Read Online Duchess in Love by Eloisa James - Free Book Online Page A

a fit of rage that I wouldn’t, and I haven’t.” He looked across the table with a gleam of mischief deep in his eyes. “Of course, I live off the proceeds of fat pink statues, as you describe them.”
    Stephen sighed. “She’s your wife, Cam. Your wife . You married her when she was eleven, and didn’t come back for twelve years—and you think the extent of your responsibility was turning over your bank account?”
    Cam smiled, unruffled. “That’s about right. You can try, but you’ll never be able to cram that hidebound sense of English responsibility you were born with into my useless soul. The only thing I give a damn about is where my next piece of marble is coming from. Gina and I both know that we’re not truly married, so why should I return before she asked me to?” He swallowed some brandy. “At any rate, here I am, ready to hand over my so-called wife to the marquess.”
    Stephen snorted.
    â€œDo you suppose she’s dancing with him again?” Cam asked. For some reason, he didn’t feel like sitting around in the comfortable male confines of the card room.
    â€œWhat do you care? He’ll likely throw her over after you annul the marriage. She’ll have to go live in a cottage somewhere in the north.”
    Cam stood up so suddenly that he bumped the table, spilling brandy onto the polished surface. “Any time you decide to stop moralizing long enough to breathe, just let me know, will you, cousin? I’ve had all the boredom I can take at the moment.”
    He strode out of the room, conscious of a prick of guilt. He shouldn’t have snapped at Stephen like that. But he’d had that lesson drilled into him one too many times—by a master of morality, his own father. His lip twisted. Responsibility! In the name of responsibility his father had locked him in every dark closet in the house, destroyed any reverence he had for the name of his mother, and married him to a woman he had, until the day of his marriage, thought to be his first cousin.
    Gina stood out in the ballroom like a lighted torch among a bunch of squibs. As it happened, she wasn’t dancing with her marquess. Instead, she was partnered with a stout middle-aged man. He leaned against the wall for a moment and watched. She wasn’t strictly beautiful, his wife. Not beautiful the way Marissa was beautiful. Marissa had the deep-set eyes and rounded cheekbones of a Mediterranean goddess. Whereas Gina…Gina had a lovely mouth. His fingers itched to shape it in marble. Although coaxing that sweetness into stone would be a tremendous challenge.
    Marissa didn’t look real in stone. She looked like the embodiment of man’s greatest fantasy about women: placid, sensual, gloriously languid, unspeaking. Gina was like a moving flame. Where on earth did she inherit those tip-tilted eyes? Her spirit leaped so clearly from them that they would be almost impossible to reproduce.
    The dance was drawing to a close and Cam strolled overto the side of the ballroom where she was standing. As he walked up, she turned and smiled.
    He almost caught his breath.
    My God, but Gina had grown up well! At eleven years old, she’d been a lanky, leggy wisp of a girl with big green eyes and hair that was always falling out of its braids. But here she was wearing a gown that barely covered her curves. In fact, what cloth there was seemed no more than a backdrop to her breasts and those long, long legs. No doubt about it: French gowns were made for figures like Gina’s, he thought. Marissa would look positively plump in one of them.
    â€œHello, Cam,” she said. “Have you come to dance with me? Because I’m afraid that I promised this dance to—”
    â€œA husband’s privilege,” he said smoothly, taking her arm. Some couples were putting themselves into a circle so he towed her forward, enjoying the way she wiggled, trying to pull