Lord of Scoundrels Read Online Free PDF Page A

was it?”
    “Men are ignorant brutes.”
    “You sure?”
    “Quite.”
    Bertie let out a sigh and turned to the female, who still appeared fascinated with the contents of the display case. “You promised you wouldn’t insult my friends, Jess.”
    “I don’t see how I could, when I haven’t met any.”
    She seemed to be fixed on something. The beribboned and beflowered bonnet tilted this way and that as she studied the object of her interest from various angles.
    “Well, do you want to meet one?” Trent asked impatiently. “Or do you mean to stand there gaping at that rubbish all day?”
    She straightened, but did not turn around.
    Bertie cleared his throat. “Jessica,” he said determinedly, “Dain. Dain—Drat you, Jess, can’t you take your eyes off that trash for one minute?”
    She turned.
    “Dain—m’sister.”
    She looked up.
    And a swift, fierce heat swept Lord Dain from the crown of his head to the toes in his champagne-buffed boots. The heat was immediately succeeded by a cold sweat.
    “My lord,” she said with a curt nod.
    “Miss Trent,” he said. Then he could not for the life of him produce another syllable.
    Under the monstrous bonnet was a perfect oval of a porcelain white, flawless countenance. Thick, sooty lashes framed silver-grey eyes with an upward slant that neatly harmonized with the slant of her high cheekbones. Her nose was straight and delicately slender, her mouth soft and pink and just a fraction overfull.
    She was not classic English perfection, but she was some sort of perfection and, being neither blind nor ignorant, Lord Dain generally recognized quality when he saw it.
    If she had been a piece of Sevres china or an oil painting or a tapestry, he would have bought her on the spot and not quibbled about the price.
    For one deranged instant, while he contemplated licking her from the top of her alabaster brow to the tips of her dainty toes, he wondered what her price was.
    But out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed his reflection in the glass.
    His dark face was harsh and hard, the face of Beelzebub himself. In Dain’s case, the book could be judged accurately by the cover, for he was dark and hard inside as well. His was a Dartmoor soul, where the wind blew fierce and the rain beat down upon grim, grey rocks, and where the pretty green patches of ground turned out to be mires that could suck down an ox.
    Anyone with half a brain could see the signs posted: “ ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE ” or, more to the point, “ DANGER. QUICKSAND ”
    Equally to the point, the creature before him was a lady, and no signs had to be posted about her to warn him off. Ladies, in his dictionary, were listed under Plague, Pestilence, and Famine.
    With the return of reason, Dain discovered that he must have been staring coldly at her for rather a while, because Bertie—bored, evidently—had turned away to study a set of wooden soldiers.
    Dain promptly collected his wits. “Was it not your turn to speak, Miss Trent?” he asked in mocking tones. “Were you not about to make a comment on the weather? I believe that’s considered the proper—that is, safe —way to commence a conversation.”
    “Your eyes,” she said, her gaze perfectly steady, “are very black. Intellect tells me they must be merely a very dark brown. Yet the illusion is…overpowering.”
    There was a quick, stabbing sensation in the environs of his diaphragm, or his belly, he couldn’t tell.
    His composure faltered not a whit. He had learned composure in hard school.
    “The conversation has progressed with astonishing rapidity to the personal,” he drawled. “You are fascinated by my eyes.”
    “I can’t help it,” she said. “They are extraordinary. So very black . But I do not wish to make you uncomfortable.”
    With a very faint smile, she turned back to the jewelry case.
    Dain wasn’t certain what exactly was wrong with her, but he had no doubt something was. He was Lord Beelzebub, wasn’t he?