The Darkest Sin Read Online Free Page B

from him two steps, staring at him as though he were an apparition. “And just so you know, I found easy entrance through the window at the end of the hallway, which was slightly ajar.”
    He crossed his arms over his chest, aware that his shirt was hanging open. Rowena Woolcott believed she owed him an explanation, a cruel irony of which she was obviously unaware. He smothered another curse when in the next moment, he realized exactly how she had stormed his citadel. “You climbed, didn’t you?” For any other woman to do so would have been outrageous. But then again, Miss Woolcott was of another ilk entirely.
    Her eyes flickered over to the wide high windows. “If I can do it, I imagine any number of thieves and cutthroats could do the same. I should have that attended to, if I were you.”
    That scenario was the least of his worries now that this young woman, despite his best efforts over a year ago, had returned to haunt him. She was wearing a simple brown merino day dress, insipid in both color and cut, with a short cloak over her shoulders, none of which gave a hint of the long slender limbs and firm curves beneath. But he knew. He remembered. That was the problem. The warmth of fine French brandy still heated his belly, mingling with a heightened awareness that had everything to do with her presence and his resurrected conscience.
    â€œThank you for your concern. I shall have a word with my footmen,” he said with deliberate calm, leaning a shoulder against the bed’s newel post. “But the hour is late, as I’m sure you’re aware, so perhaps the time has come for you to tell me what you’re about. Before I do decide to call upon the good offices of the constabulary.”
    In the light of the single lamp, he could see her turn pale beneath the translucence of the finest skin, skin like silk under his hands. He pushed away the recollection, watching as she straightened her spine, her tone hardening. “I’d prefer that you didn’t,” she said with a shocking arrogance, peculiar for a woman, and for one so young. Unbidden, Rushford heard Kate’s voice intruding, bravado lacing her low contralto, that fluent, fluid confidence that came readily to a duchess assured of her beauty and wit.
    Rowena’s words cut through the inconvenient reverie like a knife through butter, drowning out the cadences of Kate’s singular intonations. “I shan’t take much of your time,” she promised, her spectacular eyes summoning him.
    Rushford forced himself back to the present. “So you say,” he replied, his voice miraculously even. “And yet you forced your way into my home to do what precisely?”
    Rowena took a deep breath, stilling her hands, the slender fingers both elegant and capable, not at all pink, plump, or ladylike. “I come to seek your expertise,” she declared, as though it was obvious, and for a wretched moment he thought he had misheard. He was bloody expert at very little these days, as it turned out. “Your expertise as a detective of crime,” she elaborated. “I have heard and read of your exploits.”
    The back of his neck tightened. Of course, the Cruikshank murders. Had he known the uproar the case would engender, he would never have taken it on, goddamn the broadsheets. Galveston’s supercilious gaze came all too readily to mind. So that was what Rowena Woolcott was after, his help . Now wasn’t that rich? Like asking the devil for guidance. “Go on,” he said, not liking himself much at the moment.
    Gazing upon Rowena Woolcott, he wondered whether she realized how beautiful she was, the effect she could have upon men, if she chose, with the elegance of her profile, those dark blue eyes, slanted at the corners and that mouth, stained like the ripe raspberries of summer. Rushford was the last man on earth who heard poetry in his soul, but experience had taught him a stinging