A Much Compromised Lady Read Online Free Page A

England.
A gentleman by title only, and a man to fear and avoid. They had
said he took any woman he wanted, that he gambled and drank and did
what he pleased. That he was a dangerous man.
    For he could make any woman love him.
    She had almost laughed at their words.
    But now she could see how he could do just
such a thing.
    He had skin that glowed like rich butter. She
had never seen such skin before on a man. Peeking from the ‘V’ made
by his white shirt, the hair on his chest caught the light and
tempted like strands of gold. Almost she wanted to touch it, to
stroke the muscles she glimpsed there. That would be about as safe
as stroking a steal trap.
    Yes, he looked like a trap ready to spring.
He concealed the tension coiled inside him with languid grace, but
her dej had taught her well. Dik and shoon —watch and
listen, Mother had always said, though her mother’s own eyes were
now sightless.
    So Glynis watched this one as she spoke, and
what she saw kept her heart pounding and her nerves stretched
tight.
    Stalling for more time, she told how she had
slipped upstairs when the maids had left to answer a summons back
to work. She did not tell him how she had gotten past a locked
door—he had no need to know about her skills in such matters.
However, the knowing glint in his eyes as she slipped past this
point made her squirm in her own skin. He seemed to know far more
than she told him. She did not like that. It made him seem more
Romany than gaujo , and she liked better to think of him as
an arrogant, hateful gaujo lord.
    With luck, she would soon be gone from here
and never see him again.
    Only why did her heart twist a little at that
thought? Oh, he was a devil to smile at her with his eyes. To stare
at her with warmth in his gaze. To lie so very still that she began
to forget her fear of him.
    She needed more than luck tonight. She needed
all her wits and cunning, or her escape from him might cost her
dearly.
    She forced a wider smile. “You were clever to
sense my lie—I was never mistress to Lord Nevin. But that one, he
holds papers he carries inside a box that is mine. One of the maids
came to his room and found me before could take it. I slipped away,
but the girl cried thief. So I ran.”
    One golden-brown eyebrow rose. “Into my room,
where you could pose as my doxy for the night? You do like
high-stake games.”
    She had to agree with him on that. Only he
had no idea just how high the stakes were.
    He went on, his voice lazy. “But what papers
could Nevin possibly have that you would want? You are leaving out
some rather important details here.”
    Glynis lifted one shoulder and her shift
slipped distractingly lower. St. Albans watched her push it back up
and decided that he was going to enjoy pulling it down again.
    Lifting her chin, she looked him straight in
the eye, her stare unblinking. “Those papers are marriage lines
that would prove the truth of marriage to Lord Nevin’s son.”
    St. Albans held utterly still. Disbelief, icy
and raw, trickled into him. Married? Her? To Nevin’s son? No. It
was preposterous. It ought not to matter, but it did. He did not
want his gypsy owned by Nevin’s son. Or anyone else. His glance
slid over her, and a confused anger beat hot and heavy against his
chest. Pushing down the emotion, he tried to think.
    It must be a lie. Did Nevin even have a son?
He recalled vague talk of one. Yes, an heir. At university still,
he rather thought, so that would put the son at about her age. But
it could not be. Nevin was far too high in the instep to allow his
own blood to marry so far beneath him. The man had the effrontery
to even think his lineage surpassed all others, for its purity of
Norman blood. But the earls of St. Albans had been Saxon lords long
before Nevin’s kin arrived on these shores.
    However, that was not the topic at hand. No,
it was this ludicrous idea of a marriage between his Gypsy
and...
    No. He would simply not allow it to be.
    He relaxed again, but