Don't Tempt Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I find myself in need of a bracer.”
    Zoe. Here. Alive. It wasn’t possible. Yet it must be, because there she was.
    He looked at her again.
    She looked right back at him, up and down, down and up.
    The back of his neck prickled. He was used to women eyeing him. This sort of survey usually occurred, however, in gatherings of the demimonde or in a private corner of an ostensibly respectable social event. It did not happen in the open in an unquestionably respectable domestic setting.
    He was not disconcerted. Nothing disconcerted him. Disoriented was more like it. Perhaps he should have had a little less to drink before coming here. Or perhaps he hadn’t had enough.
    â€œBut of course you want something to steady yournerves, dear,” said Lady Lexham. “I fainted dead away when I saw our Zoe.”
    This didn’t surprise him. The calamity of twelve years ago had sent Lady Lexham into a dangerous decline. While she did recover physically, she did not recover the steadiness and strength of mind she’d once possessed, though he was not sure she’d ever possessed great stores of either quality. These days her ladyship spent much of her time agitated, swooning, or trembling—sometimes all three at once.
    At the moment, he himself felt oddly light-headed. “Zoe, indeed,” he said. “So it is.”
    He made himself meet the assessing blue gaze again.
    The girl smiled.
    It was and it wasn’t Zoe’s smile, and for some reason the image of a crocodile came into his mind.
    â€œAnd now I’ve lost a thousand pounds,” he went on, “for I made sure I’d find another Princess Caraboo in your drawing room.”
    â€œGood grief!” cried one of the sisters.
    â€œIs that what they’re saying?” said another.
    â€œWhat would you expect?”
    â€œI daresay it isn’t the worst of the rumors.”
    Marchmont’s gaze swung toward the Four Harridans of the Apocalypse.
    â€œYou ought to see the satirical prints,” he said. “Most…inventive.”
    â€œYou needn’t rub it in.”
    â€œYou find it all hilarious, I don’t doubt.”
    â€œIf you’d been harried from pillar to post, as we have been—”
    â€œDon’t waste your breath. He—”
    â€œYou are a duke,” came a feminine voice that didn’t belong to any of them. It was like theirs but different.
    Marchmont turned away from the Matrons of Doom and toward the girl at the window: the girl who was and wasn’t the Zoe he’d known so long ago.
    She had risen from the chair. Her deep red cashmere shawl set off handsomely the pale green frock and was draped in a way that perfectly framed her figure. The high-necked frock’s narrow bodice outlined an agreeably rounded bosom. The fall of the skirt told him her waist was smallish and her hips full. She seemed taller than her sisters, though it was hard to be sure, given that two of them had expanded so much horizontally, and all four of them were seated.
    In any event, she was not a pocket Venus by any means but a full-sized model.
    Her potently blue eyes held a speculative glint. Or was he imagining that? His vision was in good order. He had no trouble focusing. His brain, on the other hand, was unusually sluggish.
    â€œYou speak English,” he said. “More or less.”
    â€œIt was much less at first,” she said. “Lord Winterton hired a companion and a maid for me. They couldn’t speak Arabic. No one else but he could, and he would not. For all the journey home, I had to speak English. And it came back.” She tipped her head to one side, studying his face as though it, too, were a forgotten language. “I remember you.”
    In the voice that was like and unlike her sisters’ he detected no trace of anything one might call a foreign accent. Yet she spoke with a lilt that made the sound exotic. It was a voice with shadows and soft