The Bride Wore Scarlet by Liz Carlyle Read Free Book Online Page B

said Geoff tightly, “I don’t doubt for an instant.”
    â€œI resent your arrogance, old chap,” said Rance.
    â€œI resent it, too,” said the girl coolly. “I am qualified. And you, sir, are an ass.”
    Geoff spun round to face her. She had made no effort whatsoever to pull together the robe he had hurled about her shoulders, a fact that made him inexplicably angry. He let his eyes trail hotly down her, and felt something besides anger curling in the pit of his belly.
    â€œIf you are truly Vittorio’s acolyte,” he said tightly, “then you’ll be marked.”
    She jerked up her chin, anger flashing in her black eyes. “Oh, I am,” she said, her hand seizing the hem of the shift. “Do you wish to see the proof?”
    â€œGood God, Bessett,” said Rance on a groan. “She’s marked. I made sure.”
    Bessett spun in the other direction. “ You made sure? ” he echoed incredulously. “Do you mind telling—no, never mind.” He turned again, and seized the girl by the upper arm. “You, come with me.”
    â€œWhere are you taking her?” Belkadi, one of the Advocati, had materialized at his elbow.
    â€œTo Safiyah,” Geoff answered, his voice pitched low. “For I can see, even if Rance cannot, that an unmarried female of good family cannot stand half naked in the middle of what is believed to be little more than a gentlemen’s club.”
    â€œOh, thank you!” said the girl bitterly. “Ten years of my life tossed into the rubbish heap over a point of etiquette!”
    Geoff did not reply but instead hauled her up the steps and through the wine cellar, into the laboratory passageway. Another flight took them to the ground floor, and eventually to the relative privacy of the servants’ stairs, the girl snapping at him the whole way.
    Except that she was not a girl.
    No, not by a far shot.
    And what she had just done—dear Lord, it was courting ruin. Did it simply not matter to her?
    â€œYou are bruising my arm, you lout,” she informed him. “What are you so afraid of? After all, I am just a mere woman.”
    â€œI am afraid for you, you little fool,” he whispered. “Be still, before you’re seen by someone whose silence we can’t so easily command.”
    She bucked up at that, jerking to a stubborn halt on the landing. “I am not ashamed of what I am,” she said, clutching his robe shut with one hand. “I have worked hard to learn my craft.”
    â€œYou, madam, do not have ‘a craft,’ ” he said coldly. “For God’s sake, consider others if not yourself. What would your father think if he knew where you were just now?”
    At that, a faint flush chased up her cheeks. “He might not approve, to be honest.”
    â€œ Might not?” Against his will, Geoff’s gaze swept hotly down her length again. “He might not approve? Of his daughter running around half naked in a London club?”
    Her hard, black eyes narrowed. “It isn’t like that,” she said. “I simply haven’t told him everything. Not yet.”
    Geoff hesitated, incredulous. “You mean you’ve told him something ?”
    Her blush deepened, but her tone did not soften. “Oh, for pity’s sake, I’ve been staying in Tuscany with Vittorio for months at a time,” she retorted. “What do you think I told him? That I was off to finishing school in Geneva? Do I look finished to you?”
    No, she did not.
    She looked like something . . . wild and totally un finished.
    Like something a man might never be finished with—though she was not precisely pretty. But she was intriguing and earthy and full of a vivacity he couldn’t quite grasp. And whatever she was, she looked like no woman he’d ever known before—and he’d known quite a few.
    Her father’s wrath, however, was none of