Sweetest Little Sin Read Online Free Page B

She had the impression of passing traffic even at this early hour, the odd cart rumbling along with deliveries or a cook’s maid on her way to market. But Jardine’s house was only around the corner. Surely, luck would favor her if she was quick.
    Too distraught to think of a stealthy approach, Louisa scurried up the front steps and rapped a sharp summons on the door with the brass knocker. Despite the early hour, the door opened instantly. Jardine’s butler, Emerson, looked down at her without apparent surprise. As if masked incognitas visited his master at cockcrow every other day of the week.
    Perhaps they did.
    She forced down a spurt of unreasonable jealousy and demanded the man’s master.
    Emerson bowed and conducted her to a sitting room, a darkly opulent parlor filled with crimson velvet and mahogany. “I shall inquire.”
    Louisa sagged, light-headed with relief. Surely Emerson would have told her if Jardine was dead, or ill, or injured? She drew a deep, shuddery breath. Even contemplated slipping away, now that she’d received the information she sought.
    But leaving when she was so close to him would be like changing the course of the planets around the sun. Impossible.
    She perched on the edge of a plushly decadent chaise longue, then she stood and paced as she waited. Why was she always waiting for him?
    After a long interval, the click of boots on wood made her head jerk up.
    Jardine slouched in the doorway, looking every inch the dissolute aristocrat.
    Hair black as night sprang back from the suspicion of a widow’s peak at his brow. He wore it longer than when she’d seen him last, and it was tied carelessly in a short queue. His skin was dead white, his eyes like gleaming jet under those devilishly drawn brows. He had thick, long lashes, high, slashing cheekbones, and lips that turned down sulkily at the corners when he wasn’t curling them into a sneer.
    Such unearthly, satanic beauty. Simply looking at him made Louisa’s heart stumble and kick and race.
    In truth, he belonged to another age, when men dressed in satins and silks and fought duels and damned everyone’s eyes as they did. He had all the sleek, lethal elegance of a jungle cat, the stinging sharpness of a rapier’s blade.
    It never ceased to awe and frighten her that she, plain Louisa Brooke, had somehow caught his interest.
    The visceral thrill of seeing him again held her silent, breathless.
    And then he opened his mouth.

    “WHAT the Devil are you doing here?” Jardine leaned against the doorjamb, felt himself slip a bit, and jerked upright. The woman before him ripped off her mask, but he didn’t need to see her face to know who it was.
    That mouth. He’d know that mouth anywhere.
    “Dammit, Louisa. Get out.” His speech slurred only slightly. Though he tried to enunciate the words, his tongue remained damnably heavy and slow. He hoped to God the foul concoction Emerson had given him would work its magic soon so he could think.
    The startlingly blue eyes blazed. “You are drunk! I don’t believe it.”
    “Drunk,” he muttered. He’d give a lot to exchange the agony of last night for an evening carousing with the brandy bottle. But it was a good explanation for the state she found him in—worse for wear, muzzy with the opiate they’d given him to numb the pain, trembling like a jelly.
    Drunk? Yes, it would serve.
    He forced his head to nod in agreement. “Three sheets to the wind, m’dear.”
    Damned if the look on her face wouldn’t terrify a man into sobriety, if drunkenness had been what ailed him. Curling his lips into a faint, mocking smile, he watched her beneath half-lowered lids. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
    “You . . .” The tip of her tongue touched her upper lip, before her teeth clamped on it. She threw her shoulders back. “You forgot my birthday.”
    “Ah.” He held up a hand that felt like it weighed a ton. “Now that’s where you’re wrong. I did remember. Just before I dropped off