Seduced by a Pirate by Eloisa James Read Free Book Online

over to find out that it was made of solid silver. Her cheeks were pink with embarrassment, or perhaps anger, and she had the most exquisite skin he’d seen in his entire life.
    In retrospect, he had always minimized the role of her beauty in his disastrous wedding night, blaming his failures on youthful ineptitude and nerves. But damn . . . she was exquisite. Enchanting.
    More than any woman he’d seen in all his travels.
    “His lordship has not had tea,” Phoebe stated, a bit desperately.
    He took pity on her. “Nanny McGillycuddy,” he said, “take these piratical rapscallions off to the nursery, will you? My wife and I have to catch up on fourteen years’ worth of conversation.”
    The nanny gave him a hard look that said without words that he’d better not make her mistress unhappy, then bustled the children away, the nursemaid trailing after them.
    “I’ll go to the kitchens and see about tea,” Shark said, patently eager to escape a round of marital conversation.
    “Why no servants?” Griffin asked after Shark disappeared. “No butler, no footmen? We weren’t even greeted by a housekeeper.”
    “She must have been busy. I do employ a few manservants, but they’re occupied in the fields or the gardens at this time of day. I don’t keep a butler, because mine isn’t that sort of household.”
    “ That sort of household?” he repeated, raising an eyebrow.
    “A gentry household,” she clarified. “I don’t use my title, and I don’t aspire to re-create that atmosphere.”
    “Isn’t life easier with servants?” he asked, genuinely curious.
    “A butler who merely stands about and answers the door for a random visitor? Footmen whose only role is to polish the silver?”
    He shrugged. It wasn’t something he gave a damn about either way. He himself ran a tight ship, every man assigned to four or five tasks. Noblemen like his father liked to have a passel of servants standing around merely to demonstrate consequence.
    Clearly her mind went in the same direction. “Your father will be anxious to see you. Doubtless he saw the same notice in the paper that I did. I am sure that he is waiting on tenterhooks for your arrival.”
    “I’m not capable of playing the prodigal son. No regret, for one thing.”
    “You sound as if the subject of piracy amuses you. I do not know your father well, but I assure you that he sees nothing amusing in your occupation.”
    Griffin shrugged. “We have never shared interests. At sea one soon realizes that titles and precedence don’t matter to a dying man.”
    “I don’t suppose they do. But there is a great deal to be said for a fortune that is not built on theft.”
    “All fortunes are built on theft of one sort or another.”
    Phoebe didn’t seem to be the twitchy sort, but he had clearly made her nervous. She kept clasping and unclasping her hands. “We must talk,” she said finally.
    “We are talking,” he said, just to be contrary.
    The anger in her eyes woke her up and made her look less like a saint and more like a flesh-and-blood woman.
    “Actually,” he drawled, “I think we should be doing more than talking.”
    Her brows drew together.
    “We are married,” he prompted.
    “I know that.”
    “Yet our marriage was not consummated.”
    She rolled her eyes. “I was there. I remember. And the answer is no.”
    Lord, there was something wildly freeing about being in company with a woman who hadn’t the slightest awareness of his fearsome reputation.
    “You can’t blame a man for the sins of his youth,” he said piously.
    “That’s got nothing to do with it.”
    “Does your refusal have anything to do with the children’s father?”
    “No!”
    The relief he felt was well out of proportion to the situation. But it would have been damned awkward to return after fourteen years and find one’s wife grieving for a dead lover. “Well, then, we’d better get about the business with expedience,” he said cheerfully.
    “Sir Griffin,”