An Unmistakable Rogue Read Online Free PDF

the sake of the children, she needed to turn him up sweet. “These children are my family.” “Matt, take your brothers and sister to the kitchen. We will discuss your behavior later.”
    They filed out, Bekah’s hand in Matt’s.
    “Told’ja not to blow that stupid horn,” Mark said.
    Matt sighed. “They were mighty fine boots.”
    “Lizard’s eyeballs, Mark, why’d’ja hit ‘em?” Luke asked.
    After they left, Chastity shrugged. “They’re only children.”
    Reed righted the settee, knowing he should go. “Why did you take them?”
    “They needed me.”
    He snorted. “If you want children, get better-behaved ones. You know, there are more pleasurable ways to— Never mind. Why them?”
    “I went to ... Aunt Anna’s, and found the children, abandoned at her death, hiding in her cellar to keep from getting separated or going to the workhouse.”
    “Anna’s?”
    “Anna’s cellar, yes. I just told you that.”
    He looked disgusted. “No. Are they Anna’s children?”
    “Heavens, no. She was old as Moses. She was their great aunt. Their mother left them with her.”
    “You do not seem saddened by Anna’s passing.”
    Anna was, in fact, William’s aunt. “I had only just learned of her existence. The children had been on their own for weeks, sleeping during the day and, ah, foraging for food and supplies at night, which is what they were doing now. They find it hard to believe that I will provide for them.”
    Reed chuckled. “Quite a fairy tale you spin. You stole the brats from the workhouse. You forget; I saw you.”
    “First, I found them at Aunt Anna’s, then they were taken from me and put in the workhouse, then I rescued them.” She should tell him what children endured there, about the ones who died the week she worked there trying to get hers back, about the newborn she had wanted to take, but he would not believe her.
    “And why may I ask were they taken from you?”
    “The Beadle said I had no means to provide for them.”
    “Did it never occur to you that he might be right?”
    “He cared naught for their welfare. He said if I were to ... perform a certain ... task , I could keep them.”
    Reed raised a brow. I find it difficult to believe that you let him take them without a fight.
    “I— Before I left, I nearly-accidentally dropped a bust of Jeanne D’Arc on his foot, and I am not sorry.”
    Reed coughed and turned away, and Chastity supposed she deserved his contempt for assaulting a man of the cloth, despite his depravity. “The children need a home, Mr. Gilbride. They are alone, lost. Surely after all they have suffered, you could find it within yourself to forgive their misdeeds.”
    “Misdeeds?” He turned in disbelief. “They’re street-hard. I should take a paddle to their tough little hides. Children are locked up for less than they did, tonight.”
    “That’s barbaric,” Chastity said.
    “People are heartless where hunger and poverty are concerned. Children are sent to prison, or worse, for stealing bread. That, Madam, is barbaric. Their short, grim lives are not even regarded in pronouncing sentence.” His eyes narrowed. “Are you of another world, Chastity Somers, that you are unaware of such things?”
    Yes, she thought, I am, but she remained silent, and shocked to her soul.
    “Life is brutal,” he said. “So gather your cold and hungry cygnets under your feathers, sweet, sheltering swan, for the world outside your nest can be worse than hell itself.”
    How cynical, how hard he could be. “Could you not think of the children as people, like us, but smaller?” she asked.
    “Small ones are the worst kind.”
    Chastity raised her chin. “Do you stay then, Reed Gilbride, or do you go?”

CHAPTER THREE

    He’d dreamed of sweet Chastity Somers last night.
    That morning, after bathing in the river, Reed made his way back to the house recalling the odd jumble of fancies, chaste and not, that had troubled his sleep before his assault. After his rude