My Seductive Innocent Read Online Free PDF

divine. She sniffed one more time, so she’d remember it. Someday, she’d buy Harry a bar of that soap. He deserved it.
    “I’m going to give you ten seconds to unhand the lady, and if you don’t, you’ll find yourself flat on your back with my boot on your chest.”
    “And jest who do ye think is gonna bring me to my back?” Moses snarled.
    The gentleman’s lips twisted into a contemptuous smile. “I will, though it pains me to think of touching you.” He regarded Moses for a long moment before speaking. “I’m counting.”
    Sophia tensed. Moses was a brawny man with a bad temper. She eyed the stranger in front of them. He was taller than Moses, and he looked to be rather strong himself, but he was a gentleman. They didn’t fight―not like commoners, anyway. Men like Moses used fists and any other means they could, including cheating, to win a fight. Gentlemen pranced around, and―
    The flash of a hand in front of her face stole her half-formed thought. Before she could blink, the gentleman was at their backs. Moses cried out, and she flew forward as his hand was snatched from her breast. The air behind her swooshed, and then a loud thump jarred the floorboards beneath her. When she turned to see what was happening, Moses was precisely where the gentleman had said he’d end up―flat on his back with the man’s gleaming black tasseled boot firmly planted on Moses’s chest.
    For a brief moment, the chatter around them stopped, but when it was obvious no more fighting was going to occur, the voices erupted again and the brawl—a rather common occurrence in the Breeding Tavern—appeared to be forgotten.
    With a look of supreme boredom, the gentleman glanced down at Moses. “I did warn you,” he said in a polite, though aloof, tone.
    Sophia barely held in the laughter that bubbled up inside her. She moved to the stranger’s side and looked down at Moses, too, savoring this moment rather indecently. Moses had been tormenting her forever, and she lacked the strength to put him in his proper place as this gentleman just had.
    She pursed her lips, enjoying watching Moses turn a bit blue as he tried to suck much-needed air into his lungs. “He cannot count past five,” she said matter-of-factly.
    The stranger regarded her with a hooded gaze. “I’d say that’s his problem.”
    “Let me up,” Moses growled and bucked his body.
    The gentleman shifted his weight forward, eliciting a wince from Moses, and then spoke. “Talk again and I’ll be tempted to crush your windpipe, which will make you rather dead. Understand?”
    The hairs on Sophia’s arms prickled as Moses nodded while glaring daggers at her. He would seek vengeance against her without a doubt. She’d have to put her dagger in her boot in a little bit.
    The stranger followed Moses’s pointed stare to her, and his black eyebrows dipped as he gave her a concerned look. “Are you going to be all right?”
    The way his gaze bore into her made her heart do a strange flip-flop. “Oh, sure,” she managed to finally say. “I’m stronger than I look.”
    “Most women are, Miss...?”
    “Vane,” she responded and dipped into an awkward curtsy that Eleanor had tried time and again to show her how to properly execute. “But you can call me Sophia. We don’t really put much emphasis on propriety here.”
    He offered her a brief, strained smile that made her think he didn’t smile much. “People cling to propriety to hide secrets.”
    She shrugged. “I guess we don’t have many secrets here. What’s your name?” It only seemed right to ask. He had rescued her, after all.
    “I’m the Duke of Scarsdale.”
    “How very proper,” she teased, even as her chest heated at her playful words.
    A real smile spread across his face this time, and the effect was mesmerizing. His shadowy eyes glistened as if they held a thousand deep secrets, then his thick black lashes lowered to veil those eyes. When he looked up again, those secrets were hidden