One Wicked Sin Read Online Free PDF

Palliser to another more compliant mistress.
    And yet Lottie Palliser was no shrinking innocent. Despite the ordeal of her divorce and disgrace there was spirit in her still, a little crushed, perhaps, but he could see the ghost of the woman she had once been. That was the woman he needed, the scandalous, hedonistic pleasure-seeker who would outrage the populace of asmall market town and keep their attention firmly on her, leaving him to pursue his business away from their prying eyes. He needed a decoy, a distraction. Lottie Palliser was going to be that woman.
    The first part of the jigsaw was now in place. Mrs. Tong had been suitably shocked and furious to lose the services of the most notorious jade in London—even if she had been hopeless as a whore—but had been unable to resist the lure of the money. The madam would undoubtedly tell the world and his wife how the scandalous Ethan Ryder had walked into her brothel and paid a king’s ransom to walk out with Lottie Palliser as his mistress. Everyone would be talking about it from London to Land’s End, which was exactly what Ethan desired. Before she even arrived in Wantage, Lottie would be the most infamous mistress in the country. She would set the town by the ears.
    “London by night.” Lottie was sitting forward, holding the curtain back so that she could look out of the carriage window. “I have missed its amusements.”
    There was something wistful in her tone, a regret for all she had lost, perhaps. For it did not matter how much he paid her at the end of their association, Ethan thought. She would never regain the life she had once had. Ton society was closed to her forever.
    “How did you come to this?” he asked. He was not sure why he was even interested. Lottie’s misfortunes were none of his affair. And yet he wanted to know how a seemingly intelligent woman had got herself into so desperate a situation. He was curious about her.
    He could feel her eyes on him in the darkness of the carriage as though she was thinking about how muchto tell him, whether to lie, perhaps, and paint her case as more sympathetic than it was. He was as indifferent to her scrutiny as he would be to her falsehoods. She would read nothing in his face. He just wanted to know her story. It would pass the time since the traffic was slow at this time of night.
    “You know what happened to me,” she said, after a pause. “You told me yourself.”
    “I know what happened, not why.”
    She turned away, hunched a shoulder. “My husband divorced me because I became too careless and indiscreet in my love affairs.” For a split second, in a shaft of light, he saw her face, remote and hard. “I always was imprudent,” she said. “I liked the danger. But I let it go too far. I was too reckless.”
    Ethan smiled.
    I liked the danger….
    He understood that because he liked danger, too. He liked the risk and the thunder in the blood and the race of the pulse, for what else was there to live for when everything you cared about had been taken away? He had been right. That instinct that had told him that Lottie Palliser was wild as he, a kindred spirit, had been correct. It should make her perfect for his purpose.
    There was quiet but for the roll of the carriage wheels over the cobbles and the clop of the horse’s hooves. Outside the nighttime world spun about them with its glitter and gaiety, the noise of the crowd, the taste of excitement in the air.
    “I can understand why your family might disown you,” Ethan said. The Pallisers were very high in the instep and divorce, scandal, would be anathema tothem. “But surely you had friends who would help you—”
    A quick shake of her head silenced him. “I tried to seduce the husband of my best friend,” she said. “That was her second husband. He refused me. I had already slept with her first one.”
    It took a very great deal to surprise Ethan. This did not even come close. Besides, he had heard some tone in her voice that