The Princess and the Pauper by Alexandra Benedict Read Free Book Online

me, do you receive any of
the funds I put down for you?”
    She stiffened. “No. Mr. Woodward retains the
money. I only receive the promise of an affluent gentleman for my
protector.”
    He fisted his hands at her nonchalant
answer. “Why did you go to him?”
    She glanced away, then back at
him. “I had
no choice.”
    “ You could have come to me .”
    He had only recently returned to
England, but she could have written to him while he was
abroad. His
tour was detailed in every broadsheet. How could she have
approached a bloody whoremonger instead of him for help? Pride?
Shame? Fear? Did she really believe he would have denied her as she
had denied him?
    A dark part of him wondered if that was
possible. Would he have slammed the door in her face had she come
to him for assistance? Was he angry with her now because she’d
denied him that revenge?
    His belly clenched at the disgusting
thought.
    But the longer he inhaled her perfume
and listened to her soft breathing and watched her fingers dance
with musical lightness, the more he realized he would never have
let her fall—even if she believed it.
    She frowned. “I didn’t think you
would—”
    “ And your father approves
of your choice to sell yourself?”
    He didn’t want to hear her admit
the past,
that she didn’t think he’d have helped her because of what she’d
done, what her father had done to him. He wasn’t prepared to
revisit that night.
    “ Papa is dead.”
    Grey expected to feel something at the
news that the man who’d destroyed his grandfather’s violin was
dead—but he felt nothing at all.
    “ He died from shock,” she
explained.
    Or shame, thought Grey. A man so high
had far to fall.
    “ I lived off what little money
remained for as long as I could, but the funds are now gone, and my
landlady doesn’t run a charity house.”
    She had said the last part with
unmistakable bitterness, and he suspected those were the landlady’s
very words to her. They were also the words her father had used
when he’d evicted Grey’s grandfather.
    “ And now you’re mine,
princess.”
    “ So it would
appear.”
    “ Take off your
dress.”
    Her features fell. She remained still for
a long while before her shaky fingers reached for the front buttons
of her garment in resignation. She said not a word after
that.
    He watched her remove the outerwear,
listened to her labored breathing. When the dress fell to the
ground, she stepped out of the fabric pile, looking slim, perhaps a
little waifish, and if he’d doubted her story before, he didn’t
doubt it now. She had clearly lived off few means.
    You should have come to
me.
    “ The corset,” he said
next.
    She pinched together the front of the
jaeger corset, trimmed with lace and rosettes, and released the
hooks and eyes. All her accessories were fastened from the front so
no maid was needed for dressing—or undressing.
    She remained in her stockings and chemise,
but there was still one binding contraption that needed to be
removed.
    “ Let down your
hair.”
    At that, she sent him a rebellious stare. She
had once lived in his heart, ruled his every waking thought. She
had mastered him, and she had broken him. Now he was her master. And he would
tame her, if only to wrest from her the power she still yielded
over him.
    H e stood firm and waited.
    His lung s cramped when she finally pulled the
pins from her hair, releasing the thick tresses. The long locks
tumbled down her back and over her shoulders in wild waves, and his
every nerve throbbed with temptation.
    “ Sit, ” he whispered.
    Her body tensed, but
s he went over
to the bed and sat down.
    “ No! ” he snapped, rougher than he’d meant, but
he’d been alarmed by her choice of the bed, that she’d assumed he’d
ravish her. He wouldn’t even kiss her on the mouth—their last kiss
had almost destroyed him.
    He grabbed a high chair
with a round
backrest and no armrests. “Sit.”
    Her brows puckered, but she obeyed and
moved to the chair.