Beyond A Wicked Kiss by Jo Goodman Read Free Book Online Page A

"Do not remove it yet. Let us put you before the fire in my study first."
    He led the way down the hall and pushed aside the pocket doors. Standing back, he ushered her inside. This was the one room besides his bedchamber where he knew he could depend upon a warm hearth. The fire that had been laid for him earlier was small now, but it only required a little kindling and one log to bring it to a proper blaze. Satisfied with his effort, he motioned Miss Ashby forward and lifted his greatcoat from her shoulders.
    She was hugging herself beneath the heavy coat, and this posture did not change when she was relieved of it. She came to stand as close to the fire as she dared and let its considerable heat flood her. Where her gown was damp, steam actually rose from the fabric.
    Watching her, West was struck by how slim she was. She was not small of stature, only slightly built. The top of her head came as high as his nose, he noted, making her rather tall for a woman. She was reed slender, with rather more bosom than one might expect, given the delicacy of her frame. It was not that the severity of her black bombazine gown emphasized the curve of her breasts, but that West already knew the fullness of their shape by virtue of his earlier search. He would not have been able to guess at the perfect roundness of her hips and buttocks if he had not had cause to feel them in the cup of his palms. The mourning gown she wore defied even a careful observer to suppose what form of woman might be under it. He, however, had already discovered the length of slim legs and the lithe turn of her calves and ankles. In truth, West could not bring himself to be fully repentant of his earlier actions. She had carried no blade or pistol, but it didn't mean that she couldn't have.
    Her hair was drying quickly. She had finally been moved to unwind her arms and raise her hands to untangle it. West thought it was even paler than it had looked in the carriage. It absorbed some of the reds and golds of the firelight, but that was only because, like sunshine, it had so little color of its own. Children sometimes had hair that was as light and fine a corn silk texture as this, but he could not recall seeing such a cascade on a woman grown.
    Four-and-twenty, she had told him. Standing before the fire, tugging on the damp curls of her unbound hair with fingers made clumsy by an awareness of his open regard, she looked no more than six-and-ten.
    "Perhaps you are Tenley's mistress," he said of a sudden.
    Her fingers stilled in her hair. "No," she said quite firmly, if only on a thread of sound. "I am not your brother's mistress."
    "Half-brother."
    "Yes, of course, your half-brother. I was not his half-mistress."
    A wry smile lifted one corner of West's mouth and a dimple appeared. "You are feeling more the thing, I take it"
    "Yes."
    Her stuttering had stopped, and he was heartily glad of it. "Good. Will you take a brandy?" He went to the drinks cabinet and found the decanter he wanted. "You would prefer sherry?"
    "I prefer brandy."
    "Just so." He poured a small amount into two crystal snifters and handed one to her. He watched her cup her hands around the bowl of the glass to warm the brandy, then sip delicately. "Better?"
    She nodded.
    "You will want to turn round," he said.
    She stared at him blankly.
    "To pull the dampness from your backside."
    "Oh."
    Seeing her flush, West found it difficult to believe she had journeyed all the way from Gillhollow to London unmolested—if one did not refine upon what he had done to her in the alley. He lighted several lamps in his study while she turned her back to the flames. He could feel her eyes following him, though each time he turned she quickly averted her gaze and regarded the floor.
    Had she expected someone with the same imposing presence of his father? he wondered. Until the cancer had finally weakened him in the last months of his life, West knew his father had enjoyed robust health and the vigor of many men half