Season for Scandal Read Online Free PDF

again, this time for the ever-observant servants. Surely they had wondered what possessed their master to marry so quickly. Now they would know, for she had shown them the heat of a love match.
    He grinned, then leaned close to her ear. “I know what you’re doing,” he breathed, setting her pearl earbob to dancing. “And I thank you.”
    She sucked in a deep breath. “That bit with the gloves was meant to be enticing, Kirkpatrick. How obstinate you are.”
    “No, it was very enticing,” he reassured her. “I was highly enticed.”
    “I can see that,” she whispered back. “Since we’re still standing in the entry of the house. Clearly you are so enticed that you have no choice but to ravish me with manners. If you thank me again in that seductive way, I may swoon.”
    A bizarre noise caught in Edmund’s throat; a sort of cough and choke and laugh all together. He had no idea how to console a timid maiden, but he knew what to do for cynical, adventuresome Jane. All he need do was be good to her, just as he’d promised. So good that she would never regret marrying him.
    Atonement. It had never seemed so sweet, or so sensual, as Edmund took his bride’s ungloved hand in his. Her fingertips were calloused from needlework, the skin roughened. Her straitened life had formed her, this woman who would rather play cards than sew, who wondered at the miracle wrought by a new coat of paint.
    He rubbed her fingers, and the touch sank deeply within him. She smelled clean like soap, her skin free from perfume.
    He liked it, and suddenly it was not enough to hold her hand anymore. His body acted without orders, bending to sweep her up, catch her behind the knees and hold her lengthwise in his arms.
    “Consider me enticed,” he said. “Enticed, and entirely unmannerly.” When Jane laughed, it felt like a victory.
    “I should show you more of the house now,” he said.
    “You really should,” Jane agreed. “Starting with the bedchamber.”
    And he carried her upstairs.

Chapter 4
    Concerning an Ill-Timed Confession
    Perhaps the bit with the gloves had been too much. Kirkpatrick had not taken it seriously, and Jane could not recall ever being more serious.
    It had been a great joke for him to carry her up the stairs, but as her new husband set her down gently on the carpeted floor of his—her?—their?—bedchamber, her smile felt ragged. The feel of his arms beneath her knees, wrapped around her chest—there was nothing funny in the slightest about that.
    The room itself was dim, the inevitable fog and rain of late autumn tossing gray clouds across the window. She picked out a bootjack in a corner; a walnut vanity and wardrobe; a connecting door in the west wall. In the fireplace, flames devoured wood rather than coal—a special luxury in honor of their wedding day.
    Blue draperies adorned the windows and curtained the bed. The bed itself seemed very large. Wood-framed and wide, its hangings were swagged back. Ready for two people to climb in.
    Kirkpatrick faced her at the foot of it, his formal attire all stark blacks and whites. With his dark hair and light eyes, his fair Celtic skin, he looked crisp as a new pound note.
    Or ten thousand pounds.
    Jane shut her eyes and pressed at them with the heels of her hands.
    “Jane? Are you fatigued?”
    She kept her eyes covered. No need to look at Kirkpatrick; she could guess the expression on his face. Dark brows slightly lifted, mobile mouth ready to curve with sympathy. So many times, she had seen him direct that solicitous expression at a woman.
    “I’m perfectly all right.” She let her hands fall, her gaze trailing after to regard the toes of her high-heeled slippers. New white satin. Impractical and expensive.
    For Jane Tindall, that is. But they were just the sort of shoe Baroness Kirkpatrick would favor from this point forward.
    Her fingers trembled a bit as they lifted to the clasp of her necklace.
    “Might I help you?” He took a step forward, then