for himself and stood frowning down at the marble-topped sideboard. Lucy could almost see him mentally comparing the spartan fare to the sumptuous spread at the Howells’. Her father forgotten, she nibbled her dry toast, riveted by details she’d never noticed before—the worn seams on Claremont’s tailcoat, the scars on his boots that no amount of buffing would smooth. Just how badly did he need this position?
    He sank into a chair and began to slather a miniature mountain of butter on his toast beneath the reproving eyes of the footman.
    Lucy frowned, beset by a reluctant pang of conscience. Mr. Claremont certainly liked to eat. Would he go hungry if she forced her father to send him packing?
    “Well, what is it, girl?” The Admiral slammed his fist on the table, rattling the silver. Lucy jumped, sloshing her tea over the cup’s gilt-edged rim. “If it’s so damned imperative that you have to interrupt my, breakfast, spit it out, won’t you?”
    Why did her father have to choose that moment to emerge from his cocoon of newsprint? she wondereddespairingly. “I thought … well, it’s just that I …”
    Claremont fixed his gaze on her face, his expression so pleasantly mild that only Lucy suspected he would have liked to gag her with her napkin.
    “I need some money for paints,” she blurted out. “I’ve used the last of the cerulean and I can’t finish my Cornwall seascape without it.”
    The Admiral’s smile was rife with such patronizing affection that Lucy wanted to duck beneath the tablecloth to avoid the coming salvo. “Ah, my darling Lucinda. I can always count on you to dramatize the trivial.” He disappeared behind a sheaf of the
Times
with a hunk of dry toast. “It was a special talent of your mother’s.”
    Lucy pushed her plate away. She dared a sullen glance at her bodyguard, expecting to find his eyes twinkling with amusement at her expense.
    Claremont had vanished. In his place sat a dangerous stranger, watching her father with pure murder in his eyes. A frisson of fear shot down Lucy’s spine, a premonition of disaster not for the Admiral, but for herself. Before she could convince herself she wasn’t simply giving in to fancy as her mother would have done, her father choked