Sinful in Satin Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dallying will gain you nothing,” she said.
    “I do not agree. Dallying here, now, for a mere five minutes, has already gained me something.”
    “I do not see what it could be, besides my vexation with you.”
    “Do you not?” He smiled so subtly she wondered if she imagined it. He pushed off from the wall. She held her ground with difficulty and masked the way fear caused her breath to shorten. No, not fear. Excitement.
    “It has gained me evidence that dallying more might gain me more, no matter how suitable or unsuitable I may be.” He reached over suddenly, and laid two fingers on her lips. She almost jumped out of her skin. She felt her lips pulsing under the contact. “You are not so sophisticated that your reactions do not show, Miss Pennifold, and I see more than vexation. There may be gentlemen who would not speculate on the possibilities present in this chamber tonight, but I am not that virtuous.”
    That special tension tightened even more with his words. He had just bluntly acknowledged that which she thought it better to ignore. Their gazes met across his outstretched arm for too long. She feared he was correct, and that she was not sophisticated enough to hide the way she stirred inside.
    His hand fell. He smiled, to himself this time. “I will leave you now. I will bolt the garden door before I go up. Sleep well, Miss Pennifold.”

Chapter Three
    C elia’s suspicion that someone had searched Alessandra’s other property was not good news for Jonathan. Nor was her announcement that she intended to live in this house, no matter how much he had enjoyed last night’s little contest with her. He was still assessing how both revelations would affect his plans when he rose from bed the next day.
    He had entered that house on Orchard Street, before coming back to this one. He had seen the tidiness to which Celia referred. If Celia was correct, and the other house had already been searched before either of them examined it, there might be a rival for the information that Edward sought. That rival might have less benign intentions than ensuring Alessandra’s past remained in the past. Any fool hoping to blackmail her patrons might risk illegal entry to find evidence of their names.
    Or—and he did not want to think it, but he had to consider the possibility—there could have indeed been traitorous acts, and the man involved needed to be sure that Alessandra had left no evidence that pointed to him.
    Jonathan thought of the lovely blond woman sleeping down below. Desperate men did desperate things. If Celia should chance upon an intruder looking for hidden evidence, or if someone concluded she knew too much about her mother’s doings, she could be in danger. Just as well that he would be living here, then. She may not want his protection, but she might need it for a while anyway.
    There was a different possible reason for another’s interest in Alessandra’s papers. It could have been someone hoping to ensure Jonathan himself would not find evidence that set him on a path of revenge regarding those events in Cornwall five years ago. It went without saying he would follow that evidence wherever it led if he came upon it.
    His mind darkened as it always did whenever he remembered that disaster and its deadly outcome. Today it was worse because vivid images from that night had come to him in a waking dream, provoked no doubt by Edward’s mention of it in the carriage. That betrayal had missed its mark, and instead caused the death of an innocent lad to whom he had paid a few shillings to guide his path along an unfamiliar section of coast.
    He had killed enough in his life. He had seen others die too, some of them comrades. Yet nothing had prepared him for carrying that boy home to his mother, and seeing a grief so profound that it did not even care about blame.
    Someone still needed to answer for that night. He really didn’t give a damn if he found a list of Alessandra’s lovers, or if someone else