I've Got My Duke to Keep Me Warm (The Lords of Worth) Read Online Free PDF

were a prize filly at auction. The man’s greed for a lofty match was palpable, and during this vulgar display of her own flesh, Gisele was as silent as good manners would permit. But Adam could tell by the set of her chin that every fiber of her being rebelled against the life her father was selling her into. She was a diamond in the rough who, with the help of the right man, could be polished to a brilliant shine.
    Adam was already married by then, of course, to awidow he’d selected for her impeccable breeding and impressive wealth. Luckily, his first wife had been easily dispatched, and the effort had been well worth it. Gisele had become the toast of the ton, the most desirable woman in London, and she had belonged to him.
    As it turned out, she’d also had more fire and strength than he’d anticipated, and it had taken him longer than expected to bring her to heel. Adam had needed every ounce of his cunning to shatter the girl’s stoic resistance and ferret out her weakness. How ironic that the one chink in Gisele’s armor had been his own stepdaughter, Helena. Adam had originally intended to consign the brat to the same fate as her mother, but Helena had been fourteen at the time of her mother’s passing, and by then she had shown the promise of considerable beauty.
    And there was always value in keeping beautiful things.
    Very quickly Helena became the means through which Adam mastered Gisele. He delighted in watching his flawless blond warrior bend to his will just the way a good wife should. Everything in his life was perfect. Until the explosion on the river took not only his treasured wife and sniveling stepdaughter, but a fortune too. And now his financial survival demanded that he replace it.
    Adam hurled his glass at the fire, the splintering crystal doing nothing to soothe his nerves. To avoid penury, he had elected to court and fawn over Lady Julia Hextall, whose fair coloring was like a taunt from the grave. The chit was meek and timid and intolerable in all aspects except for the staggering fortune she possessed and her faint resemblance to his lost bride.
    Lady Julia’s father, like Gisele’s, was predictablythrilled by the prospect of having a marchioness in the family. The vulgar man had only recently inherited his title from a third cousin and was still shaking off the foul dust of his former life in trade. But at least he grasped the value of Adam’s venerable name. The girl’s brother, on the other hand, was considerably less impressed. No matter. Adam would simply ignore the boy’s feeble protests. For now.
    This was all Gisele’s fault, really. Adam reached into his desk drawer and drew out a miniature portrait, caressing the gilt frame. He ran the pad of his thumb over the surface of Gisele’s perfect face, frozen forever.
    “Bitch!” he hissed at the painting, then clutched it to his chest, his anguish more acute than ever.
    The sad truth was that her death had ruined everything. The fortune in diamonds Gisele had been wearing the night she died was gone forever. And the rest of his money troubles could be traced back to her too. After the accident, Adam’s grief had been so consuming that he had lost all interest in the management of his estate and relied on others to see to his investments. He regretted it now, but it was too late. The damage was done.
    Moreover, Adam’s sudden poverty accounted for but a fraction of his despair. In his private life, he could find absolutely nothing that held his interest. Nothing gave him any joy or pleasure. Not a horse, not a card game, not a woman. Certainly not a woman. He’d brought plenty of them to his bed in the last four years, but rarely could he bring himself to perform. Even using his preferred methods of arousal, he was often left unsatisfied. No one could do for him what Gisele had done.
    Adam tried to comfort himself with the thought ofthe wealth he would have before the season was out. No amount of money could replace what he