Something Sinful Read Online Free PDF Page B

Charlemagne Griffin, and that couldn’t possibly come out well.
    He’d kissed her yesterday, and she’d let him. She never did anything like that during a business negotiation. Business was business. Of course it didn’t hurt that her opponent in this instance had high cheekbones, a sensuous, expressive mouth, and dark hair that brushed his collar—or that he had shoulders which filled out his coat, thighs which looked as though he spent as much time on horseback as on foot, and not an ounce of fat on his lean, muscular frame.
    Sarala scowled. Yes, he was devilishly handsome, and powerful, and he knew it. He was arrogant enough to tell other people of his pending business dealings and then expect that they would do nothing about it. Well, yesterday he’d been taught a lesson. And she had acquired a fortune in silk—which, if nothing else, would help her father get out from under some of the debts Uncle Roger had left behind.
    She sat in one of the overstuffed chairs beneath her window, picked up her discarded book on Roman history, and glanced outside. Thankfully her mother’s daily set of luncheon guests had begun departing—in another quarter of an hour the house would be free of the gossip brigade. That everyone had missed Lord Charlemagne’s visit yesterday had been a tremendous stroke of luck, but even the strategy she and her father had begun planning afterward for reselling the silks to a selection of high-class dress shops hadn’t distracted her from realizing how close a call she’d had. A lady didn’t conduct business, and she could only continue to do so if she, her father, and Charlemagne were the only ones who knew about it. India had been so much easier.
    Sarala lifted the skirt of her dressing gown to her knee. On her left ankle the dainty henna tattoo her friend Nahi had given her as a farewell gift from India still showed, though it had begun to fade a little. Sarala smiled, lowering her skirt again. If her mother ever found out that she’d been tattooed, temporarily or not, she would have the devil to pay.
    Jenny scratched at the door and opened it again. “My lady, the marchioness has asked to see you in the drawing room.”
    Sarala nodded, unhappy if unsurprised, and reached for a green muslin day gown. Most of her mother’s friends were old acquaintances from more than two decades ago before she’d left London for India. The majority of them seemed to be hapless busybodies moaning over the current state of things and trying to marry off their daughters or sons to one another’s children. They were probably the reason Charlemagne had acquired such a low opinion of women and thought they had no head for business.
    She certainly had no objection to marrying, but she wasn’t going to be bandied about and matched hither and thither to fit some mama’s matrimonial puzzle. She’d been a marquis’s daughter for less than a year, and she didn’t consider that the fact had increased or decreased her value. Other people did. Of course with the way the lot of them frowned at her hair and her tanned skin and what they whispered was her foreign accent, they probably wouldn’t want her joining their family, anyway.
    Her mother sat before the fire in the large drawing room; despite her stated delight at being back in civilization, as she called it, the marchioness seemed to be having her own problems adjusting to the cooler weather. Sarala could already almost recite the coming conversation; a lecture on behavior or etiquette inevitably followed one of her mama’s luncheons. What surprised her, though, was the presence of her father, leaning against the mantel and looking distinctly as though he wished to be elsewhere.
    “Yes, Mama?”
    “My dear, your father and I have been discussing the way you’ve adapted to the family’s new position and residence.”
    “What have I done wrong now?” Sarala asked flatly.
    “Nothing. It’s more…something we’ve done to you.”
    Sarala frowned.