Games of Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page A

already pounding. The door had crashed open. Male voices echoed from the corridor. Lights danced and glimmered in the darkness, blinding her. It was too late, then! Too late! She would be hauled naked to her doom.
    Well, damn them all!
    Miracle grabbed the cloak, spun from the bed, and ran to the window to wrestle with the casement. The drop to the inn yard was probably too far to survive, but better that than the gallows!
    A hand clamped down hard on her wrist. Hot breath, angry and fast, seared her cheek.
    â€œWhat the devil are you about?”
    She stared up at Lord Ryderbourne’s face, then glanced over his shoulder. With a great clanging of buckets, menservants were hauling away her cold bath water. Another procession of servants had lit candles and set a table and chairs in front of the fire. Maids were bringing in trays of hot food. Miracle closed her eyes against fierce tears: the mad upwelling of relief, and her unholy mirth.
    The door closed behind the servants, leaving her alone with her rescuer. His dry hair shone with highlights of mahogany, like a blood-bay horse, not as dark as it had seemed earlier, soaked in seawater. He wore no jacket, only breeches with a clean shirt and cravat. The linen at his throat formed crisp folds beneath his freshly shaved chin. While she slept, he must have bathed and changed in another room.
    â€œYou promised me you wouldn’t try to take your own life.” His fingers burned on her skin. “Does your word mean nothing?”
    Her pulse thundered, but she smiled up at him. “I only said that I wouldn’t do so without good cause.”
    He gazed down at her with a kind of ironic bewilderment, honed to a knife edge. He was obviously aroused. Though she had held together the front of the cloak with one hand, it must have offered glimpses of her naked body as she moved.
    â€œAnd this supper is cause enough?” he said. “You have such particular culinary requirements that the Merry Monarch cannot satisfy them?”
    â€œNot at all, my lord.” His scent enveloped her—man and soap and fresh linen. A hint of ocean lingered only in his boots, dried and polished now, though still stained by salt. She inhaled, flaring her nostrils to take his essence straight into her lungs. “Indeed, something smells heavenly and I’m ravenous.”
    His eyes shone as keen as kingfishers’ wings. The mood shifted, as if sunlight suddenly flooded a dark courtyard.
    He lifted his fingers and released her. “So am I.”
    â€œThen we should eat,” she said, answering the hidden message in that green gaze, “if you believe it is safe to do so?”
    â€œEveryone in this village is sworn to secrecy about your arrival. No one will dare to gainsay me.”
    Miracle walked away a few paces. Hot shivers ran up her spine. Keeping her back to him, she reached up to take the hooded collar of the cloak in both hands.
    â€œYet perhaps there’s another kind of danger?” she asked. “I could quite easily allow this cape to slide from my shoulders. Then I’d stand naked before you, inviting you to satisfy quite another appetite.”
    She heard him inhale. His boots echoed on the floorboards. The door latch rattled under his fingers. He stopped.
    â€œThat thought has obviously occurred to me, but I shan’t act on it. I’m not such a cad.”
    She glanced at him over her shoulder. Yes, he was still erect. Magnificently so! “Perhaps your body wouldn’t agree?”
    He leaned his shoulders back against the door and crossed both arms over his chest. “The body has no conscience, ma’am. However, I was raised in a thicket of scruples.”
    â€œSo was Sir Lancelot.”
    â€œThe most painful example of infidelity in literature?”
    She couldn’t quite read his expression. A sardonic impulse to mirth? A ruefully gracious withdrawal? She walked to the fireplace, offering him nothing but her