Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

There is nothing ... His mocking words echoed around her protesting mind. Lily pressed her eyes closed. She could not have sold her body and soul for freedom, only to have nothing. What was it for then? Surviving? Is that what this has been these past six years?
    “Tsk, tsk.” He made a clucking noise like a chicken that had pecked around her family’s home. “I see I’ve upset you.”
    “I am n-not upset,” she said, hating the break in her voice. She was livid. Enraged. Broken. Shattered. No, the dark swirl of emotions threatening to drag her under moved far beyond a mere upset.
    Holdsworth took yet another sip. “There is something I would have you to do for me.”
    She blinked slowly. Of course. Her skin went hot then cold with the inevitable insult; that vile proposition she’d not accept. The man could go to the devil and she’d send him there with a kick to his pompous arse. She’d not spread her legs again. Not for him. And not for any other.
    “I understand you are familiar with the Duke of Blackthorne’s family.”
    Had he pulled the Aubusson carpet out from under her feet and upended her, she could not have been more off-balance. She shook her head. She’d spent years hating everything and anything connected with that name. She’d spent the other years hating herself for having humbled herself before that vile family. Lily had vowed to never think of them again and only in the darkest corner of her mind, when the clock ticked in the dead of night, while the nightmares kept her awake, did she allow herself to think of any of them.
    “You’ve gone quiet, Miss Benedict.”
    “I did not know you required a response.”
    Her tart response roused a booming laugh. “Ah, if you are this feisty before a man in discourse, how spirited you must be in his bed.”
    Bile burned at the back of her throat. Odd, she’d not grown accustomed to crude talk and leering stares. “Say what it is you’d say and be done with it,” she said with a practiced cool that drew a frown. Good, he did not care for her aloof dismissal. A thrill of satisfaction went through her.
    “It occurs to me you detest the Duke of Blackthorne’s family nearly as much as I do.”
    He would be wrong. “How do you...?” She snapped her mouth closed, already having said too much. Even as she longed to know just what he knew of her connection to that loathsome lot, she’d not allow him to toy with her like a cat with a mouse between its paws.
    He winged a red eyebrow upward. “How do I know that part of your past, Miss Benedict?” He paused meaningfully. “Or should I say Miss Bennett?” Holdsworth gave her a sardonic grin. “I know more than you would like.”
    A chill stole through her. Lily schooled her features into an inscrutable mask, refusing to give him a hint of shock and confusion currently running through her. She’d believed she’d carved out a relatively obscure identity as Sir Henry’s lover. With his two daughters near of age to Lily herself, she’d foolishly believed he’d keep Lily away as his dirty secret. Who else knew of the shameful life she’d lived these years?
    The memory of her family flitted around the chambers of her mind and an unexpected agony lanced her heart. What would her parents, her siblings, say of Lily’s deeper descent into depravity? Odd, she’d thought each memory of each member of her family was properly buried and forever forgotten. How awful to have that erroneous truth shattered before this heartless bastard, no less. As this icy stranger continued speaking, she forcibly thrust back the images of her brothers and sister.
    “My father was quite forthcoming.”
    Lily jerked erect. “Was he?” She could not keep the bitterness from creeping into that two-word question. Men had proven themselves remarkably boorish and detestable where she was concerned, and she’d proven herself foolish time and time again for trusting a word out of their treacherous mouths.
    “He was.”
    Should it