Irresistible Read Online Free Page A

that with the fashion for loose-fitting, high-waisted gowns, her condition will have gone quite undetected. I hope none of you will have the indelicacy to utter some pointed witticism in her hearing.”
    “Are you indelicate, Nat?” Eden elevated the second eyebrow to balance the first. “Do you utter witticisms, Ken? You are never looking at me, are you, Rex? Me, the soul of discretion?” Then he sighed and changed the subject. “Just three years ago there was Waterloo still to be fought and we dreamed, the four of us, of what we would do with our lives if we should survive.”
    “Sheer unalloyed, twenty-four-hour-a-day pleasure,” Nathaniel said. “Every excess and debauchery known to man. You must admit that we gave it a good run, Ede. I swear we did not look at the world through sober eyes for six months or longer.”
    “We needed the release after all the tensions and dangers that had gone before,” Kenneth said. “But it did not take long to discover that pleasure for its own sake quickly loses its appeal.”
    “You speak, of course,” Eden said, his voice deliberately bored, “for yourself, Ken? I do believe I am the only one of us who can keep a vow. Nat, now, is up to his eyeballs in women.”
    “The devil!” Rex said, laughing. “It sounds like a single man’s dream.”
    “Not,” Eden said, “in women, Rex, but in ladies—relatives. Sisters, cousins, aunts, great-aunts, grandmothers. I warned him—I did, did I not, Nat? Two years ago when he insisted on going home, I warned him how it would be. Twenty unmarried sisters and thirty unmarried female—and resident—cousins. No dream, Rex—it is every man’s nightmare.”
    “The number increases every time you refer to them,” Nathaniel said. “I have five sisters, Ede, two of whom were married before I went home. And only one resident cousin, though sometimes she seems more like thirty, I must confess. And I have already succeeded in finding husbands for Edwina and Eleanor. There are only Georgina and Lavinia left. A Season in London should do the trick nicely.”
    “And what about you, Nat?” Kenneth looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Once you have disposed of all your female dependents, will you take a wife? Is that part of your plan in coming to town? Moira and I will start to play matchmaker, will we? It is a role I rather fancy playing. Do you wish to help, Rex?” He was grinning broadly.
    Eden groaned. “They are envious of us, Nat,” he said. “With all due respect to Moira and Catherine, they are envious. Hold out against them, my lad.”
    But Nathaniel chuckled. ‘You are looking at a confirmed bachelor, my friends,“ he said. ”No leg shackles for me, thank you kindly.“
    Eden cheered with a whoop that would have been embarrassing, loud as it was, had the park not been deserted—or almost so. There was a workingman hurrying along a path not far distant, a maidservant, walking a dog almost as large as she, had passed them a minute before, and two females were approaching on foot from a distance, also with a dog.
    “But not a celibate bachelor, it is to be hoped,” Eden said. “I have some delights in store for you the like of which you have rarely experienced before, Nat. Rex and Ken are no longer eligible. Just you and I. Starting tonight. Why waste even one more night of your stay in London, after all? You had better take a nap this afternoon, my lad. You are going to need all the energy you can muster.”
    “Dear me,” Rex said faintly. “Were we ever this young or this jaded, Ken?”
    “I think perhaps we were, Rex,” Kenneth said. “Once long, long ago in the dark ages. I can even remember a time when we would have winced at the thought of respectability. And positively blanched at the very idea of a monogamous relationship.”
    Splendid, Nathaniel thought. Tonight. Trust Eden not to waste time. There were all sorts of duties to be performed, of course, even today. This afternoon and during the next few