The Seducer Read Online Free PDF

finally defeating her during an interminable night while she huddled in the corner of a moving, black space. Of arms reaching for her in the dark and pulling her close so that she cried into a wool coat.
    Perhaps that buried, childish memory accounted for the familiarity in the carriage today.
    No, not entirely. For one thing, she was no longer a child and he neither treated her nor spoke to her as one anymore. It was that abrupt change that made her uncomfortable with him. Still, the memory eased her misgivings a little.
    She dozed off into a vision of a garden filled with golden vines.
             
    She sat on the chair in front of the hearth, waiting to be called to the meal. Her hair felt a little unsteady, piled up as it was on her crown. After the maid had finished, her reflection displayed a stranger, someone older than her own image of herself.
    The door opened, but no servant had come. Daniel stood there.
    “Jeanette asked that I check on you, to spare her coming up. You are comfortable here? You have been settled in?”
    She rose to face him. “Actually, I have been wondering if there is another chamber.”
    “This one does not suit you?”
    “I would prefer something simpler. Smaller. I am not accustomed to such as this.”
    “The smaller ones are above and used by the servants. We can hardly put you there.”
    “I don’t see why not.”
    “Because you are not a servant. You are a guest.”
    He stepped into the chamber and looked around curiously, as if checking its proportions and seeing its opulence anew. His expression changed to one of comprehension.
    He strolled over to a table near the canopied bed. It held one of the beautiful urns. “Come here.”
    She did not move. She could not, and not just because the chamber intimidated her.
    The space was not so large that one could ignore that it was a bedchamber. Her bedchamber, and he was in it and really should not be, even if it was his home. No one had ever taught her that lesson. She just knew it. An odd quickening in her blood, a different flow in the air, a heightening of the familiarity from the carriage—his presence produced a barrage of effects that warned that this was not correct.
    “Come here,” he repeated, lifting the precious urn.
    When she did not obey, he walked over to her. “You cannot spend the next weeks chained to that hearth. Eventually you must move.”
    “It is warm here. It is the only comfort I welcome or need. In fact, it is a wonderful luxury.”
    “No fire in your chamber at school? No, I suppose not. And small ones in those that were lit elsewhere, I expect. Madame would justify the discomfort as good for the soul.”
    He stood near her, the urn casually cradled in his hands. “Take it.”
    She hesitated. He placed it in her hands. It was much lighter than she expected. Fragile.
    “Now, drop it.”
    She stared at him in shock.
    “Drop it.”
    She glanced down to the hearth tiles on which they stood. “It will break.”
    “Drop it.”
    “No.”
    His hands came over hers. They rested there a moment, the warmth of his palms enclosing her hands, the rough pads of his fingers grazing her wrists. The touch startled her. A deep wave of intimacy flowed through the contact.
    She looked at him in surprise. Something unfathomable flickered in his gaze. That startled her even more.
    They stood a long time with his hands cupping hers over the urn. Too long. Or maybe not more than an instant. She couldn’t tell. Her awareness of him and of their physical contact filled the moments so totally that she had no sense of how much time had passed.
    His fingers moved. He pried her hands loose.
    The urn slipped away. She watched, horrified, as it fell to the tiles and shattered.
    “Now you have broken one and do not have to be afraid of doing so again. They are just objects, Diane. Soulless, lifeless objects. They have no value unless they serve us with their function or beauty. Only a fool is ruled by them.”
    He spoke