Seduced by a Pirate by Eloisa James Read Free Book Online Page A

his wife said, leaning toward him. Her eyes were dark blue, eyes a man could drown in. “You have not been away from England so long that you’ve forgotten your English. I do not want to consummate this marriage because I do not want to be in this marriage!”
    Just in case he didn’t understand, she got up and took herself into the house without another word.
    After a minute, a capable-looking housekeeper appeared, introduced herself, and escorted him to the master’s bedchamber.
    It showed no signs of use. How long had that fellow been dead? Or perhaps she never brought him to the house.
    It was all very interesting.

 
    E IGHT
    P hoebe fell into her bedchamber and leaned back against the closed door, her heart galloping. In a wilderness of Sundays, she never would have imagined something like this.
    Griffin had changed so much. Not even a shadow of the shy boy she’d married remained. This man had an air of danger about him that made her feel like a rabbit in sight of a wolf: frozen, enticed.
    When her father had first suggested the match with the future Viscount Moncrieff, Phoebe hadn’t demurred. She had always known that her father would find husbands from the nobility for herself and her sisters. He had the money, and he wanted the bloodlines.
    Her primary feeling had been gratitude that he had chosen someone who wasn’t sixty, even though she would have preferred someone a bit older than herself, or at least her age. By the time the young baronet was finally old enough to marry, she had just celebrated her twentieth birthday, and felt sophisticated and worldly in comparison. She had been taller than her fiancé, and certainly weighed more.
    But now, fourteen years later, their positions were reversed. He had become a man of the world, a man whose shoulders were twice the size of hers. And she was a country partridge who lived at home with her three children.
    This was a disaster.
    There had to be some way out of the marriage. There just had to be. He thought she was a loose woman. The idea sickened her. But what if she let him continue in that misapprehension? Surely he would not allow a love child to become the future viscount.
    A sob rose in her chest. Her life, her sweet life with her darling children . . . That man did not fit in here. Whatever would her friends think? Her neighbors? Even if they didn’t discover that he had been a privateer, he was marked under the eye like a New World savage.
    Common sense told her that someone would inform him that she had adopted the children, so infidelity would never work as a reason to dissolve the marriage.
    Tears caused by pure frustration fell onto her hands and slipped between her fingers.
    In a way, it was worse that he was so handsome, with such a male appeal. Even his tattoo wasn’t entirely uninviting. And there was something sensual and possessive in the way he looked at her. An unwilling flicker of heat lit in her stomach, followed by a churn of nausea.
    The door burst open. “Shark says he will take us to the sea,” Colin cried, running into the room. “The sea, the sea, the sea!”
    Phoebe surged to her feet, her maternal instinct sweeping all her other feelings to the side. How dare Mr. Sharkton say something of that nature to her child? Lure him into a dangerous, bloody career—indeed, if it could even be dignified with that title?
    “Colin Barry,” she said in a voice that he had rarely heard, “return to the nursery.”
    Colin gaped up at her.
    “Now!”
    He turned around and trotted away as fast as his legs would carry him.
    She had instructed Mrs. Hastie, her housekeeper, to put Griffin in the largest bedchamber. Luckily, she had never occupied it herself, but had taken the airy bedchamber closest to the nursery.
    Now she marched straight toward Griffin’s room, her tears dried by pure rage.
    She would fall dead before she allowed her son to be lured by a couple of felons to death at sea. She threw open the door without knocking. “I