Too Wicked to Marry Read Online Free PDF Page A

you're so good at? Seducing women is as much a hobby with you as fencing and boxing, marksmanship and riding to hounds."
    "You make it sound as if I hang trophy heads on the wall!"
    At another time his outrage would have amused her. "Well—"
    "I have standards. There are rules to the game of love."
    "Ah, but you do consider it a game."
    "You twist my meaning. Love is not a game. Romantic liaisons with ladies of worldly sophistication are not the same as love, and you know it. It's not as if I've gone around seducing maidens and nuns."
    "No. I concede you're no despoiler of virgins. The women you've been involved with have hardly been victims of your rapacious lust."
    "I could teach you a great deal about rapacious lust if you like."
    "I'm sure you could, but no thank you."
    "Aren't you a little bit curious about the ways of the flesh?"
    "Of course I—"
    "Well, then." Suddenly she was in his arms again.
    "This will not do," she declared, and found herself beating on his chest with her fists like a heroine in some melodramatic stage play.
    When he laughed in the same dastardly way as the villain in one of those plays, she couldn't help but laugh with him. They knew each other too well on some levels. They thought so much alike that sometimes they seemed to share one mind. One soul?
    Now who was being the melodramatic one? What they shared was on the surface; they could never share the basic, important things. The basic truths about who they were and where they came from could never be reconciled. Lord Martin Kestrel might think he loved Abigail Perry, but Abigail Perry could never love him. She would not even allow herself the pleasant fiction of thinking she could.
    "You are a womanizer," she told him, hoping that shining a harsh light on his past would put a stop this. "How can I believe you love me? How could I believe you would be faithful?"
    "Because I—"
    "I will not be another fling, Martin." She was far too aware of his arms around her, of the strong body so close to hers.
    "Of course not!"
    "Nor will I go to the bed of a man who has a rakehell's reputation. As you pointed out, I am a minister's daughter."
    "Most men are less than pure, my dear. At least you know the worst of me."
    But he did not know the worst of her. She sighed, and was unable to ignore the pain in his eyes. "You were hurt once, Martin, and—"
    "I reacted badly to it, I know," he cut her off. "I really did want to try my hand at being a wicked seducer after Sabine betrayed me, but you know I got over that fool mood."
    "Turned out you had too much conscience," she agreed. "But you have had a great many mistresses in the last several years."
    "Not
that
many," he corrected. "A man has to work, eat, and sleep sometimes."
    "Enough."
    Martin hid a smile. Was that a hint of bitterness in her voice? Perhaps the faintest tinge of jealousy? He
had
been wild for a time; now it was catching up with him. He only prayed that the price was not losing the woman in his arms, for he knew with his heart and soul that she was the only woman he could ever truly love. "I have been circumspect," he offered, as though discretion were some form of virtue.
    "Which does not change your behavior."
    "I am not coming to you pure of body and soul," he admitted. "There is a disadvantage in your knowing me so well, but the heart I offer to you is clean. I've never loved another woman, Abigail, not even Sabine. She gave me a child I love, and I'm grateful, but what we had was not love. You, I love. I think I've loved you since the moment I opened the door and dragged you into my life. I've gotten over being angry at women, you may have noticed. I'm through with chasing them. I'm sick of them throwing themselves at me. I want only you. Marry me, Miss Perry, become Lady Martin."
    She did not melt into his embrace and offer her lovely mouth for a kiss. "Is your proposal to me a way of laughing in the face of all those ladies who want you for your name and fortune? Are you using me to