The Perils of Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page A

the outlines of things in the dark room into clarity.
    Two thick rectangular pillars of splintering wood were strung with valances of cobwebs. A million par ticles of dust gyrated in a single narrow beam of light slanting into the room from . . . ? Ah, there it was, a window—wooden crates stacked up to obscure all but about two inches worth of filthy glass. Barrels squatted in the shadows.
    So they were in a cellar of sorts.
    Questions crowded the exits of his mind. Who? Where? Why? All seemed equally important yet mean ingless in light of one single, astounding fact: he was still alive.
    And then his mouth parted and a single, arid, aston ishing word escaped:
    “Louisa.”
    Well. He was abashed.
    The woman behind him paused in the business of untying him.
    “No. I fear I’m not ‘Louisa.’” Ironic amusement in the words. “But as our acquaintance shall be short-lived, it hardly matters what you call me.”
    Colin went still, absorbing the timbre of her voice as if it contained decipherable secrets. It had depth and maturity, refinement, a husky edge that pleased. It betrayed no emotion—unless, that is, one considered amused irony emotion—and he detected no note of allegiance. The detachment and brisk confi dence in it would have, in fact, done justice to any man.
    Colin could not recall a single woman ever regarding him with anything so neutral as detachment .
    It suddenly seemed important to ascertain whether she was pretty, in the same way it was necessary to know whether a man was armed.
    He heard the soft rush of her skirts as she stood; ex perimentally, he wagged his elbows: they were free. He could feel every inch of his arms now. But when he tried to move his arms apart . . . he discovered she’d looped one of the cords through the bindings on his wrists.
    In short, he remained tied to the back of the chair.
    And this was another clue that his freedom might have come at a cost.
    Fortunately, he’d paid the hangman a shilling to make sure his bindings were loose.
    The woman shifted to the left of him now, and his eyes tracked her.
    Pretty, was his first optimistic assessment, though she was scarcely more than a chiaroscuro sketch in this dim room. Slim, quick, deft.
    He surreptitiously twisted his wrist in an attempt to free it; he was thinner now, not to mention dexterous. The wrist slid from its bindings.
    “Who are you?” His ravaged, nearly soundless voice appalled him.
    The woman paused, then took two strides toward a barrel and reached for the jar sitting atop it, crossing the narrow beam of sun as she did, crossing out of it again.
    Ah. Not pretty, he revised with regret. The harsh light revealed sharp angles in her face, and . . . too much forehead. Something stern about the jaw, too, perhaps?
    He continued with the business of freeing his wrists.
    Madeleine Greenway turned back to the cargo she’d been paid to liberate, otherwise known as the infamous Colin Eversea, the Satan from Sussex. She saw no ev idence of actual horns, but then again, it was rather dark in here.
    “Who I am is another thing we can add to the list of things that don’t matter, Mr. Eversea, as our acquain tance shall be—”
    “Short,” he interrupted curtly, in that raw scrape of a voice. “So you’ve said. Why—”
    She thrust the jar of water beneath his chin. “Drink. I fear I haven’t any answers for you, so you may as well save your strength. You’ll have answers soon enough.”
    His famed features were difficult to distinguish in the darkness, and nothing about him radiated any par ticular danger. What Madeleine saw was a lean, broad-shouldered man sitting bayonet-straight in his chair as though posture was a force of habit. The fit of his fi ne coat, surprisingly, wasn’t flawless; no doubt it was looser on him now than when he’d entered prison. Sweat-darkened ringlets clung to his temples and forehead.
    He cast a baleful pair of pale eyes up at her and sniffed at the jar she presented. Interesting