Sex and the Single Earl Read Online Free

sending a throb of sensation over her pulse.
    “Don’t call me Puck.” Her reply was automatic. He had taken to calling her that many years ago, likening her to the mischievous sprite from her least favorite of the Bard’s works.
    “I’m sure Robert could find you another bracelet just like it,” he said in an excruciatingly kind and patronizing voice.
    “I don’t want another one! I want that one.”
    A muscle in his jaw twitched, as if he struggled to tamp down his impatience.
    “Sweetheart, you can’t go off on a wild-goose chase through the streets of Bath as if you were a child in the woods at your grandfather’s estates. I know we’re not in London, but there are unsavory elements in this town who wouldn’t think twice of harming a gently bred lady. You must learn to control your impulses.”
    Sophie retreated into a stony silence, aware she was acting like a child but unable to help herself. The last thing she needed on this day—of all days—was another lecture from him.
    Simon turned his head to gaze out the window, seemingly unperturbed by her attempt to ignore him. After several useless minutes spent trying to regain her dignity, Sophie realized she might as well climb down from her high horse. Nothing could ever pierce Simon’s implacable reserve.
    “When did you arrive in town?” she asked.
    “This morning. I had only just left my rooms in Milsom Street when I saw you dashing down the street like a madwoman.”
    Sophie ignored the last part of his answer. “You’re not staying with your aunts?”
    Normally when Simon came to Bath he stayed with his elderly aunts, Lady Eleanor and Lady Jane, at their elegant townhouse in St. James’s Square. The two women were also Sophie’s godmothers. After Robert and Annabel’s wedding, they had asked her to come for an extended visit in Bath. Sophie had leapt at the opportunity, hoping the change in scenery would ease the restlessness bedeviling her.
    “No,” Simon replied. “I thought it best to take lodgings of my own, since you are staying with them for the next month. I do not wish to intrude on your privacy.”
    Her gloom deepened. No doubt he wished to take his own rooms so he could see his latest mistress while in town. Or else he found her so irritating he had no desire to reside in the same house with her.
    The hackney pulled to a stop in St. James’s Square. Simon handed her out, escorting her up the honey-colored terrace steps to the front entrance of his aunts’ house. Sophie made a halfhearted attempt to smooth down the front of her demolished skirt as he knocked on the door.
    “You will want to come in, I assume, to call upon your aunts,” she said.
    “Not right now. Please tell Aunt Eleanor I’ll wait on her first thing tomorrow. I have some urgent business to conduct in town. I was on my way there when you accosted me.”
    “‘Accosted you?’” she snapped, irritated by the gratuitous poke. She drew in a breath, preparing to unleash her standard lecture on his lack of familial devotion, when the door behind them swung open.
    “Good afternoon, my lord, Miss Stanton. Would you care to step inside?” asked Lady Eleanor’s butler.
    “No, thank you, Yates. I was just leaving,” Simon informed him. Yates, though, was perusing Sophie’s dress with an expression of barely repressed alarm.
    “My lord, your aunts long to see you,” Sophie insisted. “It’s been ages since you’ve been to Bath. Now that you are here, why cannot you step inside for a few minutes?”
    Simon’s eyebrows drew together in a heavy scowl. He reacted like that whenever she lectured him, especially in front of the servants. He thought it yet another example of her lamentably unladylike behavior.
    “As I explained a moment ago,” he said in that same patronizing voice, “I have an urgent appointment in town. Now go inside, Sophie, and get cleaned up. You look like something dragged you backward through a bush.”
    Her temper finally broke free.