Miss Molly Robbins Designs a Seduction Read Online Free PDF

her bones and leave naught but a pair of boots and a crumpled frock on his carpet, regarded him with something new. With hope.
    She sneezed again, loudly. Although she quickly buried her face in an oversized kerchief, it was too late to catch the fine mist that shot out of her and into the air of his library. Carver winced, leaning farther back in his chair.
    “I know most folk—my own family, for instance—will say I’m getting above my place,” she mumbled into her handkerchief, “but I can’t help thinking that life should move forward, my lord, not lie stagnant. Isn’t progress the very essence of being alive?”
    She must have picked that up somewhere on a seditious pamphlet. “Perhaps I should be more diligent about the reading matter allowed inside my house,” he muttered. “Servants who learn to read have done themselves a disservice. It will end only in discord, because it puts ideas in their heads, and they can no longer be trusted not to pry into their master’s business.” It was something his father would say, and it came out of him like anything else learned by rote—a conjugated Latin verb or a mathematical formula.
    “Rest assured, I wouldn’t want to pry into your business,” she replied tartly. “As for ideas—my own are plentiful. Believe it or not, they occur to me without being put there by some man.” Pausing for another fretful sigh, she added, “I often wish they did not. I wish I could be ignorant and oblivious of things. Like the colors in clouds.”
    “Clouds?” He was trying to follow but had briefly become lost in the dewy, shimmering depths of her eyes.
    “It is quite a burden for a poor, lowly but honest girl like me to have any thoughts at all, especially when they do not coincide with the ideas of other folk.”
    Carver studied her somber face. Her countenance was calm, but there was a lot going on beneath that placid surface. He’d never heard her speak much before this, and now she was, he suspected, testing her new boundaries, kicking up the grass like a filly released from its bridle and let out in the paddock to run. Yes, a long-legged pony. She was tall for a woman. The length of her bones had outgrown her clothes and outpaced her ability to put much flesh upon them. It was one of the first things he’d ever noticed about Molly Robbins, because it made him nervous to think she might eventually grow tall enough to look him directly in the eye. Who knew what parts of him she could one day reach to prick with her sly pins?
    He pressed his aching head into the chair back, lifted her contract with one hand, and glanced over it again in the light from his window. Surely she’d underestimated the costs.
    “Two hundred pounds will not get you far,” he muttered, although he really had no idea how much a dressmaker charged for her services. If his mistress desired new clothes, he told her to charge it to his account, and then the matter was taken care of by Edward Hobbs, who handled all such affairs. In fact, Carver didn’t really know what anything cost, except for a good racehorse. Since there was little the Danforthe coffers couldn’t afford, prices were mostly moot.
    “I did not want to ask for more than I could pay back in a reasonable amount of time,” she replied. “The sum I request from you is just enough to help with rent and materials until I am established. If I asked for more, you might expect something in return, and I have my virtue to consider.”
    He almost dropped the contract. “Your virtue?”
    “That’s right, my lord. I don’t suppose you come across one often, but I’d like to keep mine unbesmirched.”
    A sudden ripple of laughter threatened his stern composure, but somehow he thwarted its determined progress up his throat and returned his gaze to the contract, where his attention was caught by a line of words, thickly underscored in the last clause. “What’s this?” he demanded.
    “No Tomfoolery, my lord. You needn’t try to