A Gentleman Undone Read Online Free Page A

sounded absorbed enough. Slowly he eased up from the chair, angling round the bookshelf for a furtive glance to assure himself they wouldn’t notice him.
    He stopped, half-risen.
    He’d been prepared for something sordid, a brute coupling between an importunate boor and a harlot who’d learned her trade at Mrs. Parrish’s. And of course it was sordid by its very nature, this retreat to the library, and Square-jaw himself was everything sordid, with his mouth at the juncture of her neck and shoulder and his hands groping here and there.
    She , though. She was … Confound him if he couldeven begin to find the right word. He only knew sordid wasn’t anywhere close.
    She stood with her back to the drapery, eyes closed, chin lifted, whole person swaying with pleasure. While he watched she sent her arms—ungloved, he could now see—up the wall behind her where they twisted overhead, wrists crossing with serpentine grace. Like one of those dancers in a story who bewitched men into cutting off other men’s heads. Her naked fingers closed over a fold of the velvet drapery and he knew how that velvet would feel to her, thick and lush-grained, a cat’s purr made tactile. Knew, too, how it would feel to be the velvet, trapped unprotesting in her hand. He found a grip on the bookshelf and held on tight.
    Down her arm he dragged his attention, down the sinuous curve until his eyes rested again on her uptilted face. Had he thought her less than beautiful? In moonlight, even in such scant moonlight, he could see the truth. Her bold features carved up the shadows and threw them helter-skelter, light and darkness dancing giddily over her nose and cheeks and chin. Her skin was pale as the moon itself, pale and tantalizing as an opal at the bottom of a clear still lake. Pale throat. Pale shoulder. Pale bosom, magnificently formed and half spilling out from the disarranged bodice. But he would not let his gaze linger there. Indeed he ought to be removing himself altogether, as he’d meant to do.
    One last look at her face. Her head tipped a few degrees left and then a few degrees right as though to stretch the muscles of her neck. Her chin came down, rearranging the composition of shadows and light. And her eyes opened and looked directly into his.
    She said nothing. She didn’t jump away from her lover, or yank up the bodice he’d tugged down, or cross her arms modestly before her. Only her eyes, widened and showing an excess of white, betrayed her consciousnessof exposure. And that, for only a second or two, though the interval was sufficient to make him feel like a thoroughgoing cad.
    The bookshelf’s edge bit hard into his hand. He couldn’t seem to look away, let alone make an apologetic bow and hasten from the room. He stood, frozen, as she regained her composure and her face hardened into the unmistakable lines of defiance: Judge me if you dare . Then that expression too subsided and only her falcon-like blankness remained. She looked through him, and past him, and altogether away.
    He’d ceased to merit her notice. Whether he watched, or not, was a matter of supremest indifference to her. Her hands came down from their place on the curtain—even now, with a dancer’s lissome grace—and settled on the oblivious biceps of Mr. Roanoke, who had continued at her shoulder and neck through the brief drama but was now commencing to haul up her skirts.
    And finally Will let go his grip on the bookshelf. He didn’t want to see what followed. He’d probably see it in his dreams, and that would be torment enough.
    Some impulse of obstinacy made him bow. She didn’t look his way, and neither did she or Prince Square-jaw glance up as he stole light-footed to the door, opened it just enough to accommodate his long-overdue exit, and soundlessly closed it behind him.
    T HEY DID not appear at supper. Will soldiered through three courses that did nothing to appease the foolhardy hunger scraping at his insides.
    Nothing to the purpose.