Don't Tempt Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

This was nothing new. It would not be the first time he’d interrupted one of their incomprehensible family squabbles. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time they promptly recommenced while he was there. After all, they did regard him as a member of the family, which meant they felt as free to abuse him as they did one another.
    He crossed to the table, where a decanter sat untouched, surrounded by wineglasses. He might as well have a drink while he watched the entertainment.
    He had lifted decanter and glass and was about to pour when her voice, with its exotic lilt, rose above the rest.
    â€œMarchmont, will you please marry me?” she said.
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    Mama let out a little scream.
    Gertrude leapt up from her chair and tried to drag Zoe out of the room. Zoe broke away from her and moved closer to her father.
    â€œA duke, you said,” she told her sisters. “Or a marquess. He is a duke. He has no wives. Wife,” she quickly amended. In England, it was only one wife to a man, she reminded herself.
    â€œYou don’t simply offer yourself to the first nobleman who walks through the door,” said Dorothea.
    â€œBut you said the dukes and marquesses would not come to us,” said Zoe.
    â€œI’m afraid to imagine what will be said about this,” said Priscilla.
    â€œYou said I could not hope to meet such men,” said Zoe. “But here is one.” And she wasn’t about to let him get away if she could help it.
    â€œOoooh,” said Mama. She fell back upon the pillows.
    â€œLook what you’ve done to Mama!”
    â€œThe girl is hopeless.”
    â€œOf course he’ll tell all his friends.”
    â€œPapa, do something!” Gertrude cried as she flung herself into her chair.
    Papa only looked briefly over his shoulder, his glance going from Zoe to the tall, fair-haired, shockingly handsome man with the decanter and glass in his long-fingered hands. The Duke of Marchmont’s beautifully shaped mouth had fallen open. His eyes had widened slightly.
    As she watched, he closed his mouth and shuttered his eyes again.
    She’d seen those stunningly green eyes wide open, for one dizzying heartbeat in time, when they’d first lit on her. The impact had nearly toppled her from her chair. She’d felt for a moment like the little girl spinning helplessly until landing on her bottom on a muddy patch of grass.
    â€œI cannot wait,” she said. “Marchmont, you are the highest of rank here. Tell them to be silent and let me speak.”
    â€œWe shall never live this down,” Augusta said. “What a tale he’ll have for his friends at White’s.”
    Marchmont slowly filled his glass. When that was done, he said, “I must have heard aright, else your sisters would not be shrieking at quite that pitch. You have asked me to marry you. Is that correct, Miss Lexham?”
    The last time her heart had pounded so hard was on the day she’d fled the palace of Yusri Pasha and found the gates of the European quarter closed to her. Then she’d been terrified of what would happen to her if she was caught.
    Yet she’d been exhilarated, too, to risk everything in one desperate bid for freedom.
    This appeared to be her only chance to live the life for which she’d taken that desperate risk.
    However grand his rank or handsome his face or splendid his physique, this was still a man, she told herself. Though he hid his eyes, she knew he was mentally taking off her clothes and liked what he saw. She felt, rather than saw, the slight tension in his posture: the alertness of the predator when it marks its prey.
    A harem slave would be tearing off her garments about now.
    Zoe knew she could not entice him in that way. Not here, at any rate. Not now. She must appeal to him from mind to mind. It must be business. The way men did it.
    Or at least it must seem so.
    She adjusted her shawl and her own posture, making herself as alluring as she