Don't Tempt Me by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online Page B

newspapers. Unlike the mob,they wouldn’t let go of a sensational story so easily. The stragglers in the square were mainly newspaper men. They wanted a story, and they’d make one up if necessary.
    He reentered the library, where Zoe waited, her blue eyes brimming with an admiration and gratitude that even he, who couldn’t be bothered to read expressions, could comprehend. He didn’t know whether or not he believed what he saw in her face. A dozen years ago, he would have known what to believe. But a dozen years ago, Zoe would never have worn such a melting expression.
    This wasn’t the Zoe he’d known all those years ago, he reminded himself. In any event, he didn’t need to know what was in her heart, any more than she needed to know what was in his. He’d promised to bring her into fashion, and that was all he needed to do.
    He turned his attention elsewhere.
    Her sisters hovered in the doorway, one black figure standing at each side of the frame and two with enormous bellies pacing in the corridor beyond.
    A quartet of crows.
    â€œWho died?” he said.
    â€œCousin Horatio,” said Augusta.
    â€œAh, the recluse on the Isle of Skye,” said Marchmont.
    Lexham had taken him there after Gerard died. Some thought it a strange place to take a grieving fifteen-year-old, but Lexham, as always, knew what to do. In hindsight, Marchmont saw how wise his guardian had been not to send the new Duke ofMarchmont back to school. There he’d have to hide his grief. There, among his friends, he’d have no Gerard to boast of, no letters from Gerard to look forward to. Skye and the eccentric Cousin Horatio held no associations with Gerard or their dead parents. It was far away from the world in which they’d grown up, and it was beautiful. He and Lexham walked. They fished. They read books and talked. Sometimes even Cousin Horatio joined the conversation.
    The brooding atmosphere of the place and the solitude had quieted Marchmont’s mind and brought him a measure of peace.
    â€œHe died a fortnight ago,” Dorothea said.
    â€œHe left his property to Papa.”
    â€œThe least one might do is wear mourning for him.”
    Were they thinking of sending their youngest sister to Cousin Horatio’s? Zoe on a desolate, windswept island of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides? She’d think she was in Siberia. For one who’d spent twelve years in a land where the sun always shone and where even on winter nights the temperature rarely fell below sixty degrees, it would be exactly the same thing: bone-chilling and spirit-killing.
    His gaze drifted to Zoe, in her wine-colored shawl and pale green frock. She was the antithesis of mourning, acutely alive and unmistakably carnal.
    It wasn’t that her garments were seductive. It was the way she wore them and the languorous way she carried herself. Even standing still, she vibrated physicality.
    â€œI did not have enough clothes, and the black dress my sisters found for me was too small,” she said, evidently misreading his prolonged survey as criticism. “To alter it was too much work. The maid must take a piece from here.” She pointed to the bottom of her skirt, drawing attention to her elegantly slender feet. “Then she must add it to this part, to cover my breasts.” She drew her hand over her bodice. “They must put in a piece here as well.” She slid her hands along her hips.
    â€œZoe,” Dorothea said warningly.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWe don’t touch ourselves in that way.”
    â€œMost certainly not in front of others who are not our husband,” Priscilla said.
    â€œI forgot.” She looked at Marchmont. “We don’t touch. We don’t say what we feel in our hearts. We don’t lie on the rug. We keep our feet on the floor except in bed or on the chaise longue.”
    â€œWhere were you keeping your feet?” he said.
    She gestured at the furniture.