The Lady Risks All Read Online Free PDF Page B

that someone a great deal larger than she was standing directly behind her.
    Her breath caught, strangled; her lungs seized. Senses flaring, she forced herself to turn slowly  . . .
    Her gaze, level, landed on an exquisitely tied ivory silk cravat.
    Roscoe watched the woman’s large eyes, already wide, widen even further, then she jerked her gaze up to his face.
    He didn’t smile. “Can I help you, Miss . . . ?”
    She didn’t immediately reply, but he didn’t make the mistake of thinking her mind paralyzed by shock; swift calculation showed in those wide eyes as she debated her response. Fine-boned, graceful, and quintessentially feminine though she might be, he was accustomed to sizing up people with a glance and didn’t need to look further than the refined strength in her face, echoed in her upright carriage and the gliding stride he’d glimpsed when he’d first seen her crossing the gallery, to guess what manner of lady she was.
    Determined, resolute, and, at least when it came to those things she believed in, unbending.
    Consequently, he was unsurprised when she drew in a tight breath, straightened to her full, significantly taller than the average height, and haughtily stated, “My name is Miss Clifford.”
    The information very nearly made him blink.
    Her gaze drifted from his face, skating over his shoulders and chest to land on the ledger he carried in one hand. A frown crimped her finely arched brows. “And you are?”
    Her tone made it clear she thought him some lowly secretary. Despite his intentions, his lips quirked. “I’m the owner of this establishment.”
    Apparently, that news was more of a shock than discovering him at her back. She stared, patently stunned and making no effort to hide it. “ You’re Roscoe?”
    He could imagine the speculation she’d heard; an inner devil prompted him to further confound her. He bowed, imbuing the gesture with all the grace he’d once exercised daily. Straightening, he drawled, “I would welcome you to my humble abode, Miss Clifford, only I have to wonder why you’re here.”
    “ Humble abode?” Her voice was husky, the tone a low contralto. Her gaze flashed to the three paintings hanging on the walls between the corridors—two Gainsboroughs and a Reynolds—then shifted to the large Gobelin tapestry on the wall behind him. “For a gambling king, sir, you have remarkable taste.”
    Interesting that she’d noticed, but he didn’t distract that easily. “Indeed. But that doesn’t answer my question.”
    Miranda was frantically assessing a different question: how to get out of this without a whisper of scandal. While most of her mind wrestled with that problem, the rest was thoroughly distracted; she hadn’t had any mental image of Roscoe, but not in her wildest dreams would she have imagined him as he was. As he stood before her.
    He was tall, significantly taller than she was, but his shoulders, chest, and long, muscled limbs were in perfect proportion, creating an elegance of form that simply took her breath away. His attire, too, wasn’t what she would have associated with a gambling king; in a superbly tailored dark coat over pristine ivory linen, with that gorgeously tied cravat, a subdued blue, gray, and black striped waistcoat with simple black buttons, and plain black trousers, he could give any ton exquisite points and he would still come out ahead.
    As for the way he moved, and that drawl . . . quite what manner of man he was she wasn’t sure, but a single glance into that chiseled face, at those well-set dark eyes steadily regarding her, at his patriarchal nose and sharply cut jaw, was enough to assure her that he wasn’t manageable. More, that he was dangerous, on multiple levels and in complex ways.
    The man who stood before her was a conundrum.
    She had no experience dealing with such as he, but following her instincts had got her into this—perhaps they’d get her out. Tipping her chin higher, she held to her hauteur.