How To Bed A Baron Read Online Free

Serena. I will take you where you need to go. Which is…?”
    “Magdalen College,” she repeated, sounding a bit breathless. He held her hand tighter, and wondered if he saw the hint of a blush rise along her cheeks. He could not be sure, and he reminded himself that gentlemen did not stare, nor did they discommode ladies. But Arthur heeded neither stricture, but watched her close.
    She was blushing, and the sudden color in her cheeks only made her more beautiful.
    “And after we have your needs seen to, and your father’s legacy sorted, you’ll come home with me.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 4
    Serena could not quite believe that it was her old friend Arthur staring at her across the table as if she were a tasty treat he could not wait to devour. She wondered why on Earth he did not simply tell his mother his girl had bolted, and start looking for a new wife. Why she needed to be dragged into his shenanigans, and into the radius of Lady Sara, a woman not easily fooled, Serena could not say.
    Unless the heat in his eyes was the reason.
    For a moment, Serena found herself wondering where that heat might lead, if she and Arthur spent the night in his mother’s house.
                  Serena fought with the desire rising in her own blood, a strange bit of madness that she had never before experienced. She had never been tempted to stay with a man even for an evening, all those years she spent in Italy with only her elderly father standing as guard over her virtue.
    She was no green girl. She had lost her innocence to an Italian in Siena who had claimed to be a displaced prince, but who thankfully traveled on to parts unknown the next morning. It had been a moment of weakness, a foolish indulgence of curiosity, which fortunately had borne no fruit and caused her no shame, save for her private shame at being a fool.
    Serena had learned at a very young age not to allow a man to stare at her with desire in his eyes. Always in the past, save with the self-proclaimed prince, she had nipped the nonsense in the bud with a strong set down. But now, with Arthur, she did nothing of the sort. She let the unwelcome, unavoidable swell of her own desire cloud her reason, the heat of his hand on hers.
                  When a woman was tall, well-endowed and bore hair as red as a fiery blaze, she either embraced the life of a courtesan or spent her life fighting off unwanted advances. If she was clever and quick, she avoided situations in which she might be accosted, in which strong set downs, say with the edge of one’s knee, must be given. She wore plain, ugly, serviceable gowns of gray and brown, and kept to digging in the dirt, and to maintaining the camp her father had set up for the gathering his bits of the past. Archeology was a dirty business, and not just because men like M. Galliard skulked about, always looking for something to loot. It was not a glamorous occupation, and it did not attract the romantic sort. She reminded herself that she was not in the least romantic. But still, she let Arthur hold her hand.
                  She realized that they had been sitting there for several minutes at that point, with only heat and silence between them. She cleared her throat, and tried to draw her mind back to the problem of getting her father’s legacy into safe hands before the sun had set. She would sort out the rest of her life after that.
                  She realized that she wanted nothing so much as to accept Arthur’s offer, at least for the night. She had nowhere else to go. And she was desperately tired of being alone.
                  Arthur Farleigh waited patiently for her to come to the conclusion he had already reached. When she did, he must have read her answer in her eyes. He did not speak but smiled at her, and drew a ring out of his pocket. It was a silver ring, holding three small, delicate pearls. Serena