Read Online By Love Unveiled by Deborah Martin - Free Book Online Page A

worked, she couldn’t help thinking of the earl who slept so close by. What kind of man was he? Ever since she’d met him, she’d kept her eyes and ears open, hoping to find proof of his role in her father’s arrest.Whenever she met his servants in Lydgate, she questioned them discreetly, but they seemed to know little, having been newly hired. His men, whom she occasionally treated for minor injuries, were loyal to a fault, praising him for his just manner and prowess in battle.
    He’d killed men in those battles, of course, but he’d been a soldier, so that proved naught. Was he a villain who would betray an innocent man simply to steal his property? Heaven take her, but she wanted to know very badly. Because if he hadn’t had Father arrested, her attraction to him wouldn’t bother her so much.
    She snorted. Attraction! She was not attracted to the scoundrel. What absurdity. She wanted nothing to do with him.
    So why did she thrill to the thought of how he’d looked at her in his room? Why did she shiver when she thought of his touching her cheek so delicately? And not a shiver of fear, either. That was the worst of it. More like fascination.
    Attraction.
    A groan escaped her. Very well, so she was attracted to the rogue. A little. A very little. And only because she’d had so few dealings with men.
    Though her family had used to attend the occasional ball or dinner, a mere baronet with a supposed Spanish wife could never be the toast of high society. Her family had socialized little with people of rank outside of a few close friends.
    Instead Father had found friends among men of science, whose mutual interest in medicine had made themoblivious to his private situation. So Marianne had grown up surrounded by men so engrossed in the fever of learning that they’d barely noticed her. Even as she’d grown older, she’d been treated by her father’s friends more as a young sister than as a possible conquest.
    Indeed, her mother had worried about her daughter’s prospects, but Marianne hadn’t cared that she might find herself husbandless. She’d always wanted to follow in her parents’ footsteps; she hadn’t needed a husband for that.
    And after Mother had died, there had been little time for dinners and balls. Marianne had had her hands full taking care of Father’s household. Once in a while one of Father’s pupils had noticed her; one had even stolen a kiss. But she’d taken none of them seriously.
    Now, after years of being regarded as a mind without a body, she didn’t know quite how to deal with a man who seemed to see her as a body without a mind.
    No, that wasn’t quite it, either, for he hadn’t disparaged her wit.
    But he’d stared at her with such . . . hunger. Yes, that was it—like a starved man admitted to a feast for the first time in months. Coping with that look was difficult. So was resisting it.
    “Stand up very slowly if you wish to live another day,” a deep voice said behind her.
    Her hands froze as she recognized the rumbling timbre of that voice. It was as if her very thoughts had conjured him up.
    Something sharp prodded her ribs, making herstiffen. For heaven’s sake, the man was actually holding a sword to her back!
    “Stand!” he commanded.
    She did so, cursing her all-encompassing black cloak, which made her look like any thief in the night. “ ’Tis only I, the gypsy. I mean no harm, my lord.”
    The sword point left her ribs. She gave a sigh of relief, but the silence behind her did nothing to lessen the pounding of her heart.
    “Turn around,” he said tersely, and she obeyed so quickly that she nearly tripped over her cloak.
    Her eyes widened as she saw his finely hewn face, implacable in the early morning light. Underneath the gray cloak draped casually about his shoulders, his clothes were in disarray, as if he’d dressed in a great hurry, but he held his sword in readiness.
    His gaze fixed on her mask, which she’d worn in case a stranger came upon