How the Scoundrel Seduces Read Online Free PDF Page B

and Lady Zoe glared at him, he quipped, “Oh, you were serious, were you?”
    She looked down her pretty little nose at him like the pampered aristocrat she was. “Perfectly serious, I assure you.”
    Dom shot him a quelling glance. “Perhaps you should explain, my lady.”
    Tristan crossed his arms over his chest. “If you can. Last I heard, your ‘real’ mother was dead, and your ‘real’ father lived at his Yorkshire estate. Though I suppose he’s at his London town house now, given that you’re here plaguing us with your nonsense.”
    God save him from silly young ladies of rank. With nothing better to do than attend balls and flirt, they created dramatic tragedies in their lives to make up for the fact that they were bored.
    When she bristled, Dom murmured, “Tristan, do attempt not to be rude.”
    “I’m merely stating facts. Thanks to her ladyship’s recklessness, we now have to waste our time satisfying her ridiculous favor.”
    He could ill afford the time, too. Ever since Dom and the duke had engineered his safe return to England, Tristan had been itching to wreak his vengeance on George by finding something to ruin the arse. Having discovered nothing in London, he needed to investigate near Ashcroft and Rathmoor Park. And perhaps search for Milosh, since the horse trader had hinted years ago of some secret about George.
    “We promised Lady Zoe that we’d help her,” Dom pointed out.
    “On an obviously frivolous wild-goose chase,” Tristan said in a hard voice. “What she wants will tie us up when we already have more cases than we can handle. Well-paying cases, I might add.”
    “If this is about money,” she put in, “I do mean to pay you.”
    That arrested them both.
    “Then . . . er . . . how exactly is this a favor?” Dom asked.
    She arched one silky brown eyebrow. “Do you generally do investigations for unmarried young ladies, paid or otherwise, without the knowledge or consent of their families?”
    “Not usually,” Dom admitted.
    “ That’s the favor.”
    Tristan exchanged a glance with his brother. That altered matters, making this both more palatable and infinitely riskier.
    “Still,” Dom said, “my brother does have a point. Have you any legitimate reason to believe that your parents are other than Lord Olivier and his late wife?”
    She sighed. “Sadly, I do. It’s a bit complicated, and I hardly know where I should start.”
    “At the beginning, Lady Zoe,” Dom said gently.
    “Good idea,” Tristan said, less gently.
    Dom was generally the one to handle clients, because he considered Tristan’s approach to be . . . problematic. Since men of rank were invariably hiding something and Tristan had no patience for liars, he liked to provoke them until they revealed the truth. It had always worked for him as an agent for the secret police in France.
    But aristocrats had little power there. Here, they were petty tyrants. Which was why Dom’s more circumspect approach was infinitely more politic.
    With Lady Zoe, however, Tristan didn’t care about being politic. She’d played a dangerous game by blackmailing them, and she was damned lucky that they were gentlemen. It had been madness for a fetching filly like her to make demands of a group of armed men.
    And God help her, she was fetching, despite the unusually busy pattern of her red wool gown. Nipped in at the waist to accentuate her lush figure, it fit her very well—too well for his sanity.
    Then there was her generous red mouth that made him think of raspberries, juicy and sweet to the taste. Not to mention her thick coil of chestnut hair garnished with a fringe of ringlets about the face. He hadan errant urge to unwind that coil just to see how far it would fall.
    He scowled. What was wrong with him? So what if she was pretty? She was also an innocent. An annoying, incredibly reckless innocent, to be sure, but he drew the line at ruining innocents, no matter how reckless.
    Eyeing him warily, she drew in