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

I. It’s just that I simply cannot seem to prove it.” Self-deprecating humor in the words. He was actually trying to soothe her.
    A wee taste, then, of Colin Eversea’s vaunted charm. It enveloped, sliding in through chinks she didn’t know she had. Madeleine hadn’t the faintest idea how to de flect it. She stood, for the first time in longer than she could recall, without the upper hand.
    It was terrifying.
    With some difficulty, she tore her gaze away. Ah, that did the trick. Her wits recongregated and presented her with a triumphant realization. “Have you any sisters, Mr. Eversea?”
    He went still, clearly surprised. And then his head went back a little on a genuine, appreciative little laugh. Acceding a point.
    “Yes, I have two sisters, as a matter of fact. Which is how I know very well that women aren’t quite the fragile, helpless creatures most men think they are. Or they would like men to think they are . . . when it suits them.”
    It was both an acknowledgment and a warning, and somehow it was just the right thing to say.
    Quite unexpectedly he released his grip at last and took a step backward, his palms up.
    And just when she was growing accustomed to that Newgate smell.
    She rubbed at her wrists eloquently and stared up at him. Not a trace of guilt altered his handsome face. Damnation . She stopped rubbing, as her wrists weren’t really troubling her.
    “Have we an honorable agreement to help each other, then?”
    Oh, not this . It never failed to amaze her: men and their bloody frivolous attachment to the notion of honor. Her own notions of right and wrong were in stinctive and, in truth, quite fl exible.
    “Yes,” she humored, tamping impatience. She could revise her version of an honorable agreement at any time, she decided.
    “Shall we shake hands, then?” There was a glimmer of something about his mouth.
    Ah. And now she knew he’d been a devil. She wasn’t eager to give her hand or any of her other limbs back to him, and he knew it. Still, he might as well know she wasn’t afraid of anything. She thrust a hand out, he closed his large warm hand over hers and gave it a firm shake as though she were any gent, and he released it as though the touch of a strange woman’s bare hand moved him not at all; while her thoughts, for a shock ing instant, were altogether vanquished simply by the heat of his fingers closing over hers.
    “No one knows about the window,” he guessed.
    “Of course not.” she said shortly, when she could speak again.
    “You brought in the lamp so no one would guess at the existence of a window.”
    She heard the bemusement in his voice. She ignored it. He wouldn’t be the first man to attempt to under stand her, to marvel at her, and there wasn’t time to indulge him. It wasn’t a game to her.
    “Can you climb?” she said curtly instead.
    “I can climb,” he answered just as curtly.
    She leaned the broom aside and cast a dubious look up at him. Colin Eversea was conspicuously tall and broad-shouldered and—well, conspicuously Colin Ever-sea . No doubt the moment the two of them managed to squeeze their bodies out of the window, an abandoned broadsheet with his image sketched over it would blow up to wrap their ankles.
    And no doubt they were clutched as cherished me mentos in the hands of all of those filtering back to their homes, either disappointed or rejoicing in the fact that they hadn’t seen a hanging, but knowing it was a day they would never forget.
    Then there was the matter of his clothes—that dark coat sewn of superfine and cut by Weston, from the looks of it; a silk cravat, limp, but silk nevertheless. Those boots of his were gorgeous, made by Hobby, no doubt, and no worse for being worn behind prison walls. The sheen of them would easily draw the eye of any opportunistic thief, who would follow them up Eversea’s legs to that decidedly memorable face, and then there would be trouble.
    Still, a horned sketch was one thing. The living,