Brazen Temptress Read Online Free PDF

miserable job of holding back a most undignified outburst of laughter.
    After Sophia's jab about
men his age
and now this pointed comment from a girl barely old enough to pin her hair up, Julien was starting to wonder if nine and twenty really was as old as everyone seemed to be implying today.
    "Well, let me think," he said. "That was such a long time ago."
    The girls immediately began to look hopeful.
    He didn't know whether it was the blue eyes of one of the girls or the rapt expressions on their faces. Or maybe it was Lily's words about his lack of family ties. Or his advanced age. But something inside him, something he usually held so tightly in check, gave way.
    "Yes," he started slowly. "I did love someone once."
    "I told you," the girl with the blue eyes told her friends.
    "What happened to her?" This barely audible question came from a shy girl at the opposite end of the gathering, far from Lady Annabelle's more boisterous companions. No one seemed more surprised at this inquiry than the girl herself. She blushed and stepped behind one of her taller friends.
    "She was lost to me. Drowned."
    His admission brought the inevitable onslaught of memories he always fought to shut out. The sound of battle — cannon fire and shot whistling through the rigging overhead. Shouts of agony. Wood splintering around him.
    Don't jump,
he'd cried.
Please don't jump. Let me explain.
    On the edge of the railing stood a woman. A dagger in one hand, the other clutching the rigging.
    Her gaze, angry and hard, bore into him with more searing heat than a red-hot piece of shot.
    Don't do this,
he'd told her. But she'd leapt into the churning water before he could cross the deck to stop her.
    Leapt to her death, the waves closing over her, reclaiming their own.
    "Drowned," the girl with the blue eyes said. "How dreadful. Was it a boating accident?"
    A boating accident?
How calm and peaceful that sounded compared to the truth. "Yes. A boating accident," he said, not wanting to look into those blue eyes.
    Feeling a pall fall over his audience, he knew he needed to change the mood. Better to lighten their hearts and remove the chains from his. He leaned forward and whispered in a conspiratorial tone, "That is why I never take sea voyages or travel over water."
    They nodded solemnly, until the far reaches of his words stopped them.
    "Surely you jest," Lady Annabelle said. "You must cross a bridge occasionally."
    "Only very sturdy ones," he told them solemnly.
    They all laughed, like happy little songbirds once again.
    "Mr. D'Artiers, what did she look like?" the duke's daughter asked, preening in her elegant gown and tossing her perfectly coiffed curls. Not one of her friends missed for a moment the implication of her question: Their vain friend wanted to know if she favored the missing love of his life.
    "Oh, yes, what did she look like?" several of them asked at once, happy to get to a subject they all were well versed in.
    What did she look like?
He'd almost forgotten. The years had erased so many of her nuances from his memory — the way she walked, the sound of her voice, how her hand felt clasped in his. These details had slipped away, but he had never forgotten her eyes.
    Eyes the color of the waters off a forgotten cay in the West Indies. Eyes that looked right down to a man's soul. Eyes that still scorched his heart with anger as they had the last time he'd looked into their stormy blue depths.
    He shook off the maudlin thoughts, teased from him by a clutch of romantically inclined girls.
    "Oh, Mr. D'Artiers, what did she look like? Surely you must remember what she looked like," Lady Annabelle persisted.
    And when he looked up, he glanced around the circle of enraptured faces, all eagerly awaiting his revelation.
    "What did she look like?" he said. "Well, she looked like ..." His voice trailed off as his gaze rose beyond the perfect English misses in front of him, and he found himself staring across the Assembly room at the latest