The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Anne Long Read Free Book Online

planted both his booted feet around her feet, trapping them.
    Damnation.
    They were so close his knees were virtually between her legs. It was perhaps the most intimate she’d been with any man in . . . well, it wasn’t as though she’d actu ally kept count of the days.
    The corners of the devil’s mouth turned up into a faint, hard smile.
    “You might very well have a point regarding my cur rent physical condition, Miss Greenway. But I’ve lately learned that desperation is astonishingly motivating. Care to take the measure of my desperation?”
    She’d seen any number of desperate men in her day; desperation, in fact, kept her in blunt. But none had looked quite like this. Or spoken quite like this. With obvious intelligence, or a penchant for irony, or a gen tlemanly menace.
    “You need me,” he pressed a few heartbeats later. It was a guess on his part, and a good one. “My family is wealthy.”
    “I need you to release me,” she corrected.
    “You need me because my family will pay for my safe return,” he corrected bluntly. “They shall be . . . happy to have me returned alive to them, regardless.”
    Interesting hesitation. “You don’t sound convinced.”
    His smile was rueful, but this time it reached his eyes. “I’m not. At least, I’m not certain they all will be happy. But I am certain you will be paid to return me to them. For we’ve honor, you see. We Everseas do.” More irony. “And something tells me it’s urgent that you’re paid.”
    “Mr. Eversea, more specifi cally, it’s urgent that I am paid very quickly . I haven’t time to waste on—”
    “Ah, once again we are in accord, then, as it’s urgent that I return to Pennyroyal Green quickly. It’s begin ning to feel a bit like destiny, wouldn’t you agree, Miss Greenway?”
    Mrs. , she almost corrected. Though it hardly seemed relevant anymore.
    “ Why do you need to return urgently?” she de manded instead. She wanted a fact, something convinc ing, by way of collateral. She wanted proof his urgency equaled her own.
    “I need to stop a wedding in Sussex. And I need to prove my innocence before I do it.”
    Oh , for God’s sake. Excessive sentimentality ought to be a hanging offense.
    “Oh, really. Who is this paragon?” He wasn’t the only one who could construct a sentence out of irony. “I imagine her name is Louisa.”
    “She’s not a paragon. She’s a flesh and blood woman. And she belongs with me.”
    The words were terse. The sun rises in the east. It’s dark at night. She belongs with me . Same tone. There
    was an odd, faint answering echo of pain somewhere inside Madeleine when she heard them. She took in a deep breath.
    “If this is true, whom is she marrying instead?” There was no pain her sharp mind and a sharp retort couldn’t blunt.
    Another of those funny, brief hesitations followed. “My brother Marcus.”
    Ah. So he’d decided to be honest, as that confession could not have been pleasant for him.
    For her part, she’d decided to be relentless. “So it’s your brother who has the family money.”
    This was clearly a little too accurate, as his grip on her tightened infi nitesimally.
    “My brother had the advantage of not being in Newgate.”
    “Presumably because he didn’t stab a gentleman to death in a pub?”
    She’d gone too far. His eyes went dark, his mouth opened abruptly, and it occurred to her too late that she might not like to make this man truly angry. But then—
    But then he surprised her. He closed his mouth over whatever retort he’d planned, his brows came together in a sort of puzzlement, and he studied her for an un blinking moment.
    Before her eyes some sort of realization gradually lit his. That frown tilted up at one corner and . . .
    Damned if it didn’t become a nearly tender smile. As though he understood something about her she didn’t quite understand yet.
    “Presumably,” he said, and his words were gentle now. “Then again, as I said before, neither did