Seduced by the Scoundrel Read Online Free PDF

set around and food and wine.
    ‘Of course you are. Don’t try to lie to me. You are cold and frightened.’ He stated it as a fact, not with any sympathy or compassion in his voice that she could detect. Perhaps he knew that kind words might make her cry and that this brisk practicality would brace her. He lit a candle, then knelt and built the fire with a practised economy of movement.
    Who is he?
His accent was impeccable, his hands, although scarred and calloused, were clean with carefully trimmed nails. Half an hour with a barber, thenput him in evening clothes and he could stroll into any society gathering without attracting a glance.
    No, that was not true. He would attract the glances of any woman there. It made her angrier with him, the fact that she found him physically attractive even as he repelled her for what he was, what he intended to do. How could she? It was humiliating and baffling. She had not even the excuse of being dazzled by a classically handsome face or charm or skilful flirtation. What she felt was a very basic feminine desire. Lust, she told herself, was a sin.
    ‘Eat.’ The fire blazed up, shadows flickered in the corners and the room became instantly warmer, more intimate, just as she had feared. Luke poured wine and pushed the beaker towards her. ‘And drink. It will make things easier.’
    ‘For whom?’ Averil enquired and the corner of his mouth moved in what might have been a half smile. But she drank and felt the insidious warmth relax her. Weaken her, just as he intended, she was sure. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
    ‘Writing bad poetry, beachcombing.’ He shrugged and cut a hunk of cheese.
    ‘Don’t play with me,’ she snapped. ‘Are you wreckers? Smugglers?’
    ‘Neither.’ He spared the cheese a disapproving frown, but ate it anyway.
    ‘You were Navy once, weren’t you?’ she asked, on sudden impulse. ‘Are you deserters?’
    ‘We were Navy,’ he agreed and cut her a slice of bread as though they were discussing the weather. ‘And if we were to return now I dare say most of us would hang.’
    Averil made herself eat while she digested that. They must be deserters, then. It took a lot of thinking about and she drank a full beaker of wine before she realised it had gone. Perhaps it would help with what was to come … She pushed the thought into a dark cupboard in the back of her mind and tried to eat. She needed her strength to endure, if not to fight.
    Luke meanwhile ate solidly, like a man without a care in the world. ‘Are you running to the French?’ she asked when the cheese and the cold boiled bacon were all gone.
    ‘The French would kill us as readily as the British,’ he said, with a thin smile for a joke she did not understand.
    The meal was finished at last. Luke pushed back his chair and sat, long legs out in front of him, as relaxed as a big cat. Averil contemplated the table with its empty platters, bread crumbs and the heel of the loaf. ‘Do you expect me to act as your housemaid as well as your whore?’ she asked.
    The response was immediate, lightning-swift. The man who had seemed so relaxed was on his feet and brought her with him with one hand tight around her wrist. Luke held her there so they stood toe to toe, breast to breast. His eyes were iron-dark and intense on her face; there was no ice there now and she shivered at the anger in them.
    ‘Listen to me and think,’ he said, his voice soft in chilling contrast to the violence of his reaction. ‘Those men out there are a wolf pack, with as much conscience and mercy as wolves. I lead them, not because they are sworn to me or like me, not because we share a causewe believe in, but because, just now, they fear me more than they fear the alternatives.
    ‘If I show them any weakness—anything at all—they will turn on me. And while I can fight, I cannot defeat twelve men. You are like a lighted match in a powder store. They want you—all of them do—and they have no