Engaged in Sin Read Online Free PDF Page A

frightened—he’d heard the truth of that in her voice. There had to be more to her story than she’d told him.…
    Hell
. He had to send her away and stop thinking about her. He’d told Tris not to send a woman. He could have killed her, the poor foolish chit, as easily as he’d warned her he could. Already he’d snapped his valet’s wrists when the man had done nothing more than remove his coat. Watson, the valet, had quit on the spot and run from the house.
    He was going mad. “Battle madness,” one of the war surgeons had called it as he was recovering in a field hospital. At that time, he’d mocked the idea—he was blind, not insane. How could any man not savor peace once war was over? Now he knew. He couldn’t forget the war. It wouldn’t leave him alone. And he had no intention of making her suffer for it.
    “Yer Grace?”
    Devon cocked his head in the direction of Treadwell’s voice. “No, she will not be joining me for supper. Have a tray prepared with her meal and taken to the bedchamber she will be using. Send a bottle of good sherry as well. Give her one of my robes for her use.”
    “Are ye certain she’ll be needing one, Yer Grace? Shouldn’t ye be keeping her … busy?”
    “Treadwell, bloody hell.” First his friend, now his servant.
    “Beg yer pardon, Yer Grace, but Lord Ashton told me as how he’s worried about ye and the way yer keeping yerself locked away in the house, and I happen to say I agree. It’s not healthy for a young gent such as yerself.”
    “Thank you for your opinion,” Devon growled. “Iwasn’t aware the dispensation of unwanted advice was on your list of duties.”
    He’d never been the kind of duke to glower at his servants. It would be impossible to do so now. Hard to strike fear with a ducal glare when one couldn’t even look in the correct direction.
    “It’s not me place to speak, Yer Grace. Yer grandfather would have had me horsewhipped if I talked to him like this. But yer not like yer grandfather, the old duke, Yer Grace. A right tyrant he was, and he would brook no talk from anyone.”
    True, he was nothing like his grandfather, a fact that had annoyed that man a great deal. Nor was he like his father. He was somewhere in between the libertine tyrant his grandfather had been and the kind, scholarly sense of responsibility that had characterized his father.
    “Meself and the others—we know ye’ve been a grand master, and all of us are worried about ye. Now, if ye want to send me to the stables, ye can do so, but I’ve had me say.”
    Treadwell had given sixty years of service to Devon’s family, beginning as a boot boy to his grandfather. A man who had to spend his childhood as a servant with an old man’s foot resting on his arse deserved some sort of perquisites in his later years. Letting him speak was the one the old servant seemed to enjoy the most. “Treadwell, you won’t be whipped.”
    “Well, now, Yer Grace, I should fetch ye for yer meal.”
    “I don’t need to be fetched. I do not need to be led to the dining room like a dog on a leash.”
    “ ’Course not, Yer Grace. But let me say one more thing before I leave ye. That girl is a comely lass. Very pretty indeed.”
    He didn’t need to know. For a start, he could not see her, so what did it matter if she was a beauty? But curiosityhammered at him. Relentless curiosity. “All right, what does she look like exactly?”
    “She’s got lovely silky hair in me favorite shade, Yer Grace. Titian, I think it’s called. Green eyes too. Not a light green, like emeralds, but dark as ivy leaves. A lass that lovely is not going to like having to spend her night alone.”
    He was left stunned by Treadwell’s description but got his wits back and gruffly said, “It’s not a matter of what she likes. It’s for her own good.”
    Anne paced the bedchamber—the
duke’s
bedchamber. He had ensured her every comfort. A fire crackled in the hearth, warding off the chill of the rainy