Deceived Read Online Free

cold.
    Isabella took a deep breath. For a moment she was poised on the brink and then there was no return.
    "I want you to marry me," she said.

 
     
     
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    It was downright outrageous.
    Marcus John Ellis, seventh Earl of Stockhaven, had been waiting for an opportunity like this for twelve long years. He had not expected it to present itself in the Fleet Prison.
    Marcus was accustomed to dealing with the unforeseen. Eight years spent in His Majesty's Navy before unexpectedly coming into a distant cousin's earldom had given him a wide and colorful experience of life. This, however, was something that he could never have anticipated. It was ironic, amusing, extraordinary. And it should have been out of the question, of course. But it was also remarkably tempting.
    "You are twelve years too late, my love," he said sardonically, and watched the color rush into Isabella's cheeks at his casually cruel use of the endearment that had once meant so much.
    "The church was booked, the bridegroom in atten -dance, the only thing that was missing was the bride—if you recall."
    He watched her thoughtfully. She looked almost the same and yet heartbreakingly different from the debutante of seventeen who had jilted him at the altar. In the dank confines of the prison, she seemed hopelessly out of place. It made no odds that she had taken steps to disguise her appearance with a plain black cloak and practical boots. For a start, she was a great deal cleaner than anyone else who had set foot in his cell during the past three months. Then there was the fact that she smelled not of rank sweat and tobacco but innocently of Jasmine. He remembered that scent on her skin and in her hair. Autumn hair, he had once told her, layered with hues of gold and copper and russet like fallen leaves. The memory sharpened an edge of hunger in him. He felt his body harden in response to images that were as potent now as they had been twelve years before. Isabella naked in his arms, his hands on her, dark against the paleness of her skin, her gasp of shocked delight as their bodies touched, famished, desperate, forgetful of everything but the shimmering desire that burned between them. He had taken her fiercely, with no consideration for her virginity, and she had responded with unguarded passion. Then, afterward, in the intimate dark of the summerhouse. . .
    "I should not have been so wanton. . . ." She had sounded astonished at her own behavior and the capacity for pleasure that he had unlocked within her. He had drawn her damp body close to his and kissed her with humility and a blissful disbelief that had echoed her own.
    "You are lovely and I will always love you."
    It had been sentimental, boyish stuff and it had been ripped apart brutally when she had left him standing at the altar and married someone else. Yet infuriatingly, no one had ever compared to Isabella in his eyes, not in all the long years since he had last seen her.
    They had met as often as they could in the gardens of Salterton House. The secrecy had added an edge of excitement to their trysts that seemed well nigh unendurable. He had burned up with the need to possess her, each time more potent than the last, each caress a brand on her skin that was echoed in his heart. There, in the cool darkness of the summerhouse, he would pull her to him, his hands feverishly pushing aside the lace and silk of her clothing, kissing her with savage fervor, invading her body with his in a heated tangle of desire and need. The turbulent emotions she aroused in him had driven him to near madness.
    Marcus blinked to dispel the memories and tried to rein in his galloping imagination. Such images were not conducive to clear thinking. But it was no wonder that he lusted after her even now. He had been a long time without a woman, for the whores who plied their trade in the Fleet held no interest for him. Besides, this woman would be enough to tempt a saint
    "Your love," she said, and the