No Marriage of Convenience Read Online Free Page A

conclusion, he still couldn’t help shake the notion that there was something very different about this one, something almost too fine for the fickle vagaries of high priced prostitution.
    “Whatever you have to say, can be said in front of me. There are no secrets in this house,” Cousin Felicity piped in, as she continued searching for her spectacles.
    Mason knew there was no evicting his cousin now. She might love a trip to the dressmaker’s, but there was nothing like a good piece of gossip to make Cousin Felicity’s day.
    He nodded for the young woman to continue. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to enlighten his dewy-eyed cousin as to how her faultless Frederick dallied away the Ashlin fortune.
    “It has come to my attention that there is a matter of an unpaid debt between us,” the woman began.
    Mason shook his head. “A debt? I certainly doubt that. We’ve never met.”
    “You are the Earl of Ashlin, are you not?”
    He nodded, thinking her voice held a magical quality, drifting through the room like notes from Pan’s flute, striking the chords of his unsettled soul.
    Poetics again? Gad sakes!
    He needed to get back to Oxford as soon as possible before he found himself composing bad sonnets and dressing himself like one of those self-styled idiotic Romantics.
    She folded her hands in her lap and shifted once again, another delicate breeze of perfume floating toward him, creating havoc with his senses. He struggled to keep his mind on the matter at hand, but her fragrance did nothingexcept fuel his earlier musings of her clad only in a chemise.
    And if she had been his brother’s mistress, she’d probably spent most of her time in a lot less.
    She let out a pretty little sigh. “I recently learned you are having…well, how does one put it? Some difficulties. So I’ve come to repay part of the money I owe you.”
    “ You owe me ?” Mason wasn’t quite sure he had heard the woman correctly. He was either still asleep or going stark raving mad like the eighth Earl of Ashlin. As far as he knew, beautiful women didn’t just arrive in one’s study claiming to owe one money.
    “Well, I cannot pay it back all at once, but I do have a partial payment.” With an artful grace, she drew out a pouch from within her lace-trimmed décolletage and offered it to him.
    Later Mason told himself that it was the lure of sudden wealth that made him bound to his feet and hastily walk around his desk toward her outstretched hand.
    This Ashlin would never admit that what truly pulled him toward her was a wrenching desire to fill his senses with the closeness of her intoxicating scent. Nor would he admit how his fingers itched to hold the velvet purse still warm from its hiding spot between her perfectly shaped breasts.
    But then, Mason was still working on this new family image, and honesty could come later.
    “Thank you,” he said, as he took the offered bounty. The bag weighed heavily in his hand, and from the feeling, he knew it contained good English gold.
    Enough to give him some respite from Frederick’s creditors, until out of the corner of his eye he saw Cousin Felicity furiously shaking her head.
    She was right, he realized, it wasn’t good to appear tooeager. He paused and chastised himself silently.
    He had more business sense than that. At least he’d had a measure of it before this lady had entered his study.
    What kind of man was he becoming, when he was willing to take money from his brother’s ex-mistress?
    Ignoring the enticing warmth in his hand and the mountain of notes behind him, Mason handed the pouch back to the woman.
    “I can’t accept this. Whatever understanding you had with my brother, it ended with his death. It is not my place to interfere with his liaisons,” Mason stated, returning to the relative safety of his desk.
    The woman looked first at him and then to his cousin. Confusion fluttered over her partially concealed features, and for a moment, Mason thought she was about to cry.
    Lord,