Disrobed and Dishonored by Louise Allen Read Free Book Online

with a flick of her exquisite French fan. ‘May I introduce the Earl of Redcliffe? He is hoping you will stand up for him for this set. Lord Redcliffe, Miss Tatton is a dear friend of Lady Standon’s.’
    ‘Miss Tatton.’ His bow was immaculate, his voice deep and achingly familiar. It could not be. It was impossible that her highwayman— her love —was standing there in front of her, a respectable member of the aristocracy.
    ‘Redcliffe!’ It was Gareth, Lord Standon. He slapped the big man on the shoulder, then took his hand. ‘You are so late I thought you weren’t coming.’
    ‘I apologize.’ Jonathan shook hands with his friend. ‘I had to go into Town unexpectedly. Things to arrange. But nothing would make me miss your party’ He glanced at Sarah. ‘Almost nothing.’
    And then the paralysis that had come over her when she had seen him began to ebb away and she realized the hot sensation that coursed through her was anger.

Chapter Five
    ‘Thank you, my lord .’ A fine line appeared between Bel’s brows at the emphasis. ‘I do not waltz.’ Her voice rose, heads turned.
    ‘Sarah—’
    ‘I do not want to dance.’ She could hear her tone becoming shrill and modulated it, forcing something close to a smile. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘Miss Tatton,’ Jonathan said. ‘I would not constrain you to anything against your will.’ She felt the color rise in her cheeks. It was as though the scene in the ballroom was shifting in and out of focus and the man in front of her was alternately formally attired and standing against a background of chattering couples, and stark naked in her bedchamber, a wicked smile on his lips and her stocking dangling from his fingers.
    ‘Let us try, shall we?’ he suggested. ‘You can always tell me to release you, should you find the experience disturbing.’
    Disturbing? The heat was gathering low in her belly, she felt light-headed and breathless and wanting, and the anger pulsed through the arousal and the ache and she just needed to hit him and kiss him and…
    Her hand was in his and she could not, without making a scene, escape. Jonathan drew her onto the floor and took her in a firm hold. ‘You are doubtless as surprised as I am, to meet like this.’
    ‘I am most certainly surprised, my lord,’ she said. Oh God, he smells the same. Leather and citrus and man.
    ‘My lord?’ He quirked an eyebrow at her as the music began. ‘What has happened to Jonathan ?’
    ‘I do not know. Tell me, what has happened to Jonathan?’
    The fact that she was angry and upset and not merely shocked seemed finally to penetrate his consciousness. ‘What is the matter?’
    ‘Matter?’ Somehow she managed to keep her voice down as he swept her the length of the room and round into a complicated turn at the end. She had never danced the waltz except with a dancing master; now, she realized, she was so preoccupied that she simply followed Jonathan’s lead through the most difficult steps.
    ‘You lied to me, you deceived me, you took advantage of me and you wonder why I am angry?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said bluntly, the arched dark brows lowering in answering anger. ‘I never took advantage of you, I never deceived you, I never lied to you—’
    ‘You lied by omission.’ He forced her into a tight, swooping turn, her skirts swinging out, the room shifting dizzyingly about her. Sarah glimpsed Maude’s face, staring. ‘I thought you were a highwayman, or if not that, at least an ordinary man, a gentleman who had fallen on hard times. How could you not tell me who you were?’
    Then the reason he had not, and the real reason she was so upset, hit her like a blow and she stopped dead in the middle of the floor as couples swerved to avoid them.
    ‘But of course you could not tell me,’ she whispered. ‘Because if you had, you thought I would say that you had compromised me, that as a gentleman you must marry me and you would have been trapped. That is it, is it not?’
     
    ‘No!’