Claiming the Courtesan Read Online Free PDF Page B

the season’s prettiest heiresses. To whom, then, amazingly, he showed every sign of fidelity.
    Which meant Soraya was back seeking a protector.
    Not that she gave any indication her sudden freedom was unwelcome. And by this stage, Ben Ahbood, or whatever the bastard’s name really was, had been very much in evidence.
    Of course, she had neither explained nor excused. The legendary Soraya’s factotum was a mute Arabian Samson. If the world disapproved, she shrugged her straight, slender shoulders and proceeded just as she pleased.
    This time, Kylemore left nothing to chance. No gentlemanly hanging back, no self-confident hesitation in expressing his interest. The morning Mallory’s engagement to Lady Sarah Coote was announced, Kylemore presented his card at Soraya’s house. He’d waited five years. He had no intention of waiting one moment longer.
    Soraya appeared neither delighted, dismayed nor disconcerted to find a duke in her parlor at an hour more suitable for breakfast than for callers. Instead, she listened calmly and, Devil take her, had said she would think about what he proposed. Her protector hadn’t been in evidence, although Kylemore would have happily faced him down if he had.
    But, Kylemore remembered with a churning in his belly, Ben Ahbood had admitted him to the house, then sent him on his way. And the lout’s manner toward him had done no honor to his dignity as a duke.
    Soraya’s response had come a week later, couched in a swathe of legalities. Kylemore’s original offer had been extravagant. She requested he increase it to a king’s ransom, including clear title to all property and goods he gave her.
    And, he remembered now with another unpleasant twinge, after a year, if either party were dissatisfied, the arrangement ceased forthwith.
    Oh, she’d been clever, his grasping, cunning mistress. Clever and faithless. And he’d been guilty of fatal complacency.
    She’d been overtly true to her two previous keepers. He should know—he had cast every lure to coax her away. But perhaps she’d duped everyone and her real allegiance was to the blackguard who lived hugger-mugger with her.
    Her subtle hints about Ben Ahbood’s sexual incapability had been a masterstroke. Kylemore had always admired Soraya, but her audacity now took his breath away.
    His excellent brain—like his looks, inherited from his despised mother—clicked back into working order. Coldly, calmly, he vowed to track down the cozening trollop and her lover.
    The blood of generations of ruthless men ran in his veins. Soraya had no idea what she’d started when she played the Duke of Kylemore for a fool. He smiled in cold anticipationof the day she discovered the mistake she’d made in betraying Justin Kinmurrie.
     
    A late summer storm had stirred the North Sea off Whitby Sands into fury. Verity flung the veil back from her black bonnet and stared out into the windswept world around her. The beach was almost deserted, and no one would notice the widow Symonds hold her face up to the cold gale or smile out at the restless ocean.
    She’d been in Whitby for three months and still could hardly believe that the transition to her new life had been so easy.
    The scandalous Soraya had left London with her manservant. Several days later, the respectable widow Mrs. Charles Symonds had taken a house in this Yorkshire fishing town with her brother, Benjamin Ashton.
    I’m free, I’m free, her heart chanted in time with the gray water lashing the shore.
    I’m free. I’m independent. My life is my own at last.
    I’m free, but becoming uncomfortably damp, her more practical self pointed out as spray flew up to darken her black bombazine. She chuckled and moved back from the edge.
    The townspeople, all good sturdy Yorkshire folk, had been mildly curious about her arrival with her brother but had soon accepted them. Verity Symonds was still in deep mourning for the young husband she’d lost to a fever six months ago. The young husband