Ten Things I Love About You by Julia Quinn Read Free Book Online Page A

she’d be warm there, as well.
    Not
that he was considering it. For all her heat, she radiated virginity.
    Which meant that she was very much off-limits.
    Someone in whom he had no interest. None. He couldn’t even be friends with the virgins, because someone would undoubtedly misunderstand or misconstrue, and then there would be recriminations or worse, expectations, and then he’d find himself off at some hunting lodge in Scotland, just to get away from it all.
    Sebastian knew what he ought to do. He always knew what he ought to do. The difficulty—his difficulty, at least—was in the doing it.
    He
could
rise to his feet like the gentleman he was, point her in the direction of the house, and send her on her way.
    He could, but what would be the fun in that?

Chapter Four
    W hen the dead body said, “Good evening,” Annabel had to face the grim conclusion that it wasn’t nearly as dead as she’d hoped.
    She was happy for
him,
of course, not being dead and all that, but as for herself, well, his undeadedness was spectacularly inconvenient.
    Dear Lord,
she wanted to moan,
the night only needed this.
    She declined his offer of assistance, politely though it was made, and somehow managed to stagger to her feet without embarrassing herself any further.
    “What brings you out on the heath?” the not-dead fellow asked conversationally, as if they were instead chatting in a churchyard, surrounded by all that was prim and proper.
    She stared down at him. He was still reclining on the blanket—a blanket! He had a blanket?
    This could not be good.
    “Why do you want to know?” she heard herself ask. Which seemed to her to be proof that she’d lost complete sight of her sanity. Clearly she should have stepped around him and run back to the house. Or stepped over him. Or on him. But above all, she should not have engaged in conversation. Even if she ran right across the amorous couple in the garden, that
had
to be less dangerous to her reputation than being caught alone with a strange man on the heath.
    If he was planning to attack and ravish, though, he gave no indication of being in a hurry to do so. He just shrugged and said, “I’m curious.”
    She looked at him for a moment. He did not look familiar, but it
was
dark. And he was speaking as if they had been introduced. “Do I know you?” she asked.
    He smiled mysteriously. “I don’t think so.”
    “Should I?”
    At that he laughed, then said firmly, “Absolutely not. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a perfectly delightful conversation.”
    From this Annabel deduced that he was a rake and well aware of it, certainly not appropriate company for an unmarried lady. She glanced in the direction of the house. She ought to go. She really ought.
    “I don’t bite,” he assured her. “Or anything else you’d need to worry over.” He sat up and patted the blanket beside him. “Have a seat.”
    “I’ll stand,” she said. Because she hadn’t completely lost her sense. At least she hoped not.
    “Are you certain?” He gave her a winning smile. “It’s much more comfortable down here.”
    Said the spider to the fly. Annabel only barely managed to avoid letting out a squeak of nervous laughter.
    “Are you avoiding someone?” he asked.
    She’d been looking back toward the house again, but at this her head whipped around.
    “It happens to the best of us,” he said, almost apologetically.
    “Are
you
avoiding someone, then?”
    “Not precisely,” he allowed, cocking his head in a way that was almost like a shrug. “It’s more that I’m waiting my turn.”
    Annabel had
really
wanted to appear impassive, but she felt her eyebrows rise.
    He looked at her, his lips curved into the tiniest smile. There was nothing wicked in his expression, and yet she felt it all the same, a shiver of anticipation, a hint of excitement pressing through her.
    “I could give you the details,” he murmured, “but I suspect it wouldn’t be proper.”
    Nothing that