The Rules of Seduction Read Online Free PDF

of nothing more than an old basket, sparrow feathers, and withered apples, that will be me.”
    His curiosity raised her pique to a reckless pitch. It was unseemly for the man who caused this grief to want the details. She threw open the door of Irene’s bedroom. “My fourth choice is to become a soiled dove. There are those who say a woman should starve to death first, but I suspect they have not faced the choice in reality, as I might.”
    She received a sharp glance for that. Beneath his annoyance at how she mocked his lack of guilt, she also saw bold, masculine consideration, as if he calculated her value at the occupation fourth on her list.
    Her face warmed. That stupid liveliness woke her skin and sank right through to churn in her core, affecting her in a shocking way. It created an insidious, uncontrollable awareness of her body’s many details. The sensation appalled her even as she acknowledged its lush stimulation.
    She had to step back, out of the chamber and out of his sight, to escape the way his proximity caused a rapid drumbeat in her pulse. In the few seconds before he joined her, she called up her anger to defeat the shocking burst of sensuality.
    She continued her goads so he would know she did not care what he thought. She wanted this man to appreciate how his whims had created misery.
    “My fifth choice is to become a thief. I debated which should come first, soiled dove or thief. I decided that while the former was harder work, it was a form of honest trade, while being a thief is just plain evil.” She paused, and could not resist adding, “No matter how it is done or even how legal it may be.”
    He stopped and turned into her path, forcing her to stop walking too. “You speak very frankly.”
    He hovered over her in the narrow corridor. His gaze demanded her total attention. A power flowed, one masculine and dominating and challenging. An intuitive caution shouted retreat. The liveliness purred low and deep. She ignored both reactions and stood her ground.
    “You are the one who asked about my future, even though it does not matter to you what becomes of any of us.” Her anger had been building since leaving the reception hall. His cool self-possession on this tour had only added fuel to the fire.
    She peered up at him. “These are decent, good people, and you have destroyed their lives. You did not have to remove all your business from Timothy’s bank. You deliberately ruined him, and I do not know how you can bear to live with yourself.”
    His dark blue eyes turned black in the corridor’s dim lights. His jaw squared. He was angry. Well, good. So was she.
    “I live with myself very well, thank you. Until you have more experience in financial matters, you can only view these developments from a position of ignorance. I am sincerely sorry for Miss Longworth and her sister, and for you, but I will not apologize for doing my duty as I saw fit.”
    His tone startled her. Quiet but firm, it commanded that no further argument be given. She retreated, but not because of that. She was wasting her breath. This man did not care about other people. If he did, they would not be taking this tour.
    She guided him toward the stairs rising to the higher chambers, but he stopped outside a door near the landing. “What is this room?”
    “It is a small bedroom, undistinguished. It was once the dressing room to the chamber next door. Now, up above—”
    He turned the latch and pushed the door open. He paced into the small space and noted every detail. The two books beside the bed, the small, sparsely populated wardrobe, the neat stack of letters on the writing table—all of it garnered his attention. He lifted a bonnet from a chair by the window.
    “This is your room.”
    It was, and his presence in it, his perusal of her private belongings, created an intimacy that made her uncomfortable. Him touching her belongings felt too much like him touching her. It created a physical connection that made the