Wicked at Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

too. 
Sorry if you find the vinegar offensive.  It's not our fault that —"
    "The scent
of vinegar is not what I'm objecting to," she said.  "Where are the
prisoners kept?"
    "Belowdecks."
    "Take me
there, please."
    "Oh, I
can't do that, m'lady.  No one's allowed below, and besides, it's no place for
a gentlewoman, I'm afraid."  He led her beneath the poop deck and stopped
at a large door sporting a bright coat of red paint.  "Anyhow, here we
are.  I'm sure that His Lordship will be . . . delighted to meet you."
    With that, Foyle
knocked once on the door and, with sudden terror animating his face, hesitantly
pushed it open.
    Gwyneth,
prepared to do battle, sailed in.  And halted in her tracks.
    There, before
the stern windows, stood a high-backed swivel chair upholstered in burgundy velvet. 
The back of the chair was toward her, and above it she could just see the crown
of a dark head.
    Foyle found his
voice, which came out as a thready squeak.  "Your Lordship?  Lady Gwyneth
Evans Simms to see you."
    A lengthy pause,
then, a deep-timbred voice.
    "I
know."
    A moment
passed.  The silence grew uncomfortable.  Then, slowly, the chair began to
rotate.
    First an ear.  Then
a ruthless, aristocratic profile.
    Then the face of
the devil himself.
    Gwyneth's breath
caught in her throat, and she stepped back involuntarily.
    "Do come
in, my dear," His Lordship drawled, with an imperious sweep of his hand. 
He had one long, tautly muscled leg thrown casually over the other, and his
snowy shirt was open at the throat to reveal a broad wedge of tanned skin.  He
did not bother to rise, he did not bother to take and lift her hand, he did not
bother to honor her presence at all, as any man of his breeding ought. 
Instead, he merely raised his brows and said with arrogant self-confidence,
"How stunned you look — but, ah, I seem to have a similar effect on all of
the woman I meet."
    Effect wasn't the word.
    Danger ,
she thought.  It was there in his lean, powerful body; in his relaxed, watchful
pose; in the very way he looked at her — as though he were going to rise out of
that chair at any moment and ravish her, right there.  His face was strikingly
chiseled, angelic yet demonic, beautiful, wicked, arresting.  But it was his
eyes that were so unnerving.  They were cold eyes, almost iridescent, thawed by
a hot, underlying sexuality simmering just beneath the surface, glowing with
cunning intelligence yet veiled by thick lashes that lent him an expression of
boredom and challenge.  They were piercing, those eyes, expressive, pure as a
Siberian glacier and devastatingly lethal.
    Devil's eyes ,
she thought, swallowing hard, and he knows just how to use them.
    "You may
leave now, Mr. Foyle," the marquess murmured, never taking that malevolent
stare off her.
    Gwyneth waited
until the youth had made his swift exit.  "And what effect is that,
Lord Morninghall?" she challenged.
    The marquess
looked at her.  Something shifted in those eyes, moving subtly across them,
humor that came and went as quickly as a wisp of cloud over a darkening sun,
before they became chillingly cold and hard once again.
    "Do you
know," he murmured faintly, leaning forward to pour himself a glass of
brandy and purposely neglecting to offer her one, "my own mother thought
me the devil."  His voice was deep, elegant, and cultured, as polished as
heirloom silver, both hard and soft at the same time and oozing a dark and
unexpected sensuality.  Hard and soft.  Angelic yet demonic.  The man was a
study in paradox.  "She ended her days in a London asylum, where she took
great delight in informing her equally mad audience that she had birthed the Antichrist." 
He raked her with that frozen stare.  "You are younger than I expected, a
mere chit.  What do you want?"
    The swift change
of thought, the quick move from pleasantry back to cutting rudeness, was enough
to bring Gwyneth's head up and her color right along with it.  She fixed him
with what she