Wedded in Sin Read Online Free PDF Page A

you mean?”
    “Your parents’ murder, of course. Tell me everything.”
    Samuel found it hard not to dance in the street. Here he’d been thinking that the Season would be beyond dull this year. Certainly it was a necessary part of his life, given his current financial straits. But free food aside, nothing at all of note was happening. And then what should appear before his eyes, but a mystery! Complete with murders and villains and a damsel in distress! He couldn’t be happier if the Prince Regent himself popped by to ask for popularity advice.
    Sadly, the whole problem probably wouldn’t take more than a few days. He’d already solved the most intriguing bit. And how gratifying it was that the distressed damsel was not touched in the head when she grabbed the bag of feet, but of a surprisingly logical bent. Imagine, a woman who could think things through and settle on a practical plan! He was still shocked by it.
    Meanwhile, the lady in question was peering at him with narrowed eyes. It wasn’t an unusual look for him to receive, usually by someone who was not at all pleased to discover Samuel’s unusual intelligence, and so he slid straight into a bit of charm. It was silly, really, how easy it was to distract some people.
    “Oh, dear,” he exclaimed. “I can see that it has been much too much for you today and no wonder. But don’t you worry. You have too much to handle as it is, what with a babe and all. Is there someplace we are headed? We can get you settled there in a trice, and then sort this whole thing out. It won’t be too hard. I promise.”
    Far from helping matters, the lady’s eyes narrowed almost to the point of fury. “Yes, sir, I do have a place to go,” she said in cold, clipped tones. “But you won’t be going there with me, and I won’t be talking of my parents or lifting my skirts for a toff who’s too bored to find his own life.” Then she held out her free hand. “I’ll be taking my bag now, if you please, and you can be on your way.”
    Samuel stared at her, his mind once again stunned silent. How had this woman—this little slip of a girl, really—managed to silence him twice in the space of an hour?
    “Magnificent!” he murmured. Her eyebrows shot up at that, and he scrambled to explain. “I have no interest in your skirts, lifted or otherwise, Miss Shoemaker, so you can be at ease on that score.” It was a lie, of course. Any woman who could so effectively put him in his place had him harder than a rock. She was comely and all, but a woman who could trade verbal barbs with him was rarer than Helen of Troy and infinitely more exciting.
    And smart as she was, she called him on his bluff. “You’ve got a gleam in your eye and a swelling that calls you a liar.”
    So he did, which he acknowledged with a slight bow. “Excellent! I’ll call that point yours. But what I want isn’t of the usual sort.” She gasped at that and he rushed to explain. “I wish to solve your puzzle. It’s a worthy one, you see. An injustice done to an innocent who hasn’t the wherewithal to solve it on her own. I could do that for you and count it as a good deed on my way to heaven.”
    She snorted. “You are not a Good Samaritan.”
    “No, I’m certainly not.” He waited, looking at her with as open an expression as he could manage. But she had to know she was running out of time. Already his mind was beginning to wander. They had reached Bond Street, where the fashionable wandered. He had already seen two new couples and one decidedly bad choice in waistcoat. Much longer and he would lose interest, his mind dragging him along to something that was likely more trivial than this, but decidedly more immediate.
    “You cannot be that bored,” she snapped.
    He sighed. “I assure you, I am. And worthy mysteries are hard to find.”
    She tilted her head as she looked at him, and for a moment his mind centered on the shift in color as the light hit her hair. She was a dishwater blonde with