Beauty and the Earl Read Online Free PDF

make the best decision should that prove to be true.”
    Liam chuckled. He wasn’t entirely sure of that, but he nodded anyway. “Yes.”
    Mal shot him a side glance. “Will you go out today?”
    Liam’s good humor faded, as did thoughts of Violet. He hated that manner Mal took when he asked the question. Like he was tiptoeing around a person who was dying. Like he was making some grand, important inquiry.
    Just because Liam locked himself away didn’t mean a damn thing. But if he said no, if he told Mal that he intended to stay on the estate again, his friend would grunt and make pained faces and try to encourage him to get out.
    Liam was too exhausted to go through it all. So he shrugged.
    “A book I ordered upon our arrival has likely come in. I suppose I could go into town to pick it up.”
    “Good,” Mal said, his voice suddenly light. “I shall have the carriage readied immediately.”
    Liam nodded as his friend left the room, but the moment he was alone, he sighed deeply. He loved Mal almost as a brother and he appreciated his friend’s companionship and aid, but Malcolm wanted to save him. Just like everyone wanted to save him.
    What none of them seemed to grasp was that there was little worth saving anymore.  
    “Perhaps there never was,” he murmured before he left the room to ready himself for the ride into town.
     
     
    Liam’s order had not yet come in, but he didn’t feel any disappointment now that he was here. There were few pleasures he allowed himself anymore, but a bookshop was most definitely one of them. He breathed in the dusty smell of the pages as he strolled through the aisles.
    At one time he had indulged more in physical escapes, letting his body be his strongest asset. But since the accident, sometimes the only thing that kept him sane was a book to read during a sleepless night. Stories could carry him away, dragging him from reality when he needed it most.
    He turned a corner to the next shelf and stopped dead. There, standing at a shelf, perusing the titles, was Violet Milford.
    He couldn’t breathe as he stared at her. Unlike their last meeting, she was wearing a fine gown, but the fabric hugged her curves and left little doubt that the fantasies he had been having about her were not exaggerations when it came to her body. Nor her beauty. Her thick, dark hair was coiled about her head in a complicated style and her lightly olive skin was clear and fresh.
    She must have sensed his stare, for she turned from her study of the shelf and faced him. Her eyes widened slightly with what seemed to be surprise, though not unpleasantly so.
    “Good Lord, Miss Milford,” he forced himself to say as he took a step toward her at last. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”
    She smiled, the surprise she had initially shown wiped away in an instant. “Lord Windbury, what an unexpected treat.”
    The way she said treat and looked at him with such a long stare made him shift with increasing discomfort thanks to the rush of blood to his cock. Was he really about to have an erection in the middle of a bookstore? Had he suddenly become a green boy facing his first sexual encounter? It was truly ridiculous.
    “I thought you might have left Bath,” she continued, seemingly unaware of her effect on him.  
    “Why?” he asked, moving closer again. He almost couldn’t stop himself.  
    She drew back. “Well, I have not seen you since…” She smiled. “Since we last bumped into each other, and that has been two days. It isn’t such a large place that I would expect to have you disappear entirely.”
    “I have a small estate just outside the city,” he explained. “So I don’t come into town every day.”
    “Ah.” She nodded. “That would make perfect sense. But books brought you here today.”
    He looked around them. “Books, yes.”
    She tilted her head and continued to stare at him. There was no mistaking the challenge in her eyes. She knew he wanted her, no matter what his body