Miss Molly Robbins Designs a Seduction Read Online Free PDF Page A

and across the hearth tiles.
    Crumpled pages of a newspaper lay on the carpet by his desk, as if tossed aside in frustration. A waistcoat, discarded here for some reason instead of his dressing room, hung over the winged back of the chair in which he sat. Molly tried to imagine the circumstances that might cause a gentleman to unbutton his waistcoat and shrug out of it before he even went upstairs to bed. But then she decided it had better be none of her business.
    Although it was she who invaded his private, intimate place, Molly was now the one surrounded and in danger of breathing too much of it in. Too much of him in. The heady essence of a seductive brute. It was somehow even worse, she realized, when he was in repose, not even trying.
    Just like now, for instance, as he bent over his desk, and that dark lock of unbrushed hair tumbled carelessly over his brow.
    “What are you looking at, Mouse?” He spoke without glancing up from his desk. “Lady Mercy would be appalled by my untidy habits, would she not?”
    “You do seem to be taking advantage of your sister’s absence, my lord. A dust rag and a broom would not go amiss.”
    He sniffed, still studying the contract, his wide, strong shoulders hunched forward over the desk.
    “But what you do and the state of your library is not my concern,” she added. “All I want from you”—she took a deep breath—“is the coin.”
    Now he looked up, fixing her in a stare that was potent, definitely heated this time. It almost drained the strength out of her knees. “A remarkably mercenary attitude, Mouse.”
    “Yes, my lord.” She sighed. “I would feel ashamed of it, if I could afford the sentiment.”

Three
     
    She wasn’t the first woman to want him for the money, of course, but she was the first to admit that was all she wanted. It was refreshingly honest, actually.
    Carver was amused, and that seldom happened so early in his day.
    The Mouse had drunk in every joking word he’d said and drawn up a contract in workmanlike fashion, also producing a copy so they could both keep one. Several misspellings and some odd punctuation, he noted, but for a country girl with no formal education, she had a neat hand. Obviously she picked things up as she went along, absorbed them quickly, and was determined to lift herself up out of the sphere in which she was born, even to the extent of abandoning her own wedding.
    “Most women of your age and in your position,” he pointed out, “want a husband to make fat and miserable, and a litter of screaming, snot-nosed brats to herd about.”
    “Then clearly I’m not most women , my lord. With your financial assistance, I won’t have to be.”
    She drooped—yes, drooped, no other word for it—before him in a weather-beaten hat and coat, her small face solemn as an undertaker. But the eyes were large and bright, full of more hope than he’d ever felt directed at him before.
    “You’ll amount to naught, boy,” he could still hear his father hissing in his ear. “It is my greatest regret that I must leave this estate in your hands, but such is God’s punishment for me.”
    That was when he was expelled from boarding school for fighting. The second time. His father never wanted to know why the fights happened. His only concern was that Carver had an unpredictable side, a temper he could not hold, and he did not seem to have much respect for rules or punishment.
    “That school was supposed to turn you into a gentleman!”
    To which ten year-old Carver had replied, “But nobody asked me whether I want to be a gentleman. I’d rather be a blacksmith or a carpenter. At least they make things.”
    As the blows came down around his ears, his father shouted until he was hoarse. “You will bring shame to this family. I might have known, but what choice do I have? Worthless boy! Good-for-naught!”
    He heard that name so often it ceased to hurt. Yet this plain wisp of a girl, who looked as if a strong gust of air might shatter