Dangerous in Diamonds Read Online Free PDF

well with each other.”
    Latham, now the new Becksbridge, was no saint. He never had been. He had only been sly and secretive instead of honest in his hedonism. “We have not been friends for a good long while.”
    “I am relieved to hear it.” That slipped out with a sigh. It was possibly the first uncalculated sentence she had uttered all evening.
    “Relieved for his sake? Do you fear I will corrupt him?”
    She hesitated, to calculate once again. “I remember him as capricious and untrustworthy. I do not care for him. I would not like to think he might influence your Tuesday decision.”
    Now, that was interesting. Almost everyone loved Latham. Vicars quoted his damned essays from the pulpit. The papers were currently full of irritating anticipation of him taking his father’s place and heralding his return to England as the salvation of the world. One rarely heard a bad word about him.
    Yet it appeared Mrs. Joyes held little admiration. Quite the opposite, from the way the subject darkened her expression. Perhaps she knew about Latham’s worst sins. If she had lived in that house, she well might have heard the servants talk about the master’s heir.
    A memory forced itself into his mind. An ugly one in which he saw Latham going too far and crossing lines that no man should cross. The images stirred a visceral disgust, with himself as well as Latham.
    He looked at the glass of punch with resentment while he conquered the thoughts and the reaction they provoked. He had not thought about that long-ago day for years. He probably would not have now either, if this woman had not made this a damned Tuesday.
    “We are of like mind regarding him, Mrs. Joyes. I promise he is incapable of influencing me, or I him, unless pistols are involved.” He angled toward the table and her. “Now, about the questions I find here—”
    “There are no questions to consider here, so you can cease straining your mind,” she said.
    “There are many questions to consider. This legacy was odd enough. Finding you here now compels my attention. So little does these days that I am wont to seek explanations when puzzles taunt me.”
    “You already know why and how I live here. All that remains to clarify the situation is this: My father was a gentleman in Becksbridge’s county and a friend of the duke. When he died and my relatives did not give me a home and support, the duke kindly accepted me into his household as a governess. Since the duke had known my father, I was treated better than other women in that situation might expect. I stayed a little less than a year before I left.”
    “To marry Captain Joyes.”
    She inclined her head in half a nod. “When I was left to my own devices once more, the duke kindly allowed me the use of this property. In his goodness he tried to help me again and ensure that I was not left destitute.”
    “You expected the title to this land, however.”
    “That was a silly hope, not an expectation. I had no claim on it or on anything at all.”
    It was a good explanation. Possibly the true one. Nor was it one that would require retreat on his part. She was a widow, in her late twenties he estimated, and certainly no innocent. He could still seduce her if he had a mind to. Which he did.
    He could not shake the suspicion, however, that this whole arrangement spoke of the duke under moral obligation to care for a woman for reasons less noble than friendship with her father.
    He still thought she had been Becksbridge’s mistress while in that house. Then again, perhaps he only wanted to believe it of the self-righteous ass.
    Well, he would know for certain once he visited the other little properties and saw if they also were now homes to other women like Mrs. Joyes.
    In the meantime . . .
    He stood. “I thank you for the hospitality and for the pleasure of your company at this dinner, Mrs. Joyes. I see the rain is well gone, and I think that I will take a ride through the area and see the lay of the